Workflow to save time, better quality + ghosting in video?
 

I own honestech VHStoDVD 4 Deluxe. I tried this plug and play capture but it didn't go very well. Laggy video and video output quality could be better (despite the highest setting set). I have a 8mm camcorder directly plugged into the device. It has one video out (yellow) and one channel audio out (white). The Honestech device is this http://www.honestech.com/main/vhs-to...deluxe-old.asp

So I searched the internet, and found out I could use this hardware combined to VirtualDub to capture video.

After having a look at the captured video, I wondered what was those horizontal lines, and discovered this was interlacing.... And so on for many other things observed.

I had questions/encountered issues, so googled a lot, hence learned a lot on the subject. So what was first intended to be plug and play work, is now consuming me a lot of time (which is ok for me since I like learning everyday). Still I consider myself a noob because I'm never 100% sure of what I'm doing.

First of all, I have a workflow question and was wondering if I'm proceeding ok:

1 Capture
Honestech Hardware
RCA cable
USB 2.0

Virtual Dub Software
Video (Lagarith)
Audio Uncompressed (Direct Stream)

I get audio sync issue, but it is fixed value so....

2 Edit (for audio)
Virtual Dub Software
Video (Direct Stream)
Audio Uncompressed (Direct Stream) + Interleaving (value for Skew)

3 Deinterlacing
From web search, found Avisynth and QTGMC
VirtualDub
Avisynth script loaded

Here is the script
AVISource("filename_with_audio_corrected.avi")
AssumeTFF()
QTGMC( Preset="Slow" )

Video (Fast Recompress)
Audio Uncompressed (Direct Stream)

4 Encoding
I wish to use x264 encoding, and mp3.
Already did once, worked, but have ghosting (I think)...


So my first question would be:

Am I proceeding ok? Is there a step I could avoid to save some time or to have better quality?

My second question is about this (see images below). I thought this was chroma shift but after noticing it on many capture, I guess this is ghosting. I would like to confirm with you what is this phenomena.

This is an example of raw capture (interlaced)

http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...ve-time-a_2jpg

These are examples of deinterlaced video with qtgmc in virtualdub
Notice the halo (ghosting?) aside the man's shirt...

http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...-b_capture2jpg

Notice the strange effect on the car's rear light (chroma shift or bleeding? Noise? Ghosting? I couldn't point out from web search...)

http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...c_capture01jpg

Notice the Referee (edge of his pants showing on the boards, and white of the boards showing on his pants)

http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...-d_ghostingjpg

All this being said, any help would be appreciated.

Thanks (a lot) in advance!

PS: I have posted on Doom9 forum, but have no answers yet (after many views). I'm thinking maybe someone could help here :) Hope it does not offend anyone because of the duplicate

Welcome.
It looks as if you've done research and accomplished much on your own. Good work.
A few points....

Many members here are familiar with Honestech. The consensus is that Honestech should be avoided if quality is a concern. Many complaints about dropped frames, bad audio sync, poor quality -- but I guess you know about some of that by now.

Not unusual. Analog tape is interlaced. So is DVD. So is standard definition BluRay. So is 1920x1080 25/29.97 fps BluRay and most TV broadcasts. If they're not interlaced they're telecined. PC media players, set top players, external media players, and TV's are designed to deinterlace or inverse telecine automatically, depending on the source. Most computer video editors don't. Other than more or less quality loss depending on several factors, deinterlacing has two main effects: it doubles the frame rate (invalid for many video formats) and degrades smooth motion. If the video source is telecined (movie-based), it can't be deinterlaced.

Why are you deinterlacing? (If you want web streaming, that's different).

Welcome to the club, LOL! There are plenty of people who take the easy, cheap, quick way out. Their work is easy to spot. Better results take longer.

(a) Honestech results are difficult to work with even for people who know what they're doing. It's not recommeneded. (b) RCA composite makes it worse and results in artifacts that are near-impossible to fix, if at all. S-video for analog capture from tape players/cameras is the prevailing standard. Of course, if your player's s-video circuitry is crumby, it won't matter.

Not sure what you mean by "fixed value". It's a fixed audio sampling rate and other specs, but that doesn't mean it's in sync with your video. I see you're capturing to uncompressed PCM, so you're starting correctly at least. But you should not have to make sync corrections later unless something's amiss during capture. A frequent problem with low-tier capture devices.

Why? Is your intended output for the internet or PC only?

It works, but did you choose that particular setting for a particular reason? QTGMC has many uses and many filter settings. The one you're using might be the best choice for some videos, but it could also be among the worst for some other videos.

BTW, QTGMC's default is "Slow" and doesn't have to be specified. You could use this simplified statement and get the same results:Are you capturing to YV12? You shouldn't be. QTGMC works only in YV12 by default, but I don't see where your script converts to that colorspace unless YV12 is the way you're capturing.

"x264" isn't a codec. It's an encoding engine. The codec's proper name is "H264". Some encoding apps use the x264 encoder, others use something else.

I'm getting the idea that you're preparing these videos for web display -- especially since mp3 won't work with standard video formats like DVD or BluRay. It's lower-quality audio compression, but it's usually favored for web streaming.

OK in many respects. See my feedback above. Couple of things you need to work on, though: surely you can get better than Honestech, and don't use composite if you can possibly use anything else (and that's not just for y/c filtering considerations).

If objects or the camera were moving during exposure, that's what an interlaced frame looks like.

It's not really 'raw", which happens to be the name of a specific graphics/video format. Maybe avoid confusion and say it's "an unaltered image" or some such nonsense. But we know what you mean.

That's a mix of many things, but mainly it's ghosting and halo. The left-side dark ghost has a bright edge halo. There's also a dark halo on the right side. Some of that might be caused by strong temporal filtering or several other things, and it's a cinch the bright color is over-modulated (too bright), which causes bleeding or "blooming".

We all hope that you aren't upscaling your SD image to HD frames. It never works. In this case, the cropping and resizing have an invalid height (all dimensions of encoded video should be mod-8, or evenly divisible by 8). The height of the image isn't mod-8. It isn't mod-4, either. When you crop, take that into account when laying out your final image.

Also note that the bright luma and bright chroma are visibly clipped. They exceed the RGB 235 upper limit for TV, and even exceed the RGB 255 limit for PC display. The histogram below tells the story. Everything that's climbing up the right-hand wall of the histogram indicates clipped detail -- another word for "destroyed". Clipped detail can't be retrieved.

Overall, image gamma is too high and looks washed out. Aside from other problems, it looks over-filtered.

Chroma upsampling error (cue), also considered a form of dot crawl. Common with cheap capture cards and worsened by using composite input. And it's bleeding, too. Usually affects low-frequency colors (such as red) and oversaturated ones. The image also has high gamma and clipped brights.

Well...I think it's a different problem The man's pants have a gray stripe. So do all the pants on all the other guys. It's a poor, low-detail image with strong over-sharpening halos and edge ringing -- bright ones in some cases, dark ones in others (look at the white posts), some bleeding. Note some "notches" or small wiggles in the posts and along the side borders (those are line sync errors during playback). Sharpening didn't help this image at all, and the muted colors and other problems make this look like a multi-gen dub from tape -- either that, or it has been seriously over-filtered and then all too seriously over-sharpened.

No exclusive policy here on questions. Or answers. Some members belong to several other forums.

Anyway, you're off to a start. You'd be surprised how many newcomers don't get as far as you have.
:wink2:

Excuse the many typos you might (will) find in this reply. It's getting late here.

(EDIT: My post was composed at the same time as Sanlyn's.)

Yeah those are some huge halos. "Ghosting" is used to refer to many different things, so "halos" is more clear. The effect is typically caused by artificial sharpening. If you have Proc Amp adjustments available in VirtualDub (Video -> Levels ideally; if not Video -> Capture Filter -> Video Proc Amp tab), turn Sharpness all the way down on the capture device. If the halos remain, the problem is with the playback machine or the recordings themselves.

The chroma issue on the car lights may be dot crawl, though it looks unusually diagonal in your case. The best way to minimize dot crawl would be to use a playback machine with S-Video output, but that means investing in a Hi8 or Digital8 device.

Regarding your workflow, well the audio sync thing is unfortunate. I don't know what to suggest there. (Oh wait, altering the Capture -> Timing settings may help. But different devices seem to need different settings.)

For the deinterlacing, it seems like you're saying you put the script into VirtualDub and created an AVI output using Fast Recompress, then encoded that using x264. You don't need to do that; you can feed the Avisynth script straight into x264.

x264 + MP3 is a weird combination. x264 + AAC would be the typical configuration, and AAC is a more efficient audio compressor.

(EDIT2: Just replies to above post.)

It take it he means it's delayed by a certain amount that can be fixed by a simple shift, as opposed to drifting sync.

Nah, it supports YUY2 natively these days (phew!). I'm not sure when that was added, but the oldest version of the Wiki page is from 2013, and it says it worked then.

Thanks for the additions, msgohan. I mentioned AAC but somehow half a paragraph got deleted. It was getting to be too long anyway.

To get more specific about the ghost/halo problem, we'd have to see a few seconds of original unprocessed AVI capture.

Looks like there's some y/c comb filtering somewhere along the capture line, as I don't see much generic dot crawl in those images. That cross-hatch -- or whatever it's called -- appeared in several examples of CUE (chroma upsampling error) I saw in years passed. Some of the cheap EZCap spinoffs often showed it, too, and so do some older DVD-player decoders.

All the images seem to be broken now, so I cannot help here. :(

Could be the capture card has different latency in the audio and video signal path, or it could be a playback issue with different signal latencies in the viewing system (the more likely condition). For example, audio may make it out of a PC's audio card faster than video makes it out of the video display. This is especially common if a PC is configured to use different audio and video output devices; e.g., the PC's sound card for audio and a separate video output device to drive a TV set.

Leading audio is an unnatural state and more noticeable than lagging audio.

I took the liberty of attaching the 4 images here, in the same A,B,C,D order as in the discussion earlier. If you or the O.P. don't want them here, I won't complain if they're removed.

That "D" ghost picture is in such bad shape, it's difficult to tell a uniform stripe from a ghost or halo. Dark details are seriously murky and crushed somewhere along the line, so recognizing an artifact from something else in nearly impossible. Tape-to-tape dupes usually look like that. All the images look like tape dupes to me, but I could be wrong (won't be the first time).

Can't give much more advice without a sample of an original, unprocessed capture. That might give some clue about the sync problem as well. The capture device is known to bring sync problems with it.

Hi! Lots of reading here! This is AWESOME. Thanks for your support first of all.

I will separate my answer by section because quoting everyone would be too long. Btw, I speak French, so sorry for using words that might not be suitable to describe what I want to describe hehe

For the capture device and/or method
I own honestech as you know. So this could be part of the culprit. I would like better quality indeed.

Friend of mine lent me the EasyCap device. Could it be better? I will try tonight anyways

I also have access to a Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1250. It is on my HTPC (constantly in use so I was looking for something else to capture since I don't want my girlfriend to yell at me because I'm using the TV... ok I'm just kidding here about the g/f but I can capture during the night even if it is on my HTPC.)

Should I buy a S-Video to rca adapter? The output from the camcorder is RCA (only white and yellow). Would it help. My guess is no since the cam has no S-Video out.

Capture settings
I must confess that (without knowing what I was really doing) I pumped up contrast a bit from 3 to 5 in the virtualdub settings (device settings). I guess it did not help at all

Deinterlacing
The goal of deinterlacing is for PC watching. I want to archive those videos in digital format.


QTGMC use
I use this script because it seems to be the best for the task. Well I think so, from web search (unless you say else than this)

The output file is YUY2, not YV12

Audio Sync issue
What I meant by "fixed value" is that it is out of sync from the same value all the way through the video. So quite an easy fix. Audio is lagging (roughly by 500ms) btw, not leading.

Other points
Sorry, I used "raw" because I'm used to this term in photography editing (Canon CR2, etc...)

I'm not upscaling my SD image to HD frames

Thanks for the QTMGC simplified script

Thanks for the encoding clarifications and suggestions

I don't mind you reposted the pictures. In fact, thank you! But the links are still up on my side.

How is it possible for me to upload some unprocessed captured footage?
(Nevermind, just saw the "How to Upload/View/Download Images & Attachments" thread)

Summary
Gamma is too high and looks washed out
Over-sharpening halos and edge ringing
Have Chroma upsampling error CUE / dot crawl
Bright luma and bright chroma are clipped


Thanks in advance!

Would only help if the composite-to-s-video adapter you buy is better than that in your capture device, and the cheap adapters are most likely not better. It is better to have a player that provides native s-video output; that typically means a Hi8 or Digital8 camcorder or VCR for 8mm video tapes.

The underlying issue is that there are three dimensions to the problem; i.e., cost, speed, and quality - called good, fast, cheap. And you cannot have all three at the same time.

Had a look at S-video 8mm player. Kind of expensive, which is in one of your dimension ;)

Will try to find someone in my family that have this hehe Who knows

Most EasyCaps in use around the globe are cheap fakes of a product that's already cheap to begin with. The "real" product is, well, "decent" compared to most cheapies but a long way from the quality you say you're after. The fakes were so prevalent and so cheap ($10 ????, What do you expect from that?) and so widespread that EasyCap changed its name to EZCap. And there are fakes of that one, too. The only real version made and sold today is from http://www.ezcap.tv.

There several giveaways for older models of the EasyCap. For older "EasyCaps":
The fakes have very thin or overly thick fonts in the product name on the barrell.
fake has SMI Grabber or EZ Grabber on cyclinder or in software CD. Real has "USB2.0 ATV" or "USB 2.0 Grabber".
Fake has 64-bit software on CD, real has 32 + 64-bit.
Fake has black inside the USB plug, real has white.
Fake has no s-video jack, real has s-video + composite.

Old and new fakes have similar differences. All of that notwithstanding, your research should have sooner or later led you to the frequently quoted, world-wide nickname for anything that has EasyCap/EZCap on the label -- "EasyCrap". That should tell you something.

A decent product for what it does. I use a Hauppage HD-PVR myself, for HDTV capture. There is no lossless capture. It caps h264 whether SD or HD, which is not designed as an editing or restoration format. To avoid lawsuits and stop-orders from your free-enterprise friends at the cable outfits and Hollywood, Hauppauge makes those captures of copy-protected material just different enough that you can't go directly from capture to smart-rendering to authored disc. The caps might look like regulation HD to you, but they're really not. If you're skilled in decoding, restoration, and re-encoding (which entails much more than VirtualDub, which you'll need anyway), you can rework the caps into the real thing. This takes a lot longer than a few free weekends. Other disadvantages: you can't use VirtualDub or get lossless capture with the Hauppauge, nor can you massage the input signal.

I think you mean a composite to s-video adapter? Either way, no. After that signal leaves your VCR as composite, the best you can hope for is a pass-thru device with a good y/c comb filter and decent s-video output. That is, you can clean up that signal somewhat but you can't replace what gets lost using composite output from a VCR or camera. And as it is, the handful of pre-2005 legacy DVD recorders that people often use for line-tbc pass-thru (which is something else you need but don't have) into a good capture card are getting tough to find, and they cost more than even a genuine EZCap.

95% of the time you'd want to tame contrast during capture, not pump it. Don't try eyeballing it for accuracy, it seldom works. VirtualDub capture has a histogram for that. That's a YUV luma histogram. It doesn't tell you that much about oversaturated chroma that gets clipped. You'll need eyes for that. Fairly easy to spot: Oversaturated colors bleed and "bloom" and lose detail at the bright end. If a color looks unnaturally "hot" or has hotspots or shimmer, you're in trouble. Sometimes it's poorly recorded source, in which case you'll have to do the best you can during capture and fix it later.

What's fixed is the audio bitrate. Again, it doesn't necessarily mean in-sync. You should not have audio sync problems with VirtualDub capture. Try using F6 to start the capture, not F5 or the mouse. Someone once told me it didn't make any difference how you start. I followed their advice and didn't use F6. Sync ws so bad I had to make that capture all over again. Maybe it was just me, but after ignoring that advice I've never had audio problems for 13 years from my ATI cards.

An Interlaced digital archive is just as digital as a progressive digital archive. PC media players can and do deinterlace. Another consideration: movies don't play the same way on a PC monitor and a TV. The two displays use different color systems and different gamma response curves.

msgohan mentioned earlier the conflict with speed, cost, and quality. You can't have everything, even if BestBuy and the rest of the world are based on instant gratification without effort. Analog capture is a real pisser. You're dealing with two different worlds, neither of which are on speaking terms with the other. Digital translators and encoders don't see analog tape the way your TV does; that's not the way digital encoders were designed. There are capture devices out there that are aware of those two different lingos and have some adjustments to help make the outcome livable. An inappropriate player, no line sync or frame sync corrections, inappropriate or poorly designed capture devices -- ill considered compromise at any point in the signal path degrades the entire process. There are $1000-plus capture cards out there, but they can't improve a bad signal from a sub-par tape player.

The nearest thing to the legacy AGP AIW devices are somewhat newer model 600 and 650 USB devices from AMD/ATI and Diamond Multimedia. No, no longer sold at Walmart. Now and then you find an AIW AGP 7500 or 9000 pro at auction for what you think is a ripoff at $100 (they cost a lot more than that when they were new 10 or 15 years ago). There are newer post-650 models of the USB gear, apparently designed by people who don't know decent video from bad but who do know that hype brings money. There really are reasons why forums like this recommend certain devices over others. No one here has any income to gain by doing so. They're recommended because they're tried, proven, and work as intended.

http://www.digitalfaq.com/guides/video.htm

Hi!

I think I have a real one, but not 100% sure. Made some research over the net.

Not sure to understand everything. This means that I could not simply use this card to capture my 8mm tape and edit it after. (since it is made for tv content which is under copyright)?

Yes this is what I meant. And this is what I thought.
I found a cheapo S-video and composite adapter (similar to this http://pisces.bbystatic.com/image2/B...anvasWidth=500) but it is giving me B&W image and some diagonals/diamond pattern visible on the screen (instead of interlaced footage with hor. lines). Tried NTSC_433, didn't change anything, so I kind of gave up with this adapter.

Next time, I will lower it to 0. It is at 3 by default.

Will try the F6 trick. Couldn't think it would potentially help.
Sorry for the terms used, again, I'm a novice :)

Ok. Well, I noticed VLC was able to deinterlace, but the result is....let's say, ok but not the best.
I didn't think it was possible to compress interlaced footage. I thought I had to deinterlace before compressing/encoding.

If you tell me that it is possible to lower the filesize by a good amout (It creates 50GB files for less than 2 hours which is too big for my archiving capacity), then I'm in.

May you recommend a good software that can deinterlace on the go, despite I know it will not be as nice as on TV display!

This is just, ehhh, kind of embarrassing. I realized that I'm doing many novice mistake and have some beginner misconceptions. I'm sorry maybe I have not read enough before posting! :smack::unsure:

Quote:

Common questions and misconceptions: Q1: I should de-interlace because I want to watch it on my computer too? A1: No. This is not true. All software DVD players come equipped with “bob” or “adaptive” de-interlace filters. You’re better off with playback software that uses these instead of using one of the odd/even or blend/merge/double filters.

Quote:

Finally, go to Capture, and Capture Video. F6 on the keyboard is a shortcut for this command. Press Capture again (or F6 again) to stop the capturing.

I have not started any other captures yet, but I will do some tests later (if it'S not getting too late!)

Thanks again for your time

You can use that card to capture standard def video from tapes. You can't use Hauppauge with VirtualDub capture. You have to use the card's recording software. The card does not record lossless video. It records h264 lossy compression. Lossy compressed/encoded video is not designed for editing. h264, MPEG, DivX, mp4, etc., are final delivery formats -- that is, they are a last-step compression/encoding process not designed for edits or restoration.
http://telestreamblog.telestream.net...hen-editing-2/

I tried some of those s-vid adapters some years back. We both found out the hard way: they don't work.

VLC is generally OK for mainstream video like DVD. Lossless video has much more data, meaning more work for players. Not so hot for HD. Go to its internal "Options" menu to set up deinterlace. In the Video category are several choices. The best are "Linear", "bob", and "yadif". It seems "Bob" is fastest. Yadif is supposed to be sharper (doesn't look that way to me!). "yadif 2x" is yadif but double the frame count. Yadif is one of several Avisynth deinterlacers. VirtualDub has a yadif version built-in, and QTGMC has a super-fast yadif repair mode. Maybe I'm just contrary, but I think VLC's "bob" looks smoother.

By the way, "yadif" gets its name from "Yet Another DeInterlace Filter". QTGMC is still king of the hill, so far.

Better players are MPC-BE and MPC-HC. They deinterlace well but tend to overshapen a bit. They need more CPU time and graphics power than VLC or Windows Media Player. Then again, if you're not using a calibrated monitor it's pretty much a waste of these players. MPC-BE and MPC-HC have image adjustments that get you closer to sane rendering. VLC's color adjustment is useless. Windows Media Player's image controls were disabled with version 9. Best way to get better rendering without calibration gear is to get a b&w movie and adjust tint/colors in MPC-BE or -HC until the grays are really gray and don't look tinted. You won't get it perfect because the image controls and the monitor's uncalibrated response aren't linear from black to bright -- but middle, neutral grays should be more workable.

The only way to really calibrate a monitor or TV is with a colorimeter. I'm assuming you won't go that far, but for your information this is the way a PC monitor is supposed to be calibrated: http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/...e_display2.htm. Lacking that, there's always the fun manual test charts at http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/, which are free.

Compressors and encoders don't interlace or deinterlace. They just compress or encode. Your Hauppauge card compresses/encodes interlaced broadcast signals, doesn't it? One thing you never do with interlaced/telecined video is resize it. Also, if you're deinterlacing from sources that are movie-based, it's likely telecined. You can't deinterlace telecined video or you'll get really goofy playback.

50GB is about right for most fast lossless compressors with 2 hours of SD video and YUY2. But deintelacing expands each deinterlaced field to full frames and doubles the frame count, which makes the file bigger and doubles the frame rate. UT Lossles codec is popular and makes slightly smaller files. The main reason for lossless is the ability to go from there to post-processing, cleanup and repair, all kinds of fancy visual/audio mods and your choice of many lossy encoded formats for disc, hard drives, or the web -- all without data loss in the work files.

Once you finish your edit or restoration, yeah, you need archive space. Best bet for a cleaner but smaller archive is encoding to very high bitrate MPEG or h264. MPEG handles interlace and telecine better than h264 and the BluRay version of MPEG offers very high bitrates for standard def BluRay or AVCHD. That would get 50GB down to 6 or 7 GB for 2 hours. Such a video would burn to DualLayer DVD. Or fit more than one movie on BluRay disc. You could get even smaller with lower bitrates, but the hard, cruel truth about bitrates is: lower bitrate = lower quality = more garbage. A popular and decent encoder offering several final delivery formats is TMPGenc Video Mastering Works, nicknamed TVMW. You'll always get better encodes with dedicated encoding apps than with all-in-one NLE's, many of which have trimmed-down or just plain bad encoders.

See notes about MPC-BE and MPC-HC, above. Both are very similar. Many just stick with good ol' Media Player Classic (MPC).

Well, like I said: count yourself a member of the club! :salute:

Hi again,

So it would give me a compressed file, but still interlaced. If I want to use suggested software to deinterlace "on the fly" while watching, this might be worth giving a try no? (let's say if I consider no editing at all)

I will give a try at those 2.

As a photography enthusiast, I'm aware of this, but haven't calibrated any monitors nor tv at home. Kind of expensive for something that I don't really mind (well, I mind but I mean I think my stuff look ok from my "far from pro" eye, so...) :wink2:

I noticed that! (when my drive was almost full!!)

That is great, but is it possible to edit interlaced footage? I mean, the image is far from smooth with those lines, so what can you do? Correct colors, brightness and stuff like this?

Sounds good to me :)


So to sum up:

I could capture (with a better device), and still use Lagarith lossless compressor in YUY2 (file A)
Edit this file in virtualdub for what I want to, and then use fast recompress option before saving (file A)
Still in virtualdub, encode with Mpeg or H264 (with AAC audio) to compress interlaced footage to get a new file (so File A gives file B, which is smaller)
Then watch file B with proposed software using software deinterlacing

I'm still not sure to completely understand how virtualdub manage video before saving as avi (directstream, fast recompress, slow recompress, full processing) despite some research on the web.

Thanks in advance!

I'm wondering why you see the interlace or telecine effect when you play movies in a media player that deinterlaces properly. You watch your Hauppauge movies on TV and interlaced broadcasts over HDTV. Do you see interlace or telecine effects on TV broadcasts? You shouldn't. Of course you see them in an editor on a PC -- on it's own, a computer display or editor doesn't deinterlace. It's the player or TV that does it. Editors aren't players; they're designed to let you see a video's properties so you'll know what you're doing.

There's always badly made tape with all kinds of noise and defects, among them bad interlacing. You can also blame inferior capture cards for that when they create captured images. And don't forget, you need a VCR with good tracking and time a time base corrector to reduce a lot of those problems.

"Full processing mode" converts the input to RGB and allows applying VirtualDub filters. Even if you use no VirtualDub filters, full processing mode converts to RGB anyway and saves to uncompressed RGB by default unless you specify another output. "Direct stream copy" just copies the input and outputs a copy as-is. Nothing changes, no conversions. "Fast recompress" is used if you want a new copy of the input using a different (or even the same) colorspace and compression, or to save Avisynth input without ruinning VirtualDub filters on it. VirtualDub filters won't be applied. "Slow compress" is almost redundant, just use "fast recompress", it's virtually the same thing.

Depends on what you're doing. Some noise problems require non-interlaced or non-telecined footage. When you load some VirtualDub filters, you might see an "interlaced" check box in the dialog settings, indicating that the filter treats interlaced and non-interlaced video differently (but outputs interlaced if the input was interlaced). Most of VDub's filters don't care. If you mean encoded video (MPEG, h264, Xvid, etc.), applying VDub filters requires complete decoding, conversion to RGB, reconversion to the original colorspace (usually YV12), and lossy re-encoding in its entirety. If cut and join is all you want, VirtualDub does not smart-render encoded video. You need a frame-specific smart-rendering editor for that. And as I said, most editors don't deinterlace the display.

For reasons explained above, I'm afraid not. This would be an entire lesson in decoding. edits, and re-encoding using various software. Submit a short sample of an unprocessed AVI capture. You can cut a few seconds of AVI in VirtualDub and use Direct stream copy to save the edit. Then we can get into more detail. From some of your comments, it sounds as if you have line sync problems and excessive combing.

Of course. But, brother, I wish analog video was that easy!

I guess it's time for a few old samples of problems and possibilities, and why you need to do things a certain way. All of these samples are posted elsewhere in the forum.

The first 2 small samples are a piece of MTV video captured from MTV as interlaced. It has bad vertical and horizontal jitter, and some frames are reversed as well as in the wrong sequence. It also has typical VHS chroma noise, bad color, and looks generally awful. Likely the frame sequence problem occurred by previously deinterlacing a telecined video, which is a big no-no.

First two samples are a piece of MTV video captured as interlaced. It has bad vertical and horizontal jitter, and some frames are reversed as well as in the wrong sequence. It also has typical VHS chroma noise, bad color, and looks generally awful.

This is the original m2v posted in the forum (m2v = mpeg without audio): jitter_2.m2v

jitter2.mpg is the repaired version with frames in proper sequence, frame hopping smoothed, head switching noise and bad borders fixed in a manner that didn't change the original image aspect ratio. Done in Avisynth. Color tweaked in VirtualDub: jitter2.mpg

Below, "A" and "B" are examples of trying to clean up bad chroma flicker. The "A" version is the original telecined YUY2 AVI capture, encoded for posting directly to MPEG with no added processing. This retail tape is one of the world's worst film-to-VHS transfers. It's noisy, has all kinds of defects (spots, noisy edges, bad color, excessive grain). The tape is beat up and played to death. The chroma flicker can be seen in bright areas, which alternately turn reddish, bluish, then greenish. Although a tbc cleared Macrovision for capture, Macrovision typically can have many residual side effects (such as the flicker shown here). On the original tape, the flicker gradually dissipates about 30 minutes into the tape. "A" is the original, "B" is the clean-up.

Original: A_flicker_samples_original.mpg
cleanup: B_flicker_samples_after.mpg

"C" and "D" are examples of other damage control from the same tape. There are 4 short scenes. Besides horrible color differences from scene to scene, there are spots, huge color blotch "explosions", projector punch holes, chroma bleed, dark halos, white stringy stuff and whitish flareups, the usual tape noise, etc. Avisynth and TIVTC was used for starters, then VirtualDub for more cleanup and color. "C" is the original. "D" is the clean-up.

C_defect_samples_original.mpg
D_defect_samples_after.mpg

All samples were MPEG encoded separately from other processing. Not all of the "repaired" samples are fully finished as posted. An AVi sample that you might post would likely use a workflow similar to the above, but we have no sample yet to get into detail.

No, everything is fine. The media center software is Mediaportal. I don't know what is the software for playback behind Mediaportal, but the image quality is perfect.

I was talking about virtualdub on my pc. I know that editors are meant for editing and not playback, but I just don't see how I can decide to correct this and that on a video when during editing, I see it as interlace (i.e. image not that smooth)

Thanks for the explanations the way virtualdub process the files.

Ooook, I will need some google search to translate all this in something I understand. No I'm kidding, but I'll go deeper into the subject to well understand this paragraph. :unsure:

Good examples you gave for processed videos.

As you request, I'll cut a short clip of unprocessed captures and upload it here. I think I will go with 2 samples. The hockey game and the Jeep trail (as in my initial screeshots)

Please allow me sometime to do so, I'll try to do as fast as possible.

Thanks for your incredible support, really appreciated!

Btw, should I submit lagarith capture or totally uncompressed video and audio as the option in virtualdub?

Thanks in advance!

Never attach uncompressed files.
In many cases, even lossless AVI is unnecessary, and a high bitrate MPEG can just as easily show problems.

Alright, will work on this!

High bitrate is 3000kbps and above? Remember seeing 8000 max for h264 (I think, not sure)

Thanks!

Reading this over now...

@sanlyn: I don't trust Avisynth devs to not change things, and without telling users. While the default for QTGMC may be "slow", I'd like to ensure this fact. (This also hopes that they don't monkey around with what "slow" means.) I've run into far too many issues over the years where something has been changed.

@mo414: Interlace can hide issues, when viewed progressive. When you deinterlace it, those issues can become obvious. It's one more reason that interlaced video should be left alone, if TV viewing is the target.

@sanyln: I often say "raw". I think the .raw format needs to find another name. :)

@mo414: QTGMC can cause halos, but not ghosting. The default setting sharpens, thus adding the ringing/halos. This can be turned off or reduced with advanced uses of the script.

From what I see, you're getting good advice from others. Nothing else for me to really add.

Doom9 is fine, I'm a member there too. But it's mostly for the filter developers or film restorers. You get better usage advice elsewhere. As sanlyn suggests, non-shooting video is a fairly small community, and members tend to be on several sites. However, many sites also have specialties. And since you need help with tape-sourced video, so digitalFAQ.com is the right place.

@mo414: High bitrate MPEG-2 starts at 15mbps. Be aware that H.264 is always filtered, and can hide issues. It's the main reason that "Youtube samples" are 100% useless.

I shall try new capture and processing with less or no sharpening at all, before uploading samples. This might help in issue resolving

Thanks for your advice, I'll keep you posted asap :)

Capture samples for analysis are almost always requested as unprocessed. If you captured to YUY2 AVI using Lagarith lossless compression, then losslesss Lagarith YUY2 AVI is what you want for a sample. You can open the original AVI capture file in VirtualDub, make the cut you want, then save it using "Direct Stream copy". 10 seconds of 720x480 Lagarith AVI shouldn't be more than 30-40MB or so (depends on how much action/detail/etc). Include a scene with motion, not necessarily camera motion but something moving, walking, or whatever, so that interlace patterns or problems can be watched. Don't filter, deinterlace, fix color, or anything else.

Usually the discussion centers on anything that might be amiss or easier to configure in the capture setup, or any fix-up processing. Some people do a quickie cleanup on VHS, others get into more detail -- it depends on the source and what you want to do with it. But you'll likely get plenty of detail and procedure to work with.

Thanks for your patience.

Hi! Here are 2 unprocessed samples, not even audio synced

Thanks in advance!

The frame rate is wrong (should be 30000/1001 = 29.9700299700... repeating not 1000/33 = 30.30...). Lines are wiggling (line TBC is needed). Something is very wrong with the chroma, part of which does look like CUE but that's not the only thing. A sort of grid covers the luma (leakage/crosstalk from chroma?).

On the plus side, you can definitely do better. But I think you may want to avoid this capture device.

I saw that there's an option in virtualdub that round to nearest millisecond in capture/settings/frame rate. I remember I clicked on this. It went from 29 something to 30 something. That's the culprit.

Line Time Base Correction. Another thing I need to learn hehe (no worry, I will do my research)

I guess I will need to find a new capturing device as you suggest... But I don't want to spend too much on this, so I guess my budget will not allow me to do way better :depressed:

Thanks for the samples. :salute: And to msgohan for input.

You don't have to zip compressed video. in fact, you saved less than 200 bytes of space on both samples. No big deal, though. Well....what's first?

If your video is supposed to be 29.97 fps, that's the value to have in VirtualDub capture.

Video8 and other NTSC analog tape sources usually originate and play as Top Field First (TFF). First thing I notice is that the captures should play as TFF, but they're Bottom Field First(BFF). Usually, the only common format that uses BFF is DV. At some point field structure and phase were altered. This causes problems including interlace glitches. If at any time these videos went through DV or DV playback, they should be transferred to a PC via Firewire, not recorded as analog.

Most consumer analog audio usually has a sampling rate of 44Kh for DV and (I think) 48KHz on VHS, correct me if I'm wrong. Usually analog tape is capped to 48KHz audio (44KHz for DV), since DVD and BluRay use it that way. The sample rate for Sample_01 is 22.05 KHz, for Sample_02 it's 44.1 Khz. The audio bitrate for uncompressed PCM is usually 1536 kbps Constant. For both samples it's half that (705.6 kbps, which I didn't even think was done in VirtualDub). The first thing I did with both these videos was open them in Avisynth, re-set the audio sampling rate to 48KHz, and save audio-only as new .WAV (PCM) files. Then I remuxed video+audio in the Avisynth script.

Next thing I did was run an Avisynth script that cropped off the black borders so I could get a YUV histogram. Both histograms in the images below show bright-end clipping and elevated black levels around RGB 30. This isn't too bad in the hockey clip, but it makes the Jeep clip look a bit washed out and really upsets trying to correct gamma and some other things.

What you say you see as "interlace" lines is aliasing and broken angular lines on motion. When played, the aliasing and broken lines will "Twitter". That's why it's called "line twitter". Twitter on angular lines is a common problem with consumer cameras, but field order problems can make it look worse.

Below, Sample_01, frame 82 (interlaced), black borders removed, and a YUV histogram:

http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...1&d=1432504167

Look at the stripes and edges of the players' uniforms and you'll see aliasing, not interlace double images. Those objects and the numbers on the time clock show dot crawl as well. In the white "luma" portion of the YUV histogram, look at the right-hand side. Where white turns orange and smashes against the right-hand edge, that data will be clipped in RGB display. The tall "spike" at the left indicates crushed darks with no detail.

Below, Sample_02, frame 18 (interlaced), black borders removed, and YUV histogram:

http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...1&d=1432504307

Again, the histogram shows slightly elevated blacks and clipped brights. To see the effects of clipping, look at the back of the guy's neck. Blue in the shirt and colors in skin tones are clipped and changed to near white. Some of this was recovered by fixing levels in YUV with Avisynth. The field/interlace problem is seen in the blue ghosting (even the ghost shows aliasing) and in some of the edges of the jeep's hood, front upper window panel, front fender, and elsewhere. In case you haven't noticed, there's been a color shift: the jeep, mud, and tires are purple.

If you think deinterlacing fixes the alias effect, it doesn't. Below are 2X blowups of QTGMC deinterlaced frame 18, where the fields in progressive mode become frames 36 and 37. Aliasing exists in both fields.

http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...1&d=1432504444
http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...1&d=1432504475

Attached are two version of Sample02, one interlaced, one progressive, with some fixup and color correction. In the 29.97 interlaced version, you can see aliasing isn't fixed by deinterlacing and filtering the video, then re-interlacing. In the 59.94p progressive version, aliasing is relieved somewhat as progressive video because aliased fields aren't blended, but many edges are still "disturbed" when anything moves. Two anti-alias filters were used on both clips, which should not have been necessary.

The audio sync sounds about right to me, unless it's several seconds off (the jeep seems to groan and creak right on time). But the full clip might still have problems with nonstandard caps of the audio sampling rates and bitrates. This is a sample of the code I used to remux audio+video after making a resampled audio file from Sample_02:
Later I'll post details of how I made the re-encoded clips. The double-frame rate progressive is mp4 -- my encoders won't allow to-spec DVD or BluRay 720x480 at 50fps progressive. Not satisfied with either of them.

I'll echo msgohan, you need better capture gear. A good device doesn't cost a fortune, but Windows8 does impose limits. What camera are you using to play the tape? If its a DV camcorder, it's outputting DV from analog tape. Can you give us some history about how these tapes originated and were played?

Yeah I know. I'm an engineer and work with CAD software. It's a reflex to do so because I do data delivery to clients everyday.

From websearch, I found infos to create script in avisynth to find if I had interlaced or progressive footage , and if it was TFF or BFF. by looking at the frame order when going frame by frame. I had this. This is how I discovered I had interlaced footage and that I needed TFF.


AVISource("filename.avi")
AssumeTFF()
# or AssumeBFF()
SeparateFields()


It was done in virtualdub. Audio compression was none (PCM), but I played with the raw capture format since I thought that lowering bitrate might help for my sync issue (I think I found this advice over the web). Did many try, so that's why you have different values. Sorry, I sampled footage I took a few days ago. Did so many trials before asking here that I didn't remember this! Sorry for this

This, I understand better since it's the same as in photography. Right spikes means bright spots, left is dark.

I knew there was something more than this because the effect was not only horizontal. Then aliasing is exactly the same as when I play pc games. Video cards have anti-aliasing which help reduce the "non-uniform" lines when at an angles (I think so, but do not know the theory like you guys do!)

You have better eyes than me. I haven't!

I'm on windows 7, for info. It's not a DV camcorder. It's an old analog 8mm camcorder (early 2000's). They were filmed, and I simply plug the cam to the capture device and transfer them to the PC.

Here is the model of my *cough* magnificient *cough* camera :D

hitachi VM-E545LA

http://diagramas.diagramasde.com/cam...0LA_E545LA.pdf


Guys, thanks for putting so much time in someone else's problem! That is more than appreciated!

Yep, I had the same ITT xperience. Like I say, no big thing. Thought I'd saver you some time.

That's a good way to check things out. The videos are interlaced, for sure. But both are BFF.

So, I don't have your experience in video manipulation.

What should be my next step?

Let's say I keep the same capture device...

Should I try to capture with (at least) better cables, with low sharpening level (or none) in virtualdub?

I will keep it interlaced for now, no deinterlacing process

Btw, I'm not too picky. Your samples look quite good compared to what I have achieved :)

I could upload samples of what I get to see if things get slightly better :)

Wow, that's a great compliment, and thanks. Brother, I wish I knew more, but I'm really just following others. Anyway, you pick up stuff as you go along, and you're looking in the right places.

It's not as complicated as it looks at first. Tomorrow I'll have more time to break down what I did, step by step. That's how it was taught to me. I don't recall finding any single source or project that had it all in one place.

You need a better capture device, or the effort gets no easier -- gets tougher, really, because constant annoyance and frustration will make you (or anyone) pretty tired of this game before very long. If your friend's EZCap is the real thing, give that a try. It can't be worse than the Honestech. I see you have Win7. That puts you a step ahead of Win8 owners who have less choice. We know from many users and other forums that the ATI USB 600/650 and Diamond Multimedia ATI TV Wonders 600/650 give about the best results around these days, aside from forking up $1100 for cards whose features you'll never use and can't afford anyway. Excessive interlace combing and audio sync glitches aren't the only thing the Honestechs are notorious for. At least your camera is one many are looking for and are making do with worse.

I might be imagining things, but it seems to me that Hauppauge had a pretty good budget capture device in a "110" or "100" series, can't recall if it was PCI or USB. Maybe one of the readers will recall that one, as I sew it pop up at auctions now and then. You wouldn't want their newer TV Wonder 750 USB's, they're a step down.

Cables won't make much difference, given the device you use now. If you're not using s-video from the camera, you should be (I forget whether it has s-video or not). That would reduce color noise at least. Sharpening during capture does more harm than good -- after all, who needs sharpened noise? Most s-video cables are pretty much alike, unless you've got the cheapest 99-cent wonder ever made. Mine are from BlueJeansCable. They're not cheap, but there are $100-per-foot to $500 s-video cables out there that look worse. If composite RCA is the only choice, try Amazon or eBay for some old Acoustic Research blue-jacketed Performance Series composite cables. Many say this budget brand is better than the more expensive Pro-II series, which looks too soft. http://www.amazon.com/Acoustic-Resea.../dp/B00005LACF . Unfortunately their blue s-video cable ain't as sharp. The "blue RCA's", as you see from Amazon, are getting scarce.

Much of the difficulty in treating things like ghosting and other capture-time artifacts requires deinterlacing. You can encode interlaced high bitrate archives. But since you're using PC playback anyway, and if you want to encode to mp4 or mkv for TV playback via USB drive or external player, you can go with 59.94 progressive video.

Thanks again. But don't underestimate your own progress. You'd be amazed at some of the godawful stuff we've seen, and from users with pretty nice gear!

Be more careful with your VirtualDub settings. I usually make a quickie of a minute or so and check it in VirtualDub before I commit to longer captures. Also a good idea to not capture entire hours movies at one time, unless they're pretty short clips to begin with.

I'll post more details on what I did with the samples, later. You know how these holiday schedules go... :wink2:

Hi!

Yes it's memorial day there tomorrow (guessing you're from USA). Forgot about this! (I'm in canada)

Don't take too much time of your long weekend to reply to me!

BTW, just found this in craigslist for 30$ (CAN)

ATI TV Wonder HD 650 COMBO USB ATSC FM Radio
http://www.kijiji.ca/v-autre-ordinat...ationFlag=true

Is this what you're talking about?

Is it the same as Hauppauge, i.e. is this automatically encoded right after capturing?

Found this also, for 8$ haha

ATI Theater 550 Pro TV Tuner PCI NTSC & Analogue, S-Video IN
http://www.kijiji.ca/v-autre-ordinat...ationFlag=true

It does not have S-Video out. So considering buying a new capture device (better), reading earlier post, I should buy a Composite to S-Video adapter to separate luma from chroma right?. Please, correct me if I'm wrong! :)

Not sure to clearly understand the statement. Am I reading wrong, or you're saying that my camera is not bad at all? haha (Sorry I don't get all expressions despite I know English hehe) If so, I didn't think this at all.

If I'm able to achieve better results, then yes I will go with deinterlacing to expand playback possibilities.

This being said, I'm going to bed because I work tomorrow (sad but true). No holiday for me.

BTW, no rush mate. Have good time!

The ATI 650 has a known flaw with the AGC (also here). The 750 is said to have the same problem, but possibly more source-dependent (PCIe / USB).

The 550 is pretty good, from what I've seen (I actually bought one myself but have only used it for a few minutes). $8 for it is a no-brainer if it includes the purple breakout box. It can capture lossless, but the newest drivers are only for Windows Vista x64, not Windows 7. I forget whether I managed to use it in Win7, but a post on NeoWin claims the Vista drivers can be installed in compatibility mode. One nice thing that might help you is that it offers a 3D comb filter to reduce dot crawl, if that is the problem we're seeing with the chroma. The often-recommended ATI 600 only has a 2D comb filter, like most other capture devices.

Having said that... there's an annoying issue with a lot of these devices where the Proc Amp controls only work on XP. And you need those controls.

Once they're mixed, there is no way to perfectly separate them. The plug adapters like you bought are essentially just scams; properly converting from composite to S-Video requires active electronics to perform comb filtering. Some DVD recorders like the Panasonic DMR-ES10 / 15 / 25 do 3D comb filtering as well as line TBC, so people like us who prefer to capture lossless often pass signals through those and capture the output.

Didn't know about AGC. Seems to be a PITA...

I don't know, I see shared comments on the ATI cards (saw a post where lordsmurf told they were s**t). Though, it is probably better then what I have, so for the price...

A friend (same who lent the easycap) told he had a Matrox Mystique laying around. Don't know about this, but who knows, maybe you guys know this and this is good hardware.

This being said, I have a complete computer laying around at home ready to install windows XP (old hardware). I could use it and add the 550 to it.

Just for fun, here is an example of an easycap capture through virtualdub.

Where did I say the ATI cards were not good? :question:

Sorry, please don't get me wrong! It was not negative.

Let me find again where I found the post in question.

EDITED:
http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/3...IW-7500-9600XT
There, but still sorry. I was at work and read quickly. Though, you did not seem to appreciate them.

The Easycap sample doesn't have the CUE problem. Line wiggling looks like it may actually be worse though. If your variant is like my $6 Easycap STK1160 toy, the composite input is quite blurred. That does appear to be the case, though it would be easier to tell if you captured a DVD rather than a tape.

I haven't double-checked SAMPLE_02, but the original SAMPLE_01 is TFF.

Hi

I asked my friend and he confirmed it's not a genuine easycap.

I found the colors were better, but the overall quality worst.I guess my observations are like yours, but without good explanations as you did. ;)

So definitely I think it is safe to assume the honestech device is the culprit for many issues.

The guy for the ati 550 is out of town until Thursday. I'll keep you posted.

He has the 550 and 650 in hand. Which one would you go with? I have a feeling I'd be better with the 550, don't know why though!

Thanks in advance!

d=I believe that DV was typically 48 kHz/16-bit stereo, or 32 kHz/12-bit with up to 4-channels. Some camcorders defaulted to the 32kHz rate, some to 48kHz. The 32 kHz rate allowed audio insert on tracks 3 and 4 in post.

Analog VHS did not have a specific sampling rate on tape disregarding some possible DSP in the record/playback electronics. (It was recorded as linear tape track, and as a FM-coded signal on stereo Hi-Fi VCRs.)

Although the DV spec allowed 44.1 kHz audio, it was not widely used with video.

@dpalomaki, thanx for the audio info.

@mo418: Here are some details on what I did with Avisynth and VirtualDub on Sample2.avi. Firsv step was to open the AVI in VirtualDub, resample the audio to 48KHz, and save audio-only as a .WAV file (uncompressed PCM). Then I remuxed video and audio in the script, as you'll see below. This sometimes brings audio into sync, but you might still have the do it the hard way as you did earlier.

Below,good old frame 84 (deinterlaced frame 42)\, with borders removed using the Crop() function. Crop() has important restrictions, depending on colorspace and whether interlaced or progressive. Have a look at the chart at the bottom of this Avisynth help page: http://avisynth.nl/index.php/Crop. The black levels aren't bad, even if not much detail under the jeep. Pretty dark down there, so I didn't try to force detail out of areas that don't matter anyway. GAmma is high, giving a washed-out-look. Brights are clipped, as the detail on the back of the guy's neck shows. There's also a downward chroma shift of blue by about 6 pixels (look at the guy's shirt sleeve).

http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...1&d=1432665367

The same frame, deinterlaced, after the Avisynth script and borders restored. Notice that the "spike" at the right end indicates clipped brights during capture or during shooting. But some of the brights were retrieved here. The big orange spike at the left is the black borders and a small part of the murky detail under the jeep.

http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...1&d=1432667746

Only a tiny speck of bright luma gets close to the unsafe area at the right. This video was shot under overcast light, so it won't have the same high-end range as a sunlight shot. The result is a little green, but I took care of that in VirtualDub while watching this script run.

Here is the Avisynth script. Everyone has their own way fo doing things, but this is what I did with a quick run through:
aud=WAVSource("Drive:\path\to\audio\SAMPLE_02.wav" )
vid=AviSource("Drive:\path\to\video\SAMPLE_02.avi")
AudioDub(aud,vid)
AssumeFPS("ntsc_video",sync_audio=true)
All of these functions are Avisynth built-ins. "aud" is a name I "invented" for the audio input, "vid" is the name I "invented" for the video. These are user-created variables that nyou name whatever you want, as long as they aren't the same name as a function or filter.

crop(10,0,-6,-6).AddBorders(8,2,8,4)
Cropping is in interlaced YUY2 (must be mod-2). AddBorders() restores the original frame size and centers the image. The default border color is RGB-0 black.

ColorYuv(cont_y=-20,off_y=-15,cont_u=-50,gain_u=-20)
ConvertToYV12(interlaced=true)
SmoothLevels(16,1.05,255,16,245,chroma=200,limiter =0,tvrange=true,dither=100,protect=6)
ColorYUV is mainly used to reduce luma contrast (cont_y) and shift the image luma/colors to the dark end with a negative offset (off_y=-15). Blue is oversaturated and exceeds RGB 255, so I reduced blue contrast (which sort of "shrinks" the u channel toward the middle) and reduced blue bright-end gain (gain_u). Next comes SmoothLevels, which requires YV12. Notice that the conversion to YV12 stupulates that the video is interlaced at this point. SmoothLevels uses several techniques to reduce banding and color gaps. Here, it mainly reduces bright clipping by interpolating RGB 255 down to RGB 245. The second digit in the SmoothLevels values is gamma (midtones), which I raised slightly. "Protect=6" leaves blacks below RGB 6 untouched. SmoothLevels is a function is the SmoothAdjust plugin.

AssumeBFF().QTGMC(preset="medium",NoiseProcess=1, GrainRestore=0.2, NoiseRestore=0.2, NoiseTR=2). QTGMC defaults to the Avisynth default (BFF), but I like to be more specific about these things. The "medium" preset doesn't denoise as strongly as "slow", which often scrubs away too much detail. The other values inhibit denoising a bit, and restore some of the original grain and noise. Let's face it, analog "detail" is really lots of noise anyway, and I didn't want to discard too much.

ChromaShift(C=2,L=-6)
DeHalo_Alpha(rx=3)
Chroma is shifted 2 pixels to the right and 6 pixels up. SOmetimes this looks cool, sometimes shift is so screwy it could look weird. One thi9ng it fixed was the blue bleed below the guy's shirt sleeve and some of the color washout on the back of his neck. DeHalo_Alpha helps reduce playback oversharpening halos. Not a real fix for ghosts, though. I used a horizontal pixel width (rx) of 3; the default is about 1; high values can sometimes make worse edge artifacts, but it seems to be OK here. These are two filters that require a little fiddling.

### AssumeBFF().SeparateFields().SelectEvery(4,0,3).We ave()
This is a re-interlace routine. Note that it is commented-out here.

Santiag(2,2). This is an anti-alias plugin. Probably most effective with interlaced video, but it works on progressive as well. The (2,2) values are the stronger setup. It does soften video a little.

ConvertToRGB32(matrix="Rec601",interlaced=false). To RGB for VirtualDub work. Note that the video is not interlaced at this point. If the video had been reinterlaced, the statement would need "Interlaced=true". If you don't want to use RGB filters, you won't need this statement.

return last. You need this statement at the end because other entities have been named earlier in the script ("aud" and "vid"). "Return last" returns the result of the last executed excuted statement. Otherwise Avisynth would be a bit confused as to exactly what you want to come from this script, and you'd get ye olde Avisynth error message.

Below, the frame after VirtualDub color and gamma tweaks. The number VDub filters I used isn't usually necessary. Not a vast difference, but anti-ghost was used and the color looks more natural.

http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...1&d=1432668137

The attached Avisynth_plugins.zip has the AVisynth filters I used, in case you don't have them. You already have the QTGMC package, which is a good thing because some of those plugins use QTGMC support files. The filters included are ChromaShift, DeHalo_Alpha, Santiag, SangNom (used by Santiag), and the SmoothAdjust package version 2.60, which works in all versions of Avisynth (and which has dll's for Intel and AMD systems, so look over the docs that come with it. Use 32-bit versions). It also includes a deinterlacer named MAA. It softens a bit, too, but you should use it only on interlaced video before any deinterlacing. I didn't used it here.

Color balance is usually a personal matter, so if you don't like what I did in VirtualDub you can always change it to suit. It does help to know how some of these filters work. Best way to learn? Mount the filters, start pushing sliders and clicking buttons, and watch what happens.

Attached is VirtualDub_filters.zip, with these plugins: ccd_sse2 (CamcorderColorDenoise), ColorMill, Exorcist, GradationCurves, and Hue/Saturation/Intensity. If you already have some of these in lordsmurf's VDub filter package, you're a step ahead. I also attached csamp.zip, which includes a desktop pixel sampler that you can use with VirtualDub and other apps in the Windows desktop. This is not a filter plugin. There's no installer. Just copy csamp.exe to your desktop. When you run Csamp,you can place its little window anywhere om the desktop. It comes with instructions. While it's on, you'll also see small icon in the taskbar's right-hand corener. There's a sample of its use in the images below.

I used the exorcist.vdf plugin to diminish that blue ghost. There are better ways of doing it in Avisynth, but you'd need a slew of old samples and other plugins to use it, and those methods sometimes do more harm than good. I just didn't have time to get too fancy with masking routines. If you create a dark anti-ghost with exorcist it will darken and lower gamma, so you need to compensate for that with other filters. I used ColorMill, gradation curves, and the built-in "Levels" filter to restore some dynamic range. I used the Hue/Sat?Intensity filter to lower Cyan saturation in that shirt (cyan=green + blue). I used ColorMill to tweak color balance toward red a bit, to increase saturation in the yellow range, and to tweak Blue in the darks and brights.

I'm also including a .vcf settings file. I don't know if vcf's were mentioned earlier. A .vcf is a file used to store VirtualDub filters and settings as used when processing a video. For a .vcf to work, the filters mentioned must be in your Avisynth plugins folder. To load the filters in VirtualDub, use "File..." -> "Load processing settings", navigate to the location of the vfc, select it, and click Open or whatever. The filters will load with the same order and settings I used. Be sure to re-check your output colorspace and compressor. You must use "Full processing mode". When the filters are loaded you can open each in the filter chain and look at the settings I used. If you really wanna get geeky, a .vcf is a plain text file that you can open in Notepad.

There was nothing extreme about the settings I used in Sample2. It's probably more illustrative to use more extreme images from a previous project of a few years ago. Look at the image below, from a bad VHS of a documentary on Cher. It's too dark, too yellow, too red. Skin tones are weird, and even her eyes look yellow.

http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...1&d=1432670121


The image is a screen cap from VirtualDub and shows the use of the ColorTools RGB histogram to analyze color problems. It's obvious that the Red channel is overextended, and blue looks crippled. The ColorTools VirtualDub plugin is found at doom9, but a caution: it'll crash VirtualDub in Windows 7.

The image below shows the same frame in the process of being color corrected in VirtualDub. In the Cher image you can see the Csamp pixel samplers' little dialog window being used to read color values. Note that CSamp's readout shows RGB pixel values wherever the desktop cursor is placed. At the left side of the picture is the Blue channel dialog of the Gradation Curves filter. Note the shape of the vertical line in that curves window: it's bowed upward and to the left, which raises Blue in the required amount and area, then sharply cut off at the top to avoid overrunning RGB 255. More adjustments were made later,especially lowering Red in the Red channel window. The Blue correction required was rather strong, mostly in the darks and midtones, tapering off toward the brightest end.

http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...1&d=1432670363

The last image is of the CSamp dialog tool, and a schematic showing how that vertical line works in gradation curves. Csamp is showing pixel values from the location, which was on Cher's nose. For most skins tones, this shows a high Red value and a ridiculously low Blue value. Her uncorrected skin tone is pumpkin colored.

http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...1&d=1432670723

In the gradation curve above, the vertical line is in the default position from lower left to upper right. The lowest point on the grid would be darks (RGB-0 values for luma, Red, Green, or Blue). The midpoint of the graph represents RGB 128. The top of the graph is RGB 255. Moving that vertical line to the right will darken the affected channel. Moving it to the left will brighten. Using an actual "S-curve shape", you can twist that line in such a way as to brighten darks and darken brights at the same time, or the reverse, or whatever you want. To get similar controls, you'd have to get Photoshop Pro, After Effects, Premier Pro, Vegas Pro, etc. Since you have Photoshop, you might be familiar with the curves filter.

Post #39 above has an attachment of Avisynth plugins. Shucks, I already attached them earlier in post #38. What I meant to attach in post #39 was VirtualDub_filters.zip, see below.

It usually pays to take your sweet time correcting posts before clicking "Submit". :smack: