I have a G450etv, how should I edit my analogs wedding tapes?

[colinbr]

Thanks Brian,

<i>Then you can buy a mini-DV for new shooting and profit from the better quality that this will give you</i>

Does mini-DV give significantly higher digital quality than Digital8 ?

I was given to understand they were about the same.

Colin

[Patrick]

Some clarification...

Brian is a great guy, but he knows nothing about Digital8 or ice hockey!

Everything else being equal (lense, CCD, etc) there is no difference in quality between MiniDV and D8. I have a Sony TRV900 MiniDV camcorder that will blow the socks off any D8 camcorder, but it also cost two to three times as much as any D8 model.

In regards to capturing the best DV quality from analog 8mm/Hi8 tapes, the reason why I suggested what I did was because of the Time Base Controller available on some analog 8mm/Hi8 decks and camcorders. This device really cleans up a video signal. Although D8 camcorders have a TBC, it apparently is only used on digital tapes that are being played back on the unit. Analog 8mm/Hi8 tapes do not receive the benefit of being time base corrected when they are played back on a D8 camcorder. I have tested and seen this for myself.

It's a whole lot easier to simply capture analog 8mm/Hi8 tapes directly from a D8 camcorder, but if you want the BEST quality when doing a DV capture from analog 8mm/Hi8 tapes, follow my first post in this thread.

[Hulk]

So anyway, I'm going to capture my old analog wedding video using the the PICVideo codec with quality set to max, right?

[Patrick]

Oh sure, isn't that what I said...

[colinbr]

I know next to nothing about Time Base Correction, but surely any piece of equipment which digitally captures analogue video must be tollerant of timing errors in the waveform otherwise you'd get dropped frames and lines all over the place.

I would guess this "tollerance" involves waiting for the sync pulses in the incoming analogue signal rather than rigidly expecting them to conform to a clock on the capture equipment and throwing data away when it doesn't. I probably have this completely wrong, but if this is how capture cards and digital camcorders (reading analogue-in) work, then surely they are
already performing some sort of time base correction anyway?

What does a Time Base Correction device give you that a capture card/camcorder does not?


Colin

[Brian Ellis]

Patrick

Even if I pull your leg over ice hockey, I still maintain that it is an error to change analogue to DV before doing the rest. Analogue is best captured as analogue at MJPEG 704 x 576 (480 for NTSC) without any conversion and edited as such. It can then be converted to MPEG-2 to burn a DVD or whatever. There is precious little video info in analogue, anyway, and converting to DV first will lose you half the chroma info which you badly need. And you won't gain a jot in luma data, 'cos it ain't there to start with I'm not a gambler, but I bet a pound to a penny that you will see the difference if you look carefully. Voice of experience with about 150 VHS-C tapes under my table.

[Hulk]

Brian,

I forgot about the 4:1:1 format of US dv. That is actually a good reason to stay away from it.

That being said I'm definitely going to use PICVideo since it's 4:4:4

Mark

[Patrick]

Brian, believe it or not, I agree with you in regards to your comments about the quality of video degrading when analog is converted to DV! Perhaps I should have made myself clearer, but what I was suggesting was the best way to do DV capture when starting from an analog 8mm/Hi8 source. I believe for the vast majority of people, the ease of doing DV capture (with the benefit of device control) far outweighs the relatively small video quality advantage of doing analog capture. Especially for people who view their masterpiece productions on some 25 year old RCA television.

What does a Time Base Correction device give you that a capture card/camcorder does not?

Umm, well.....time base correction for one. The easiest way to be convinced that there is a benefit to having a TBC is to play back a tape on a deck which has a TBC that can be turned on and off. Looking at any vertical line (such as a pole or the edge of a wall, etc), with the TBC turned off one can see the scan lines on the monitor not quite matching up, but with it turned on the edges are much more defined. However, no amount of my explaining will convince anyone. You'll have to see for yourself.