New capture setup, input on AVT-8710 captures?

[sanlyn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rf99

I am just getting started on learning cleanup techniques, and I didn't even notice some of these bleeds. But, now I do, and I'm sure they will be very noticeable to me going forward. I think you just cursed me. Hah!

Don't fret over that. It comes with time. A workable capture is always the first step.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rf99

as scenes and lighting change on a tape, do you find yourself applying certain scripts to certain scenes, and other scripts to others? Obviously if it's the same camera, I'd assume a lot of the same fixes would be constant. But, I can imagine that you might find yourself having to apply different fixes as the content and lighting change as well?

I've done it many, many times. That's the main reason I stick with Avisynth, VirtualDub, and sometimes AfterEffects. Many of their tools are are incredibly sophisticated. I've had to do that with retail tapes, too.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rf99

I'm curious what you think about the H.264 M2T from PE, though. PE allows a high bit-rate, and it seems to look good on my Oppo.

The m2t's look fine to me. You don't always have to use very high bitrates. I have plenty of encodes on disc that didn't need so much bitrate, although for archives I go that way instead of taking up room for lossless caps. I have 4 USB drives with old lossless caps. Probably won't go back to them, but you never know. They're the remains of hundreds of hours of very old VHS tapes from 1990 on.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rf99

Were there any additional steps used (or subtracted or modified) on this vs. the script you posted for the first capture?

I used the same script but cut the strength of some filters because the Fashion tape was cleaner. People tend to build a store of frequently used filters.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rf99

It does seem like the cleaned up version might have a little more noise/pixelation in some areas... almost as if it was sharpened slightly. (For example, the top part of the red shirt that is just to the right of the shadow from the arm.) It's small, but is that a side-effect of one of the filters in particular? Either way, the improvement is substantial!

It was sharpened to counteract the chroma cleaners, but only slightly (LimitedSharpenFaster was at half strength and set for no edge sharpening). You reach the point where you decide whether the improvements outweigh the side effects. No free lunch.

For what's possible later, an example of noisy, damaged tape, bad analog cable noise, a cheap noisy cable amp hooked up to 3 splitters, and a cheap 2 head mono RCA VCR on cheapo RadioSHack tape at slowpoke 6-hour speed (!! Like, I really didn't know what I was doing), was posted a while back. If you want a look I'm including links to mp4's, the lossless telecined original and the de-telecined filtered results. The tape was so bad it wouldn't track well in my AG-1980, so I used a rebuilt non-tbc Panasonic PV-S4670 SVHS circa 1996, an ES15 for tbc pass-thru, and my original AVT-8710 into an an ATI All In Wonder 9600XT.

There's lots of noise, line shimmer and twitter, (dig how the big black train engine wiggles and twitters as it approaches), telecine combing, color bleed (from the cheap amp and splitters), and you name it. The demo was originally to show that often a 6-hour tape can be rescued. They're 51 seconds each. Near the end of the lossless original at about 47 seconds you'll see a big basketball sized dark gray circle go BLIP right in the middle of the frame. That 1954 movie Technicolor wasn't easy, either. Not perfect, and at 640x480 it'll never be DVD. But it has nostalgic value. I think I reached the point of diminishing returns. Looks darker on a PC than on TV -- they have different luma curves, which often throws me off, darnit.

FYI:
original: Liv5A_cut_EP_original_cap.mp4
restoration: Liv5A_ivtc_cut_EP_playback sample.mp4

About 33MB each. Keep up the good work.

[rf99]

Holy cow! I am in disbelief at the results you were able to achieve (and would still be amazed even if the original wasn't in nearly as bad shape as it was).

I have a lot to learn... that's for sure! Thanks for sharing, Sanlyn!

[lordsmurf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rf99

WOW!!! This is incredible. I cannot believe the improvement here.
I am blown away by how much cleaner that looks!

I'll let sanlyn answer, but those are minor fixes, likely using some easy Avisynth techniques.

Yeah, you seem to be

Now that I'm working on the video glossary (most of it dedicated to restoration), as I intended to do 10+ years ago, it's going to packed with samples. Then you're going to see some really advanced samples.

[sanlyn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lordsmurf

I'll let sanlyn answer, but those are minor fixes, likely using some easy Avisynth techniques.

Yes, pretty much a case of everyday cleanup with Avisynth. And a little help from CamcorderColorDenoise.Basic script is in post #39, one of many copy-and-paste potboiler procedures from a big .txt file of favorite routines. I never leave home without them.

[rf99]

With regards to the interference, I still have not been able to completely stop it from happening (and still have to wait it out until I can somehow make it disappear [or it just disappears on its own]).

First, I tried a new purple ATI box. That made no change.
Second, I tried replacement S-VIDEO cables (still 3 ft each) from Blue Jeans cables. Same thing, no change.

I still am not sure if fidgeting the cables is making the difference, or if it's just a time thing.

It seems like it might be the VCR or the PC then. Or some outside interference that comes and goes.

I have yet to try any ferrite cores, but that seems like the next step unless anyone else has any bright ideas. =P

Thanks!

[sanlyn]

I know how much of a pain in the neck that must be. You could try a hassle like moving all the capture gear (except the capture card) to another location and hook it up to a TV. The problem there is that many TVs have at least nominal noise reduction circuits that would invalidate the test. As for the new cables, they'll likely give better looking results anyway and are more durable and well made than the $1.98 specials from monoprice and such.

If it's any help, my computer setup is a wall-unit desk my wife cooked up (and it cost plenty to have it made), something I would never have done with so many $100 computer desks in the market but you know how the ladies are: I'm strictly utilitarian, but she wanted "furniture", LOL. In building it, however, an electrician installed a dedicated wall outlet on a separate circuit. So no refrigerators, air conditioners, TVs, cable boxes or other appliances are on that circuit, only computers and VCRs. Not exactly cheap, but the guy had to tear open the wall anyway to install the wall unit. What a mess for 2 weeks. Before that time, every time someone turned on a vacuum cleaner in another room I'd have a power blip in the capture, one of which even crashed VirtualDub during a capture. When my wife turned on her electric iron in the bedroom the lights would dim in the computer area.

The wiring for the PC and capture components is bundled into a couple of harnesses secured with velcro wire ties. The power cables are all bundled together separately from a/v wiring. Also, I still have the original RF cores tied to the capture card wiring, even if I've never had problems they might address but I decided a while back to keep them mounted anyway.

It appeared from your earlier noise capture that the noise ends up in the capture, is that correct? The infuriating oddity is that it comes and goes. In the past this sort of thing has usually been traced to noise in power circuits or to bad grounding somewhere. I had a Panasonic DVD recorder that had floating hum bars in everything it recorded, so in a dark video you could clearly see them. It turns out that the particular Panasonic had an unfiltered power connection on its internal cooling fan -- a 50-cent capacitor cleared that up, thanks to a radio/tv tech (but no sooner had he fixed it than the darn unit's hard drive died a short while later, so I got rid of it).

I also had to replace a PC cooling fan that developed a bad rattle, but it seemed to me it injected some fluttery noise into my monitor. That's what I get for using a cheap fan in my PC build, so out it went and got replaced with a $65 job that's been going for 5 years. But offhand I don't see how jiggling external cables would affect that.

If you get ferrite cores use them on the power cords as well. Hope this helps.