Restoring colour in VirtualDub on DV via WinDV?
 

Hi,

So I have copied some DV tapes that I had via firewire and Windv using a sony TRV-DCR-510E (type 2 capture)

All my other tapes have been HI8/V8 so I have been using virtualdub and huffyuv lossless capture method.

With the DV AVI files, how should I prepare them for filtering in virtualdub?

Do I need to re-encode before filtering to restore colour saturation? or can I filter direct in virtualdub from a copied 1:1 DV avi file?

Thank you.

No answers yet so I'll throw in my two-bob's worth. I'd suggest you do your colour stuff in VDub. If you intend doing further work with your DV files in VDub, don't re-colour it first outside VDub as you'll have to re-render it before bringing it in to VDub.

Try importing the files into VDub; if they come in OK, just do your re-colour stuff with it. If they won't import, it's probably because you don't have a DV-AVI codec on your machine. There are various DV codecs around, and I don't profess to know which one is the best. The Canopus DV codec gets a good rap.

It depends.

You wrote "colour", not "color", so I'm guessing PAL. And PAL is 4:2:0, not the nasty 4:1:1 you'd get with NTSC. With NTSC, 4:1:1 > 4:2:2 (or even 4:4:4) pre-filtering can be needed. But for PAL, eh. You can't recover lost colors, but the goal here is to widen the palette to prevent further loss, allow more nuance in correction.

Normally you'd just correct the DV in VirtualDub directly (ColorMill), then save to lossless.

Avisynth and ColorYUV can help be helpful as a pre-correction, pre-VirtualDub. Only sometimes, not even most of the time.
BTW, I recently saw something in johnmeyer's film script, where he limits black/white values, and that'd be something to look into when doing these auto settings. I need to figure out how those work.

Thank you - much appreciated.