• Applied Microscopy
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.47-51
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• 2010

The capability of real-time observation in TEM is quite useful to study dynamic phenomena of materials in a certain variable ambience. In performing the experiment, the choice of video recording program is an important factor to obtain high quality of movie streaming. Window Movie Maker (WMM) is generally recommended as a default video recording program if one uses "DV Capture" function in DigitalMicrograph$^{TM}$ (DM) software. However, the image quality does not often satisfy the condition for high-resolution microscopic analysis since the severe information loss in the final result occurs during the conversion process. As a good candidate to overcome this problem, Virtual-Dub is highly recommended since the information loss can be minimized through the streaming process. In this report, we demonstrated how useful VirtualDub works in a high-resolution movie recording. Quantitative comparison of the information quality between the images recorded by each software, WMM and VirtualDub, was carried out based on histogram analysis. As a result, the image recorded by VirtualDub was improved ~13% in brightness and ~122% in contrast compared with the image obtained by WMM at the same imaging condition. Remarkably, the gray gradation (meaning an amount of information) becomes wider up to ~115% than that of the WMM result.