Vegas 5 Sony codec vs Canopus DV Storm

aabell wrote on 11/16/2004, 3:17 PM

I own several Canopus cards, including the DVStorm. A lot of people using Storm cards are turning to OHCI due to unstable DVStorm drivers.

I posted at the Canopus forum, regarding extensive tests that I completed between

- Premiere Pro 1.5 with DVStorm
- Premiere Pro 1.5 OHCI
- Vegas OHCI

I shot a bunch of scenes, digitized to my drive, color corrected, ran transitions -- then I output back to DVCAM tape and to DVD (from high bitrate MPEG 2 files) and carefully viewed the results on a broadcast Sony monitor and a high def Samsung TV set.

The conclusion of my tests -- I saw no noticeable difference between video produced with the Storm and that produced through regular OHCI via Vegas or Premiere Pro.

Now, someone on the Canopus forums says that the DVStorm due to upsampling or the way it handles color space outputs superior video to Vegas or Premiere OHCI without a Storm card.

Is this true?

First, I was under the impression that the only advantage of a Storm card (or Matrox) was the real time capability, I thought OHCI and Storm firewire were identical, except of course for potential differences in the NLE application used and the Canopus codec vs Sony or Mainconcepts.

Is there anone here who knows more about the tech specifications of the Storrm vs OHIC than myself, and can answer this quality debate issue??

Thanks in advance.



MB

Comments

taliesin wrote on 11/16/2004, 3:50 PM
There is one thing in common and one difference between Canopus Codec and Sony Pictures Codec.

Both codecs are able to retain full luminance range of 0-255 (RGB values).

The difference is: Sony Pictures DV renders in RGB space. Canopus DV renders in YUV space.

DV footage coming from a dv camera delivers a YUV signal. So using the Sony Pictures DV codec in Vegas forces the signal to have a YUV-RGB-YUV conversion.
No color space conversion needed when using the Canopus DV codec.

But there are only very rare cases when a difference will be visible in the end. There are only few colors that will be affected, e.g. some certain orange tones.

If you never noticed a color shift when using the Sony Pictures DV codec - it's just fine. Keep on using Vegas and Sony Pictures DV ... ;-)

Marco
BJ_M wrote on 11/16/2004, 4:11 PM
well since the encode is done in the camera and the whole firewire thing is to just copy it over to your drive ... I cant see how there would be much a difference UNLESS you re-encoded it back to DV, but why even do that ?

Ask about the fact that the Canopus dv codec had the chroma bug ... Sony's does not .. Has Canopus fixed this ? otherwise I hear it is pretty good ..

Though here they tear it up real bad (i guess no love between canopus and matrox) http://www.matrox.com/video/products/pdf/canopus_got_it_wrong.pdf

NTSC DV to mpeg is really kind of not a great thing due to the color space issue ... many have said to have better quality rendering from the timeline or frame serve out RGB or YUV or render to an intermediary codec ..

jaegersing wrote on 11/16/2004, 4:21 PM
The Storm allows you to get a cleaner chroma key, probably due to the YUV colourspace and the upsampling. Other than this, I don't notice much difference in quality of output between Storm and Vegas.

There was a lot of hype and excitement on the Canopus forums a while back, when Canopus released some test results that showed their codec was far superior to the Matrox DV codec. In reply, Matrox claimed that the Canopus test was conducted wrongly and was invalid, and released their own test results showing that the Matrox codec was much better than the Canopus one. Things got quieter on the Canopus forums after that for some reason.

By the way, from your post it is not clear to me how you are actually comparing the 2 DV codecs. When you say "then I output back to DVCAM tape and to DVD" I don't really follow the process. Also, if you are comparing the DV codecs after MPEG conversion, it is not really an ideal way to do it since the MPEG compression could be masking any differences in the DV side. However, it is a real-world example of what people would see as the final output so I suppose it is fine.

Richard Hunter

Edit - There is a good explanation by Tim Kolb on the Canopus forums, in response to your post. It is worth reading.
StormMarc wrote on 11/16/2004, 6:44 PM
>But there are only very rare cases when a difference will be visible in the >end. There are only few colors that will be affected, e.g. some certain >orange tones.

>If you never noticed a color shift when using the Sony Pictures DV codec - >it's just fine. Keep on using Vegas and Sony Pictures DV ... ;-)

Marco,

I use quite a bit of crossfades in my work and at times have an annoying color shift between clips that I have never experienced when using my Canopus DV Storm. So I guess this is the problem (the conversion between YUV and RGB). Is there any way to solve this?

Thanks,

Marc

SonyTSW wrote on 11/16/2004, 9:18 PM
Take a look at this thread "Mpeg renders NO Good on oranges & reds", it has suggestions for dealing with your color shift problem:

http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=178571
farss wrote on 11/17/2004, 2:54 AM
One day we'll all get rid of this YUV nonsense and life will be much easier, YUV is an inferior system to RGB that was only invented to handle technical limitations at the time. I really cannot understand why more people aren't demanding it be given a long overdue burial.
Bob.
mbelli wrote on 11/17/2004, 11:37 AM

>By the way, from your post it is not clear to me how you are actually comparing
>the 2 DV codecs. When you say "then I output back to DVCAM tape and to
>DVD" I don't really follow the process. Also, if you are comparing the DV codecs
>after MPEG conversion, it is not really an ideal way to do it since the MPEG
>compression could be masking any differences in the DV side.
> However, it is a real-world example of what people would see as the final
>output so I suppose it is fine.

Exactly, I'm always work on real world situations when making such tests.

I completed a series for IFC Canada last year called "Make Your Movie" that was edited entirely on DV using Canopus DVStorm and Premiere 6.5. The finished program went SDI to digital betacam and the series was delivered to IFC on digital betacam format.

IFC loves the series and was very happy with the quality and my workflo was great but recently I switched over to Vegas and Premiere Pro 1.5, so I was overly concerned that I didn't get a quality hit doing so.

So prior to changing everything from DVStorm to Vegas/Premiere, I thoroughly tested since I didn't want to work on another series like this and find the quality wasn't there anymore and I'd have trouble selling it or getting broadcaster approval.

So, I pulled some practical footage I shot on a Sony DX30/DVCAM back, I digitized to my hard drive from Premiere Pro 1.5, from Vegas 5 and from Premiere Pro 1.5/DVStorm, working with basic NTSC DV for all of them.

Then I edited, added effects then output each back to DVCAM tape in however each application demanded. How else could I view the results on a NTSC broadcast monitor at my leisure and without my PC?

I viewed all the stuff, made notes -- then went to another test to make sure my DVD authoring workflow wasn't effected. So, I authored three DVDs from each editing program, using Canopus Procoder to encode. Anyhow, I don't want to detail the DVD part, I don't have time, but I used a high bitrate and viewed the DVD's carefully.

Overall, I didn't see any difference that would concern me enough to use the DVStorm over Vegas or Premiere Pro in regards to quality.

So there you have it. I don't do lots of compositing or special effects so maybe in those instances there might be a difference.


MB

jaegersing wrote on 11/17/2004, 5:39 PM
YUV is actually very useful for some things. For example, try adjusting colour saturation or brightness, without changing colour, in RGB colourspace - of course it is possible, but it is not straightforward and also not intuitive. My old Matrox RT2000 system could not do realtime monochrome because of this, since it worked exclusively in RGB.

Richard