Testing various LaserDisc equipment
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Ok, I've just started a new topic to show the realtime footage using both of my LaserDisc players and various capture cards. Before I post 12 different captures of realtime scene I am going to be posting 2 quick captures of the test pattern of Snell & Wilcox. Pioneer Elite LD-S2 was used for both.
File titled '01. Video Essentials.avi' was recorded outputting S-Video into AIW 7500. File titled '02. Video Essentials.avi' was recorded outputting Composite BNC into Panasonic DMR-ES25 and then outputting Component video (Red, Green, Blue) into a Conexant based USB capture stick. Notice how it takes 3 frames for motion adaptive 3D comb filter to kick in. |
Now comes the realtime capture samples. A little background. This is part of the rock concert that took place in Germany in 1990. It was shot by PAL cameras. It was pressed on PAL VHS for European viewers, NTSC VHS for North American viewers and Japanese NTSC LaserDisc for Asian viewers in 1990. In 2015 it was remastered into PAL DVD and PAL BluRay but I thought remastering was horrible. Besides 12 LaserDisc samples I intend to include the same sample from PAL VHS done by someone else and the same sample from DVD remaster. It will probably take me several posts to attach all the 14 files. But here we go.
Here is the description of the hardware workflow used. Some of the captures done using S-Video outputs directly into the capture card thus omitting motion adaptive 3D comb filters. Others are done outputting Composite into capture cards or DVD recorder with motion adaptive 3D comb filters. I personally don't see much of visual difference between all the captures. The only difference I noticed is when I used inferior player Pioneer CLD-D703. The image is grainy. But even then the difference between motion adaptive 3D comb filter and direct S-Video is none. The other difference I noticed is when I used Compro VideoMate card. For some reason it gives very blurry image. I don't know what's wrong with this card. 01. Live In East-Berlin.avi Pioneer Elite LD-S2 -> BNC Composite -> Panasonic DMR-ES25 -> Component -> Conexant based USB stick. 02. Live In East-Berlin.avi Pioneer Elite LD-S2 -> S-Video 1 -> ATI All In Wonder 7500 03. Live In East-Berlin.avi Pioneer CLD-D703 -> Composite -> ATI TV Wonder HD 750 PCIe 04. Live In East-Berlin.avi Pioneer Elite LD-S2 -> S-Video 2 -> OneTouch VC500 (Conexant based USB stick) 05. Live In East-Berlin.avi Pioneer CLD-D703 -> S-Video -> ATI TV Wonder HD 750 USB 06. Live In East-Berlin.avi Pioneer Elite LD-S2 (before video level was lowered down) -> BNC Composite -> Panasonic DMR-ES25 -> Component -> Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle Thunderbolt Recorded into uncompressed 8 bit MOV. Converted to Huffyuv AVI using QTInput from AVISynth. 07. Live In East-Berlin.avi Pioneer Elite LD-S2 (before video level was lowered down) -> BNC Composite -> ATI Theater 550 PRO 08. Live In East-Berlin.avi Pioneer Elite LD-S2 (before video level was lowered down) -> BNC Composite -> Compro VideoMate TV Ultra 09. Live In East-Berlin.avi Pioneer Elite LD-S2 (before video level was lowered down) -> S-Video 1 -> ATI AMD TV Wonder 600 USB 10. Live In East-Berlin.avi Pioneer Elite LD-S2 (before video level was lowered down) -> BNC Composite -> ATI TV Wonder HD 750 PCIe 11. Live In East-Berlin.avi Pioneer Elite LD-S2 (before video level was lowered down) -> S-Video 1 -> OneTouch VC500 (Conexant based USB stick) |
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Attachments 4 through 6. Can moderators move all realtime attachments into one post later?
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Let me know when you're done with this volley of posts. I'll clean it all up. :)
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Attachments 4 through 6. Attempt 2.
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Attachments 4 through 6. Attempt 3. :hmm:
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Attachments 7 through 9.
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Attachments 10 through 11 plus PAL VHS and PAL DVD samples.
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Lordsmurf, I am done. If possible, move all 11 attachments (titled Live In East-Berlin) as well as VHS.m2v and Reissue.m2v into a second post. Thanks a lot.
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Thanks for all y=this work with your samples.
But....why are the samples so washed out and pale? Even the black borders are greyed on most. Otherwise I'd say no single shot lasts long enough for evaluating anything in colored floodlights and heavily reprocessed masters. Except for differences in levels (one of which hit illegal limits, many of which are clipped at y=16), the main difference I see is that some are softer than others and none are particularly sharp. With this kind of video, apparently designed for viewers with severe attention deficit disorder, it comes down strictly to a matter of preference for most of the choices. None of it represents nature or reality very well, it's all show colors. So I'd advise: pick the one you like best. Of course others might have a different take entirely. I just didn't have time to make all these uploads look more correct or "natural" for detailed evaluation. They have no dynamic range at all, so apparently these aren't tests for those qualities in a capture card. I didn't notice any dot crawl, if that's what you were aiming for. |
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Reissue.m2v is laughable indeed. Badly deinterlaced with a bunch of temporal information thrown away. Inexplicably pillarboxed to 16:9. Makes me wonder how these idiots get/keep their jobs.
I don't think this is good LD demo material for comb filter/workflow testing, because of how much the footage was abused by field blending PAL->NTSC. I didn't compare all the files, but the DMR-ES25 is creating some nasty "moth-eaten" artifacts. Is the DNR definitely off for this input? |
Hi Brad,
Yes, the DNR is definitely off on DMR-ES25. Well, that's the posterization artifact at its best. Still hoping to receive ADV7842 evaluation board. I don't know how those idiots keep their job but unfortunately this is the case for most of the DVD and BluRay reissues in music industry now days. The BluRay reissue isn't better. |
Hi Sanlyn,
Sanlyn, yes, these are the LaserDiscs I'm trying to digitize. Just the live shows which were filmed by PAL cameras at the time. I do have Video Essentials LD and I just ordered Video Standards LD. I guess I can make short samples of real scenes there, but many of my cards are gone now. ATI 600 USB, ATI 550 Theatre PCI, Blackmagic Intensity Pro - are all gone. Compro VideoMate is unplugged and is in the box. But the point I was trying to make is that for such scenes I don't see any rainbows or dot crawls regardless whether I go with motion adaptive 3D comb filter or without it. Brad, you already looked at clip #10 which was done with LD-S2 and ATI TV Wonder HD 750 PCIe card. Now if you look at clip #3 which was done with CLD-D703 and also ATI TV Wonder HD 750 PCIe, you will see that CLD-D703 produces a lot more grain than LD-S2, but has better chroma. Now the question. In your opinion the lack of grain on the clip #10 due to heavy noise reduction or just lack of noise? Is it possible to apply some AVISynth noise filters to clip #3 to get rid of such grain and make the clip look very close to #10? Note: Noise Reduction were set to off on LD-S2 during the capture. |
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So if you don't want herringbone or similar noise and you still want smooth smoky backgrounds, you'll have to live with some grain. |
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This post mentions crosstalk but it's not clear to me whether the colorbars screenshot is meant to be a demo of that or not. |
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the CLDD-D703/HD-750 combo and the LD-S2/HD-750 combo without the pass-thru unit? Are you sure the DMR-ES25 didn't screw things up? Why wasn't the DMR-ES25 used in both tests? I often wonder why anyone would be using the ES25 anyway, I've never seen anyone recommend it for pass-thru. It's not equal to the ES10 or ES15 in correction power and all three ES's have a different look to them. But that's another story. |
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