hem, I m new.. and I will ask you a simple question, is it useful to render in YUV sony codec if the original source is in DV?

Thanks farss. As the podiatry patient said, I stand corrected.

jbraudrand: i've you've made any modifications at all, even titles or simple crossfades, rendering to YUV will suffer less degredation than rendering to DV. That being said, the difference is probably almost insigificant. SONY's DV codec is so good that it can stand up to dozens of generations without significant loss.

It's not a generational loss issue, DV doesn't do a spectacular job of handling text and graphics. If ALL of your source material is DV then I think there's really nothing to gain from using the Sony YUV codec however IF you've added text, graphics that's when you'll pickup a small advantage.
Bob.

Farss, what strategy would you use for getting the crispest generated text in a video that also uses DV footage?

-jerry

Just composite it as per normal. The text itself is uncompressed RGB, so what you render out to is what makes the difference.

If you're adding text to a video shot in DV and you're going out to DVD then encoding directly from the timeline will give the best possible result.

If you're going out to DV tape then you will suffer some loss, it's very minor in PAL from my experience, probably worse in NSTC land.

Thing is you need to understand where the losses are hitting you. Going from DV or DVD to a monitor / TV via a composite video connection means you need to watch the video levels of your text as well as the sharpness of the color transition on the edge of the text, oftenly something a little less sharp will actualy come out better by avoiding ringing on the composite feed. For example 100% blue text on a 100% red background will really spin things out but yellow text on a brown background gets handled quite nicely.

There's quite a bit of information about these issues, do some Googling.

Bob.