Picture Quality

[A1M]

What software do you use to get your mini DV picture quality like the DVD’s movies you buy in the store? I don’t understand how the movie company get so much picture quality on a 8 gig DVD even after you shrink the original dvd to a 4.7 gig dvd the picture quality does not decrease by much
I used “powerproducer 2 gold” to convert my mini DV to DVD and the picture quality sucks and that was on High Quality mode at 8Mbps. When I convert the mini DV to DIVX the quality is much better but DIVX cannot play on standalone dvd players.

[Guest]

DV does not have P or B frames; thus it will never give as good quality as MPEG2 at the same bitrate.

There are standalones that play DivX.

[guada 2]

A1M,

If you don't like this quality.
Buy you this machine:

PIONEER Dvr-530h-s DVD Recorder.

NOTE: but, attention with the wallet. :)

[A1M]

so the problem is hardware (camcorder)

[theReal]

so the problem is hardware (camcorder) No, it's not your camcorder, it's the MPEG2 on the DVD.

Movie DVDs look much better because they are not just encoded with powerproducer - the people who encode commercial movies do a lot of magic with filtering and encoding (bitrates are manually adjusted in difficult scenes and so on).

I'd try another encoder first (I don't know the powerproducer encoding engine, but I guess it's not that good and this can really make a big difference!). Encoders like CCE and TMPEGEnc are quite good, I think (however I'm not an expert in this area)

If you're still unsatisfied you'll have to get into avisynth and try different smoothing filters and filter combinations for better results.

[henryho_hk]

1) Use a proper DV codec. Cedocida is great if you set it correctly.
2) Apply filtering if needed. De-noising (RemoveGrain) is nearly always needed. For more noisy materials you need more sophisticated (== slower) smootheners as well as sharpeners.
3) Use a good MPEG2 encoder. e.g. HC (freeware)

[bb]

Many people swear on Canopus ProCoder, especially for DV sources.

But besides the encoder and the filtering, there's another important difference between commercial films on DVD and home made DV clips: a professional film transfer delivers a very clean source, much better than DV shots. That makes it easier for the MPEG encoder to find macroblock matches, thus better quality at lower bitrate is possible.

bb

[henryho_hk]

Agree. Clean source is extremely important.

Low light and high gain are our enemies. ^_^

[A1M]

So the problem is software then.

henryho_hk what is this “HC” your talking about and “Cedocida” is it a freeware and user friendly for beginners

Canopus ProCoder is this freeware because I am looking for freeware only

[A1M]

i just google Canopus ProCoder its 500US ,my system isn't worth that much

[Guest]

You can find HC on the Doom9 download page under MPEG1/2 Encoders:

http://www.doom9.org

You can find Cedocida here:

http://neuron2.net/misc/cedocida016.zip

Simple use of the search mechanism on this forum would have disclosed these facts.

[A1M]

i tried CCE it is not compatable with powerproducer and nero

[writersblock29]

@A1M

[Qouted] "What software do you use to get your mini DV picture quality like the DVD’s movies you buy in the store?"

Another thing to consider (on top of the advice given above) is the fact that very, VERY, few Hollywood movies are shot on DV. Now that HDDV is becoming more mainstream -- thanks in part to film makers like Robert Rodriguez and George Lucas -- this will undoubtably change... but even then, you're still not dealing with an apples-to-apples comparison. Footage shot at 1080p will usually have a level of detail absent in 720i, meaning your master footage is purer in signal... and will translate into a more pristine MPEG transfer. If you were to shoot your projects with a 35mm motion picture camera rather than a consumer-grade miniDV, and invest the money for professional color timing and development... well, we'd have ourselves a discussion, all right. ;) Some good indie films have been shot on DV and released on DVD... but while these films at times look quite good (Open Water, for example), they still don't measure up to the level of detail we're accoustomed to on studio DVDs. Please don't get me wrong! If you take care to keep sharp focus on your subject, use adequate lighting, and have the ability to adjust your white balance and shutter speeds, you can turn out some truely breathtaking work. Heck, just using good focus and lighting will automatically place you ahead of most shooters, regardless of the equipment used. :cool:

[Qouted] "i tried CCE it is not compatable with powerproducer and nero"

...Nero 6 has its own encoder packaged with Nerovision Express, if memory serves correctly. I don't use it for my own projects (come to think of it, I've NEVER used Nero for anything other than burning my own projects), but you may do well to experiment with it just for giggles. I believe you have to author your DVD within Nerovision to use it -- but I could easilly be wrong. If you find that you'd like to filter out noise, deinterlace, or anything that radically changes your final product's look as compared to the original footage, it'd be my own personal recommendation to become intimate with AVISynth; it may seem a little over-complicated at first, but it's free and powerful. VirtualDub is another great tool, and fairly easy to figure out.

You've got tons of options, which sadly adds to the confusion at times. The pain-in-the-butt part of it is, you'll have to experiment a fair amount until you find what works best for your situation. You have my best wishes!