Long shot posting here to see if anyone knows about this, but I thought I would try. I have old Mini DV videotapes I am transferring in using the mini DV cable via a Canopus ADVC100. It looks pretty good, but on fast moving motion, the video displays a kind of double ghost image and I'm wondering why. This is not interlace combing, but a ghost image, as below.
Anyone have any idea how to avoid this?
Mac Studio (2023)
Yes, the last time I tested this QuickTime Player imports DV deinterlaced as mean/blend and depending on the settings it imports PAL as 585x480 AVC_AAC (option High) or 702x576 ProRes_PCM (option Maximum).
Final Cut Pro 10.7 imports 720x576 25 fps bottom field first interlaced, overall 30.5 Mb/s, timecode .mov (DV, 16 bit 48.0 kHz 1536 kb/s PCM Little / Signed) from my D8 PAL camcorder (4:3). My old .dv files archived from iMovie 1.0.2-6.0.3 are essentially the same except .dv, overall 28.8 Mb/s, no timecode and PCM Big / Signed.
So I'd recommend FCP import for the quality I am used to.
Set Final Cut Pro Pro project as PAL SD, 720x576 25i (or 50p if you want to bob deinterlace to double frame rate preserving both fields although ffmpeg has better quality options for that with bwdif=1 bob deinterlacing filter in my experience). FCP should then automatically export it as 768x576 (rectangular .dv pixels converted to square pixels. Or in ffmpeg scale 720x576 to 788x576 and crop to 768x576). Optionally you might fiddle with FCP interlacing settings.
DV import to Sonoma still works - Apple Community
Transfer Mini DV footage - Apple Community
Thank you, Matti. I made a new project set as you suggested and I lost the black bars, so that's good. I did not see any option to change the frame rate to 50, but when I put the clip on the timeline and choose to "deinterlace", it changes it to 50, so I guess that's what you meant.
In FCP, it plays perfectly. Nice and smooth. No double image and no interlace combing. When I export it, however, it looks all interlaced. So what am I doing wrong such that the export looks bad?
And the other question is, while I get much better results importing via FCP, it does chop the video into dozens of little clips, which I do not want. It also seems to drop a few frames between them. QT doesn't do this, but it gives me those double images, so what can I use to import which will give me a clean result and one single clip?
Thanks!
Cartoonguy wrote:
I set up a project as above in FCP, but now I am back to getting black bars on top and bottom, as pictured previously. Otherwise, the output looks good. Baffled as to why there are black bars when the settings for the clip and project are 768x576.
Is there a way to import with FCP without it making loads of tiny clips? I can't see any setting to turn that off? If not, is there another application for importing video? Still don't know why QT import does such a terrible job for this input material.
I shot my old .dv movies with 4:3. But for fun I shot the very last tape as 16:9 before retiring the camcorder many years ago. 16:9 uses the same sensor by just cropping so the effective resolution is clearly worse than in 4:3. Both are saved as 720x576 but just scaled differently and tagged in the metadata so for that for 16:9 .dv MediaInfo and Invisor display:
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 576 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
In the old QuickTime Player 7 Pro and in MPEG Streamclip it was possible to change losslessly that .dv metadata tag between 4:3 and 16:9 when some iMovie version tagged it incorrectly via a certain workflow.
Anyways, I now digged such old 16:9 .dv file and FCP 11.0 respects that 16:9 tag and automatically puts those black bars to such footage. It seems you can force it to 4:3 by setting Anamorphic Override to Standard so try that:
iMovie HD 6 had a setting NOT to start a new clip at scene break. I used it when some bad tape had lots of dropped frames causing the import broken down to multiple very short clips.
One option might be to get an old Mac with built-in Firewire and use old iMovie 1-6 for the import.
Matti Haveri wrote:
One option might be to get an old Mac with built-in Firewire and use old iMovie 1-6 for the import.
Yeah, getting an old Mac is not really an option for me, but thanks for the suggestion.
I can't imagine there isn't a solution to this. I'm happy that I have learned that the original problem was the dumb way Quicktime imports, so can't use QT. FCP does it correctly, but breaks the scenes up and drops frames, so that's no good.
Shocked that QT is so terrible for importing video. Baffled that FCP does not have an option to not break the scenes up. Is there really no utility which can be used just to import DV footage properly?
Hi everyone. I was reading this topic and I desire to disturb you to ask some help.
I'm using a MiniDV player (Sony GV-HD700). I linked it on my M1 MacBook Pro by firewire and the apple adapters (from firewire to mini display port 2 plus another from mini display port 2 to thunderbolt/usb c).
It is working good and I can acquire perfectly using final cut pro or QuickTime.
Final Cut Pro is perfect to capture video with timecode, creating many clips with a lot of informations like date and hours.
QuickTime is helping when you want to create a big video file.
The problem is that some minds tapes appears damaged.
Audio is coming up and down, video is damaged and the timecode is broken.
So is impossible to acquire these minidv tapes with Final Cut Pro or QuickTime.
Do you know if there is another option to capture this video without looking on timecode or video jumps?
I was trying OBS but it's complicate to be used and I'm not sure about file quality it creates.
Do you know if there is some minidv tape reader that can help me forcing in some way the tape reading?
(professional one?)
And the miniDV was shot 25p PAL? Also, isn't ProRess 422 overkill for DV?
And the miniDV was shot 25p PAL? Also, isn't ProRess 422 overkill for DV?
Yes, 25p PAL.
I think ProRes 422 is overkill, but QT records it that way. I then edit and output using H.264.
I set up a project as above in FCP, but now I am back to getting black bars on top and bottom, as pictured previously. Otherwise, the output looks good. Baffled as to why there are black bars when the settings for the clip and project are 768x576.
Is there a way to import with FCP without it making loads of tiny clips? I can't see any setting to turn that off? If not, is there another application for importing video? Still don't know why QT import does such a terrible job for this input material.
Transfer from Mini DV video camera has ghosting
