rezonat0r
5th February 2004, 19:30
Greetings, I am capturing analog video from various sources through my new Canopus ADVC-300 (love it, btw) and editing with Premiere Pro.
I am also using the new Canopus Procoder Express 1.0, and exporting directly from the timeline in Premiere Pro to a final MPEG2 stream (no prerendering or recompression beforehand).
Now, I should note that all my captures use the Canopus FourCC, and the decoder used to play them back on my system is whatever Procoder Express installed. It appears to be similar to the standard Canopus DV decoder that is available from their website, but perhaps a slightly newer version, because in the settings window there are three options, the last one being "Compress for DVCPRO-25". I don't recall seeing this last option when I just installed the free decoder from Canopus without Procoder.
So my question is, do I still need to worry about the infamous chroma upsampling bug that the Canopus DV decoder was known to have in the past? Since I'm pretty much using all Canopus stuff in the video chain (ADVC-300 to capture, Canopus DV codec, Canopus plugin for Premiere Pro, Canopus ProCoder), it would seem like I'm doing it the cleanest way possible.
My latest, and nearly first, 2-pass VBR encode of 80 minutes of Hi8 material looks pretty phenomenal, using an average bitrate. Very low noise and natural, definitely less "compressed" looking than TMPGenc at the same bitrate, and FAR better than even a tweaked CCE. This confirms what others have said about CCE not fairing too well on interlaced material.
Here is a sample image with a red traffic cone:
http://www.dvd-scrapbook.com/capture.tif
The reds in my encode don't look perfect, but they don't look overly blocky or 'splochy' as I've seen in the past. However, there does seem to be some smearing on the right side of the cone, this is because the camera is panning slowly to the right and the cone is leaving a slight trail. I don't know if this is related to chroma upsampling, my Hi8 camera, or the S-video cable used for capture. The smearing is apparent when playing back on a computer, before any MPEG2 compression.
Any input would be appreciated. As soon as I sort this out I plan to post a document detailing my experience in getting the ultimate quality in analog -> DVD conversion. Thanks!
I am also using the new Canopus Procoder Express 1.0, and exporting directly from the timeline in Premiere Pro to a final MPEG2 stream (no prerendering or recompression beforehand).
Now, I should note that all my captures use the Canopus FourCC, and the decoder used to play them back on my system is whatever Procoder Express installed. It appears to be similar to the standard Canopus DV decoder that is available from their website, but perhaps a slightly newer version, because in the settings window there are three options, the last one being "Compress for DVCPRO-25". I don't recall seeing this last option when I just installed the free decoder from Canopus without Procoder.
So my question is, do I still need to worry about the infamous chroma upsampling bug that the Canopus DV decoder was known to have in the past? Since I'm pretty much using all Canopus stuff in the video chain (ADVC-300 to capture, Canopus DV codec, Canopus plugin for Premiere Pro, Canopus ProCoder), it would seem like I'm doing it the cleanest way possible.
My latest, and nearly first, 2-pass VBR encode of 80 minutes of Hi8 material looks pretty phenomenal, using an average bitrate. Very low noise and natural, definitely less "compressed" looking than TMPGenc at the same bitrate, and FAR better than even a tweaked CCE. This confirms what others have said about CCE not fairing too well on interlaced material.
Here is a sample image with a red traffic cone:
http://www.dvd-scrapbook.com/capture.tif
The reds in my encode don't look perfect, but they don't look overly blocky or 'splochy' as I've seen in the past. However, there does seem to be some smearing on the right side of the cone, this is because the camera is panning slowly to the right and the cone is leaving a slight trail. I don't know if this is related to chroma upsampling, my Hi8 camera, or the S-video cable used for capture. The smearing is apparent when playing back on a computer, before any MPEG2 compression.
Any input would be appreciated. As soon as I sort this out I plan to post a document detailing my experience in getting the ultimate quality in analog -> DVD conversion. Thanks!