These captured images illustrate the serious and pervasive Buz
interlacing problem at high capture resolutions. For more
information, read the details in the Problem
FAQ.
The source of the video test pattern (and crude text overlay) is a
Tektronix Pathfinder NTSC pattern generator, connected to the
composite Video In on the Buz. It's about the cleanest, most stable
video input the Buz could ask for. Don't let Iomega tell you it's
because of a bad video feed.
Below is a single frame of captured video, unretouched. I used
VidCap32, and captured a single frame to BMP format. Then, LView Pro
converted it to a GIF file, to best preserve the sharp edges. It
looks just fine. (Well, if you ignore the ubiquitous green horizontal
line at the bottom.) The grainy "noise" in the image is mostly due to the GIF colormap constraints. The video looks much nicer.
A-OK fine, see?
Single frame capture with VidCap32, converted from BMP (92k):
Below is a sample frame from a captured AVI file that
exhibits the jitter problem. The sharply defined edges on the text in
the video really make it show up. The video was captured at 720x480
using VidCap32. During playback, I grabbed the image from the
"mplayer" display screen and saved it as a GIF file.
(While MGI VideoWave can play back captured video without the
interlacing problem, when the final video is "produced", it will
exhibit the same bad symptoms.)
Bad Bad Bad! Interlacing error:
Video captured with VidCap32, played back with Active Movie (133k):
The frame below is from a "produced" MGI VideoWave movie.
The video clip used in the production previewed just fine (as above),
but the rendered output looks terrible! Note that if you play with
the MGI software instead of ActiveMovie, it looks half as bad, like
the frame above.
Rendered movies are the worst:
Video captured and rendered with MGI VideoWave, played with Active Movie (141k):
Back to the Buz problems page
Copyright ©1998
Steve Haehnichen
