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08-17-2021, 10:11 AM
noclevernameleff noclevernameleff is offline
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As I understand it, going from Hi8 to digital via S-Video is better than using straight FireWire because of possible colour loss. What I’ve been trying to find is a set of image comparisons of Hi8 film captured from both methods, so I could see if the quality loss would be severe enough to warrant purchasing a working Hi8 camcorder. Any samples would be appreciated.
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  #2  
08-17-2021, 02:00 PM
dpalomaki dpalomaki is offline
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The greater issue is DV uses a lossy compression scheme that is doubly hurt by and noise in the video, which is common for home video.

Whether or not s-video capture would be better will depend on the condition of your tapes, the playback equipment, the capture equipment you are using, and the codecs you are using. In theory s-video should be better if all gear is running at its best and you use the appropriate CODECs and capture cards. But capturing s-video to lame capture device using a compressed lossy codec may well be noticeably worse.

What gear are you planning to use? and what is its condition?
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  #3  
08-17-2021, 07:47 PM
Hushpower Hushpower is offline
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Quote:
so I could see if the quality loss would be severe enough to warrant purchasing a working Hi8 camcorder.
I think you mean a Digital 8 camcorder. My understanding is that you won't get Firewire from a Video 8 or Hi 8 camcorder.

Re the quality comparison, NTSC DV is apparently not the highest quality because of the colour issues; I have read here that PAL DV is much better, colourwise.

It's not exactly your scenario, but I did do a comparison between a Digital 8 tape played on my D8 camcorder, capturing the DV from Firewire and then Lagarith lossless AVI video from the S-video port. The S-Video quality is so close to the DV quality it's hard to tell the difference.

Posted via a link because this forum is to limiting on image width.
https://postimg.cc/YLLqJxL9
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  #4  
08-17-2021, 09:00 PM
dpalomaki dpalomaki is offline
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The issues between NTSC and PAL is 4:1:1 vs 4:2:0 color sampling in the digital representation of the image. This represents the sample ratio of luma (B&W) to chroma (color) information. (It has no meaning in analog video.)

In NTSC DV Luma is sampled at 13.5 MHz, and chroma at 1/4 that or 3.375 MHz for scan line. Thus in theory the video luma has a nominal bandwidth of abut 6.7 Mhz (or around 520 lines) and the color 1.6 MHz (or around 130 videolines). NTSC sample every video line. PAL samples color for every other line, but each line is samples twice as often. Thus NTSC can provide better vertical color resolution, PAL better horizontal color resolution. NTSC may be a bit better for color when motion is involved. Both exceed the capability of the consumer analog formats.

But keep in mind that the consumer SD analog formats (Video8, Hi8, VHS, S-VHS) recording scheme limits the chroma bandwidth to something like 600 KHz so the DV format is more than adequate to represent the analog tapes color data from a sampling rate standpoint.

However, the DV format is a lossy compression, thus quality suffers with noisy video (noise consumes bytes and doesn't compress) and it should not be used as a format for serious editing beyond simple cuts, or for restoration or where recoding the video is involved.

DV is good for acquisition of clean (noise free) SD video but lossless file formats are better, although they generally result in larger file sizes.
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  #5  
08-17-2021, 09:32 PM
Hushpower Hushpower is offline
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LS, can you please modify this forum so that is accepts decent-sized images. I posted a comparison 16:9 image side by side above via a link because this site wouldn't accept it. 890 pixels wide is just too small to be any value these days, even if images are stacked on top. The vast majority of us have at least HD monitors, so the site should be taking advantage of that by allowing larger and wider images.
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  #6  
08-17-2021, 09:40 PM
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lordsmurf lordsmurf is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by noclevernameleff View Post
As I understand it, going from Hi8 to digital via S-Video is better than using straight FireWire because of possible colour loss. What I’ve been trying to find is a set of image comparisons of Hi8 film captured from both methods, so I could see if the quality loss would be severe enough to warrant purchasing a working Hi8 camcorder. Any samples would be appreciated.
"Firewire" is DV compression. You lose quality lots of quality. Also realize that's literally a 1990s conversion method, for use with low-power Pentium III computers of that era. By 2000, it was already becoming obsolete, due to lossless conversion. The only thing that kept it going in the 2000s was that it took 1/3rd less hard drives space, but at the sacrificing of quality. MPEG arguably had advantages over DV, especially due to 4:2:0.

The severity depends on the content, the image quality of the video. The more badly shot the video, the quicker the quality tanks.

Quote:
Originally Posted by dpalomaki View Post
so the DV format is more than adequate to represent the analog tapes color data from a sampling rate standpoint.
Nope, that's theory only. If you properly analyze and sample, sure. But realtime is rough sampling, so theory doesn't become practice. NJRoadfan pointed this out about a year or two ago, he had a good post on this. It explains why we see what we see, in terms of lost color when used as conversion, rather than as a shooting format. It's decent with PAL 4:2:0, but can be unacceptable with NTSC 4:1:1.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Hushpower View Post
LS, can you please modify this forum so that is accepts decent-sized images. I posted a comparison 16:9 image side by side above via a link because this site wouldn't accept it. 890 pixels wide is just too small to be any value these days, even if images are stacked on top. The vast majority of us have at least HD monitors, so the site should be taking advantage of that by allowing larger and wider images.
It can't be done right now. It'd stretch the pages. It was possible at one point, using Lightbox-type embedding, but code updates broke the functionality years ago. If you, or anybody else here, has the ability to code something for vBulletin (php), then let's discuss doing it. But you must be careful, and not run afoul of mobile internet. The images must be highly compressed, and still have some sort of max height/width allowed. If you want something large and uncompressed, that's what zip/7z/rar/etc attachments are for.

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  #7  
08-18-2021, 01:50 PM
msgohan msgohan is offline
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Here is my NTSC Hi8 comparison, DV vs lossless:
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/...uto-load%21%5D

(For some reason the Canopus NHX-E2 capture has supposedly been downloaded over 1200 times while the next-most frequent download is only 106. WTF?)
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  #8  
08-20-2021, 04:12 PM
Ohank Ohank is offline
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Sorry I don't understand some technical aspects of this discussion. Am I reading some of these posts right to be saying that Minidv capture via fireire is worse than analog capture? In my case it's with PAL tapes.
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  #9  
08-20-2021, 05:56 PM
hogharry hogharry is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohank View Post
Sorry I don't understand some technical aspects of this discussion. Am I reading some of these posts right to be saying that Minidv capture via fireire is worse than analog capture? In my case it's with PAL tapes.
If you mean miniDV tapes then FireWire will be the best option as you are directly transferring the digital information from the tape as a direct copy.

I’m assuming that the OP is talking about capturing Hi8 using a Digital8 camcorder. My experience of this is that it is very straightforward but the quality with PAL tapes is not as good as analogue capture. That said, I captured all my Hi8 and Video8 tapes using a Digital8 camcorder via FireWire to create a backup. It’s quick and easy and I can scrub through them to see what’s there before I do each analogue capture. I’m a bit confused by the original question as Hi8 via FireWire usually involves a Digital8 camcorder and as far as I know they all have the S output, so buying a Hi8 camcorder would be unnecessary.
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  #10  
08-20-2021, 06:16 PM
dpalomaki dpalomaki is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohank View Post
Sorry I don't understand some technical aspects of this discussion. Am I reading some of these posts right to be saying that Minidv capture via fireire is worse than analog capture? In my case it's with PAL tapes.
Not really. MiniDV is already a digital recording on the tape. If transferred via firewire you are essentially doing a file copy, sort of like recovering data from computer backup tape. Subject to any unrecoverable tape read errors it should be perfect copy of what the camcorder recorded to tape.

I believe what they are saying is that if you start with an analog source, such as a VHS or Video8 tape, capture it with a recommended device that can give you a 4:2:2 lossless file as the end result. Using a Firewire device nets a DV format captured file and is not recommended due to the limitations of the DV signal. Will the results be bad? - that depends on your definition of bad. A lossless capture using a good capture card can lead to a better end result, how much better will depend on the condition of the original tapes and gear you are using.

If you try capture a MiniDV tape via s-video playback to to capture card you are doing a D/A conversion in the player and then an A/D conversion with the capture device, two opportunities to introduce artifacts and suffer from what ever errors and noise these conversions introduce. In general it is better to transfer MiniDV (and HDV) via firewire and use appropriate lossless intermediate file formats for subsequent editing, processing and sweetening.

The only exception might be with miniDV tapes that have sufficient tape read errors to prevent a good firewire transfer, but the player has sufficient error correction built into its analog playback output processing to yield a satisfactory/usable analog stream. I have occasionally seen this with audio on some MiniDV recordings.

As I recall, not all Digital8 gear can read Video8/Hi8 tapes. Check the specs before you buy one with VIdeo8/Hi8 in mind.
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  #11  
08-20-2021, 10:24 PM
Ohank Ohank is offline
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OK. Good to hear since I've already done about 4/5 of my MiniDV archiving via firewire. Thanks.
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  #12  
08-21-2021, 04:36 AM
RobustReviews RobustReviews is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dpalomaki View Post

As I recall, not all Digital8 gear can read Video8/Hi8 tapes. Check the specs before you buy one with VIdeo8/Hi8 in mind.
Very true, only the higher-end ones seemed to, at least in PAL-land anyway.

The cynic in me makes me wonder if Sony didn't want a comparison between Hi8 and Digital8 being casually made by customers... I'm not convinced Hi8 doesn't make a more aesthetic image, but that's speculation and nothing but personal opinion, and even I'm not convinced!
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