DV AVI format

[angusdei]

Hi,

This must be a very simple question, but anyway…
I capture files from my digital video camera in “DV AVI” format, roughly 3.5 MB/sec. Does this format compress with losses? In other words, if I open and save a DV AVI file multiple times, will the quality deteriorate?

thank you

[bb]

Welcome to the board.

DV is compressed 5:1 using a similar (but slightly better) technique as MJPEG. Quality will decrease a little if you re-encode DV to DV. If you just open a DV file and save it again without changes (like adding transitions), most video editors will do a "direct stream copy". This is mostly called "smart rendering" or the like. In this case no quality is lost, because the frames are just copied. Re-encoding should occur only on frames where changes have been made to the video.

By the way: there's a DV forum for questions like yours.

bb

[angusdei]

thank you for the reply.

Could you suggest a book or an Internet source, where such an information (about formats) were presented in a systematic manner.

[bb]

Hmm, there's a huge amount of information available on the web, and I'm certain there are many books available about the topic as well.

You might want to start browsing through the "Links" sticky thread on the DV forum.

bb