A good Alternate DV codec for Windows? Where?

Matt Grunau

Matt Grunau

Adobe Demigod
Hi all, I tried searching the forums, but didn't have much luck. I would like to buy, or at least find another codec for DV to try, with the hopes of it be the default DV codec. I read Sony has it's own codec, but that it is proprietary. Quicktime's DV codec looks better than Microsofts (no Apple vs PC flames please) to me, and I know there are others like Mainconcept's. Does anyone know of any additional DV codecs or have any experience with them? I use Vegas, but bump around to other software, and sometimes file sizes prevent even Quicktime Animation lossless, and I cant tell any differene between Sony's codec and Microsofts.

Thanks for any help.
 
i use the microcosm codec (QT wrapper) to take files between Vegas and other apps .. it.s a lossless 8/16 bit 4:4:4:4 .. for DV clips files size is approx 6-8 mgs ... it's $99 for the encoder ... readers are free ...
http://codecs.onerivermedia.com/ look under 4:4:4
you also find other codec's tested on site
 
Thanks guys. I'll look into Avid's codec, and thanks for the link donatello. Though even with the microcosm codec, the footage is initially captured with Microsofts DV codec. I was hoping to find a way to get another codec in the capture pipeline and avoid the Microsoft DV codec as the default capture codec.

Anyone else have any thoughts, ideas?
 
What are you capturing from? If it's a standard MiniDV camera, then it wouldn't matter what DV codec you had on your system during capture, as you are actually transferring the already encoded data from the camera to the computer via firewire. There is no encoding occurring at this point, so it doesn't really matter what DV codec you have for capturing.

However, it does matter what DV codec you use when you want to render/encode video. Keep in mind that it only really matters if you applied some sort of post-processing (filters, etc.) to the video you want to render, forcing it to recompress the video. If you've done nothing but straight cuts, then you'll still be using the original DV data, so the DV codecs you've got on your system would be of little significance. Even if you've applied transitions between clips (but no filters, etc. otherwise), only the transitions will be recompressed (more accurately, created from scratch). The original DV data will be used for the rest.

Ideally, if you want to move your video from one application to another, the best way would be to use an uncompressed or lossless codec. Uncompressed codecs generally have better performance (compared to lossless, since they don't have to be decompressed first), but require faster disk arrays (especially for multiple streams) and more raw disk space (approx. 5x more than DV-25). Lossless codecs can save you disk space, but getting realtime performance out of them is not likely if you don't have a decently equipped computer. Nonetheless, either of these choices is better than using ANY DV-25 codec because DV is a lossy codec, meaning you will lose a generation whenever the source is recompressed. On the flipside, no generational loss will occur when using uncompressed/lossless codecs, thus maximizing the final output quality.
 
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