I was converting a VHS tape to a DVD that was close to two hours in length. Therefore I was not going to be able to encode at much higher than 5300 Kbs. At VideoHelp I once read that noise in the video can waste bitrate trying to recreate the noise, instead of improving the picture. The solution is to run the AVI through filters prior to encoding.

VirtualDub is a poplar free product that allows you to install filters and apply them to an AVI. However it required the Panasonic DV codec, which was not installed on my system.

I installed the codec along with some filters and ran my video through VirtualDub. The filters worked very well for cleaning up the video. I was pretty impressed.

Everything worked great until I went to author the DVD in Ulead DVD Movie Factory. All of the sudden some of the AVI’s would not work in MovieFactory. What was puzzling is that the clips I ran through VirtualDub looked fine but other AVI’s were having issues. I re-rendered a few of the bad AVI’s and discovered that if I rendered as Type 1 AVI they worked fine in MovieFactory.

After a few hours of investigation I learned that the Panasonic DV codec can cause problems with other applications. This codec is for the older Video For Windows (VFW) format. When you install the codec it adds a line to the registry that tells programs to use the codec for that file type of DVSD.

In the header of an AVI file there is something called a 4CC (4 character code) code. This let’s Windows know which codec is needed to play an AVI file. On my XP machine this registry entry is at
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Drivers32\vidc.dvsd=pdvcodec.dll

When software encounters an AVI with a 4CC of dvsd it knows to use the Panasonic codec.

The Panasonic codec only works with Type-2 DV files. Also VirtualDub must use Type-2 DV since it is a VFW based program.

There are two types of DV format. Type-1and Type-2. Type-1 has the video and audio in one interleaved stream. Type-2 splits the video and audio into separate streams. Not all software will open both types. Type-1 DV AVI files are not compatible with VfW.

VFW(Video For Windows) is the old standard developed to allow Windows software to interface with a wide variety of Video hardware such as Capture cards, webcams and TV-cards. It’s been around since Windows 3.1 and although it is widely supported Microsoft is phasing it out in favor of WDM and DirectShow. DirectShow allows complete access to type-1 and type-2 files.

So anyways…
Ulead MovieFactory was getting confused on which codec to use for the AVI’s I ran through VirtualDub.
There are multiple codecs that can play 4cc(four character codes)=DVSD including
Microsoft DirectShow qdv.dll
Panasonic Codec VFW
For type 1 DV avi files, the directshow built-in MS DV codec gets used.

I had to go into the registry to disable the Panasonic Codec by renaming vidc.dvsd to xvidc.dvsd. Everyting worked great after this.

It’s a pain but I now leave the Panasonic Codec disabled most of the time unless I am going to be using VirtualDub. To enable the Panasonic Codec I go onto the registry and just rename xvidc.dvsd back to vidc.dvsd