Rendering DV with software MSP6 or Premiere5.1c?

[cjyo~]

I don't have a firewire card yet, but I am trying to render some DV files in software for future firewire transfer to tape.

I tried rendering a DV(Quicktime) file in Premiere 5.1c, but the results looked terrible (worse than mpeg1). Is PC playback only a low resolution preview? Will the same file look DV-quality once I transfer to tape.

If anyone has any suggestions about rendering Marvel MPJEG files to DV with software for future transfer to DV tape, please let me know.

Should I use Ulead MSP 6 or Premiere 5.1c and what settings should I use to ensure compatibility with the hardware in a DV camera?

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Please visit http://spincycle.n3.net - My System: Celeron 300a(@450/2v),ABit BH6, 128mb ram, Win98, Marvel G200TV, Diamond MX300, IBM 8.4gb UDMA Deskstar system drive, Adaptec 2940UW SCSI, 2x 9gb Seagate Barracuda UWSCSI video drives, Hitachi GD-2500 DVD-Rom, UltraPlex CD-Rom, Plexwriter CD-recorder, Viewsonic PT775, Soundworks 4.1 speakers

[cjyo~]

no one?

[jeff b]

It's a little confusing to figure out what you mean by DV(Quicktime), since DV and Quicktime and two completely different formats.

[DrMordrid]

These examples don't use Marvel clips but they should be instructive;

Both were transcoded to the RT2000 DV codec. Proportions are rendertime:realtime.

MSPro 6.0:

720x480 5 mB/s PICVideo 2.0 to DV: 4.9:1

Premiere 5.1C:

720x480 5 mB/s PICVideo 2.0 to DV: 4.6:1

This small a difference could be system specific.

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by DrMordrid (edited 02 March 2000).]

[cjyo~]

When you render a DV file in Premiere 5.1c, you choose Quicktime, instead of AVI or Mpeg, then DV is a compression format. There is no .avi option to use the DV codec.

Two specific examples:

I would like to render a 1) final movie of Matrox MJPEG full rez NTSC source (704x480, 29.97fps) and 2) transcode a 9MB/s mpeg-2 file (high quality hadware encoded from digibeta) (720x480, 24fps).

I want to eventually firewire these out to miniDV tape, so I want to use Premiere or MSP to render these files into a miniDV camera-compatible format.

Should I render type-1 or type-2? What field order should I use? Should I use 44.1 or 48khz audio?

So far, I have rendered an MJPEG project with Premiere and played it back in MSP and the Quicktime 4.1 player and it looked very blocky, despite the file datarate of 3.5MB/s. Should it look this bad when I play back on a PC without a firewire card or a DV Raptor? Will it look better when I eventually transfer to miniDV tape?

[NZF]

If you are using the quicktime engine to encode in DV you really have a high quality file ready to transfer to any 1394 camcorder.

Your only problem is in playback. as you know Quicktime is Mac software ported to PC, and Apple programmers don`t like to see their software runing faster on windows machines, so you can`t expect good DV performance on quicktime player.

This player defaults to low quality mode to maintain a decent frame rate. whith high quality enabled i can get arround 4fps on my Pc (celeron@450mhz). If i save the same movie in a DV encoded AVI i can get 30fps with 80% CPU usage.

Nicolas.

[cjyo~]

Thanks. I will definitely stick to MSP6 (and .avi)for rendering DV.

[salacious]

If you download the Adaptec drivers for the 8945 card from ftp://ftp.adaptec.com/pub/BBS/1394/hotconnect_ultra_v20_win.exe
this will install a software DV codec that you can you use if you don't have a DV card.
This will give you settings for Premiere 4.2 and 5 if you copy them to the correct locations.

Salacious

[cjyo~]

Thanks salacious.

Now should I use this as a replacement for the DV support that comes with Windows98SE and Media Studio Pro 6? Or will this give me an additional DV codec to choose from, when creating or rendering a project?

[salacious]

This will give you the option of using this DV codec under Premiere and MSP6 rather than using MJPEG. I do have MSP6 but I don't use it. I will install it and have a look at it.

Microsoft defines two versions of DV which are type 1 and type 2. Ulead natively uses type 1 DV files which are incompatible with Premiere which need type 2. (BTW cheap DV cards that you now get use type 1 DV where older cards like Adaptec make type 2 DV files). The difference is type 2 files are native DV with a AVI header wrapped aroung it. If you import this into Premiere it ignores the audio although the audio is using up space in the file. This is compatible with VfW.

Type 1 uses IVAS (Interleaved video/audio stream) which requires DirectShow. This is only supported under Windows 98 and Windows 2000. Which means that only software which uses DirectShow filters rather than VfW filters will work with this format.

I have had a quick look at MSP 6 and you can output to DVSoft AVI, I was using Windows 95 so I am unable to test the Type 1 DV file. I believe that with Ulead you should be able to convert between Type 1 and Type 2 files. There was some talk that Premiere 5.1c was going to support Type 1 files but I am unsure if it does.

If you wish to read more about DV types goto http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/desinit/dvavi.htm

Salacious

[This message has been edited by salacious (edited 17 March 2000).]