Improving my capture devices and workflow
 

Hello,

i'm trying to improve my hardware capture devices and the workflow.

How it is for VHS:

- Panasonic NV-FS200 pal
- Ati 600 usb capture card on W10 pc.

Connected with gold plated SVHS cable and cinch for sound.

How it is for Video8/Hi8:

- Sony CCD-TRV66E pal
- Ati 600 usb capture card on W10 pc.

Connected with gold plated SVHS cable and cinch for sound.

I also noticed that when I connect the TRV66 to my Pana FS200, it seems that I have a better quality, is it possible ? TBC and DNR was activated on both devices.
Is this a good way of improvment to connect the sony to the pana with DNR and TBC on both devices ?

Is there any valuable improvment possible ?
I know that all depends on source quality (and in this case the quality of the tape is a big deal) but If I had an affordable TBC between the source and the capture or even if I improve the capture card, will that be a good improvment ?
I also read somwhere that the TBC of the Pana FS200 was really good, so is it valuable to add an other tbc ?

Thanks in advance for any advice

Kind regards,

Chrisbati

Daisy chained the TRV-66E to the NV-FS200? Hmm.. Maybe. They're both line TBCs, maybe there's a synergistic effect there if you notice a difference. I guess it just depends on what errors you're trying to correct, and your tastes.

But if what you want to capture has noticable time base error (vertical straight lines look distorted) to fix it requires a frame TBC.

You're right about the source tape, I have some source tapes that have such a strong stable signal that I don't even need a frame TBC to capture them; they look great on DVD, just slight time base error on a few scenes but what average 65 year old viewer is going to pause a video and point it out? (one of my target audience)

Oh, one improvement I can suggest is to add a really good sound card; makes all the difference in my setup, but YMMV.

I thought the fix for wiggly vertical lines is a line TBC eg ES-10, 15?

Line TBC fixes wiggles, frame TBC cleans the signal reducing dropped frames.

Mea culpa, I mixed up jitter with vertical lines somehow :smack:

Ok i think the Panasonic fs200 has not a simple TBC but a full-field (multi-line) TBC.
But still i have lines issues.
If I understand correctly, a full frame TBC will not be really helpfull because the main difference with what I already have is on dropped frames which is not really an issue for me now.

Could you tell me more about the advantages of a soundcard and how you can use it in a capture workflow ?

The ADCs (analog to digital converters) used in higher-quality soundcards are upgraded - they have less quantization noise & more SNR (signal to noise ratio); provided the soundcard is in good shape. When a prosumer or studio-level card is spec'd at maximum 24-bit/96kHz sampling for example, it means it, it's not just introducing noise at that resolution & rate.

They were more expensive back in the day but today they can be had for a bargain and can really give a good quality boost to the recording IMHO.

The way I use mine is I connect the VCR directly to the card (or the breakout port if the card has a breakout). YMMV, I'm thinking some connect it to the capture card or the frame TBC inputs.

In VirtualDub I select the card's input for audio recording (I use mono usually for my mono Video8 or VHS tapes and mirror it later in AviSynth to the right channel). Some cards (such as DAW prosumer cards, Digital Audio Workstation) have extra software apart from the drivers to adjust levels and can monitor levels while recording which can be nice.

Ok thanks !
Any sound Card to consider? Pcie or USB for best compatibility ?

Well, the bargain cards are the older PCI-based cards (such as the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz or prosumer cards from late 90s) as long as they work. I'm using a Windows XP PC that's over 15 years old so that I can use the ATI AGP AIW card to capture, and I use a PCI slot for the soundcard.

There's a USB-based box I know about from Sound Devices that's really nice but I can't vouch for the latency; it has line-level and balanced mic inputs. I'd like to own one of those boxes actually if I can get I good bargain price for it on eBay, though it's 32-bit only w/ a 64-bit unsupported driver. Their newer USBPre2 looks to have excellent latency but currently costs 1k USD (it used to cost about half that, they keep increasing the price over time).

There are other boxes such as M-Audio but I haven't used any of those to share any experience.

VCR = fine
capture card = fine

You're missing the frame TBC.

Nothing about gold improves video, audio, blank media, or otherwise. In fact, most often, it degrades. Why? Gold isn't the optimal metal you want.

Gold's not even a good long-term investment (arguably not even short-term). More stuff that's hawked to gullible suckers.

Gold makes for pretty jewelry. Buy the missus something nice if you want to buy gold. :laugh:

Prove it. Samples needed. But this is surely just your imagination, as there is no technical reason that could be the case.

Put a number of it.

Also, affordable to what metric? An education understanding of historical TBC costs ($1000+), or simply "gee, I wish I could find one for $XX" without any realistic valuation being given? I see far too much of the latter, with not enough realism in hardware costs. You don't get that with other hardware, such as $1k+ cell phone or Nvidia graphics cards, where people gleefully literally wait in lines to get it.

Another line, no.
A frame, yes. Your workflows lacks frames. The functions complement.

Based on what? I don't see how it's possible. Line TBCs cannot chain, the first overrides the second, always. Perhaps we could see some 3D Y/C type improvements, but I'm not aware of that being the case here.

You would be surprised. Lots of older folks view on larger devices these days, and complain more about the image and sound. Even more than I would, as all I want is enjoyable video and audio, without distracting errors (wiggle, color flicking, color loss, etc). Far too many people are getting overly anal about resolution, sharpness, etc.

Cannot be done with the ATI 600 USB, nor most USB. For that, AIW required, which means XP required.

Correct.

But line does have some image stabilizing effects, and frame has some image clearing effects. Not many, not often, not strong, but it's there. It's not purely line=image/wiggle, frame=signal, but primarily.

Sample needed.

Based on what? You need to realize that frame drop reporting isn't 100% accurate -- especially if you disable the reporting. Too many guides are written by newbies, and they turn off reporting in the VirtualDub settings. So it "looks like" 0 drops, but it's dropping. You just don't get it reported, but you'll see it.

How do you capture foolproof, no way drops can happen? Frame TBC.

Just for clarification: :)

Turtle Beach Santa Cruz is NOT a "bargain card", in terms of quality. In fact, it's one of the most suggested high quality cards for pairing with ATI AIW for capture. From a macro view, when considering price points of the best cards, at under $100, sometimes even $50, it's definitely bargain priced by comparison.

Creative (Sound Blaster) is overpriced, and quality errs to the tinny (and crappy).

So my main point is, but i'm just a beginner, I don't have frame drop issue or even if, that's not what cause the diagonal lines I see everywhere now.
It's not the main interlaced lines, we don't see them on every scene, but mainly on scene with big parts with same colour: see example below in the yellow part of the sign.

1- Sony TRV66E -> ATI 600 USB -> VDUB2 32bit

Attachment 14319

for me here you can see diagonal lines, specially in the yellow zone, starting top left to bottom right.
And when it's moving it's really annoying.

2- Sony TRV66E -> Pana FS200 -> ATI 600 USB -> VDUB2 32bit

Attachment 14320

Diagonal lines are still presents, but less, maybe blurried ? and it's noticeable when playing the scene.


Here's the footage with only Sony TRV66E:

Attachment 14321

And there is the footage with Sony AND Pana:

Attachment 14322

Maybe it's only me but i'm sure i see a difference and less diagonal lines with Sony and Pana.

Can't argue with that. Weird thing is from my experience many folks cannot even change the inputs of their TV to switch from cable to whatever and back without being instructed over and over how, and have trouble operating their DVD or Bluray players. Lol. I live in a different world I guess. Quality is quite good, no wiggles or color issues thanks to the AIW card and a good VCR.

I did not know one cannot use a soundcard if using USB, thanks. Glad I have the AIW.


Agreed, some prosumer cards from the era are a bargain as well. I paid about 250 USD for mine back in the day but they're fraction of that now. By the way the prosumer cards have balanced inputs but can work with unbalanced outputs; can usually select -10 dBV line level using the software or driver to make it work.

They're good cards, but I don't understand the cachet attached to them, they're also ageing. They were very well marketed, I can remember getting a sales pitch on them many years ago after the (Moby?) album was recorded on them.

We're fully Creative here for the DAWs now, I wouldn't say our units provide tinny audio -it's good enough to mix down for national broadcasters (including the BBC) to pay for our products. We do a fair amount of analogue capture with them without issue, although we do use the very top of the line card with the breakout card and the desk breakout as well. I don't know what the more modest cards sound like.

For most general videotape purposes any given audio card from the last decade or so is going to meet or exceed the requirements of most videotapes, I personally would say any given audio device is a 'nice to have' but certainly not a requirement. A decades-old Santa Cruz card wouldn't be top of my list personally, that said, they're perfectly cromulent cards though.

I can imagine when restoring VHS audio there's a natural sequence of products required and unless you have a decent set of headphones and monitors, worrying about the card is probably not the priority. If you're editing audio on a craptastic set of Sony (insert their current £50 wonder here) or similar you'll be fighting a losing battle to start with.

I won't recommend anything because that always starts a debate and everybody has personal preferences but a middle-line set of AKG, BeyerDynamic or Sennheiser headphones and a quiet environment is probably more useful than worrying about the differences between any given model of sound-card. There's always BD DT100s if you're a sadist....

Just an opinion, but I wonder how many people get middling results because they're trying to work with this stuff on mediorce (or poor) headphones and speakers?

I think the DAW prosumer cards could have very low jitter & latency with precision components which I'm guessing can help with capture.

But to your point if there's no discernable difference then it might not matter

I think you'd be hard-pressed to notice the difference from the majority of amateur videotape stock.

Things have moved on a lot, sometimes there's a lot of speculation based on things that were true 'once upon a time', but it's 2021, a modest modern sound-card isn't going cause your video capture audio to suddenly turn to garbage.

Most (#notall) videotape audio is junk anyway, especially linear analogue, it's lower in terms of specification than a ferric cassette tape.

Oh, those diagonal lines are actually normal, look up "combing effect." It's because interlaced video is being played on your progressive monitor. If your footage ends up on a playable DVD or BluRay (which preserves interlacing) those lines will not even be present on the TV and your footage will look great. If you want your footage to be playable on a computer without those diagonal lines you'll have to deinterlace; lots of info here and on the web to do that. On the preview on your progressive monitor the lines are fine. Best of luck!

Combing caused by interlacing would be horizontal lines. OP was talking about faint diagonal lines in flat areas of saturated color.

I think the only reason the FS200 passthrough sample has less-noticeable diagonal artifacts is that it's acting as a low-pass filter, slightly blurring the high-frequency portion of the video that's passing through it.