Small comparison of DV codices in PAL format (12/2003; mb1)

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Tested:
Sony Pictures DV within Vegas 4.0e
Mainconcept DV within Premiere Pro
Canopus DV within Let's Edit RT Plus
Microsoft DV within Vegas 4.0e

Save the pictures, load them into your favourite graphics application and zoom in for details ...
DV decoder always was Canopus DV which is known not to change the ranges.

Starting point was the 'DV stresstest picture':


I rendered this picture (0-255) to an 'uncompressed RGB'-avi and created 5 DV generations with the above named applications.

Here are the results of the first render generation:
Sony Pictures DV (1. Generation)
There are some bad areas within the dithered greyscale near black edges. The chroma sentence is a real DV killer.
The rest of the picture has been rendered extremely well.

Canopus DV (1. Generation)
Greyscale is fine but the luma sentence and the 'AMEX' word do have more and harder mosquitos. The chroma
sentence is bad as always with DV.

Mainconcept DV (1. Generation)
Even the first generation of this proprietary Codec (v2.4.3; sort of a light version) shows horizontal lines after zooming in.
Also the luma changed to 16-235.
The full Mainconcept DV 2.4.4 has a settings change to 0-255. This Premiere Pro one lacks that option.
Decoding with MS-DV expands the range again and makes the light grey looking white again.

Microsoft DV (1. Generation)
Bandings in the darker greyscale area always have been a weakness of MS-DV. The rest is fairly well. But again the
luma has been restricted to 16-235. So it needs to be decoded with MS-DV to have real white and black.

Result:
Winner would be Sony Pictures DV if it wouldn't have problems with dark contrasts near dithered greyscales even
in the first generation !

So I think Canopus DV gets the point for the first render generation.

Go to  Second Render Generation   Fifth Render Generation