CTB-100 ghosting? (aka AVT-8710 TBC)

[BarryTheCrab]

Hello to the members of this great forum. Happy and Safe Independence Day to all.
I have read pages upon pages of analog VHS to digital captures and various aspects and man oh man there is a lot!
So...I joined in the hopes of an answer on if my CTB-100 can be "unghosted", and make some new acquaintances. To be transparent, I am BarryTheCrab from the Cyberlink Forum, 5,300 posts and still going strong.
My setup is a Philips (stop snickering) DVP 3345V. Very nice condition but it's most definitely not on your lists.
For the record this is happening with my old rundown JVC HR-S5912U as well as my aged Panny.
So...Philips to CTB-100, to Hauppage 850 USB stick (wimpy wires on the 850 I must say) and the whole thing runs into an i7 4770 capture with either the Hauppage WIN-TV 7 software or my preferred PowerDirector.
There is no doubt the CTB-100 is doing something good on MOST of this particular troubling tape. A great deal of wiggles and the like has been fixed, it is very apparent. Even some ghosting is an improvement over some of the major wiggles, it's that bad.
I have tried switching out cables, using the JVC S-video, RCA on all 3 machines, changing outlets, but the CTB unit on this tapegives me a major tear or bend on the TOP of the video, and on SOME parts of this tape (from 1986) it freezes and ghosts a great deal. This tape is a mess. So...I could not find any list of bad CTB-100, to be honest I couldn't unscrew it on my first attempt to look at it inside, very stubborn screws.
Based on this meandering presentation of mine, might you suspect the unit has an issue, or this tape is just too far gone (there is a lot of fading and pink grass, too)? What other tricks can be played to eliminate the freeze/ghosting?

[JVRaines]

Cypress changed the chipset several years back. Whether it's the chip or bad programming or both, frozen fields are what you get with this model. It's too bad, because otherwise it's a great little frame sync for the money.

[BarryTheCrab]

Would you suggest getting rid of it and getting the 8710, which in appearance is the same but inside I suspect very different, from my reading. I know there is a store here at the forum but I have not visited yet.

[koberulz]

The 8710 is the same box with the same problem.

[sanlyn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by BarryTheCrab

Happy and Safe Independence Day to all.

And to you as well, and welcome.

Quote:

Originally Posted by BarryTheCrab

My setup is a Philips (stop snickering) DVP 3345V. Very nice condition but it's most definitely not on your lists.

With no line tbc in that player, it likely will never be listed. Neither will the JVC. Which brings up the next point....

Quote:

Originally Posted by BarryTheCrab

There is no doubt the CTB-100 is doing something good on MOST of this particular troubling tape. A great deal of wiggles and the like has been fixed, it is very apparent. Even some ghosting is an improvement over some of the major wiggles

If you refer to horizontal line sync errors, you've uncovered what must be the only CBT-100/AVT-8710 frame-level tbc that corrects line timing errors. It would be interesting to see a sample.

Quote:

Originally Posted by BarryTheCrab

but the CTB unit on this tapegives me a major tear or bend on the TOP of the video, and on SOME parts of this tape (from 1986) it freezes and ghosts a great deal.

Top border flagging is a sign of line timing errors, which your type of TBC won't fix.

What do you mean by ghosting? Does it occur without the CBT in circuit?

When you incur multiple problems such as these, it's a good idea to post an unfiltered sample. Since you're capturing with Cyberlink from VHS to DV or another lossy codec (you should know better than that), your Cyberlink software should be able to allow a few seconds of edited original without re-encoding. I don't usually work on VHS to lossy captures, but a short few seconds of sample video made using a frame-level tbc that corrects line timing errors but causes flagging and ghosting all at the same time sounds most intruiging. A visual sample would certainly help.

[BarryTheCrab]

Yes, I am capturing to MPEG2. It will be going to DVD. I know you ALL use Avisynth, but not being an uber-tech gives me pause.
So, here is a sample. The tape is horrid, though a few parts play perfect and I suspect may have been dubbed from another tape, I am at a loss here and might even send the tape the the Lord Smurf & Co.
The semi-transparent freeze frames are not in this clip, but that is what I refer to as "ghosting", though I may be mis-using the term.

[sanlyn]

Thanks for the sample., but sadly it's not original.

Quote:

Originally Posted by BarryTheCrab

Yes, I am capturing to MPEG2. It will be going to DVD. I know you ALL use Avisynth, but not being an uber-tech gives me pause.

Avisynth can't be used for capture. No one uses Avisynth for that.

Comments have to be very limited for samples that have been extensively reprocessed and re-encoded. But that's a tape dub with some really bad colorspace conversions (by Cyberlink, and more by something else? Cyberlink converts to RGB for the work done, doesn't work with YV12->RGB very well), and a lot of other boo-boo's. So all that can be said, really, is that something with a more effective line tbc is required. With all the disturbances coming out of the players, it's asking a lot from the the CBT. The JVC shot isn't 100% lack of a line tbc (which that player doesn't have) but also poor alignment. At some point the field order has been reversed in one segment, and there are other problems -- repeated frames, frames inserted out of order, duplicates, some really odd image wobble, chroma displacement from improper resizing of YV12 originals, plus other bad processing, and....well, you get the idea. The original must have been bad enough, but this sample is too butchered to tell what's causing what.

No ghosting, though.

The attached re-encoded sample is deinterlaced so that you can see what the individual fields are doing, edited to make it shorter, and encoded field-by-field at 5fps so you can see the real damage.

[JVRaines]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sanlyn

If you refer to horizontal line sync errors, you've uncovered what must be the only CBT-100/AVT-8710 frame-level tbc that corrects line timing errors. It would be interesting to see a sample.

I had an AVT-8710 that also did a fair job on wiggly lines, though not as good as a DVD recorder.

[lordsmurf]

Your CTB-100 (aka AVT-8710, both rebadged Cypress units) is bad. All post-2010 Cypress units use flawed chipsets. There are actually multiple issues, but the freezing frames are most obvious.

See also: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vcr-...-8710-doa.html

I have a TBC-1000 available, and it works perfectly. Emails me if interested.

[BarryTheCrab]

Dear lordsmurf,
it is my honor to "meet" you and your colleagues.
Based on this thread I have returned the unit.
In an attempt to step up the quality and dependability of my occasional captures (which usually go without incident) I sprang for a long lusted after TBC. ERROR.
And...I think my Hauppage only captures DV and MPEG so that is also in need of looking at, perhaps. Budget is always a concern, but the topic is wandering a little maybe, so I will research that here before starting another thread.
An email to LS to inquire follows.
Thank you,
BarryTheCrab

[lordsmurf]

Which Hauppauge? I still have 1 ATI 600 USB left, new in box.

nth gen VHS tapes (copies of copies) can be not-fun. Lots and lots of potential issues, and gets worse with every generation of copying that was done.

I use Avisynth, but not as much as others. I prefer GUI tools when available. But, of course, some things can ONLY be done in Avisynth. Having AvsPmod makes it less code-y.

[BarryTheCrab]

LS,
I have the 850, which has very wimpy wires, but I think probably they are sufficient for A/V throughput, after all Hauppage is not new at this, but I think it only captures MPEG or DV, I can't seem to find a program that will capture with it in AVI. Anyway I was thinking maybe THAT could be a weak link and causing some of the freezing, or just the fact it was stated here that a better choice is AVI, but now I'm going in circles. I am in a spot where decent tapes are not a problem, but to step it up and be able to force junk tapes to submit to my will I need a better VCR, and a TBC, possibly a better capture dongle, at least my computer is alright. i7-4770, 16G RAM, Nvidia GTX960-4Gb. Step by step.

[sanlyn]

VirtualDub and AmarecTV are the mainstays most people use for lossless AVI capture, with huffyuv or Lagarith the most popular lossless compressors for capture, restoration (which means cleanup to most of us, something an NLE editor was never designed for), and edits. I don't believe anyone here would recommend an editor for analog to digital capture, least of all anything from Cyberlink. Whether the 850 can work with DirectShow lossless capture is up for reply from those who've used it that way, so I stand ready for correction on that score. The ATI 600 USB (hard to find) and the Hauppauge USB Live-2 are similar, while the Diamond VC500 USB has been around for a while. These would be the affordable and decent capture alternatives short of an ATI All In Wonder setup (which requires an AGP or PCIe mount and Windows XP).

This is old news to users who've been fighting through the hassles of getting high quality transfers from analog tape, whether VHS, SVHS, VHS-C, or Hi8, etc. Looks as if it should be a simple copy job, but it isn't. Analog and digital are worlds apart. The best setups are those few that are optimized specifically for analog sources.

A working external frame-level TBC is getting more and more difficult to find, and line-tbc's for tape playback are found only on high-end VCR's that are all near or at the end of their expected lifespans. TGrantSales is one reliable source for rebuilt gear, or try this forum's marketplace section. EBay is out, period. For tbc you could also consider a pass-thru unit as discussed in these forums, finding a working Panasonic ES10 or ES15 that offers good line-tbc performance as well as nominal frame-sync capability (but which won't defeat Macrovision). There are workarounds, but you don't see them mentioned in the usual editor user forums or clueless consumer sources the likes of CNET.

Meanwhile damaged, abused, and multi-generation tapes are problems of their own. No NLE is equipped to help with those -- in fact, NLE's likely produced a lot of bad output using techniques that could have been avoided using other software. In short, you have to match the tool to the job at hand.

[BarryTheCrab]

The truly troubling mess of a tape that started all this was probably garbage when it was dubbed.
So, I was going to say this in a PM to lordsmurf, but I have to do it publicly and take my lumps. The 850 dongle is letting me capture Windows AVI in PowerDirector, and the Mediainfo is as follows...please note this is a different tape from the horror show.
Format : AVI
Format/Info : Audio Video Interleave
File size : 16.1 MiB
Duration : 890 ms
Overall bit rate : 152 Mb/s
Video
ID : 0
Format : YUV
Codec ID : YUY2
Codec ID/Info : YUV 4:2:2 as for UYVY but with different component ordering within the u_int32 macropixel
Duration : 866 ms
Bit rate : 148 Mb/s
Width : 640 pixels
Height : 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 4:3
Frame rate : 30.032 FPS
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:2
Compression mode : Lossless
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 15.995
Stream size : 15.2 MiB (94%)

Again I run the risk of veering off-topic...and perhaps I have gone as far as needed here.

[sanlyn]

Thanks again for the new sample. I guess you must have changed the name of the posted sample, which was originally "VHS DV Capture.avi". The new sample renamed as PD16 is the same clip, different name.,

First noted is that the frame rate is an oddball 30.032 fps, the audio sampling rate is 44.1Khz, and the frame size is 640x480. All three of those elements are invalid for DVD or BluRay, so I assume that web posting and PC or external storage drive playback are your ultimate goals. The sample's format is not "DV", but is YUY2 (4:2:2) uncompressed AVI. The DV format would be YV12 (4:2:0) or YV12 (4:1:1), or only half the color resolution of YUY2, with DV artifacts added. Uncompressed and/or losslessly compressed AVI does not have added compression artifacts.

You're better off with uncompressed YUY2 (which preserves the luma and chroma format of analog tape) -- and considering the kind of grain, spots and block noise in the original film, you managed to avoid the heavy compression artifacts of lossy DV encoding, which are a nightmare to clean without destroying every detail in sight. The size of uncompressed YUY2 could be losslessly compressed with Lagarith or Huffyuv. Your uncompressed sample file size was 16.9 MB. As Lagarith lossless YUY2 the size would be less than 1/3 of the sample, or 3.7 MB, with no compression damage and 100% intact.

Cleaning the spots and the snatch of hair in the sample had to be done carefully to keep as much of the original as I could, but there's always a cost with dirty transfers. This is cleaner than many old-film transfers we've seen. I suspect the sample's frame rate is speeded-up from the original film, which would have been anything from 18 to 24 fps. I picked 19.8 fps, as that frame rate is the slowest that can be neatly telecined to play at 29.97fps for NTSC DVD.

To meet DVD spec the frame would have to be resized to 720x480. With telecine applied, the encoding is automatically classed as "interlaced". Your sample played as interlaced video from your VCR and was captured as interlaced, but the frames themselves are pure progressive film speeded up to NTSC but somehow captured at 30.032fps. The more I watch the film played back, the more it looks as if it was recorded at 23.976, but that would have been unusual for a consumer camera of that era.

The cleanup I performed can't be done with an NLE. I used Avisynth, including the speed adjust, monitored in VirtualDub, and added pulldown flags with a freebie called DGPulldown. The dark gray bar at the left was overlaid with a lighter patch, but that would have been a much neater job with something like Adobe Premiere Pro and its advanced masking tools. I'm not satisfied with the results on that vertical line, but a little more experimentation might get cleaner results. The original sample has right-edge oversharpening halos, which are common with tape. It also appears that your player has some level of builtin line tbc. There are very few prominent vertical wiggles, although the right-hand border has notches and does give a jerk about halfway through the sample, but that could be on the film source. The color balance of the source itself isn't true neutral gray but is slightly green -- that's a minor matter, but I converted to straight monochrome.

How much of the original grime you want removed is up to you and is adjustable. I think trying to remove more than 90% of it, as I did with the attached sample, takes something away from the atmospherics of the original. The filter strengths are changeable. Leaving in more of the original grain would probably look more authentic, although some motion smoothing is needed in the light gray waves in the background. Personally I would have kept more noise. One temptation is to overbrighten the original, which wouldn't be correct: the scene was shot in overcast subdued light, not in bright sunlight.

The link for the Lagarith lossless compressor for YV12, YUY2, and RGB video is https://lags.leetcode.net/codec.html, both 32- and 64-bit. Lagarith is free. Its installer will install both versions in 64-bit systems. Use 32-bit for Virtualdub and Avisynth, use 64-bit for 64-bit Power Director. The more you learn about video the less you'll be using Power Director. I could post the Avisynth script I used, but at this point you'd have no idea how it works.

[sanlyn]

OK, I couldn't leave that DP sample alone. Still questioning your goals for final output format. I recompressed the original YUY2 with lossless Lagarith for a smaller working file, and reworked for a slightly smoother version and encoding for standard DVD output telecined for 29.97fps NTSC

At the risk of information overload I'm posting the Avisynth script as a plain text file. Critique and flames welcome. Some of this is new to me with old films. 26 frames isn't much to work with.