Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop,rec.video.production,rec.video (More info?)

Codecs, encoder,decoder, Directshow, DirectX etc. etc. ...(blink blink
blink).....My problem is that I really don't have an understanding of what
role these and other elements play in the whole process, which makes it more
difficult to ask intelligent questions since I'm surely using terms
incorrectly.

Can someone offer or point to a good link that gives a flowchart type
explanation of what exactly happens during capture/viewing/editing of video
from a digital camcorder? Both in the case of using the camera strictly as a
pass-through or making tape on the cam and then going to the h/d as digital
video (or even mjpeg for that matter.)

The signal or image goes into the camcorder and...what happens to it? Then
goes out to the Firewire port or capture card and....then what? And what
happens when you view it? Or send it back to a digital or analog
camcorder...

I'm frustrated that I'm drowning in a lack of understanding.

In fact, that's another thing. Is all non-streaming video either digital or
mjpeg or are there other categories as well? For example are mpeg-4, divx,
etc. altogether different animals?

My sincere appreciation for all shared wisdom.

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop,rec.video.production,rec.video (More info?)

Doc

Graphedit is a tool to combine filters graphically to test and create
DirectX objects.

May I suggest the

microsoft.public.platformsdk.directx


or

microsoft.public.win32.programmer.directx.xxxxxx

where xxxxxx is audio, graphics, sdk.. etc..

There is a lot of discussion going on about the inner workings of
directx.


"Doc" <docsavage20@xhotmail.com> wrote in message
news:HdxIe.979$RZ2.318@newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net...
> Codecs, encoder,decoder, Directshow, DirectX etc. etc. ...(blink blink
> blink).....My problem is that I really don't have an understanding of what
> role these and other elements play in the whole process, which makes it
more
> difficult to ask intelligent questions since I'm surely using terms
> incorrectly.
>
> Can someone offer or point to a good link that gives a flowchart type
> explanation of what exactly happens during capture/viewing/editing of
video
> from a digital camcorder? Both in the case of using the camera strictly as
a
> pass-through or making tape on the cam and then going to the h/d as
digital
> video (or even mjpeg for that matter.)
>
> The signal or image goes into the camcorder and...what happens to it? Then
> goes out to the Firewire port or capture card and....then what? And what
> happens when you view it? Or send it back to a digital or analog
> camcorder...
>
> I'm frustrated that I'm drowning in a lack of understanding.
>
> In fact, that's another thing. Is all non-streaming video either digital
or
> mjpeg or are there other categories as well? For example are mpeg-4, divx,
> etc. altogether different animals?
>
> My sincere appreciation for all shared wisdom.
>
>

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop,rec.video.production,rec.video (More info?)

codec stands for encoder/decoder. The codec used is specified in the
file by a fourcc code uniquely identifies the codec. Examples of
these are XVID, DIVX etc.

My understanding is that if the application uses DIRECTSHOW to display
the video you start talking about filters rather than codecs.

When putting video to DVD , VCD etc there are standards that define the
type of video files required.

www.videohelp.com is a good source.

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop,rec.video.production,rec.video (More info?)

"Doc" <docsavage20@xhotmail.com> wrote in message
news:HdxIe.979$RZ2.318@newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net...
> Codecs, encoder,decoder, Directshow, DirectX etc. etc. ...(blink blink
> blink).....My problem is that I really don't have an understanding of what
> role these and other elements play in the whole process, which makes it
> more
> difficult to ask intelligent questions since I'm surely using terms
> incorrectly.
>
> Can someone offer or point to a good link that gives a flowchart type
> explanation of what exactly happens during capture/viewing/editing of
> video
> from a digital camcorder? Both in the case of using the camera strictly as
> a
> pass-through or making tape on the cam and then going to the h/d as
> digital
> video (or even mjpeg for that matter.)
>
> The signal or image goes into the camcorder and...what happens to it? Then
> goes out to the Firewire port or capture card and....then what? And what
> happens when you view it? Or send it back to a digital or analog
> camcorder...
>
> I'm frustrated that I'm drowning in a lack of understanding.
>
> In fact, that's another thing. Is all non-streaming video either digital
> or
> mjpeg or are there other categories as well? For example are mpeg-4, divx,
> etc. altogether different animals?
>
> My sincere appreciation for all shared wisdom.
>

Try; www.doom9.org www.digitalfaq.com www.digital-digest.com

Luck;
Ken

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop,rec.video.production,rec.video (More info?)

"Jona Vark" <noemail@all.com> wrote in message
news:NWxIe.9996$_%4.5535@newssvr14.news.prodigy.com...
> Doc
>
> Graphedit is a tool to combine filters graphically to test and create
> DirectX objects.
>
> May I suggest the
>
> microsoft.public.platformsdk.directx

I guess I'm looking for something that essentially spells the basic process
out more concisely than trying to put it together piecemeal. I.e., if I go
to this group, I'd still be in the same boat I'm in now.

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop,rec.video.production,rec.video (More info?)

Doc wrote:
> Codecs, encoder,decoder, Directshow, DirectX etc. etc. ...(blink blink
> blink).....My problem is that I really don't have an understanding of what
> role these and other elements play in the whole process, which makes it more
> difficult to ask intelligent questions since I'm surely using terms
> incorrectly.
>
> Can someone offer or point to a good link that gives a flowchart type
> explanation of what exactly happens during capture/viewing/editing of video
> from a digital camcorder? Both in the case of using the camera strictly as a
> pass-through or making tape on the cam and then going to the h/d as digital
> video (or even mjpeg for that matter.)
>
> The signal or image goes into the camcorder and...what happens to it? Then
> goes out to the Firewire port or capture card and....then what? And what
> happens when you view it? Or send it back to a digital or analog
> camcorder...
>
> I'm frustrated that I'm drowning in a lack of understanding.
>
> In fact, that's another thing. Is all non-streaming video either digital or
> mjpeg or are there other categories as well? For example are mpeg-4, divx,
> etc. altogether different animals?
>
> My sincere appreciation for all shared wisdom.
>
>

Digging deeply into the specifics of exactly what happens to the data
each step of the way is a good side hobby, but I get the feeling that
your drowning in trees, so to speak.

You take your generic batch of video. Typically, when it flows down the
firewire line to your computer (The technical term for this process is
'magic') it ends up in a format called DV25. (On your basic Windows
computer) This has some compression on it, but seems to be an industry
standard that balances size with editing potential.

You take your editing progam, snip snip, paste paste. Then, you want to
put it all together in a way that others can view it. You render it into
another format using an encoder (which may or may not be part of your
editing program) and the encoder has a choice of codec. The codecs are
what till put your video into one of a whole bunch of different formats.
Divx, Xvid, Mpg 1 and or 2, Avi, Windows media, Quicktime, and on and on
and on.

As said on this forum many times, the file type is just a 'wrapper'. In
other words Avi dosen't necessarily mean anything specific as you can
have uncompressed avi's, ntscdv avi's, Divx avi's, xvid avi's and I'm
sure there are more flavors.

But what about DVD's? Well, DVD's are really just MPG2 files. But
nooooo, they couldn't just leave them that way could they? No, they are
all broken down into VOB files. Again, more 'standards'. And, I'm sure
there is a long long detailed history and explanation as to why the are
put together this way, but, do you really need to know this to create
DVD? No. Still, its fun to look it up in your spare time.

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop,rec.video.production,rec.video (More info?)

Doc,

DirectX is simply Windows' response to those of us who were developing
for the PC and early Windows versions. Back then we were ablke to write
directly to hardware buffers on video cards and as Windows grew up that
functionality disappeared. So DirectX is a solution that provides faster
drawing, image processing and audio processing.

It is a fairly steep learning curve to get it all sorted out.

Filters and codecs are not related per se. The DV filters are processes
that perform some action on the data stream. Or they 'render' that stream to
a device. If you are a programmer you should download the DXSDK from MS and
start reading the materials and running the sample apps that come with it.
Then you can begin asking questions in the development newsgroups. Even if
you are not a programmer the SDK can be very helpful.

There are also a ton of books out on DX.

best


"Doc" <docsavage20@xhotmail.com> wrote in message
news:VRBIe.1080$RZ2.822@newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net...
>
> "Jona Vark" <noemail@all.com> wrote in message
> news:NWxIe.9996$_%4.5535@newssvr14.news.prodigy.com...
> > Doc
> >
> > Graphedit is a tool to combine filters graphically to test and
create
> > DirectX objects.
> >
> > May I suggest the
> >
> > microsoft.public.platformsdk.directx
>
> I guess I'm looking for something that essentially spells the basic
process
> out more concisely than trying to put it together piecemeal. I.e., if I go
> to this group, I'd still be in the same boat I'm in now.
>
>

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop,rec.video.production,rec.video (More info?)

On 5/8/05 9:08 AM, "Doc" <docsavage20@xhotmail.com> wrote:

> For example are mpeg-4, divx,
> etc. altogether different animals?


Divx is an implementation of MPEG-4, as is Xvid.

Basically you have two major categories of digital video compression, DV
(which includes DV25, DV50, DVCAM, DVCPRO, and all other 'Intraframe-only'
codecs; and you have MPEG based interframe codecs known as MPEG-1, -2, and
-4 as well as MJPEG and a few others like HDV.

Intraframe means that each frame is compressed individually and exists as a
complete frame. This is best for editing, as you can cut anywhere and
there's nothing to worry about.

Interframe means that most frames are encoded as 'the difference from the
last frame' to save space - but you lost editability as any cuts have to
either fall on the "I frames" which are intra-only frames, or you have to do
some magic to make a new I frame from a non-I frame.

Almost all consumer digital video camcorders use MiniDV, which is known as
DV25 for its bitrate of 25Mb/s - the other systems out there would be using
MicroMV (MPEG-2 on a tiny tape), HDV (MPEG-2 on a DV tape), or DVD-RAM
(again, MPEG-2).

Capturing DV25 video from a camcorder is lossless, as the 'encoding' upon
capture is really just ensuring that there aren't frames dropped in the
stream being written to the hard drive. Outputting the edited DV (assuming
there's no effects or transitions applied) is also lossless, as you're just
streaming pure DV25 back onto the tape.

To RS: DVD-Video uses program stream VOBs so that you can have multiple
synchronised audio and video tracks in one file without using native
timecode - it just multiplexes every track into a Video OBject file so the
decoder can just pull out whichever tracks it wants. See, not that long or
difficult an explanation

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop,rec.video.production,rec.video (More info?)

Doc wrote:

> Codecs, encoder,decoder, Directshow, DirectX etc. etc. ...(blink blink
> blink).....My problem is that I really don't have an understanding of what
> role these and other elements play in the whole process, which makes it more
> difficult to ask intelligent questions since I'm surely using terms
> incorrectly.
>
> Can someone offer or point to a good link that gives a flowchart type
> explanation of what exactly happens during capture/viewing/editing of video
> from a digital camcorder?

Not a flowchart, but a complete set of definitions covering compression,
codex, etc.

http://www.microsoft.com/mspress/b [...] 28.asp#126

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop,rec.video.production,rec.video (More info?)

On Sat, 06 Aug 2005 02:14:14 +1000, Cail Young <nospam@anywhere.com> wrote:

>Almost all consumer digital video camcorders use MiniDV, which is known as
>DV25 for its bitrate of 25Mb/s - the other systems out there would be using
>MicroMV (MPEG-2 on a tiny tape), HDV (MPEG-2 on a DV tape), or DVD-RAM
>(again, MPEG-2).

You left out the DV25 derivative, Digital-8.

cheers

-martin-
--

"Northern Hemisphere tourists must purchase new CD players
when visiting Australia, since CDs play backwards in the
Southern Hemisphere due to the Coriolis Effect."

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop,rec.video.production,rec.video (More info?)

Martin Heffels wrote:
> On Sat, 06 Aug 2005 02:14:14 +1000, Cail Young <nospam@anywhere.com> wrote:
>
> >Almost all consumer digital video camcorders use MiniDV, which is known as
> >DV25 for its bitrate of 25Mb/s - the other systems out there would be using
> >MicroMV (MPEG-2 on a tiny tape), HDV (MPEG-2 on a DV tape), or DVD-RAM
> >(again, MPEG-2).
>
> You left out the DV25 derivative, Digital-8.
>
> cheers
>
> -martin-
> --
>
> "Northern Hemisphere tourists must purchase new CD players
> when visiting Australia, since CDs play backwards in the
> Southern Hemisphere due to the Coriolis Effect."


quote: CDs play backwards in the Southern Hemisphere due to the
Coriolis Effect

I thought that was the explanation for the different frame rates for
PAL and NTSC.

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop,rec.video.production,rec.video (More info?)

While I'm still not providing you with the flowchart you asked for (not a
lot of time on my hands right now), here are a couple more resources for
you. It sounds like you are very new to digital video (forgive me if
I've come to the wrong conclusion). The attachments here will explain a
number of concepts that may help you build that flowchart in your head
until someone else here can give you one. Some of the other links
already posted are indeed worth a look. Make sure you don't pass those
up.

Yes, the pdf files provided are from Adobe and Avid, and so may speak
specifically about their products, but there is a good amount of
foundation in these 3 files.

The DV Primer may be the best starting place. It talks you through from
shooting video to capturing and editing, to making DVDs.

The Intro to DV is more selling tool than anything else, but I included
it anyway.

The Glossary from Avid is a good resource to look up those terms often
tossed around by some of the more experienced in the community

Hope you find some help in these files. You should let us know what
resources you actually get some usage out of so that when other new users
ask the same questions, there is some idea of what really helps and what
doesn't.

Erich

"Doc" <docsavage20@xhotmail.com> wrote in
news:HdxIe.979$RZ2.318@newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net:

> Codecs, encoder,decoder, Directshow, DirectX etc. etc. ...(blink blink
> blink).....My problem is that I really don't have an understanding of
> what role these and other elements play in the whole process, which
> makes it more difficult to ask intelligent questions since I'm surely
> using terms incorrectly.
>
> Can someone offer or point to a good link that gives a flowchart type
> explanation of what exactly happens during capture/viewing/editing of
> video from a digital camcorder? Both in the case of using the camera
> strictly as a pass-through or making tape on the cam and then going to
> the h/d as digital video (or even mjpeg for that matter.)
>
> The signal or image goes into the camcorder and...what happens to it?
> Then goes out to the Firewire port or capture card and....then what?
> And what happens when you view it? Or send it back to a digital or
> analog camcorder...
>
> I'm frustrated that I'm drowning in a lack of understanding.
>
> In fact, that's another thing. Is all non-streaming video either
> digital or mjpeg or are there other categories as well? For example
> are mpeg-4, divx, etc. altogether different animals?
>
> My sincere appreciation for all shared wisdom.
>
>
>

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop,rec.video.production,rec.video (More info?)

Erich <not@home.com> wrote in news:lLadnTPURIpoJW7fRVn-qw@comcast.com:

> While I'm still not providing you with the flowchart you asked for
> (not a lot of time on my hands right now), here are a couple more
> resources for you. It sounds like you are very new to digital video
> (forgive me if I've come to the wrong conclusion). The attachments
> here will explain a number of concepts that may help you build that
> flowchart in your head until someone else here can give you one. Some
> of the other links already posted are indeed worth a look. Make sure
> you don't pass those up.
>
> Yes, the pdf files provided are from Adobe and Avid, and so may speak
> specifically about their products, but there is a good amount of
> foundation in these 3 files.
>
> The DV Primer may be the best starting place. It talks you through
> from shooting video to capturing and editing, to making DVDs.
>
> The Intro to DV is more selling tool than anything else, but I
> included it anyway.
>
> The Glossary from Avid is a good resource to look up those terms often
> tossed around by some of the more experienced in the community
>
> Hope you find some help in these files. You should let us know what
> resources you actually get some usage out of so that when other new
> users ask the same questions, there is some idea of what really helps
> and what doesn't.
>
> Erich
>
OK, that was my first time trying to post a file and it doesn't appear to
have worked, so here are links to the files online.

http://www.avid.com/freedv/avideditingglossary.pdf
http://media.studio.adobe.com/link [...] primer.pdf
http://media.studio.adobe.com/link [...] tro2dv.pdf

You may have to register at Adobe's site to get their 2 files. The Avid
link shouldn't require any registration.

Good luck

Erich

> "Doc" <docsavage20@xhotmail.com> wrote in
> news:HdxIe.979$RZ2.318@newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net:
>
>> Codecs, encoder,decoder, Directshow, DirectX etc. etc. ...(blink
>> blink blink).....My problem is that I really don't have an
>> understanding of what role these and other elements play in the whole
>> process, which makes it more difficult to ask intelligent questions
>> since I'm surely using terms incorrectly.
>>
>> Can someone offer or point to a good link that gives a flowchart type
>> explanation of what exactly happens during capture/viewing/editing of
>> video from a digital camcorder? Both in the case of using the camera
>> strictly as a pass-through or making tape on the cam and then going
>> to the h/d as digital video (or even mjpeg for that matter.)
>>
>> The signal or image goes into the camcorder and...what happens to it?
>> Then goes out to the Firewire port or capture card and....then what?
>> And what happens when you view it? Or send it back to a digital or
>> analog camcorder...
>>
>> I'm frustrated that I'm drowning in a lack of understanding.
>>
>> In fact, that's another thing. Is all non-streaming video either
>> digital or mjpeg or are there other categories as well? For example
>> are mpeg-4, divx, etc. altogether different animals?
>>
>> My sincere appreciation for all shared wisdom.
>>
>>
>>
>
>

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop,rec.video.production,rec.video (More info?)

This may not be exactly what you're looking for, but perhaps it's a start:

http://groups-beta.google.com/grou [...] 7620a96417

http://groups-beta.google.com/grou [...] urce&hl=en