callstreet
20th September 2004, 04:35
I have search through this forum and the internet but I'm not sure if I will be doing the right thing.
Ideally, I want to store video in some lossless format so I can work on it later - edit, denoise, etc. But the DV format and the well known near lossless codecs like HUFFYUV, MJPEG provide too low compression. I can live with DVD level compression, and indeed someone suggested here MPEG2 as the format for archive. MPEG4 are said to be no good unless perhaps I know how to clean up all the artifacts from, for example, NTSC capture, before compression. That's one of the reasons I need some compression like MPEG2, which perhaps allow me to store all the video in some manageable size files and experiment to improve them later.
I need MPEG2 like encoders to be able to write AVI files, that is, installable as a codec in windows. Otherwise, if I open an mpg file in VirtualDubMod just to cut out some footage for use, it will cost me another compression that is unnecessary and undesirable. That is, the direct stream copy doesn't work for mpg files. If that works, I will have a lot less problem because my main concern is the NTSC video capture. The quality isn't too good and already in MPEG2. I cannot afford another lossy compression without first cleaning them up with filters like denoise, spatial and temporal smoothing. I can do some recommended filtering first but I'm sure more can be done later if I understand more about the filters and experimental with the settings.
My first question is whether the commonly found codecs in Windows, like Cinepak, Indeo, etc, would be good enough if I set the quality to 100 or close to it? I couldn't find much quality comparisons but I understand that some are old, some are for video conferencing on the web etc. I doubt if I can minimize the loss even if I set the quality to 100.
MPEG2 codec like CCE and TMPG are out of the question as they are not free. TMPG is reasonable in price but I doubt if it is an overkill for some not so good video captures. Also, I wonder if can get the same quality by allowing a larger file sizes with other lesser MPEG2 codecs. Twice the size or more is reasonable but not that much as the near lossless codecs.
FFVFW is the only one that I found, which contains at least two versions of MPEG2 codec. That I can use with VirtualDub. QuEnc doesn't write to AVI format so it will cost me another compression if I just want to cut out some footage and save it in AVI.
So a simple question is whether FFVFW will satisfy my needs? And what's the recommended settings to minimize loss? For example, I read through the analogue capture guide, but I'm still not sure whether I need to deinterlace or not. I tried some other filters and some gave big improvements. So I need some encoders to store the video without limiting my chance to improve the quality later. And since the video is already captured in MPEG2 formats already (Instant DVD), which I couldn't do anything about, I don't think I loss much if I use the right MPEG2 codec just once more.
The same goes for the DV from my camcorder. If I can compression them to some reasonable size without losing much, I can get rid of the mini DV tapes.
Ideally, I want to store video in some lossless format so I can work on it later - edit, denoise, etc. But the DV format and the well known near lossless codecs like HUFFYUV, MJPEG provide too low compression. I can live with DVD level compression, and indeed someone suggested here MPEG2 as the format for archive. MPEG4 are said to be no good unless perhaps I know how to clean up all the artifacts from, for example, NTSC capture, before compression. That's one of the reasons I need some compression like MPEG2, which perhaps allow me to store all the video in some manageable size files and experiment to improve them later.
I need MPEG2 like encoders to be able to write AVI files, that is, installable as a codec in windows. Otherwise, if I open an mpg file in VirtualDubMod just to cut out some footage for use, it will cost me another compression that is unnecessary and undesirable. That is, the direct stream copy doesn't work for mpg files. If that works, I will have a lot less problem because my main concern is the NTSC video capture. The quality isn't too good and already in MPEG2. I cannot afford another lossy compression without first cleaning them up with filters like denoise, spatial and temporal smoothing. I can do some recommended filtering first but I'm sure more can be done later if I understand more about the filters and experimental with the settings.
My first question is whether the commonly found codecs in Windows, like Cinepak, Indeo, etc, would be good enough if I set the quality to 100 or close to it? I couldn't find much quality comparisons but I understand that some are old, some are for video conferencing on the web etc. I doubt if I can minimize the loss even if I set the quality to 100.
MPEG2 codec like CCE and TMPG are out of the question as they are not free. TMPG is reasonable in price but I doubt if it is an overkill for some not so good video captures. Also, I wonder if can get the same quality by allowing a larger file sizes with other lesser MPEG2 codecs. Twice the size or more is reasonable but not that much as the near lossless codecs.
FFVFW is the only one that I found, which contains at least two versions of MPEG2 codec. That I can use with VirtualDub. QuEnc doesn't write to AVI format so it will cost me another compression if I just want to cut out some footage and save it in AVI.
So a simple question is whether FFVFW will satisfy my needs? And what's the recommended settings to minimize loss? For example, I read through the analogue capture guide, but I'm still not sure whether I need to deinterlace or not. I tried some other filters and some gave big improvements. So I need some encoders to store the video without limiting my chance to improve the quality later. And since the video is already captured in MPEG2 formats already (Instant DVD), which I couldn't do anything about, I don't think I loss much if I use the right MPEG2 codec just once more.
The same goes for the DV from my camcorder. If I can compression them to some reasonable size without losing much, I can get rid of the mini DV tapes.