Hi!
I would first like to thank you guys for your great support so far!
I finally have got a TBC-1000, ATI 600 USB along with a Philips VR 1000!
I now have the proper equipment to start capturing VHS tapes and digitize them. I would like to first show two pictures about what I used to have and what I use now.
Old setup: VR110, EZCap 116
New: VR1000, TBC-1000, ATI 600 USB
I used the same software for more accurate comparison. ArcSoft ShowBiz that came with the EZCap.
What software should I be using? I tried the DVDW2 but I get an error when I'm about to capture, even in a virtual environment :O
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Also I noticed that VLC's "Bob" deinterlacing is the correct method for my videos apparently, is there some way to insert that directly into the video?
It's not so important, it's just for convenience.
Ulead DVD Workshop 2 (DVDWS2) is just for authoring -- never use it to capture.
It's nice to see someone using the before/after code.
And that is amazing what happens when you use good hardware vs. not-good hardware. How sad that more people do not realize this, and you can see first-hand how badly they are screwing up their videos.
Leave the original video as interlaced. The TV will deinterlace it for viewing, like VLC does on a computer.
The Yadif x2 filter is actually on of the best for VLC these days. Deinterlacers are always improvnig, both hardware and software, which is why you never want to deinterlace the original footage for discs (DVD, Blu-ray). Only when using something like Youtube do you have to deinterlace (streaming for computers, aka progressive displays), but even then just use a copy -- not the original digital video file. Again, leave the masters, and any discs you make, interlaced.
I see, I think I'm going to try virtualdub as it's more customizable than the CMC.
I have heard about using special filters with it, but I have very little knowledge about it, are there any "must have" filters?
Or is there a list I can look at for suggestions?
Before I begin capturing I would like to do it right from the beginning as I have around 100 VHS tapes lying around so it's quite a hassle to go through them multiple times if I do it wrong
Here are 2 more pictures where I had severe "brightness bleeding" with my old setup that it was unbearable. It's still present a little bit with my new equipment but it's about the same amount as if I playback the VHS tape into my Philips 14PV210/01.
Still using ArcSoft ShowBiz as software because that's what I used with EZCap a few years ago so the comparison is accurate. Same recording settings, just different setups.
Edit Uhm, it seems I broke the comparison code or something :/ now my first post doesn't work anymore :O
Ops, I had same IDs ^^
Oh, about ATI 600 USB. I didn't take it into consideration that it apparently was NTSC only? It seems to work with my setup somehow for some reason though. Should mine had become grayscaled if it didn't work?
That's such a stark difference if the luma in those screen caps. Good job on that.
CMC will not do anything PAL at all. If it "works" somehow, know that it's capturing NTSC 29.97fps, not PAL 25fps.
It may not be grayscaled.
Only PAL AVI works on this card.
I did it just this week, as we had several PAL tapes to run, and that system in the ATI 600 USB workflow right now. (It's works great. But we may change it to the Tevion, because that system does not want to work with ATI CMC at all. And we went 15mb/s MPEG-2 for Blu-ray from it when needed.)
Hm, I seem to have a problem to capture interlaced in Virtualdub. It looks fine during capturing in preview mode and preview acceleration to "interlaced - weave, even first". The video becomes smooth but when I playback the recorded video and select for example Yadifx2 deinterlacer in VLC the screen jumps, as if the other field is missing. When I go into codec information the fps is at 25 but on the other older videos I successfully recorded interlaced with like ArcSoft it says 50fps.
The codec I'm using in virtualdub is Huffyuv 2.1.1 with both "predict" set to best, and the other options unchecked.
In custom video format I have YUY2.
Possibly because of VLC assuming BFF for AVI. As a quick test you can open in VirtualDub, add the Deinterlace filter, choose Yadif, and compare Double Frame Rate TFF to BFF.
Is this tape Macrovision protected? The Easycap I bought to try out isn't great but also isn't terrible (video-wise; AV sync is another matter). The contrast blooms like that when it detects Macrovision, which happens with another USB device I have too.
Here is a comparison with an unprotected tape:
You might try lowering the contrast a little in the ATI 600 Proc Amp settings, if you haven't already.
Yes that was it, it worked after using TFF & Yadif with virtualdub.
It's pretty weird, Interlaced, even fields first = BFF right? and odd = TFF.
Preview is correct with even fields, but then when I add deinterlace like you said for TFF it works in VLC :S
I tried all combinations of TFF and Swap fields and vice versa but nothing seems to work :O
I don't know why VLC is deinterlacing it wrong. Maybe I should stick with MPEG2 with CMC / ShowBiz because these for some reason just work.
About the proc amp, where is it exactly? Video->Capture Filter?
I don't know why VLC is deinterlacing it wrong. Maybe I should stick with MPEG2
We discussed it a little in another thread. Everything I've ever read indicates that AVI doesn't have any metadata in which to store the field order. Programs just assume that every AVI is BFF, presumably because DV-AVI is. Whereas MPEG-2 field order information is written into the video stream and read back.
You can still capture to AVI and then encode an MPEG-2 file as your end result with no problems.
Quote:
About the proc amp, where is it exactly? Video->Capture Filter?
Yup. Note that for some reason, the ATI 600 USB's Contrast and Saturation controls only function in steps of 2, i.e. contrast 30 and 31 produce the exact same output. It's a shame, because those are wide changes. The whole scale ends up being only 32 steps from 0 to 63.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lordsmurf
That exact error is almost never Macrovision. It's the tape itself.
These devices do react to Macrovision by a constant bloom, though. It isn't the changing bright-dark-bright-dark cycle like you expect to see from a VCR, but rather some sort of calculated response.
I've made a video with a DVD source to show the effect. When I hit play, there are some frames of black and then once the Macrovision signal starts the black level shoots up, along with the contrast and saturation. If you watch the histograms closely you can see how the DVD player's overlay goes from grey to out-of-range white.
Quote:
You can see quite easily how the Easycap has a smeery capture vs the ATI. It also has lousy chroma blooms.
In his images I do, but do you see that in my comparison as well?
Oh I see, then my tinkering with trying to get my AVI working properly in VLC was just a waste of time then! grrr
What kind of software is that msgohan? I think I might need to calibrate my proc amp a bit.
I will make another comparison with EZcap and ATI 600 but this time the EZcap will use my TBC-1000 and VR 1000 since I want to only see the change in the capture devices. The ones I showed before were with my old setup before I got a new VCR and an external TBC.
If you mean the displays in the video, they're just a bunch of Avisynth scopes combined together with some overly complex scripting.
If you have Avisynth installed and do some research on the basics of how to use GraphEdit I can tell you how to play with the Proc Amp settings while the live scopes display.
I will look into avisynth later this weekend. Right now I have to focus on my discrete mathematics as I'm a bit behind right now
Hm, I don't fully understand how avisynth works. Do you write commands row after row about what it should do and then open that file in virtualdub? When does avisynth run? When you export to AVI or?
I have a quick question regarding the TBC. Should I turn off the VCR's TBC and just let TBC-1000 do all the work? I have it on now, and I wonder if it's interfering with the TBC-1000 in some way? Or should I leave it as it is?
Ok, at the moment I can't notice a difference when I turn on/off the VCR's TBC so I guess I can just leave it on. Maybe it does something but I can't just see it haha.
edit-
Hm, I have a weird problem with my TV. It's a LG 42LV355N-ZB and when I play an interlaced .mp4 video it speeds up instead :/
The video plays normally on the computer. I'm playing the video from an external HDD.
I also have to find out the size/time limit on the files because currently 3h long video with 6000kbps is too much, the TV says the video is invalid when I try to play it.
Quote:
Format : MPEG-4
Format profile : Base Media / Version 2
Codec ID : mp42
File size : 40.4 MiB
Duration : 54s 400ms
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 6 230 Kbps
Encoded date : UTC 2013-11-23 11:32:56
Tagged date : UTC 2013-11-23 11:32:56
Video
ID : 2
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4.0
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 2 frames
Format settings, GOP : M=2, N=13
Codec ID : avc1
Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding
Duration : 54s 400ms
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 5 843 Kbps
Maximum bit rate : 6 000 Kbps
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 576 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 4:3
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 50.000 fps
Original frame rate : 25.000 fps
Standard : PAL
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Interlaced
Scan order : Top Field First
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.282
Stream size : 37.9 MiB (94%)
Language : English
Encoded date : UTC 2013-11-23 11:32:56
Tagged date : UTC 2013-11-23 11:32:56
Audio
ID : 1
Format : AAC
Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec
Format profile : LC
Codec ID : 40
Duration : 54s 379ms
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 384 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 2.49 MiB (6%)
Language : English
Encoded date : UTC 2013-11-23 11:32:56
Tagged date : UTC 2013-11-23 11:32:56
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