Why is downloaded video quality suddenly bad?

[Steve Biodrowski]

The last couple times I have downloaded footage from my Sony Digital8 handycam, the results have looked digitized - like what you would expect from something you shot on your cell phone.

The mystery is that I have been downloading for years with satisfactory if not spectacular results, and I have made no (deliberate) changes to my methods, hardware or software.

To double check the problem, I re-downloaded an old piece of video from over a year ago and compared the new version with the old download. Old download looks fine; new download has great blocky chunks of digitized color against a bright blue sky.

Problem is not with the Hi8 metal camcorder videotape (recorded in Standard Play mode), which looks great when plugged into my 50-in plasma TV.

Technical stuff:

The Sony handycam connects to the computer through a USB cable. The handycam came with a USB streaming tool software, which I use to adjust download settings (brightness, picture quality, etc). Video looks good on the streaming tool, but that could be deceptive because the window is very small and will not enlarge.

To actually download the video I use ULead Video Studio 9. The video looks bad during the download and during playback. Double checked by viewing dowloaded files through Windows Media Player, which also looked digitaized.

I run Video Studio off my internal hard drive and save video to an external hard drive.

Video is saved as uncompressed AVI files, 640x480, but they look worse than the results I got years ago, using an analog digital capture device and saving video as MPG-1 files to burn on VCDs.

As an experiment, I tried saving files as MPG-2; results still looked digitized. Only thing that makes them look slighlty less digitized is saving them as 320x240, but of course the image is smaller and not as clear.

The computer is about one year old and gave good results previously. As mentioned above I have not deliberately changed settings, except to go back and check that they are the same as I used before.

I have 226 GB free space on my internal hard drive. Only 13.7 GB free space on the external drive.

Any idea what could have changed to make the video download quality suddenly look so bad?

[sjj1805]

You need to get rid of the USB cable and use an IEEE1394 firewire / iLink cable instead. I would also recommend saving to the internal hard drive - you can transfer it later to the external drive. You should also be transfering the video in DV - this is a compressed form of "avi" that uses 13GB of hard drive psace per hour.

[Black Lab]

To expand on Steve's comments, make sure your capture is set for DV-AVI, not MPEG-2 or DVD.

[Ken Berry]

Sony was one of the companies that helped develop Firewire and it was first introduced as far as I am aware in their Digital 8 range. I have one, and as Steve has already suggested, you will find that as well as the mini USB port, it has a mini 4 pin Firewire port. You should Google for photos of Firewire ports so you can recognise it. Or look at the camera manual and find a reference to the i-Link port, which is what Sony calls it.

The problem is that no camera manufacturer of which I am aware, including Sony, ever include a Firewire cable with the camera. They usually supply a USB cable, so users form the mistaken impression that this is what they have to use. However, as you have found, at most the USB connection is used to transmit streaming (i.e. low quality) video, as well as still photos. The fact that the captured video has a frame size of 640 x 480 is indication enough that you are not capturing in a format consistent with a DVD since the international DVD standard has a size of 720 (or sometimes 704) x 480 and fractions a half those sizes.

So check to see if your computer has a firewire card. If it doesn't, then install one == they are quite cheap these days and easy to install in a spare slot in your motherboard. Often they will come with a firewire cable as well -- make sure you get the correct size. It should have a 4 pin plug at one end for the camera, and a larger 6 pin plug at the other end which goes into the computer.

And as Steve says, you can then captue in DV format, which gives you the exact same high quality as used in your camera when filming. Believe me -- you will be amazed by the difference. After all these years ... !!

In addition, depending on the model of your Digital 8, you can even insert old analogue 8 mm and Hi8 tapes you may have shot on a previous camera, and transfer these via Firewire as well. Again the quality is extremely good and much better than if you were to use an analogue USB capture device. In fact, that is the real reason I bought my Digital 8 in the first place (a DCR-TRV480E).

[Steve Biodrowski]

Thanks for the suggestions. I will definitely get the Firewire cable to connect the camera to the computer (which already has the ports).

My concern is that the USB cable method used to give good results, and now suddenly it does not. Maybe the cable itself is defective. I just hope it's not a symptom that something else has gone wrong with the computer.

[Ken Berry]

I can only repeat: if you thought the USB gave you good results, wait till you see the Firewire/DV results...

[Steve Biodrowski]

Sony was one of the companies that helped develop Firewire and it was first introduced as far as I am aware in their Digital 8 range. I have one, and as Steve has already suggested, you will find that as well as the mini USB port, it has a mini 4 pin Firewire port. You should Google for photos of Firewire ports so you can recognise it. Or look at the camera manual and find a reference to the i-Link port, which is what Sony calls it.

Ah yes, there it is in the Camera Operations Guide : the "iLink cable (optional)" - "optional" meaning it is not included in the box.

Well, I gues I'm off to Fry's electronics...

[Steve Biodrowski]

Got the 1394 cable, and the downloaded video works great!

Thanks for the good advice.