DV Camcorder Capture

[joe355]

I'm a relative newbie to digital video so this may or may not be a stupid question. When I capture video from my DV camcorder (thru firewire) it seems to be interlaced. Is this how it's meant to be? (because I always thought DV was progressive).

[nFury8]

If your camcorder supports progressive mode recording then you'll get progressive frames, otherwise it will be interlaced.

[bb]

Originally posted by joe355
(because I always thought DV was progressive).
Most of the time DV is indeed interlaced. You must be lucky to have a camcorder which supports progressive scan.

bb

[nicco]

Maybe you can post more details on your camcoder, someone which already have it can give you more informations...

[joe355]

I have a JVC GRDVP7. Anyway, I'm now fairly sure that this camera doesn't support progressive recording. (JVC only seem to have one or two cameras with progressive shutters available here in australia)

[nicco]

You can get more information in JVC homesite

[bleo]

I think for some (consumer grade) camcorders, if you record directly to your PC through FireWire, that is, not just transferring video from the tape, then you can get progressive frames.

But I'm a bit of a newbie myself and have only started experimenting! :)

[nicco]

Look at this
http://www.bestphotovideo.com/store/jvc_grdvp7.html

[writersblock29]

DV's still a little behind in its own time. Since it's primarily aimed at the home-video, family-vacation, audience (and seen mainly on old analoge television sets), there hasn't until recently been much interest in making progressive image capture a priority. The big push for it now are the HDTVs and plasma screens that aren't based off of scan-line technology and tend to show ugly artifacts from interlaced material. Also, many manufacturers are finally wise to the fact that many indie film makers are shooting their projects on DV rather than film (saves tons of money!) and converting to film afterwards. Progressive-scanned images aid this process significantly. Give this topic a few years, and I'm sure it'll be a whole different ballgame by then. But for right NOW, your only real option for having progressive-scanned images from camcorder footage is to shoot normally (interlaced), capture to the hard drive normally (still interlaced), edit normally (again, still interlaced), then use an deinterlacer when compressing the final project to MPEG2 (if DVD is the ultimate goal).

Again, in a few years, these rules are bound to change. DV is unfortunately a damned good technology that's still in its infancy right now. It's usable and of terrific quality... but still has a ways to go before its potential has been maxed out.