Capture card differences when capturing with Huffyuv?
 

Hello,

Thank you for all of the incredible information available on this website! It has been very helpful in my home video digitization project! I will be capturing some Video8 and VHS home videos and I have a quick question about capture cards.

Currently, I have a computer with Windows 7 using a Hauppauge 1229 WinTV-HVR-2255 (the same card as the Hauppauge 1213 WinTV-HVR-2250 without a remote control and the WinTV software included). This is a TV tuner card that I use to record OTA television broadcasts. It also has the ability to capture via S-video. After starting my research into this project, I have decided I want to capture the tapes to avi using huffyuv as an archive and to allow for editing/restoration. After researching the card I have, I found that although it does have MPEG-2 hardware encoding, it is also able to capture uncompressed avi using VirtualDub. This post ( http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/3...=1#post1953962 ) describes one person's success capturing lossless avi using VirtualDub. I was able to verify myself that it works using my current computer setup with a test tape and a random VCR I currently own.

My question is: Assuming that I am correct that the Hauppauge card I have is able to capture true lossless AVI, is there any difference when capturing lossless AVI between the Hauppauge card I have and one of the ATI AIW cards that are widely recommended as the best card to use for analog to digital capture?

Thanks!

The diferrences may be found in the ADC(analog to digital "YUV" converter) chip, some are 8 (very old),9,10 or 12bits (the higher the better) you may not the see the differences with the naked eye though. Pro cards have ~12 bits ADC usually.

Thanks for the quick reply!

It appears the HVR-2250 uses the NXP SAA7164 Chip (I've attached a manual for the chip to this post). That claims that it has a "16 bit parallel input for 4:1:1 and 4:2:2 YUV data". Does that make it good for capturing lossless avi via S-video?

Are there any other differences between something like the HVR-2250 and other cards that make other cards more favorable?

"16 bits parallel input for YUV 4.1.1and 4.2.2" ? i don't know what they mean exactly here.
In the doc they also wrote: 9bits for Y /8bits for U/V.These specs seem to be standard for mainstream cards these days

already read?

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/lib...=vs.85%29.aspx

^ This is a far more technical answer than I was going to give. :congrats:

The color/contrast/etc differs in hardware, yes. This is why, for example, an EzCap/Easycap card is crap (Easycrap!), while an ATI AIW is excellent. The former skews colors, overexposes, and has color casts. The ATI does not. Hardware does matter.

Thank you everyone for your helpful replies! I ended up finding a computer with an AGP card slot and got an ATI AIW card. Now all I need is an s-video camcorder and I'll be set to start capturing!

What kind of camcorder? Unless I'm misinformed, if it's a digital camcorder without analog passthru your analog tapes will be encoded to lossy DV. An analog camcorder that plays Video8 and outputs analog video will do the trick, but I don't know that VHS tape will also play in the same camera. When you locate a camcorder let us see the model number.

A "random VCR" doesn't tell us much. For analog source you'll need a good VCR/player, a line tbc and a frame tbc for decent playback.

Hi Sanlyn,

Thanks for reading my thread! When I mentioned the "random VCR," I was just using that for test purposes b/c it was all I had on hand. For the tapes I want to capture, I only have a few VHS tapes, most of the tapes I have are Video8. I plan on capturing all the Video8 first and then try and figure out getting a nice VCR to use for the VHS tapes.

For capturing, I definitely won't be using a digital camcorder or DV (the horror!). I'm going to be getting a Hi8 Camcorder, a Sony (one from this list: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/video-capture/5825-capturing-8mm-tapes.html#post31250) that has a built in TBC and Noise reduction. I also have an AVT-8710 line TBC and a SignVideo PA-100 to further clean and adjust the analog signal before capture. I'll be capturing losslessly using probably huffyuv to allow me to have as much information in case I need to do any digital processing.

Looks as if you're on your way. :)

Tip about processing and proc amp: It's the experience of many that even with noise reduction, home made Hi8/video8 can definitely use some post capture cleanup You don't have to go crazy with it (or you can, if the results require it!). Trying to make precise color correction during capture with such sources will prove to be futile, since color and levels will change with every shot. The proc amp will let you make some basic corrections that can be adjusted later. In particular, the luma level LED on the SignVideo unit is a godsend to avoid crushed blacks and blown-out brights. Make the best compromise settings you can during capture and customize later.

The dnr in older playback devices is primitive by today's standards but will help save work later. You'd be surprised how much more sophisticated post-process filters can be for tweaking your work.

Good luck.

The Hi8 camera TBCs don't really do anything. They don't even output a stable signal. I have no idea what they do. You buy the camera for playback quality, not the TBC. For TBC, you need an external to prevent dropped frames. Without one, those cameras drop a ton of frames.

DV is fine for DV-shot tapes, of course. Shot DV isn't a problem like converted DV.

Remember that it often takes software-only methods years to achieve what's possible in hardware. The 90s hardware filtering in S-VHS VCRs is still not really possible live while capturing. It's only been available on playback for maybe 5 years now (VLC). Only post-capture non-realtime software can achieve better filtering, for some errors, and that's really only been possible (again) in the past 5-8 years (late 2000s to 2010s). Some are still the hardware-only domain (jitter timing errors). So ancient? Not really.

Yes, it sounds like will74 is on his way. :)