Adaptec firewire card VS VIA chipset card question

[MASK666]

I got a $50 firewire card at curcuit city when I picked up my camera to mess with. I got a cheap $20 card off ebay to replace the adaptec one after reading there was no difference in the cards. Either I am going crazy or the video is much darker on this other card than it was with the $50 one. Has anyone ever heard of such a thing or maybe I just got a bad card?

Thanks

[theReal]

shouldn't be possible - but maybe you have installed another DV codec on your system meanwhile? The card only transfers digital data from the camera to the pc: as long as it gets there without interruptions, it's always the same.

[Foambullet]

Yeah I use a really cheap card ($20) and my video is really dark. No one seemed to know much about this.

[MASK666]

I'm sure there has to be something I am doing wrong here... I have taken the firewire card out of the picture as being a problem based on my last post and the fact I just switched my cards and it looks the same... This is killing me over here if I output the video to my tv it looks nice clear and bright. Then when I capture it with Premiere 6.0 or ulead it comes out all dark. It says it is using the the microsoft DV codec for the compression which makes me wonder if that is the problem... Is there some way I can do a raw copy from my minidv tape to my hard drive? And to make matters worse I think I am going to trade this panasonic 103 in for a sony handy cam and will lose the ability to read minidv tapes and I would hate to lose what I have on this tape. I guess if I had to I could record it to VHS then capture it with my video card but there has to be something that can fix whats wrong here.

Thanks in advance for help on this problem and thanks for the past input.

[DDogg]

Ok, this whole thing does not make sense so please allow me to ask a few question for myself and several others whose mind I think I am reading at the moment.

1> You say, "when I output to TV..."
What does that mean? You take your DV camera and hook it to the TV? Correct?
2> So, when you capture your DV to PC via the firewire, edit, render and output it back to tape and then hook to the TV you are saying it looks different? That it is darker? Please note the exact sequence mentioned.

BB, maybe you can merge this thread back with his other where it belongs?

[MASK666]

Yes your correct I should have posted this under my other thread rather than making another one..

What I was saying was when I hook it up to my tv with the A/V cables it looks brighter then when I capture it with my firewire card and play it back on my computer(or when im capturing it for that matter.) I have yet to play the captured file on my tv to see how it looks but I think I will try that later today just to make sure it is not some funky color setting with my computer I guess.

[DDogg]

Still, your answer was not very clear, but I think you are just saying what everybody already knows. Captured DV played back on a PC appears darker than when it is played on a television via hookup to the DVCam video out. Of course it does.

DV is nearly always darker when played on a PC unless the GAMMA of the PC monitor has been adjusted. You might want to do a search in Google on "adjusting gamma on PC monitors". This is the reason that many DV people have an external television that is hooked up to the DVCam. The better editing software allow a preview to be output from the editing time-line out to the DVCam via firewire. The DVCam can then pass that on to a calibrated external monitor hooked to it. The user can then see an example of how the edited footage will appear when finished.

In short, you can not properly judge the appearance of DV footage on a PC monitor, especially if it has not been specially calibrated for gamma level. Btw, if you have Adobe Photoshop, you will notice a gamma adjustment utility in your control panel. Photo software suffers a similar problem as video when judging the relative lightness/darkness of what you see on your PC monitor and what you will see when photo is printed.

[bb]

Originally posted by DDogg
BB, maybe you can merge this thread back with his other where it belongs?
Threads merged.

bb