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11-03-2019, 08:22 PM
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I'm using Virtualdub, avt 8710 and a SR V10U. Running coax to a sony trinitron for a monitor and s video to capture ATI G Wonder 600. Using bluejean s video cables.

The picture looks more washed out on the S video capture than the display on sony trinitron. Blues and Reds look brighter on the crt. What could possibly be causing this? Are colors naturally richer on a CRT? Is there an easy way to correct some of this in virtual dub?

I think part of it is the default on the AVT 8710. I bypassed it and got a brighter blue. I was able to turn the color up and get closer but still not perfect.

Where I started.



After bypassing avt 8710



After maxing out color on avt 8710



still not a rich vivid blue like the screen



Attached Images
File Type: png Bypass.png (397.6 KB, 146 downloads)
File Type: jpg Start.JPG (44.3 KB, 151 downloads)
File Type: jpg Color Max.JPG (61.8 KB, 150 downloads)
File Type: jpg tv display.jpg (87.7 KB, 149 downloads)
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  #2  
11-03-2019, 10:58 PM
keaton keaton is offline
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As I've learned on this forum, any monitor (TV, computer monitor, tablet, etc) can display things quite differently. The only way to get two monitors to display very closely is to have them both color calibrated. The only way I believe you can get accurate color (including boosting color to be more saturated) is in a video editor after capture. Virtualdub and Avisynth are the most recommended on the forum. When doing color correction of video, it really should be on a color accurate monitor (meaning it has been color calibrated, or maybe you buy a monitor that comes calibrated, but that may not be 100% accurate), which involves getting one of the devices and software packages out there to do this. It's the same thing used by those that color correct pictures in Photoshop. Although most TVs and monitors are not color calibrated, the best you can do is work with a monitor that is known to be calibrated. The only way you can truly control how it will look on other monitors is to calibrate them also, unfortunately. Without this, you can make it look good for now, but when the monitor changes the colors will appear different. Regarding video capture being dull, that is my experience. Once I correct video color/contrast with Virtualdub filters like ColorMill or Gradation Curves, or a Hue/Saturation filter, then I can use one of those same filters to boost the saturation a bit (but not too much) by looking at the video in the ColorTools Virtualdub plugin, which has a Vectorscope that shows if the video is in gamut (i.e. displayable as a real color and not over saturated). There's a wealth of threads on color correction in this forum, complete with sample videos and pictures of histograms/vectorscopes, etc. If you can search by user, sanlyn has posted some fantastic material that can go quite in depth. I highly recommend reading such threads and playing with these Virtualdub plugins (although Avisynth also has some plugins that may work), which can be found in the Virtualdub pack posted elsewhere on the forum.

Best of luck to you!
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  #3  
11-04-2019, 08:35 AM
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Man, thanks for the great reply! I will defintely do a search for sanlyn's posts. They sound great.

But to discuss the avt 8710 again. Should it darken and wash the colors as much as I'm seeing when set to default? The first 3 images posted are screencaps from the image capture in virtualdub. If I take the avt 8710 out of the chain, I get a richer brighter blue. But it has those bars. I put the avt 8710 back in the chain and I get a darker washed out blue but the bars are gone.

Do I perhaps have a defective unit?
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  #4  
11-04-2019, 10:27 AM
msgohan msgohan is offline
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The bars are actually present in the top screenshot with the AVT in-chain, too.

The contrast is lower in your AVT shots, which makes the whole image less vibrant regardless of cranking saturation. Using histograms and scopes will let you see the actual levels differences instead of just eyeballing.

There's something else that I can't investigate right now cause I'm on my phone. A line-to-line (field by field?) difference in the AVT shots compared to the original.

VCR menus and blue-backs aren't great as test material. The Mitsubishi HS-HD2000U's menus, for example, seem to be generated as a composite signal which is then decoded in a dirty/careless manner for the S-Video output. Viewing the menus over composite looks better, even though viewing tapes over S-Video looks better. Many VCR menus seem to be "240p" like a NES, which some devices either can't handle, or handle differently than 480i.

A DVD test pattern routed into the VCR's S-Video input should make a better reference than its internal menus for most purposes.

Lastly, the screenshots are nice as a preview, but to really analyze, a lossless video sample would be more useful since it avoids the RGB conversion. Even if it's just 1 frame in the file.
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  #5  
11-04-2019, 08:01 PM
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lordsmurf lordsmurf is offline
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Green (good) or black (known-flawed) AVT-8710)?
Where did it come from?
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  #6  
11-07-2019, 11:23 AM
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Black. Purchased many years ago.
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  #7  
11-13-2019, 11:50 PM
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That's a known issue with the black units. It goes berserk with so many aspects of video. What msgohan says is accurate, but it just gets much worse with bad equipment like that black AVT-8710.

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  #8  
11-19-2019, 09:31 AM
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So I tracked down a working green unit...and I'm seeing the same problem. Reds and blues are darker. On the plus side it makes skin look more natural. On the negative side, it makes backgrounds look darker. I have my AG1980 coming back this week. I'm going to do a series of comparisons when it comes back.

I have a satellite feed test pattern on vhs that I could use as a standard. But being on a tape still means it is slightly dirty at best because of the nature of vhs tapes. What is the cheapest dvd player or similar that I could use for a test pattern?

Also, just for the sake of being thorough, I noticed that neither of the power supplies are 12V on the output which is what is listed in the spec page on B&H. Is this right? Does anyone have the manual or Power supply in front of them? Could it be as simple as AV shipping the wrong power supply with these units?

-- merged --

I put this video together the day I got the green unit.

https://youtu.be/6OVICykWNik

It is a weird marketing tape that Chidlren's Palace put out in 1990. It is notable as being Lacey Chabert's first recorded appearance (Lost in Space, Mean girls, Hallmark X-mas specials).

A lot of those logos and signs should be fire engine red and not blood red.
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  #9  
11-19-2019, 10:02 AM
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lordsmurf lordsmurf is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by FrostBite View Post
I noticed that neither of the power supplies are 12V on the output which is what is listed in the spec page on B&H. Is this right?
B&H is wrong. No surprise to me, not when it comes to TBCs. The AVT-8710 is the Cypress CTB-100G, which uses the 15V center-negative power supply.

Quote:
Originally Posted by FrostBite View Post
Lacey Chabert

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  #10  
11-19-2019, 10:41 AM
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Anyone know of a good supplier to get a workable 15V power supply? And a link to a download of the manual?

I'm going to recheck at lunch but I have a feeling both of the power supplies I have are under powered.

-- merged --

Found these threads.

Manual dl
http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vcr-...vt-8710-a.html

Discussions on power supply
http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vcr-...apter-avt.html
http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vcr-...r-adapter.html

-- merged --

The green unit came with transformer DPD120050-P5C, Model: 41-12-500D by CUI stack.
12V DC 500 mA out.
Negative center tap.

Black came with
model 3A-163WP12 by ENG.
12V at 1.25A

-- merged --

More experiments. It appears that all AVT 8710 units make wash the picture out. The default settings in virtualdub could also be washing the picture out. Working together you end up with a really washed out picture.

I downloaded the test pattern disc below and used a Panasonic ES10 as a player. All cables are bluejeans cables recommend elsewhere. S-video is ran to ATI TV Wonder 600 USB dongle. Video was recorded in virtual dub, all with the same settings.

First shot is screenshot playing the disc in VLC and taking a snapshot. Notice the dark blacks.

Second image is the ES10 running straight into the Wonder 600. Colors are slightly less dark.

Green unit is slightly less dark than the raw signal from the ES10.

Black unit is the most washed out.

I played with the Saturation and value in the HSV filter. Set Sat to 135% and Value to -13% and got things a lot better. But now the white bar on the far left has a hue of 76. Should be zero. Not sure what to do about that.


Attached Images
File Type: png Raw from PC.png (22.5 KB, 7 downloads)
File Type: png Raw from DVD player.png (278.0 KB, 6 downloads)
File Type: png Using Green AVT.png (348.6 KB, 8 downloads)
File Type: png Using Black AVT.png (362.6 KB, 8 downloads)
File Type: png vlcsnap-2019-11-26-20h58m32s49.png (352.4 KB, 7 downloads)
File Type: jpg Values.JPG (83.4 KB, 7 downloads)
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  #11  
11-27-2019, 09:55 AM
msgohan msgohan is offline
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Do you have the DMR-ES10 set to Darker output?

My VH thread "The side effects of hardware filters": https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/...screenshots%29
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  #12  
11-27-2019, 11:26 AM
hodgey hodgey is offline
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Any sort of A/D -> D/A conversion will have some impact in the image, only way to completely avoid it would be to use something that can handle the VHS instability and keep the signal digital all the way.
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  #13  
01-19-2020, 07:00 PM
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I got the remote in this week. And yes, the previous owner set it to Cinema. Which is a bit darker than Normal or Fine.

I set it to Normal with some improvement, but I'm still seeing issues with saturation and RGB. Saturation is about 12 below the capture I got off the dvd player in the PC and RBG are all about 15 points hotter on everything when compared tot he capture on PC. If I use the colormill filter in virtual dub to correct, I can't find anything that fixes it all. Like I can get white, yellow, cyan and green to where they need to be, but then the blue and red are too high. If I go further and fix the red and blue, the hue on the white goes way up and gets a bit gray.

Not sure what to do. I've been messing with it all day. I'm thinking off making a new thread.

(above comments were made using a Panasonic ES10 going straight into an ATI TV Wonder usb capture stick going straight into virtual dub. I have a green AVT 8710, results are about the same.)
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  #14  
01-19-2020, 07:39 PM
sanlyn sanlyn is offline
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Hey, haven't you ever heard of post processing? Who the hell gets perfect exposure and color on any capture? Not you, not yours truly, not anyone. Won't happen. Give up and learn to make corrections the same way everyone else does. Or try a different planet. Let us know who told you VHS was all that accurate to begin with. Let us know and we'll to buy his equipment and sell it back to you at 5000% profit. And you expect perfect color using a JVC player? GoshAmighty!!!!!

There must be thousands of posts here and elsewhere describing how to massage input to correct certain factors, and more thousands showing how corrections are made later. Even at that, if you think you're going to get perfect captures you'll be trying for a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong time.
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  #15  
01-19-2020, 08:38 PM
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For what it is worth, I've mostly been comparing an es10 playing a dvd of test patterns against the same dvd played on the PC.

And isn't colormill a post process tool?
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  #16  
01-20-2020, 07:40 AM
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lordsmurf lordsmurf is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by FrostBite View Post
The green unit came with transformer DPD120050-P5C, Model: 41-12-500D by CUI stack.
Never saw that.
All mine came with Ever Glow DDU150060 15V 600mA center-negative

Quote:
It appears that all AVT 8710 units make wash the picture out.
No. But different hardware in a workflow, as well as tapes, can react differently. And again, don't use JVC blue screens as a test of color/contrast, as those can vary wildly, as the NTSC output signal is not 100% perfect.

Quote:
Black unit is the most washed out.
The black AVT-8710 is so fubar that I wouldn't even waste time testing it.

Quote:
Originally Posted by hodgey View Post
Any sort of A/D -> D/A conversion will have some impact in the image,
Yep, always. The goal with TBCs is transparency, but all processing has some affects on image. The best are almost invisible, good are ignorable/hard-to-see, unacceptable is everything else (most items) that leaves obvious errors that even casual viewers can see.

Quote:
Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
Hey, haven't you ever heard of post processing? Who the hell gets perfect exposure and color on any capture? Not you, not yours truly, not anyone.
Oh, I try! And sometimes it is possible, with mix of proc amps, VCR settings, etc! But most times, when it comes to color, one must settle on the best (least-worst) setting available, and run with it. And then post-capture restore/edit as you've sternly suggested. But I see no harm in trying. The better the input quality, the easier (or even possible) it is to do in post-capture.

Quote:
Originally Posted by FrostBite View Post
And isn't colormill a post process tool?
Yes, in VirtualDub.

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  #17  
01-20-2020, 08:35 AM
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I guess I wasnt clear with what I was doing recently with this.

I'm using an es10 dvd player and an internal dvd player to test what post processing settings I need in color mill to correct what is going on with the hardware.

One issue was the cinema feature being turned on in the es10. Turning it to normal improved the level and rgb values by 1 to 2 points. But the level is still low 12 points and the rgb is still hot 12 to 15 points when compared to the pc internal player.

I've tried two same model USB sticks, same values. I've removed the green box, same values. I have not been able to try a second player as the other two svideo players in the house have dead DVD drives.

So yeah, the es10 > svideo cable > usb stick is reducing the level 12 points and increasing the rgb by 12 to 15 and color mill cant correct it. Not with any setting I've tried. If I get the white fixed, blue is too high, if I fix the blue, white is too dark.

Maybe this is something inherit in svideo. Level is lost in passing through the hardware and colors are boosted to compensate.
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  #18  
01-20-2020, 09:02 AM
msgohan msgohan is offline
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Picture Menu: Normal
Black Level Control -> Output Level: maybe try both
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