A couple of video quality questions

[Terry Kennedy]

I did my first road test with my dual ChaseCam setup today.

When viewing the videos in VLC (1.0.1, the latest), severe interlacing artifacts appear for horizontal motion. It almost looks like the fields are being recorded in reverse order. Using the various VLC de-interlacing options makes it appear somewhat better, but the issue is still very visible. Here's a VLC screen capture (I'm doing all of these as links instead of inlining them with IMG tags, so people browsing don't auto-download them):

http://www.tmk.com/transient/vlcsnap-2009-08-04-20h25m11s60.png

Next, and possibly related to the above - severe jaggies are visible on thin objects like phone wires:

http://www.tmk.com/transient/vlcsnap-2009-08-04-20h15m26s75.png

This last one is really odd. The video while stopped at a red light shows the overhead red light slowly pulsing on and off, while the one on the stand on the right stays lit constantly. This is hard to see in a still, but this should convey the general idea:

http://www.tmk.com/transient/vlcsnap-2009-08-04-19h54m18s161.png

This is all with the latest firmware, 1.02.08, Chase bullet cameras, highest quality / full screen recording.

[RandallNoll]

Terry,

Give us a call so we can better understand the video issue you are describing.

Regarding the red lights. Video often captures a 'solid' light blinking because of the frame rate vs the light's (LEDs specifically) pulse rate. This is a similar phenomenon to watching a video of a spinning rim and it looking like it's spinning backwards. You'll see this often when shooting LED tail lights--they'll look like they're blinking.

[Terry Kennedy]

Give us a call so we can better understand the video issue you are describing. 619-337-2300.
Will do, thanks!

Regarding the red lights. Video often captures a 'solid' light blinking because of the frame rate vs the light's (LEDs specifically) pulse rate.
I had considered that, but couldn't see any reason why the traffic light LEDs would be pulsed, let alone at something other than 60Hz power frequency.

[Mark]

This is probably a bit late, but I'll chime in with a "me too." I haven't tried anything besides VLC, so maybe that's the issue. I'll also check with my latest camera. I noticed this over a year ago, but found satisfactory results with one of the VLC deinterlacing options (I forget which).

Regarding the red light- I assume that the LED traffic lights might be PWM controlled so that they're brighter during the day and dimmer at night (I really hate when they're blinding at night). Depending on how much sun is on the light sensors, the two lights might have different PWM duty cycles and that's why only one appears to be flickering.

I'd assume the PWM is a lot higher frequency than would be noticeable on a camera, but I never really though about it that hard... Let's see... maybe 10kHz PWM cycle but some bullet cams shutter speeds max out at 1/100000 sec. So yeah, you can certainly catch the LED when it's pulsed off.

[Terry Kennedy]

This is probably a bit late, but I'll chime in with a "me too." I haven't tried anything besides VLC, so maybe that's the issue. I'll also check with my latest camera. I noticed this over a year ago, but found satisfactory results with one of the VLC deinterlacing options (I forget which)

I can fiddle with the de-interlacing settings in VLC as well, but I wind up losing video resolution and/or getting jumpy video.

I'm familiar with interlacing concepts (to provide some background, I was part of the Sony Broadcast BVH-1100 product team).

If you consider each frame to be composed of an A field and a B field, then the normal progression would be A1 B1 A2 B2 A3 B3 and anything moving horizontally at a constant speed will have a linear progression across those fields.

This really looks like it is being recorded B1 A1 B2 A2 B3 A3, with the result that there's a 3-field jump between A1 and B2.

It was suggested that I try the MainConcept codec. I downloaded their MainConcept ShowCase player to try this out. On a clean Windows system with no other codecs installed, the video exhibits the same behavior. Here's a screen capture to compare with the VLC one in my original post:

http://www.tmk.com/transient/mainconcept-snap.bmp

It is possible that all of the units do this, but it isn't noticeable in most cases as on a track, objects are generally moving toward or away from the camera, not across the camera's field of vision.

I've burned a DVD with the videos that show the issue and am sending it to ChaseCam for evaluation.

[Terry Kennedy]

When viewing the videos in VLC (1.0.1, the latest), severe interlacing artifacts appear for horizontal motion. It almost looks like the fields are being recorded in reverse order. Using the various VLC de-interlacing options makes it appear somewhat better, but the issue is still very visible. Here's a VLC screen capture (I'm doing all of these as links instead of inlining them with IMG tags, so people browsing don't auto-download them):

http://www.tmk.com/transient/vlcsnap-2009-08-04-20h25m11s60.png
I've continued to experiment with this and while I haven't found a solution that I'm completely satisfied with, processing the video through MeGUI (http://sourceforge.net/projects/megui/) generates a video that has far fewer interlacing artifacts. I expect that with some additional practice, I'll get something I'm happy with.

Here's a link to the same video frame as the original link above, this time processed through MeGUI before playing with VLC:

http://www.tmk.com/transient/vlcsnap-2009-08-04-20h25m11s60-megui.jpg

[Gcoxusa]

Like Mark ... I'll chime in with a "me too." I am disappointed with the quality of the video that I see using the latest version of VLC. And if there is something I can do to improve it I would like to hear some suggestions. I updated the firmware earlier this year so I don’t think that will help to do it again.

I am using the C52 bullet camera and the video quality is set at the highest on the PDR. What I find really aggravating is that I have a cheap ($79.00) digital camera that I bought in 2008 which produces better quality video than my expensive PDR100.

[eug]

I've always had that tearing interlacing problem with VLC with any interlaced video file. Playing back the file in a different player like Windows Media Player "fixes" the problem, or rather, deinterlaces it better.

I usually pull the video files into premiere, edit them, and export them as deinterlaced WMV or h264 video files that look great. No tearing problems at all when the files are uploaded to online streaming video sites.

Of course, one has to keep in mind that the footage still started out interlaced... i have yet to see a progressive-scan recorder with a similar feature set and remote prog-scan camera head that doesn't cost a bomb.

Try skipping VLC and using something like windows media player or an editor like adobe premiere. If it still looks bad, maybe you're too used to HD video. :)

p.s. cheap video cameras nowadays use CMOS sensors. The rolling shutter problem is pretty horrible imho.