DV-AVI vs HDV-AVI

[James Gerber]

I wanted to speed up my editing process, and figured using normal DV would help. My final output is mainly WMV files for web viewing.. with potential for a DVD (NTSC viewing).

Problem: Begining with an DV captured file... any object in motion, and especially any thin moving object (ie: rope) seems to have jagged edges when I view the WMV file.

I created a page, as I've been struggling with this issue for a week now, and was on another forum seeing if anyone could shed some light on my issue:

http://www.creativecola.com/hc1/pages/hdv_to_dv.html

Basically... when I take my original HDV (versus original DV capture), and export it as a WMV file, the thin moving objects appear smooth without the jagged edges.

Is there something I'm doing wrong? or maybe it's something with the way the HDR-HC1 downverts/exports DV video?

 

[Spot]

I'm confused by your post. You mean you're converting to DV in the camera, and then editing? Or converting on the timeline from HDV to DV and then editing?

HDV has far more resolution than DV, 1080HDV is basically 1.6mp vs less than .5mp for DV, so it generally converts better. Second, objects will appear more smooth in WMV format due to the blurring and compression algorithm. I didn't download all your media, just don't have the time to wait for large files, but the short answer is that if you have HDV and Vegas, capture as HDV, edit as either CineForm or even m2t if you can manage to, and render straight to wmv from there, regardless of the bitrate of the wmv. This will guarantee the best quality you'll find in the wmv.
As far as going from the HDavi to the SDavi, I'm not sure why you'd ever do that, unless you were going to a YUV file for Betacam or DVCPro output. Maybe I missed something in your workflow description?

 

[James Gerber]

I'm confused by your post. You mean you're converting to DV in the camera, and then editing? Or converting on the timeline from HDV to DV and then editing?

HDV has far more resolution than DV, 1080HDV is basically 1.6mp vs less than .5mp for DV, so it generally converts better. Second, objects will appear more smooth in WMV format due to the blurring and compression algorithm. I didn't download all your media, just don't have the time to wait for large files, but the short answer is that if you have HDV and Vegas, capture as HDV, edit as either CineForm or even m2t if you can manage to, and render straight to wmv from there, regardless of the bitrate of the wmv. This will guarantee the best quality you'll find in the wmv.
As far as going from the HDavi to the SDavi, I'm not sure why you'd ever do that, unless you were going to a YUV file for Betacam or DVCPro output. Maybe I missed something in your workflow description?

It's hard for me to explain.. and admit that my post is very unclear.

However, you've sorta answered my question. I'm not familiar with CineForm and may look into it.

And will probably stick with editing the original M2T files.

There isn't a setting in Vegas that you can turn on/off that allows the thumbnails in the timeline to refresh faster is there? Right now when dealing with M2T files, sometimes it takes a few seconds for them to refresh when I advance the frames in the timeline.