Mini DVs with current version of VideoPad

[Russ Croucher]

I have researched this tremendously to make sure that we have a problem with mini DVs. Normal mini DV is 720x480 non-interlaced they are all transferred with FireWire to a computer. Those AVI files are then fed directly into VideoPad. The latest version of VideoPad v8.16 reads those in as 640x480. Actually, it reads the 720 as 640 and crunches the horizontal a little bit. So the resulting video is thinner than it should be. Being the engineer that I am, I backed off every version that I have and found that v7.51 works great. So now I am stuck using v7.51 with that computer that uses mini DV. I thought it might be a Windows 10/Windows 7 problem and it's not. I thought it might be a codec problem and I don't think so. So I'm turning here to find out what I can do as far as a workaround. I found that when I convert the file with FireWire you get only the first segment of the tape. You need to load the next segment later into one file. When I do that I use VideoPad to stitch them all together. Then I output that as a single file that is then read later again to stabilize it. Those fragmented files inadvertently work fine because it is read correctly by VideoPad.

If I take those AVI files that I loaded with the FireWire and stabilize them directly they do not work correctly. Again, the image stabilization reads it as 640x480. So the only way I've been able to get to work correctly is :

1) use v7.51 to load the file and write it back out with VideoPad unchanged.

2) use that new file to any stabilize the video with v7.51.

3) quit VideoPad and then retrieve the temporary AVI files that are stabilized in the temporary directory.

This solution seems to work great with v7.51. I would like to figure out a way to move on to the newer versions but I need to get a solution that works above. I have submitted a bug report yesterday on this issue but don't know where we stand.  Maybe you guys can help me understand what I can try differently to fix this problem. I currently have 3 license versions and is looking to get some more. Several of Windows 7 one Windows 10

Edited March 18, 2020 by Russ Croucher
Clarify the message a little bit

[alex_l]

Can you please drop a link to those AVI files so that we can check it out? It's easy and will be private.

Here's how...  http://nch.invisionzone.com/topic/23659-tips-for-getting-help-on-this-forum/
If it contains sensitive material link it in a personal message (PM).

[Russ Croucher]

Alex, I'm going to make another bug report tomorrow.  I will include request for a file upload. Typically they only want one file to be named to a number that they use for the bug ID I did determine in more testing that v7.51 is only required for the initial reading and writing of the original FireWire AVI.  Once the file has been read and written with VideoPad all the later versions can be used.  Then v8.16 can be used to image stabilized it.

So my workaround at this point is to take each file from the FireWire, read it with VideoPad and write it back out   That way if all the segments were not read in the first segment VideoPad will stitch them together.

[Russ Croucher]

I went to report this bug using version the 8.16 and they informed me that there is a beta version 8.18 they would like me to use so I decided to use this new version and try it with the image stabilization and yes it did fix part of the problem where it would read in the file at 720X480 now.  However, they still have a problem with the image stabilization that it still only interprets that file as 640x480 where the 640 is a narrow version of 720.  So I took the file loaded it with VideoPad and before I image stabilize it I wrote it back out without any changes then use that file as the input to the image stabilization process.  That worked fine.

So now solution for me until they fix the problem is to use the latest version 8.18, load the file with FireWire, load the output of that with VideoPad and write it out as a file that VideoPad seems to understand and then use that file as input to VideoPad to image stabilize it.  That will work until they fix the problem.
 

[alex_l]

Hi Russ,

Glad to hear a part of your problem is fixed with 8.18 beta version.

And, can you please send the files by dropping a link here or send a PM so that we can take a look and get your issue fixed faster? It seems that the image stabilization has some issues when reading your files, which possibly a bug.

Thanks,

Alex