Quicktime DV through avisynth = bad quality

[TEB]

Hi. Im trying to frameserve some Quicktime DV files to Quenc.
The quality i get through mediaplayer really sucks... Dont know why tho.. The picture looks like a bad 1mbit mpeg2 encode with lotsa encoding artifacts.
I encoded the file inside of Procoder 2.0.x and both the preview and result is crisp and very clean. (the source was filmed on a Sony DVCAM pdr-150 or so)
I have to add that the file looks as bad in the Quicktime player in windows so theres obviously something wrong with the decoder filters..
Anyone have any idea? or how to get avisynth to use another DV decoder filter?

apriciate any suggestions

best regards

teb

[Mug Funky]

quicktime (and actually windows a lot of the time) likes to decode DV in half or even quarter res for faster playback.

my advice is to export the DV (losslessly!) to a DV avi, then encode from there.

it's possible that with the right directshow filters (and directshowsource) you'll be able to get good decoding through ffdshow though, and save the disk space.

please don't cap in quicktime again :) i suppose programs like final cu*t pro or iMovie will only go to mov though.

[TEB]

Hi thx. Is there any freeware programs that can export Quicktime DV to something else? (i got the file from a mac guy)

[communist]

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=80344
Maybe after disabling that setting quicktime on windows will decode in higher quality - I dont know since I never had to deal with DV in QT coming from a MAC.

[Steve56]

Originally posted by TEB
Hi thx. Is there any freeware programs that can export Quicktime DV to something else? (i got the file from a mac guy)

Back in time, I also were facing this problem. First I did use QTreader, but that only outputs in RGB which is not ideal for AviSynth (image quality loss with every colorspace conversion!)

Then I found the DV Conversion Suite, with DV File Converter, with that you can convert your QuickTime DV videos to e. g. Canopus DV, which worked best for me. This is without any quality loss! You just need a suitable DV codec to open the video in almost any application then, like AviSynth, VirtualDub(Mod), CCE, ProCoder or other.

DV File Converter is not free, but really good for this purpose. I don't recommend using it with Microsoft DV codec, I got some false decoded Macro Blocks with that.

Steve56

[TEB]

@Communist: Hi thx for the link but fortunatly its only for mac os x not for windows... so im sorta in avail.

[Mug Funky]

if you've got premiere and your project is set to DV, it _should_ be able to export timeline losslessly to type-2 DV AVI. but it's such a shitty temperamental program that it might want to recompress it. you'll be able to tell from the time remaining - lossless copying is much much quicker (i get about 50-100fps on my crappy old machine versus 7fps for recompressing).