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  #21  
09-02-2015, 03:16 AM
jmac698 jmac698 is offline
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Yes, it's an xvid movie, just as I expected, and again, the format doesn't even matter. The DVDStyler program automatically transcodes the video for you. I have recorded movies to tape myself, just to see how retro SVHS looks in the modern era, and for the nostagia effect! Anamorphic movies on SVHS looks pretty good, and it's an interesting experience.

-Start DVDStyler. On the New Project screen, change Video Format to NTSC 720x480. The other options are fine. Click OK
-Under template, you can pick the first one (Basic blue)
-Drag any video file to the bottom. It says "Adding, please wait"
-File->Burn DVD
-It can burn the DVD for you if you put in a blank disc, or just leave an ISO file, which you can burn later. You should test the playback first with whatever you use to play videos. VLC will directly load the VIDEO_TS folder, or the ISO file and play it.

Your DVD will be generated. That's it. The DVD has a default menu, just select "Play All".

The program can read any format, any size, and film or ntsc framerates, and encode to ntsc mpeg for DVD.

@Sanlyn:
Consumer type DVD authoring programs are automatic. Just drag any file, SD or HD, and all proper encoding is done for you. Even aspect ratio doesn't need to be set, because when recording off the DVD player, just use it's option for "widescreen display" if required, and it will output an anamorphic video to the VCR. The TV can then undo the squeezing with it's own setting. No codec packs are necessary, as it uses ffmpeg. Encoding is done with HCencoder.

-- merged --

Ok I tested it, but VLC seemed to crash at the menu screen, the video converted fine though. Here's another way to do it if you have trouble:

start with no template, then pick a background, and right click, assign to background.
add a video
right click the background, properties
under pre commands, select jump to title 1

This will make an autoplay DVD with no (visible) menus, and the movie will play endlessly.
I got this to work fine in VLC.

If your DVD or Bluray player has a USB port, I suggest just copying the file to a USB stick and playing it right off the player, it will convert it on the fly to interlaced video that you can record.

In fact, before even recording to VHS, just see if it plays without lines directly from the DVD player to your TV. If that works, it will play fine from the VCR, as it's the same thing but lower quality.
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  #22  
09-02-2015, 03:42 AM
redlinetex redlinetex is offline
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Thank you very much for providing me detailed instructions for using DVDStyler. I'll print your instructions and keep them for future reference. It's too late to start this project today, but I'll work on it tomorrow. Assuming that the DVD turns out alright, I can then try recording the movie on the VCR. Fortunately, I have a DVD changer that has an S-video output to go to the VCR's S-video input. It's too bad I can't eliminate the DVD step and go directly from the computer to the VCR, but at least I'll be able to accomplish what I set out to do with just a couple of extra steps.
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  #23  
09-02-2015, 06:57 AM
sanlyn sanlyn is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jmac698 View Post
@Sanlyn:
Consumer type DVD authoring programs are automatic.
Yes, that's true, which is why I don't use them.

I would tackle the job of all those intended conversions with Avisynth, etc., but obviously the owner doesn't want to go into that. So I left it up to those who use other software to help redlinetex in detail. As he goes along with the project he'll undoubtedly learn something about standard formats, which will be helpful. But as for tape editing -- editing digital video is far easier, but it involves a learning curve. The problem with tape is, it's tape. If something goes amiss with the players there's not much out there these days for a fix. Once the players are gone, the tapes can't even be captured to a computer. What then?
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  #24  
09-02-2015, 12:39 PM
jmac698 jmac698 is offline
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There must be some way to go from the computer to the VCR. Could you tell me what your monitor refresh rate is set to?

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/w...#1TC=windows-7

I could figure this out, it would just take some time and testing, I wanted to suggest the most likely method to work first.

Also I suggest using DVD R/W so you don't waste a lot of discs on this. All you need is 1!

@Sanlyn

Me too! I did this same process before but directly with avisynth and HCEncoder, leaving DVDStyler for the last step. But I try to remember to hold back when I'm not talking to experts. I love learning, but most people have a practical personality type and just want a problem out of their way, besides having to deal with patience, frustration, and overwhelming.
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  #25  
09-02-2015, 07:03 PM
redlinetex redlinetex is offline
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The monitor refresh rate is 60 Hertz, but should that matter since I can see everything else clearly on the screen when watching a video from the computer or a tape on the connected VCR?
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  #26  
09-03-2015, 12:13 AM
sanlyn sanlyn is offline
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What does "see it clearly" mean? Do you mean that what you now see is blurred? Can you tell that an object is moving on your monitors at 24, 30, 50, or 60 times per second? When you watch a DVD or BluRay made from a motion picture film or a film-based HDTV program broadcast, can you tell if it's interlaced, telecined, or progressive? On average, interlaced or telecined motion displays as smoother motion. On average, the typical tv or set top player does not handle interlace or telecine well, nor do they upsample cleanly from lower-resolution sources. In that regard, you don't always get what you pay for.

On 60Hz refresh rate displays (which includes your HDTV and your PC monitor), interlaced or telecined NTSC video plays at ~30 interlaced/telecined frames per second, or ~60 fields per second. The frame rate is 1/2 the refresh rate. The field rate is approximately the same as the refresh rate.

on A 60Hz refresh rate, 23.97fps progressive plays at ~24 frames per second, period.

Nominally, few should be able to see the difference. The problem is that LCD monitors have no talent for motion handling that's as clean as CRT's, plasmas or movie projectors. It's not really the fault of LCD's, it's the fault of the con artist who sold non-flickering LCD jellybeans as a good idea for video displays. Human persitence of vision and the laws of physics are not in favor of LCD in that regard.

Last edited by sanlyn; 09-03-2015 at 12:29 AM.
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  #27  
09-03-2015, 12:50 AM
redlinetex redlinetex is offline
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I meant that I have no problem watching anything except the movie I had tried to record from the computer to the VCR. Frankly I have no idea how many times per second an object is moving on the screen and doubt I could ever tell the difference unless there is an obvious interlacing issue as with the movie we have been discussing. By the way, I downloaded AviSynth, but I can't find an application anywhere on my computer that can be opened. How does it work? I also downloaded HCEncoder but don't understand how that works either. I'm going to try burning a DVD with DVDStyler. Hopefully I'll get somewhere doing that.
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  #28  
09-03-2015, 01:10 AM
sanlyn sanlyn is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by redlinetex View Post
Frankly I have no idea how many times per second an object is moving on the screen and doubt I could ever tell the difference unless there is an obvious interlacing issue as with the movie we have been discussing.
I'm with you there, alright, that was a glitchy capture problem.

Yes, I'd stick with DVDStyler. The problem with automated software that plagued me for some time when I first started this insane video work was that all in one, one-stop-shopping NLE's make it difficult to learn very much about video.

Avisynth is run by a text script that you can load in any frame serving app that recognizes Avisynth output, such as VirtualDub. You learn to use Avisynth by going into the Program folder listings in Windows, finding the program listing for Avisynth 2.5 (or Avisynth 2.6), expand that program listing like any other program listing, and clicking on "Avisynth documentation" in the resulting menu.

HCencoder ships with a pdf user manual.
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  #29  
09-03-2015, 01:37 AM
redlinetex redlinetex is offline
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Thank you for the explanation. I'm so technically challenged!
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  #30  
09-03-2015, 07:51 AM
jmac698 jmac698 is offline
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Just for fun, this is how telecine works. Film is 24 frames per second, video is 60 fields per second. Parts of the film are displayed as they come by. The rates are different, but it creates a pattern which repeats over 5 frames, which have 10 fields, and 4 film frames. This is because 4/5 *30=24. And here is how they look:

The labeling for film frame shows that parts of different film frames might be displayed at once, when this happens, you get the lines effect. The labelling of video fields always shows an even numbered field on the top line, and an odd numbered field on the bottom line. This labeling is more helpful when viewing the fields individually.

This view of the video, with the lines, is what you normally see when viewing a film coming from an analog source on a computer monitor, however, if viewing on a TV, or by using a software settings (such as IVTC under Video on VLC) it can detect the pattern with the lines and remove them, so you see the film as it should be.

You can see that frames 0,3, 4 are displayed fine as film frames 0,2,3, but frames 1,2 show parts from film frames 0,1 and 1,2 respectively. So how to reconstruct the missing film frame 1? You need the odd lines from frame 1 and the even lines from frame 2. This process is called inverse telecine; it detects that pattern of lines on 2 of every 5 frames and puts them together to create the missing film frame. Since two frames are used to construct one film frame, the rate changes, and the final frames come out at 4/5 the speed, or 24fps.


Attached Images
File Type: jpg telecined0.jpg (23.7 KB, 3 downloads)
File Type: jpg telecined1.jpg (24.1 KB, 3 downloads)
File Type: jpg telecined2.jpg (24.0 KB, 3 downloads)
File Type: jpg telecined3.jpg (23.8 KB, 2 downloads)
File Type: jpg telecined4.jpg (23.8 KB, 2 downloads)

Last edited by jmac698; 09-03-2015 at 08:10 AM.
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  #31  
09-03-2015, 08:17 AM
jmac698 jmac698 is offline
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Here is how the 4 film frames look after being reconstructed. Notice the field numbers for film frame 1; there's a big jump, because it took 4 fields to reconstruct this film frame:

Something else to notice here, is that film frame 2 is made from frames 2,3, however it could also be made completely from frame 3. I'm not sure if there's any difference, but the way I decode it, it produces the film frames as soon as possible. Also note that the odd lines (bottom field) of film frame 2 are recorded twice, also the even lines (top field) of film frame 0. These copies can be averaged for an occasional reduction in noise, or dot crawl (which I didn't explain).

I can now demonstrate exactly what is happening with your PC2TV converter. Also I know a solution! All that we have to do is display your movies with telecine, then you can record directly from the computer. The only way I know to do this on the fly is with a feature in ffdshow, where you can run an Avisynth script in realtime on the video. More to come.


Attached Images
File Type: jpg ivtc0.jpg (23.7 KB, 2 downloads)
File Type: jpg ivtc1.jpg (23.7 KB, 1 downloads)
File Type: jpg ivtc2.jpg (23.8 KB, 1 downloads)
File Type: jpg ivtc3.jpg (23.8 KB, 1 downloads)
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  #32  
09-03-2015, 08:44 AM
redlinetex redlinetex is offline
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That's quite interesting. Thank you for sharing this information with me. Right now I have another issue I need to resolve. I have tried to burn the movie in question to a DVD, using DVDStyler but am getting nowhere. Initially, everything seemed to be working fine, until DVDStyler reached the preview stage before the actual DVD-burning stage. It keeps getting stuck in the preview stage. After several hours it still has not completed the preview, and I have already repeated this process several times with no success. Do you have any idea what I am doing wrong?
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  #33  
09-03-2015, 09:36 AM
jmac698 jmac698 is offline
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Unclick the preview checkbox, you don't need it.

Sorry about the long explanation, I don't think you really need to know (and probably aren't interested), it's not really for you but more for people in the future who might read this thread. I'm breaking my own rule here, to not go into unnecessary details when someone just wants to solve their problem
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  #34  
09-03-2015, 06:32 PM
redlinetex redlinetex is offline
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Thank you. I'll try it without the preview option. Hopefully I'll then be able to burn a DVD with no further problems. There was no need to apologize for the information you provided previously. I am always happy to learn as much as I can about topics in which I have an interest, this being one of them.
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  #35  
09-03-2015, 07:15 PM
sanlyn sanlyn is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by redlinetex View Post
Aside from what comes with Windows 10 and the DVDStyler that was recommended and which I have downloaded, I don't have any sophisticated software. Any suggestions will be very welcome. I noticed that someone commented about why I don't just burn a DVD. Of course I can do that as long as I can overcome the resizing and re-encoding issues you mentioned. As to why I want to record to a VHS tape, let's just say that tapes can be edited with the right equipment, while generally speaking, DVDs are only good for watching.
Well, of course, no one's going to charge you with criminal or silly activity because you want to work with tape. But to say that all you can do with a DVD is "watch it", well..... I'm afraid you're mistaken about what you can do with a DVD.

You can copy a DVD, 1:1, no degradation or alteration whatsoever, in about 5 minutes, then a copy of that, then a copy of that, then a copy of that, then a copy of that, then a copy of that, then a copy of that, again and again and again and again and again and again and again, from generation after generation after generation after generation after generation after generation after generation, ad finitum, with the 1000th generation looking and playing exactly like the original, then put a DVD into a smart-rendering editor and make a new version, correct motion problems with no apparent damage to the rest of the video, replace frames with frames from other parts of the video or frames from other videos, add titles and scrolling credits with no effect on the core image, add subtitles and audio tracks in several languages with no alteration of the core image, mix and change video sequences with smart-rendering editors, add and change menus and display features without altering the core image or core presentation, decode the video entirely and with the proper software create higher-resolution versions, lower resolution versions, presentations for the internet, combine segments of one DVD with segments of other DVD's without affecting the quality of any of the segments and create a new DVD, edit HD and SD recordings and remove the commercials and other cable broadcast junk without re-encoding the remaining video, then start making copies of that, copies of that, copies of that, copies of that, etc., etc. etc.....

And with with free software, too. All from a DVD, or two, or three, or four, or however many DVD's you'd want to play with.

Carry on. Let us know how the tape project works or if members can help with any problems.

Last edited by sanlyn; 09-03-2015 at 07:44 PM.
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  #36  
09-03-2015, 07:46 PM
redlinetex redlinetex is offline
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This is a hobby of mine. I don't use the tape decks I have so frequently that I need to worry too much about their breaking. Most of the time I stream movies from the Internet, but I want to have the option of playing around with my video equipment as a hobby. I take pride in having at my disposal at least one of almost every video format that has been available in the past 30 years or so. Most of my components are high-end, not the cheap throwaway stuff that Sony and other manufacturers have been making in the past few years and are continuing to manufacture. Yes, I include the new DVD and Blu-ray equipment in the throwaway category. You can buy this new stuff for under $100, whereas an EDV-9000 Super Beta cost $3,000 back in the day. By the way, you can still find a lot of these items, some of them completely overhauled, in Japan at very reasonable prices.
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  #37  
09-07-2015, 01:35 AM
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Ugh. Lots of misunderstandings in this thread...

VCRs are effected by gravity. After several years, they go out of alignment. This cannot be avoided, since we're all on Earth. So unserviced units will develop problems, regardless of usage.

Don't use Divx. That's an old format, and was supplanted by H.264/x264.

A DVD can be completely deconstructed and manipulated, and often is by professionals and hobbyists alike. It's just data in a specific format. The only discs that are "copy protected" are big-budget movies, and there's really no reason to decompile those anyway. Only a few fans do that, like for Star Wars.

Video was my main hobby long before I began to work in the field.

Interlacing is never a "problem". It's just one way that video is created. Quality deinterlacers like QTGMC can 99%+ remove it perfectly, when needed (ie, converting to streaming). See this: http://www.digitalfaq.com/guides/vid...ifferences.htm

AVI is not a format. It's just the wrapper. The actual video format is underneath.

I don't understand the need to output to S-VHS. You can convert to disc in many ways. If this is a typical torrent-downloaded film, 23.976, then use ConvertXtoDVD. I'm starting to get the impression that this is the source we're dealing with here.

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  #38  
09-07-2015, 02:19 AM
redlinetex redlinetex is offline
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No doubt you know much more than I do about this subject. I'm curious about the effects of gravity on a VCR and hope you won't mind explaining what exactly happens to the VCR, especially if it is rarely used, and what kind of servicing, aside from a good cleaning, is needed. I

Normally I don't use Divx. The movie I had downloaded just happened to be an uploaded Divx. I subsequently found the same movie on YouTube in MP4 format, which was of much better quality, and I didn't need to convert it in order to burn it to a DVD.

Finally, outputting to S-VHS is not something I "need" to do. I was merely experimenting since I have an S-VHS VCR identical to one in my home theater setup, the former being connected to my computer and TV/monitor. I figured that if I could successfully record a video from the computer to the connected VCR I could play it back on the VCR in the living room. Call it nostalgia or whatever. Of course I can also burn a DVD on my computer and play it back on a DVD player. I just enjoy playing with my equipment and having a variety of methods to accomplish the same thing.
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  #39  
09-07-2015, 03:21 AM
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Cleaning does nothing. The issue is the alignment. It shifts. At first, you may not notice. However tapes recorded by the unit are hard/impossible to play in other units. Then the sifting alignment affects playback as well. Eventually, it neither plays nor records. Damage happened when the misaligned tape path affects more than just the heads.

Youtube is usually awful quality. If it was better, I'd hate to see the Divx version!

The main ingredient with tape output is a quality video card. There's not many options for this, and most are expensive. For example, as excellent as the ATI AIW is for capturing, the output is mediocre at best. Some of my first restoration work was before we had DVD-R(G) burners. I'd output one copy to VCD, and another to S-VHS. But compared to what's possible now, that was mostly an exercise in possibility (and/or waste of time).

I understand what you're doing. But without the proper hardware, it'll never look great.

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  #40  
09-07-2015, 03:59 AM
redlinetex redlinetex is offline
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Thank you for explaining the alignment issue involving VCRs. It's not easy to understand, though, how a machine can get out of alignment unless it is heavily used.

Regarding video cards, what do you recommend? I am currently using an AMD HD 6450. I am still trying to figure out why I was unable to record from the DVD drive in my computer to the VCR. Even though it appeared to be recording, nothing was recorded, and I have tested the VCR. So I know that it is able to record.

To give you an even better understanding of why I'm doing what I'm doing, perhaps I should mention that this is not only a hobby for me, but also a means of exercising my brain. Being retired and physically disabled, I need something like this hobby to keep myself occupied and not let my brain turn to mush through non-use.
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