Poor capture at 25fps

[paulc1]

Im not an exeprt at this so maybe a dumb question.

I've got a standard Sony digital video camera. Format PAL. I try to capture to avi at 25 fps (with 720 x 576 screen) but the video is not fluid, especially when theres motion (obviously). Motion is like a mouse when tracking speed is low...theres a trail (hope I'm describing this properly).

With Pinnacle I capture to MPEG. Lower quality but tracking/trail not present. Capture to wmf with WMM, low quality but no tracking. Tried with adobe premiere, but cannot get it to capture at 30fps.

I think the problem would go away if I can capture to avi (raw DV quality ... I have lots of disk space) at 30fps but I cannot find a way to do this. Seems dumb that all preset PAL settings are at 25fps in pinnacle, premier, etc so I suspect I am missing something. Does the fact that the DV tape has been recording in LONGPLAY mode affect things?

Thanks for any suggestions, ideas.

[madman_xxx]

Your problem lies within interlacing-progressive display issues. Your camcorder records interlaced material (just like mine :))

1) Read whole info on http://100fps.com to understand the interlace thing
2) After reading try to understand it: This will help avoiding asking wrong questions :P (if you plan to discuss any matters later, please describe the trail effect)

Summarizing: The motion on the TV looks fluid, because field-refresh-rate is 50Hz and TV shows fields instead of full frames. Your programs set capture-refresh-rate to 25Hz due to PAL standard (30Hz for NTSC) and it isn't physically highier, because 25Hz is frame-refresh-rate (as you already should know interlaced frame consists of two fields).
If you capture standard miniDV AVI (dvsd) you might (depends on installed drivers) notice high framerate, but if you check "video renderer" properties, you will see only 25fps...
Practically: It isn't easy to get full-motion. IMO there are 2 main categories:
A) Post-processing during encoding
B) On-the-fly during playback.
Ofcourse they can be divided into subcategories...

Ad. A) If you applied to suggestion 1) and especially 2) :P you probably deducted that ProgressiveScan/Bob+Weave might come in handy. Unfortunately output will be 50Hz = double filesize (with small exception - when using Bob only - half height). There are a lot of filters/articles/guides about it. Use "search" <- it's your friend :P

Ad. B) It's my tactic, not too many people use it, or they just stay quiet :P I encode the video as interlaced to xvid and then I use AVISynth's SeparateFields() command to do Bob. I switch on interlace mode on my monitor. Then I play the file, forcing the aspect ratio to 4:3 and enlarging to full-screen. Some might say I loose quality (by doubling image vertically). I would, but due to monitor-interlace-mode switched on I don't, because only one field of every frame is drawn = half number of lines.

You would probably ask me "Why use AVISynth's SeparateFields()? Just playing video on interlaced-monitor-mode should be enough?"... Well, it should.
Let's take normal ordinary interlaced frame. On progressive display (such as your monitor) the image looks "combed" - interlaced. BUT if you view it on tv/interlaced-mode-monitor, the frame should "flicker" - switch between two fields very fast (interlaced mode treats odd and even lines as two differend frames). Practically, during video playback, interlaced frames might or might not flicker - depends on videocard/drivers/filters/codecs. Thread about this issue can be found here: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=168789#post168789

[paulc1]

Thanks for the info.

Read 100fps.com It really helped. A bit too much info for a novice like me but the principles I understood.

I experimented a bit and used:

VirtualDUB with the deinterlace filter and encoded to XVID, MP3. The motion issues are almost gone now....certainly a level of quality I can accept. (These are only family videos of kids etc, nothing professional).

So, thanks again for the info and the reference.