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  #1  
02-09-2018, 04:03 PM
Liberty610 Liberty610 is offline
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I just received my Sony DCR-TRV230 from good 'ol eBay today. I am happy to report the camera is in really great shape. Cosmetically it looks almost new, and I did a test capture via FireWire today with a full digital8 format tape (a little over an hour long) and everything seems good. The cassette mechanism is still solid; nice and smooth open/closing with no odd sticking issues. No tape jams after trying 3 or 4 tapes out.

I have a couple Digital8 tapes I am working with for capture this weekend, along with a few regular Hi8 tapes. The DCR-TRV230 has fire wire capture of course, and the software I used to cap the test was ScenalyzerLive. If anyone has a better suggestion, please let me know - but I have read the comment 'DV is DV no matter what software you use - it stays the same dtatarate, ect'. I like the fact that ScenalyzerLive will name the files based on the date stamped in the time code, as I sort all my home movie media on my pc by date.

So, that leads me to my targeted media with these tapes. DVD is one, and my digital archive is the other. I have a large NAS storage unit where all my home videos and media is stored, all sorted by folders/date. I try to keep those files in high quality so I can pull from them later for DVD copies for family or to add to youtube. A lot of my video files these days come from digital tape-less cameras of course, so those are pretty easy to keep sorted and stored - drag and drop the files where I want them. These tape sources, of course not so much.

I have read threads here about targeted media, and I see lossless AVI is best for capture, Mpeg2 best for DVD/Archiving, and H.264 (I think?) for online sites like youtube, is this correct?

Are there any recommendations for my upcoming captures? Should I do firewire capture for the Digital8 and anlog for the regular with Virtualdub? Or just use Firewire for all of them? The camera does have an S-video out. The capture device I will have access to this weekend is the Happauge USB Live 2.
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  #2  
02-09-2018, 06:31 PM
sanlyn sanlyn is offline
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It's a shame you have to take a quality hit and add compression artifacts by encoding analog Hi8 to lossy DV before going to another lossy encoding stage for DVD. Yes, lossless is the highest quality for analog-to-digital capture, and there are several lossless codecs for realtime lossless compression to reduce the file size (huffyuv, Lagarith, UT Video). Lossless is the ultimate capture archive for analog sources. From lossless one can easily go to any of dozens of final output or web formats. Meanwhile DV-to-DV is always copied, not captured or re-recorded, via Firewire, to avoid first-stage loss. I don't know why anyone would want to degrade either Hi8 or DV source by capturing directly to h.264, especially to large-GOP sources that seriously cripple future editing.

Last edited by sanlyn; 02-09-2018 at 07:23 PM.
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  #3  
02-09-2018, 06:38 PM
Liberty610 Liberty610 is offline
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I will gladly capture the analog hi8 tapes to a lossless avid file for sure. No problems with doing that at all. I just have to trade up more on virtualdub to do it.

Is the Hauppauge USB live 2 a decent option for Windows 10 a decent option for capturing with Virtual dub? Is going to be the analog capture device I have access to for the weekend.
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02-09-2018, 07:30 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Liberty610 View Post
I will gladly capture the analog hi8 tapes to a lossless avid file for sure. No problems with doing that at all. I just have to trade up more on virtualdub to do it.
It takes longer to read up on it than to do it. There is an updated detailed guide: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...-settings.html. Includes notations on working with USB units.

Is the Hauppauge USB live 2 a decent option for Windows 10 a decent option for capturing with Virtual dub? Is going to be the analog capture device I have access to for the weekend.[/quote]The Hauppauge is one of the forum's recommended units optimized for digital source capture. The Diamond VC500, also popular, has been around for several years and is very similar.
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  #5  
02-09-2018, 08:14 PM
Liberty610 Liberty610 is offline
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Thanks for the reply! The link to the Virtualdub is what I've been looking into on and off.

I'm not to savy with color levels and what not yet. After the capture, what should I look to do next to touch the footage up?
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02-09-2018, 10:12 PM
sanlyn sanlyn is offline
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The standard and preferred capture format for analog such as VHS or Hi8 is 720x480 interlaced lossless AVI files using a YUY2 color space. YUY2 more closely resembles (and preserves) the color system used by analog tape, which is not exactly the same color system used by DV. Most would use huffyuv for lossless compression, it's easiest on CPU's during capture.

What to do with the capture later? That depends on how it looks and what you intend for final output. You can cut a short few seconds of captured video and preserve its original colorspace and compression without alteration by making a short sample edit this way: open the file in Virtualdub and use the edit controls in the lower left corner of VDub's workspace (you can also use items in the top main menu). About 8 to 10 seconds of lossless huffyuv YUY2 video with motion would suffice and would fall under the 99mb upload limit. Save your selected edit by clicking "Video..." -> then select "Direct stream copy" in the drop down menu. Then save the new sample file.
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  #7  
02-09-2018, 10:24 PM
Liberty610 Liberty610 is offline
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Awesome! Thanks for the input. I should have the USB live 2 device tomorrow. I'll output the camera via S-Video into Virtualdub using the huffyuv option. I have read up on it, just have not done any capturing with it yet. I am going to capture the footage through firewire as well and do comparisons. I'm interested to see how much of a difference I personally can see,
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02-09-2018, 11:55 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Liberty610 View Post
I just received my Sony DCR-TRV230 from good 'ol eBay today. I am happy to report the camera is in really great shape. Cosmetically it looks almost new
D8 cameras from eBay tend to be better than not, because the owners rarely used them. I'm really not surprised,

Quote:
So, that leads me to my targeted media with these tapes. DVD is one, and my digital archive is the other. I have a large NAS storage unit where all my home videos and media is stored, all sorted by folders/date. I try to keep those files in high quality so I can pull from them later for DVD copies for family or to add to youtube. A lot of my video files these days come from digital tape-less cameras of course, so those are pretty easy to keep sorted and stored - drag and drop the files where I want them. These tape sources, of course not so much.
My method is
- capture lossless
- if future editing/restoration needed, save lossless
- if not, fine as is, same as 422 MPEG-2 at 15+mbps (encoded with MainConcept)

Quote:
I have read threads here about targeted media, and I see lossless AVI is best for capture, Mpeg2 best for DVD/Archiving, and H.264 (I think?) for online sites like youtube, is this correct?
Pretty much. The streaming copy is also deinter;aced copy.

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Originally Posted by Liberty610 View Post
lossless avid file
I don't recall Avid having anything lossless for SD, and the best HD in lossy DNxHD (similar to ProRes422, almost lossless lossy).

Quote:
Is the Hauppauge USB live 2 a decent option for Windows 10 a decent option for capturing with Virtual dub? Is going to be the analog capture device I have access to for the weekend
It's fine.

Quote:
Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
What to do with the capture later? That depends on how it looks and what you intend for final output. You can cut a short few seconds of captured video and preserve its original colorspace and compression without alteration by making a short sample edit this way: open the file in Virtualdub and use the edit controls in the lower left corner of VDub's workspace (you can also use items in the top main menu). About 8 to 10 seconds of lossless huffyuv YUY2 video with motion would suffice and would fall under the 99mb upload limit. Save your selected edit by clicking "Video..." -> then select "Direct stream copy" in the drop down menu. Then save the new sample file.
^ This.

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Originally Posted by Liberty610 View Post
Awesome!
I am going to capture the footage through firewire as well and do comparisons. I'm interested to see how much of a difference I personally can see,
Happy capturing.

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  #9  
02-10-2018, 11:18 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lordsmurf View Post
I don't recall Avid having anything lossless for SD, and the best HD in lossy DNxHD (similar to ProRes422, almost lossless lossy).
I apologize. That was a type-o. Lossless AVI without the 'd' was what that should have said.

I am happy to report that I have the USB Live 2 installed, and it is successfully talking with Vdub for capturing.

I have been following the guide for the settings that sanlyn provided, and so far so good. I have run into a hiccup with the huffyuv compression. I can't seem to get it to show up in the options menu. I downloaded the rar files off the forum here. I wasn't sure which ones to go for, so I went for them all. I have the HuffYUV.rar and the 65.rar. I also downloaded the the HuffYUV-multithreaded.rar and the VirtualDub 1.9.11 + Filters.rar file.

I unRar the standard HuffYUV rar, and I see the .dll and the.inf files. I read up on the install thread for these, but I am apparently doing something wrong because in the compression section in Vdub, the HuffYUV isn't showing up as an option.

I followed the instructions and right clicked on the .inf file and cliked 'install' and it asked me for admin rights, I accepted, and then it appeared to install, but the option isn't listed in Vdub. I restarted Vdub twice, and even selected 'Show all codecs, even if they may not work' and it is not listed there. I tried both the regular Huffyuv and the 64bit. Do I need to extract them to a certain folder first?
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02-10-2018, 11:21 AM
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Which instructions?
Did you see this: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...html#post11627
If not, that's your issue.

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  #11  
02-10-2018, 11:46 AM
Liberty610 Liberty610 is offline
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I did not see this, thanks.

I did try it, but no luck. I am confused, because I did not get en error message, and it appeared to install fine. But it is still not showing up in the compression section in Vdub under the video tab. I even re-tried it with the 64bit one, and a after running the command listed on the thread you showed me, it box popped up and said 'A version of this is already installled, do you want to over right it?"

So, it apparently installed, but Vdub isn't seeing it still. Do I need to reboot my entire system after the install? Or just Vdub?

-- merged --

Scratch that. ha. I got it! Thanks!

I can't seem to get video to playback however after the catpure. I get the audio, but no video. I tried Windows media player (The Windows 10 built in one) and VLC, whcih tells me it doesn't have the Huff codec?

-- merged --

Okay, so I ran into a couple more bumps. The huffYUV compression issue I edited in above (wasn't sure if you saw that or not).

I was only getting Black and White from the S-Video cable, but there was a bent pin in the cable. That's fixed.

Now, this next issue I remember I had with my Canon HV30 as well, but there is an option to change settings for it. On the TRV230, the way you transfer video/audio is of course with S-Video or composite cables. The supplied composite cable has the standard red, yellow, white cables on one end, then a 3.5mm plug on the other that transfers all 3 signals from the audio/video jack on the camera. I am using that cable to transfer the audio, and the S-Video cable of course for the video.

The audio has a terrible buzz in it. Like, overly dramatic buzz. On the HV30, there is a settings in the playback menu to chage the a/v output jack to A/V both or just audio. I remember wearing a pair of headphones one time trying to watch a tape playback on it, and this simular buzz was there, and switching the option to just audio got rid of the buzz.

I am assuming this is the same sort of issue. After hearing this horrific buzz in the test capture I did, I tried a pair of headphones. Buzz is there, and super loud. The issue is, I can not for the life of me see where in the options I can switch the a/v output jack to JUST audio. Am i missing something? Or am I on the right path and just have to find the option in the menus....


**UPDATE** you can delete this. I am a moron. There is a headphone jack on the other side of the camera.
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02-10-2018, 01:36 PM
sanlyn sanlyn is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Liberty610 View Post
I can't seem to get video to playback however after the catpure. I get the audio, but no video. I tried Windows media player (The Windows 10 built in one) and VLC, whcih tells me it doesn't have the Huff codec?
That's odd, I'm playing huffyuv files all day long with the latest 32-bit VLC player in Win7. It doesn't matter if you have other codecs installed, VLC uses its own and ignores external codecs.

Windows Media Player for W10 is a total loss anyway, just forget it's there. There are better media players, even in older 32-buit versions:
- The old standby Media Player Classic (MPC) https://www.videohelp.com/download/m...c_20100214.zip
- A newer 32-bit Media Player Classic BE (MPC-BE) https://www.videohelp.com/download/M...-installer.zip
- An even newer 32-bit Media Classic Home Cinema (MPC-HC) https://www.videohelp.com/download/M...1.7.13.x86.exe

As for VLC, I still have this guy but every new version has a different problem that previous versions didn't have, and they keep changing their internal codec lineup.
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  #13  
02-10-2018, 01:53 PM
Liberty610 Liberty610 is offline
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Yea, I don't use the standard Windows 10 player at all anyways, but I tried it just to see what it would do.

I tried a capture with the standard AVI uncompressed option that's at the top of the list - YIKES. Holy file size. 20 minute video was over 18 gigs. Can't be doing that for my archive files ha. Temporary projects, sure. But that's about it.

I'll try and switch back to the huffyuv and see what happens with the playback. If one of these other media players you suggested plays them fine, I'll be sure to use it as my standard player for these captures. I want to be able to capture in AVI format for sure and keep them in my archive. That way if I need to post them to youtube or make a family member a DVD of a certain video, I can do so from the AVI file like you mentioned before.

I have my first tape captured. I did a comparison between the AVI analog and the Firewire DV by matching the clips up in Vegas Pro 14 and muting the top video on and off. I can see what you mean for sure with the DV caps. The colors are not as rich, and the cropping feature for the analog cap really helped fill the frame properly. So thanks for pointing me into the S-Video direction.

Thanks for all the tips. This is getting interesting, but in a fun way

-- merged --

So this is a sample of what I got from the capture so far. Hopefully i did this right. I went in, selected a few seconds of video, and under the video tab I selected 'direct stream copy' and then under file I saved it as avi.

I didn't do much with the capture itself as far as settings in contrast and what not. Wasn't really sure what would be the best settings. I did go in and crop it a bit to get rid of the black portions around the edges.

I also attached two screen shots. One is the analog capture, the other the firewire cap.What a difference.....


Attached Images
File Type: jpg Image2.jpg (137.9 KB, 17 downloads)
File Type: jpg Image3.jpg (89.7 KB, 17 downloads)
Attached Files
File Type: avi samp.avi (85.92 MB, 22 downloads)
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  #14  
02-10-2018, 04:54 PM
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The analog capture should look anywhere near that smeary.

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02-10-2018, 04:55 PM
Liberty610 Liberty610 is offline
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That's what I kinda felt too. But I'm not sure what's causing it?
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02-10-2018, 05:36 PM
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Likely the capture card. Maybe...

Capture some VHS to lossless AVI. Let's compare.

Be very sure to take screenshots with VirtualDub, not something else. Other stuff messes with the image quality. VirtualDub is precise, unmolested screenshot of video frame.

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02-10-2018, 09:29 PM
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Thanks for the sample. Not bad for a first try with VDub.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Liberty610 View Post
the cropping feature for the analog cap really helped fill the frame properly.
Nope, that's not what the crop feature is designed for primarily, and you don't want to modify the source image to that extent. The crop function temporarily eliminates black borders and other disturbances such as bottom-border head switching noise, because they adversely affect the levels histogram. You're supposed to disable cropping before starting the capture.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Liberty610 View Post
So this is a sample of what I got from the capture so far. Hopefully i did this right. I went in, selected a few seconds of video, and under the video tab I selected 'direct stream copy' and then under file I saved it as avi.
That's correct.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Liberty610 View Post
I didn't do much with the capture itself as far as settings in contrast and what not. Wasn't really sure what would be the best settings.
A sample histogram is shown in the settings guide linked earlier. As it is, you protected highlights okay, but darks are crushed. The image below shows a histogram with with dark levels in the non-safe area of the graph (white bar at top of the histogram). The non-safe side borders of the levels histograms indicate when the input signal encroaches into unsafe levels. In this case you end up with murky darks and very little dark shadow detail because of clipping.



Quote:
Originally Posted by Liberty610 View Post
I did go in and crop it a bit to get rid of the black portions around the edges.
Ouch!! Don't do that the way you did it here. It's not the way borders are adjusted. As it is, you cropped illegally using odd vertical scanline numbers and screwed up the chroma. You have to ask yourself what you're going to do with a height of 471 pixels, which isn't valid for any standard format. It results in fatal errors from many filters, is a problem for many media players, and will be rejected by most encoders.

In order to work with the sample I had to replace the original vertical borders in Avisynth to get a height of 480 pixels, at the same time centering the image vertically. The 704-pixel width works OK for standard def DVD, but for a 16:9 image you'll need 720 width. There are a bizzilion examples of cropping and restoring original frame dimensions with Avisynth and VirtualDub. Avoid the newbie mistake of cropping borders and then resizing the image to fill the frame -- it distorts and degrades the image. The attached mp4 was deinterlaced with QTGMC and encoded for 480p web posting at 59.94 fps. The sample's lighting looked a little dim so I increased gamma a bit in Avisynth.

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Originally Posted by lordsmurf View Post
The analog capture should look anywhere near that smeary.
Illegal cropping dimension is probably the culprit, along with YUV processing in Vegas. Colors look a little corrupt, especially red, and there's a sepia color cast over the image.

And why is this video's field order bottom field first instead of TFF?


Attached Images
File Type: jpg frame 192 levels.jpg (74.8 KB, 79 downloads)
Attached Files
File Type: mp4 samp_480p.mp4 (6.00 MB, 10 downloads)

Last edited by sanlyn; 02-10-2018 at 10:15 PM.
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  #18  
02-10-2018, 09:33 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
Illegal cropping dimension is probably the culprit, along with YUV processing in Vegas. Colors look a little corrupt, especially red, and there's a sepia color cast over the image.
Yep, I missed that.

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  #19  
02-11-2018, 06:46 AM
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Sorry for the delayed replied to these.... my eyeballs were fried and I needed to take a step back from this. I was at it for over 6 hours straight.

Quote:
Originally Posted by lordsmurf View Post
Capture some VHS to lossless AVI. Let's compare.

Be very sure to take screenshots with VirtualDub, not something else. Other stuff messes with the image quality. VirtualDub is precise, unmolested screenshot of video frame.
I can capture some VHS today and post it. I won't get my Panasonic AG-1980 until later this week, but I have the good 'ol Emerson I can pass through the ES15 for now just to see what happens.

How do you screen shot in Vdub? I can't seem to find it. And I am assuming the capture card isn't the issue now? I just botched the capture?

Quote:
Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
Thanks for the sample. Not bad for a first try with VDub.
Thanks for the encouraging words. This is legit my first time trying this. Have not done much with analog since Pinnacle Studio back in 2007-ish.

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Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
Nope, that's not what the crop feature is designed for primarily, and you don't want to modify the source image to that extent. The crop function temporarily eliminates black borders and other disturbances such as bottom-border head switching noise, because they adversely affect the levels histogram. You're supposed to disable cropping before starting the capture.
This is where I got confused after reading other threads you and lordsmurf where posting in (I really do try to read about things before I ask questions .) For whatever reason, the Crop section remained check marked after I took the black boarder out. Was I suppose to reset all the crop values to 0? What threw me off was, the cropping went away in the preview/overlay window while it was capturing, but it apparently kept the settings in tact. I remember reading posts where you said to turn it off before capturing, which I thought I had done. Guess not?

Quote:
Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
A sample histogram is shown in the settings guide linked earlier. As it is, you protected highlights okay, but darks are crushed. The image below shows a histogram with with dark levels in the non-safe area of the graph (white bar at top of the histogram). The non-safe side borders of the levels histograms indicate when the input signal encroaches into unsafe levels. In this case you end up with murky darks and very little dark shadow detail because of clipping.
First off, wow.... that fixed clip you posted looks awesome compared to the first. THAT'S the kind of result I want to know how to achieve. And I am sure there where other things that could be done to it to make it even better....

Histogram is kinda like EQ for video in a way? I some what now how to read one, but never really know how what to ajust. Is it suppose to be pretty even all the way across?

When I started setting up Vdub with my VCR via composite cables to get the settings started, I was able to see the histogram fine. Once I switch to the Hi8 cam-corder with an S-Video cable, what I would see is a blank bar like what what you see in the image I have attached. to this reply. Is there a setting I missed somewhere?

Quote:
Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
Ouch!! Don't do that the way you did it here. It's not the way borders are adjusted. As it is, you cropped illegally using odd vertical scanline numbers and screwed up the chroma. You have to ask yourself what you're going to do with a height of 471 pixels, which isn't valid for any standard format. It results in fatal errors from many filters, is a problem for many media players, and will be rejected by most encoders.

Illegal cropping dimension is probably the culprit, along with YUV processing in Vegas. Colors look a little corrupt, especially red, and there's a sepia color cast over the image.
Thanks for the info on this. As I mentioned earlier, the cropping this was a mis-understanding mostly, and I thought I had turned it off. I am assuming you have to actually reset the all vaules to 0 in it when you are done using it to look at the histogram.

Quote:
Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
Illegal cropping dimension is probably the culprit, along with YUV processing in Vegas. Colors look a little corrupt, especially red, and there's a sepia color cast over the image.
Are you referring to just the still images I posted? The video clip I uploaded never touched vegas. That one came right from Vdub. The stills I captured in Vegas.

Quote:
Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
And why is this video's field order bottom field first instead of TFF?
I honestly am not sure. Like I said, all I really did aside from the cropping is simply capture it using the Vdub guide you posted. Should all analog caps be top field first? If not, how do you know what the feild order should be? And how do you change it in Vdub?

@Lordsmurf: When you say smeary, are you referring to the black interlaced lines around the colors? Or something else? I noticed that the digital cap, even though the colors were weaker, had a more clear signal.

Sorry, I am all new to this! Just trying to put the pieces together! As far as AVIsynth goes, I have it, but not a clue how to use it. I don't want to get to ahead of myself here though, so I wanna figure out what needs addressed in the cap process first.

I do appreciate all the help though! I feel like I on the right track...?


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  #20  
02-11-2018, 11:05 AM
sanlyn sanlyn is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Liberty610 View Post
Sorry for the delayed replied to these....
Dion't wsorry about it. We don't like to push and shove around here. We get tired too.

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Originally Posted by Liberty610 View Post
How do you screen shot in Vdub? I can't seem to find it.
Top menu, "Video..."-> then "Copy source frame to clipboard." If you want to see the effects of any VDub filters applied, "Copy output frame to clipboard". We would prefer the unaltered source frame for the forum.

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Originally Posted by Liberty610 View Post
And I am assuming the capture card isn't the issue now? I just botched the capture?
LOL, it's a long way from botched. Stick around, you'll see some really awful captures.

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Originally Posted by Liberty610 View Post
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Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
Nope, that's not what the crop feature is designed for primarily, and you don't want to modify the source image to that extent. The crop function temporarily eliminates black borders and other disturbances such as bottom-border head switching noise, because they adversely affect the levels histogram. You're supposed to disable cropping before starting the capture.
Was I suppose to reset all the crop values to 0? What threw me off was, the cropping went away in the preview/overlay window while it was capturing, but it apparently kept the settings in tact. I remember reading posts where you said to turn it off before capturing, which I thought I had done. Guess not?
That's a complaint of mine as well. Yes, you have to set crop params back to zero. Pain in the neck, yes, I agree. And I've forgotten to it, too !

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Originally Posted by Liberty610 View Post
Histogram is kinda like EQ for video in a way? I some what now how to read one, but never really know how what to ajust. Is it suppose to be pretty even all the way across?

When I started setting up Vdub with my VCR via composite cables to get the settings started, I was able to see the histogram fine. Once I switch to the Hi8 cam-corder with an S-Video cable, what I would see is a blank bar like what what you see in the image I have attached. to this reply. Is there a setting I missed somewhere?
Histograms and similar graphs aren't EQ. They do do anything, they just show information. They do help you analyze trouble spots and they chnage accordingly when you make corrections. It's difficult to eyeball many visual problems correctly, even though your brain is saying "something is wrong here, but what?". There are many types of graphs, including those based on YUV like the one I used and those based in RGB, such as the ColorTools plugin for VirtualDub. There are also waveforms and vectorscopes, which present the same information in different ways.

Not every scene will fill a histogram edge to edge. A night scene and most interiors won't get bright enough -- although you can have specular highlights such as a light or lamp in the frame that's brighter than other objects. During playback the levels will vary (they change a few times slightly but visibly in your sample when darker and lighter objects enter the frame). Usually a minute or two of play will allow you to set a safe range for varying levels. Aim for the worst-case scenario -- you can always adjust after capture. Retail tape editions are more well-behaved, but not always.

Changing the player or the source might require at least minor changes in your levels setup, but sometimes not. Why the histogram disappeared is a mystery to me, but I see you're using VDub v.10.x. I never noticed any problem with v.9.x, but I never changed input cables while setting up levels. Maybe it requires restarting VDub.

There's a good free histogram and levels tutorial at Cambridge Photo. It's for still cameras, but the principles for video are exactly the same. The article uses parade-style histograms like those in Photoshop, Premiere, Vegas and VDub's ColorTools.
Understanding histograms Part 1 and Part 2
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tut...istograms1.htm
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tut...istograms2.htm

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Originally Posted by Liberty610 View Post
Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
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Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
Illegal cropping dimension is probably the culprit, along with YUV processing in Vegas. Colors look a little corrupt, especially red, and there's a sepia color cast over the image.
Are you referring to just the still images I posted? The video clip I uploaded never touched vegas. That one came right from Vdub. The stills I captured in Vegas.
The sepia color cast is in the video. But all analog and consumer DV videos have some kind of color cast, usually from the camera, and red is usually pushed harder than the other colors (because it makes video samples look "good" in neon-lighted showrooms). Often the color cast is cyan or yellow-green. This applies to analog tape as well as DV, the latter of which likes to push bright levels past legal limits to impress those who don't know better. Some VCR brands will push contrast to ridiculous levels. They're all capture headaches, which is why better cap software has level controls.

Both images and the video alike have bright edge sharpening halos that are apparently in the original recording. I used a good Avisynth filter plugin for that (DeHalo_ALpha) and the aWarpSharp2 plugin to help reduce chroma bleed. There is also DCT ringing (edge ghosting) in the date-and-time chartacters in the lower right, for which AVisynth has some deringers -- unfortunately they soften some videos too much. These filters require deinterlaced video. In the case of the earlier mp4 I left the video progressive at 59.94 fps, although many websites would force you to drop alternate frames to maintain 29.97 fps. For DVD one would normally reinterlace in Avisynth, which does it cleanly and efficiently the way it's supposed to be done and which can do it changing field order to the usual TFF. But in this case a common problem of noisy interlace raised its ugly head (excessive combing effects). This is a fault of camera shutter design; some are worse at interlace than others. With an old CRT, it's not noticeable.

For today's TV's, one can discard alternate frames with a clean deinterlacer like QTGMC and make a valid standard def DVD or BluRay by lying to your encoder and telling it to encode with interlace flags (many set top players will play it as interlaced anyway!). The attached mpg was processed and encoded that way. This cuts temporal resoltiioon from the otiginal 59.94 fileds per secvond to 29.97 fields per second and results in less smooth motion, especially on camera pans. Sometim,es there's just a very subtle stutter (called judder, if you're really watching), more often on fast action there is a souble-image effect for a split second. And some say the result looks slightly less sharp than proper interlace. But many say it's less offensive than a camera's sloppy interlace noise. Try the mpg and see what you think.

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Originally Posted by Liberty610 View Post
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Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
And why is this video's field order bottom field first instead of TFF?
I honestly am not sure. Like I said, all I really did aside from the cropping is simply capture it using the Vdub guide you posted. Should all analog caps be top field first?
Analog tape is usually TFF (Top Field First), DV is usually BFF (Bottom Field First). But there are exceptions. Why, I can't say. It's best to capture the field order as-is from the input signal. I guess you could change the field order in Virtualdub, but it's so much easier and faster in Avisynth where you can use the existing colorspace.

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Originally Posted by Liberty610 View Post
@Lordsmurf: When you say smeary, are you referring to the black interlaced lines around the colors? Or something else? I noticed that the digital cap, even though the colors were weaker, had a more clear signal.
I'll await lordsmurf's advice here, but IMO the DV image is more fuzzy and has some compression losses that will show up as worse later when encoding to final formats. It's just possible that the SONY's playback of analog tape is a little smeary (I don't know if that's the best word), or it could be the original camera's fault. The effect is seen in the chroma, which can be sharpened in a number of ways using fast masking in Avisynth -- it's difficult in VirtualDub if not impossible.

There's also some chroma damage in the way the video was cropped using odd-numbered scanlines. Cropping is done in elements of 2, or even in elements of 4 with some formats, because of the way chroma data is stored in different color systems. Avisynth online help posts the table shown below as a guide to proper crop dimensions for different formats, color spaces, and frame structures:



Above chart from the Avisynth wiki page at http://avisynth.nl/index.php/Crop.


Attached Images
File Type: png Crop parameters.png (9.3 KB, 97 downloads)
Attached Files
File Type: mpg samp_480p_DVD.mpg (7.78 MB, 11 downloads)
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The following users thank sanlyn for this useful post: Liberty610 (02-11-2018), wimvs (02-11-2018)
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