Hi this is the last blast:

Anyone using 1394 firewire cards for capturing video probably have found by now the standard programs everyone uses here (VDub, Flask, Panasonic, bbMPEG, Premiere 5 etc etc) will not handle the DV Type 1 or DV Type 2 avi's with fully interleaved sound. Despite capture programs being available to achieve this in firewire it is a step in the wrong direction to use a normal vwf type 2 avi because one loses the transmit to DV camera/VCR option for mastering.

So alternate methods need to be used to even achieve a VCD from the very high quality source material.

1) having captured the type 1 files in one of the Ulead programs that currently support the firewire codecs (VS3, VS4 or MSP6, w98se limit 4G) it is necessary to convert the output file to another codec before mpeg-1 encoding to a vcd compliant file in the Panasonic standalone encoder.

2) tests have shown that the timeline LSX encoder has a very poor performance if re-sizing is attempted but it can be screwed to give a good output using the same size frame as that used for capture. Choose high level Mpeg2 using "I frames only" and "no fields". Select the slowest encode speed from the advanced options which can be activated with the command advance=1 in the windows\ulead32.ini file under [VIODRIVER]. At this point in time, you cannot select VBR and expect to get such a file, so for the time being, select a CBR output. If the video track is 27 minutes or less select 9800kbits/s as the video data rate or for other track times use this equation:

{[273000/time in minutes] - sound data rate}

As an example, a 40 minute track with 224 sound can be encoded at a data rate of 6600kbits/s without exceeding the 2G input limit of the encoder (equation is based on a file size of 2000M).

The quality of the encode is higher at high bit rates so consider limiting your track time - sample testing the quality is recommended.

Encode the file in the Panasonic encoder, do not de-interlace and you will perhaps only need week noise reduction filtering. At low Mpeg2 data rates you may have to increase the filtering. The consumer image will be of a much higher quality than you can achieve with most home brewed analogue sources.

Good luck to you all in your VCD endeavours and farewell.

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), April 06, 2000

Answers

As a matter of fact, Panasonic MPEG encoder 2.3 does accept type 1 DV avi. You can try yourself. I tried. To my suprise, it worked perfectly.

Frank

-- Frank (frankj1@usa.net), April 06, 2000.

Frank

Thanks but as far as I understand it the 2.3 encoder sees the full frame as only half size, 360 x 240 NTSC 360 x 288 PAL and the encoded result is of a much lower standard than that based on a full frame source encoded with the above method. bbMPEG does exactly the same thing and the results are also b...y awful.

The readme file actually says that. So it is still difficult to extract the quality results firewire DV is capable of and my first posting is one method that actually provides it - like anything else in this business a simple test will show if it works in another computer.

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), April 06, 2000.

I have tried DV-1 avi video file on Panasonic Encoder 2.3, it does NOT work. It works on Ulead Video Studio 4.

-- Mave Lee (mave_lee@hotmail.com), April 07, 2000.