Metalic sound in grabbed video

[corex]

Hi everybody.

I have a strange problem and hope that you guys can help me. :)

I am a little new to video-editing så please dont be so hard on me. :)

I have tried several capture-tools. I have a Sony DCH-HC40E PAL miniDV Camcorder. I want to capture the video direcly into an avi-file using the codec Huffyuv. The only program I found that can do that is the "STOIK Capturer" where you can choose compression on video and sound. Video-compressor is "Huffyuv" and audio-format is "48,000 kHz, 16 Bits, Stereo (187kb/sec)". After capture there is a kind of metalic sound on the captured video. I have tried different codecs and different audio-formats. Same result.

What is that?

Futhermore, if anybody can tell me what tool to capture video from my miniDV. I dont want to use the DV-codec. Need Huffyuv.

Anyone ? :)

[corex]

Oh, I just found out. Sorry guys. Wrong forum. It should be under the DV-forum. Can anyone move this thread for me. Thanks in advance.

[Arachnotron]

I dont want to use the DV-codec. Need Huffyuv.Huffyuv is a losless codec. However, since you are using a DV cam your capture is already in DV format and trying to cap to huffy only re-compresses the video from DV to huffy. So there is no advantage in doing losless capturing any more since you already have gone through a lossy DV step.

It would be far easier to simply use the DV stream and use that for further processsing. As I understand it, this camera has an i-link interface so you should be able to connect it to a firewire interface.

(assuming we are talking about the DCR-HC40E (http://www.sony.co.uk/PageView.do?site=odw_en_GB&page=ProductMarketingFeatures&section=en_GB_Products&productmodel=%2FCamcorder%2FCAM+MiniDV%2FDCR-HC40E&productcategory=%2FCamcorder%2FCAM+MiniDV&productsku=DCRHC40ES.CEH) )

[corex]

Hey Arachnotron and thanks for the quick response.

Yes, it is the DCR-HC40E and I already use firewaire-interface. A friend of mine told me that If I could grab directly from fireware-interface to Huffyuv it would be best, but how to do? Is this possible. I thought the "STOIK Capturer" could do it. But is it "routing" through DV before it comes to Huffyuv ????

My friend also told me that DV-format is not good enough to bigger jobs.

The whole project I have started is to have all my small video-tapes grabbed into the computer, converted it to XviD with a bitrate on 2000 or more. Then, when I need to use it in video-editing, I can convert the clips to Huffyuv without loss.

Thats what I've been told. :)

[corex]

ok, one question. The stream that comes via fireware from camcorder, is this already DV-codec? Because, then this thread is irrelevant. Can anyone confirm that ?

[Arachnotron]

A friend of mine told me that If I could grab directly from fireware-interface to Huffyuv it would be best, but how to do? Is this possible. I thought the "STOIK Capturer" could do it. But is it "routing" through DV before it comes to Huffyuv ????I think you can do that if you conect the camera through the USB interface (at least a friend of mine once captured to AVI like that) but as I said, it is a complicated way to do it and it gains you nothing over simply grabbing the DV stream.

The only reason to use huffy is when capping from devices that can deliver a raw video stream. AFAIK a DV camcorder cannot deliver such a stream so the only thing you are doing is capping a small and compact DV stream and blowing it up to huge huffy AVI files. It would be much more efficient to save the DV and feed it into the editing software later, which only has to uncompress the video on a frame per frame basis. It would save you the huge intermediate huffy files.

The whole project I have started is to have all my small video-tapes grabbed into the computer, converted it to XviD with a bitrate on 2000 or more. Then, when I need to use it in video-editing, I can convert the clips to Huffyuv without loss.Using several lossy compression algorithms after each other is a bad idea in general and only results in cumulative compression errors. I would suggest you save the raw DV files for archiving purposes and use xvid only for distribution of the final product. If you need further editing, use the original DV's again. Otherwise you end up with three compression steps in a row: DV > Xvid > processing > second Xvid.

But anyhow, I'm not much of a DV user so maybe someone on the DV forum can help you further :)

[corex]

Thanks for all your help. :) I am thinking..... :D

[jggimi]

Moved to DV forum.

[bb]

There's no way to achieve better quality by converting a DV video to Huffyuv. There won't be any quality loss as Huffyuv is lossless, but the file will be twice as large. If you want to create an XviD video, the best way is like this:

1. Capture the DV from the camcorder via firewire.
2. Make sure you know about type-1 vs. type-2...
3. Use AviSynth for filtering, resizing, and frameserving the video.
4. Encode to XviD, e.g. using VirtualDub.

bb

[theReal]

If you go back to DV then the conversion to HuffYUV will actually result in less quality. If you capture to DV (this is a 1:1 file transfer from tape to HDD) then the NLE program only recompresses those parts of the video that are changed (wipes, color correction, etc). If you don't use filters but only hard cuts, then none of the video frames will be recompressed.
If you encode the DV to HuffYUV, then every frame must be recompressed by the NLE program (assuming you want to get a DV file in the end) - and that definitely results in worse quality.

I wouldn't compress the files to XVid before editing. The best possible quality is the unaltered DV file, like it comes from the tape.


My friend also told me that DV-format is not good enough to bigger jobs.Well, then you have to shoot your videos with DVCPro50, MPEGIMX or DigiBeta equipment - as soon as you're using a DV camcorder you get DV, no matter what you do afterwards :)