Go Back    Forum > Digital Video > Video Project Help > Capture, Record, Transfer

Reply
 
LinkBack Thread Tools
  #21  
02-11-2018, 02:59 PM
Liberty610 Liberty610 is offline
Free Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2018
Location: USA
Posts: 43
Thanked 1 Time in 1 Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
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.
Thanks! I'll be sure to do so going forward!

Quote:
Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
LOL, it's a long way from botched. Stick around, you'll see some really awful captures.
I guess that makes me feel some what better ha.

Quote:
Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
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 !
I won't forget next time, especially if it can cause the issues that my first cap here has.


Quote:
Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
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.
Thanks for the tips. I'll try and make adjustments better next capture. What about captures with a LOT of change in the lighting? For example, in a home movie I had issues with in the past when editing in Vegas, the shot moved from a poorly lit living room to a brightly lit kitchen 5 to 8 times in a span of 15 to 20 minuets. How much work does that generate?

Quote:
Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
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.
I not only re-started Vdub several times, the screen shot I shared of the missing histogram came after a full Windows reboot. I did not try the VHS composite capture after the histogram vanished, but as I said, it was there in living color when I first started my set up with the VCR.

Quote:
Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
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
Thanks! I'll check them out for sure.


Quote:
Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
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.
Thanks for the explanation. This cleared up a few things, but I also have never used AVIsynth, so some of it kinda goes over my head at the moment. When you say 'combing', I am assuming you are referring to those awful black lines that kind of look a batch of teeth on a straight hair comb? I kept seeing it in and it was driving me nuts.

Quote:
Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
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.
I thought the mpeg you uploaded was awesome. As I stated in my last reply, I want to get to the point where I can achieve those results because I have learned what to look out for. I know it won't happen over night, but that is why I am hear. To learn as much as I can!

Quote:
Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
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.
That is what I did. I just captured it as is. I did nothing with the field order on the capture itself. I knew DV was usually bottom field first, as I have done a lot of work in Vegas with DV where my renders turned out bad because I didn't have the field order set properly.

Quote:
Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
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.
These are the things I still have to learn about. I some what understand the chroma topic, but not really. I have not really dove into the terminology with a lot of video work yet. Bare with me.... work in progress lol.

Quote:
Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
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.
Thanks for the details. I am assuming these are the cropping guidelines to follow, but cropping isn't to be done unless needed AFTER the cap, correct?

Looking more into the histogram ordeal, and knowing more about audio then I do video, I stumbled onto this video on youtube wich really helped me understand a few things....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htqrTTSZp-M

Thanks a million for the reply! The more you info you feed me, the more I want to know things ha. I appreciate this VERY much!
Reply With Quote
The following users thank Liberty610 for this useful post: sanlyn (02-11-2018)
Someday, 12:01 PM
admin's Avatar
Ads / Sponsors
 
Join Date: ∞
Posts: 42
Thanks: ∞
Thanked 42 Times in 42 Posts
  #22  
02-11-2018, 04:14 PM
sanlyn sanlyn is offline
Premium Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: N. Carolina and NY, USA
Posts: 3,648
Thanked 1,307 Times in 982 Posts
Quote:
Originally Posted by Liberty610 View Post
What about captures with a LOT of change in the lighting? For example, in a home movie I had issues with in the past when editing in Vegas, the shot moved from a poorly lit living room to a brightly lit kitchen 5 to 8 times in a span of 15 to 20 minuets. How much work does that generate?
Amateurs are always making shots like that (my sister is a real camera kamikaze), and advanced users are always shaking their fists at the results.

Sometimes the exposure is such that the transition works anyway without special help, and viewers understand the change in lighting. Sometimes it's not so easy. In capturing, you soon find a way to find the worst case scenario and set up for it, then tweak later.

On rare occasions I use an Avisynth plugin called HDRagc, which does some exposure and backlight compensation. If you use it on full auto you can blow a picture apart. Instead, I tame things changing some of HDRagc's parameters (there are about a dozen of them, fully explained in the filter's download). Most auto filters are as bad as the agc in cameras and do exactly what you don't want at exactly the wrong time. Otherwise, it's not uncommo0n to chop a capture into many segments that are processed separately, then rejoined later.

A thread that will show you some Avisynth scripts with these special filters and the before/after home videos that made me desparate enough to use them is in this post: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...huffyuv-2.html. Exposure correction required work in the original YUV, while color correction and other filters were in RGB with Virtualdub. The earlier part of the same thread, FYI, has a lot of detail on Avisynth and VirtualDub filters in common use. Avisynth and VirtualDub are essential repair tools, each compliments the other. Avisynth seems scary until you realize that it's just a sequential series of commands run in Virtualdub using the same battery of filters over and over for almost everything. But it is somewhat strange to see a filter named "nnedi3_rpow2", which sounds petty cryptic until you learn that it's only a specially-honed filter to resize an image by 2X. Looks daunting but acts like a puppy in use.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Liberty610 View Post
I not only re-started Vdub several times, the screen shot I shared of the missing histogram came after a full Windows reboot. I did not try the VHS composite capture after the histogram vanished, but as I said, it was there in living color when I first started my set up with the VCR.
You have me on that one. It could be just a quirk with VDub v.10x, which I don't use.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Liberty610 View Post
When you say 'combing', I am assuming you are referring to those awful black lines that kind of look a batch of teeth on a straight hair comb? I kept seeing it in and it was driving me nuts.
Yes, combing is the interlace "teeth" seen in editors that don't deinterlace, which includes most editors. When you work you want to see the video in its primal state so you'll know what's going on. Playback is different; when you see excessive combing or sawtooth edges in media players and TV it's usually the camera's fault, especially cameras designed during the CRT era.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Liberty610 View Post
As I stated in my last reply, I want to get to the point where I can achieve those results because I have learned what to look out for. I know it won't happen over night, but that is why I am hear. To learn as much as I can!
It doesn't take as long as you'd think at first sight. Most advanced users learned this crazy stuff by watching what others did in forum posts, although the documentation that comes with some of the advanced filters is helpful (if you can slog your way thru the techy stuff) -- the latter can be slippery sometime, but at least you'll know how not to use a particular filter. One of the better filter guides is the online help for VirtualDub's gradatio0n curves filter, which mimics the functions of the curve filter from Photoshop, Premiere, Vegas, and other high-priced stuff (http://members.chello.at/nagiller/vd.../tutorial.html).

Quote:
Originally Posted by Liberty610 View Post
I am assuming these are the cropping guidelines to follow, but cropping isn't to be done unless needed AFTER the cap, correct?
Correct. What you want is a capture of every part of the original, even the pesky borders, with original image content intact.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Liberty610 View Post
I stumbled onto this video on youtube wich really helped me understand a few things....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htqrTTSZp-M
Nice find! Thanks for the link.
Reply With Quote
The following users thank sanlyn for this useful post: Liberty610 (02-11-2018)
  #23  
02-12-2018, 05:56 AM
lordsmurf's Avatar
lordsmurf lordsmurf is offline
Site Staff | Video
 
Join Date: Dec 2002
Posts: 13,503
Thanked 2,449 Times in 2,081 Posts
Image2.jpg = Assumed DV with analog tape source, obvious timing wiggles. ie, no TBCs.

Image3.jpg = Assumed to be analog capture via Hauppauge USB, smeary/blurry, at least partially due to deinterlace. If I'm reading correctly, also due to bad resizing, etc. You filtered at capture time, and should never do that.

That's what I see.

- Did my advice help you? Then become a Premium Member and support this site.
- For sale in the marketplace: TBCs, workflows, capture cards, VCRs
Reply With Quote
  #24  
02-14-2018, 10:21 AM
Liberty610 Liberty610 is offline
Free Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2018
Location: USA
Posts: 43
Thanked 1 Time in 1 Post
Thanks again for the replies guys. I have been busy the last 2 days doing audio projects for a couple bands to get tracks ready for mixing engineers. Today I have some time off, so I am back to add on....

Quote:
Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
Amateurs are always making shots like that (my sister is a real camera kamikaze), and advanced users are always shaking their fists at the results.

Sometimes the exposure is such that the transition works anyway without special help, and viewers understand the change in lighting. Sometimes it's not so easy. In capturing, you soon find a way to find the worst case scenario and set up for it, then tweak later.

On rare occasions I use an Avisynth plugin called HDRagc, which does some exposure and backlight compensation. If you use it on full auto you can blow a picture apart. Instead, I tame things changing some of HDRagc's parameters (there are about a dozen of them, fully explained in the filter's download). Most auto filters are as bad as the agc in cameras and do exactly what you don't want at exactly the wrong time. Otherwise, it's not uncommo0n to chop a capture into many segments that are processed separately, then rejoined later.

A thread that will show you some Avisynth scripts with these special filters and the before/after home videos that made me desparate enough to use them is in this post: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...huffyuv-2.html. Exposure correction required work in the original YUV, while color correction and other filters were in RGB with Virtualdub. The earlier part of the same thread, FYI, has a lot of detail on Avisynth and VirtualDub filters in common use. Avisynth and VirtualDub are essential repair tools, each compliments the other. Avisynth seems scary until you realize that it's just a sequential series of commands run in Virtualdub using the same battery of filters over and over for almost everything. But it is somewhat strange to see a filter named "nnedi3_rpow2", which sounds petty cryptic until you learn that it's only a specially-honed filter to resize an image by 2X. Looks daunting but acts like a puppy in use.


You have me on that one. It could be just a quirk with VDub v.10x, which I don't use.


Yes, combing is the interlace "teeth" seen in editors that don't deinterlace, which includes most editors. When you work you want to see the video in its primal state so you'll know what's going on. Playback is different; when you see excessive combing or sawtooth edges in media players and TV it's usually the camera's fault, especially cameras designed during the CRT era.


It doesn't take as long as you'd think at first sight. Most advanced users learned this crazy stuff by watching what others did in forum posts, although the documentation that comes with some of the advanced filters is helpful (if you can slog your way thru the techy stuff) -- the latter can be slippery sometime, but at least you'll know how not to use a particular filter. One of the better filter guides is the online help for VirtualDub's gradatio0n curves filter, which mimics the functions of the curve filter from Photoshop, Premiere, Vegas, and other high-priced stuff (http://members.chello.at/nagiller/vd.../tutorial.html).

Correct. What you want is a capture of every part of the original, even the pesky borders, with original image content intact.

Nice find! Thanks for the link.
Thanks for all the input! II'm making notes and what not for future references for sure! Thanks a million for all the detailed responses.


Quote:
Originally Posted by lordsmurf View Post
Image2.jpg = Assumed DV with analog tape source, obvious timing wiggles. ie, no TBCs.

Image3.jpg = Assumed to be analog capture via Hauppauge USB, smeary/blurry, at least partially due to deinterlace.
Actual, just the opposite. Image 2 was the analog, 3 was the digital.

Quote:
Originally Posted by lordsmurf View Post
If I'm reading correctly, also due to bad resizing, etc. You filtered at capture time, and should never do that.

That's what I see.
As I told sanlyn, I did crop it before capturing, but it was a misunderstanding/mistake. I'm going to make sure my next capture test (hopefully today) is a raw, unaltered capture, and I will post samples again! .
Reply With Quote
  #25  
02-14-2018, 12:52 PM
Liberty610 Liberty610 is offline
Free Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2018
Location: USA
Posts: 43
Thanked 1 Time in 1 Post
Ok guys, at the request of Lordsmurf, I am attempting to capture some video via VHS.

I just got my Panasonic AG-1980 today, and I am am not sure if I am doing everything right for the histogram ordeal. Here is what is happening...

Like I stated in a previous post in this thread, the histogram would be all black, or hardly working. I figured out how to get it to work correctly, but there is still some annoying complications going on.

In order for me to see the video I am capturing with the Happauge Live 2, I need to select 'Overlay' in the video tab on Vdub. This mode, makes the histogram NOT respond at all. It's all black, or has very few blue graph showing, and it does not move at all. If I switch to 'preview' mode,the histogram works/moves around with video without any issues. The problem with that is, the video itself goes away and doesn't show, so I can't see the video itself to see exactly what changes I am making to it. I have to switch back and forth between 'Overlay' mode and 'Preview' mode to get a happy balance for the histogram. Is this normal?

I am testing this with a VHS video that is probably a challenge as a whole. Figured that wouldn't be a bad place to start. It's a dark/dingy location with a live band playing, where stage lights of all sorts of colors are flashing randomly. It's coming from a VHS-C tape inside the VHS adapter, recorded in SLP mode, being played back in the Panasonic AG-1980. I didn't make any ajustments on the 1980, other then making sure the TBC was on, and turning off 'S-VHS' option. I am assuming that was correct since the current VHS-C is not a S-VHS tape?

I adjusted the brightness/contrast based on what I thought I should by looking at the histogram, but I am not sure about changes to hue, saturation, sharpness, ect should be made because none of them seemed to make the histogram change much. Wasn't sure if it was because they don't effect the histogram, or if the video itself and the way it was shot was causing it.

I also set the cropping values all back to 0 after looking at the histogram levels so it was not cropped while capturing, unlike the Hi8 capture earlier.

I have attached a sample for you. Let me know what you think, please!


Attached Files
File Type: avi vhs_sample.avi (84.49 MB, 8 downloads)
Reply With Quote
  #26  
02-14-2018, 06:37 PM
sanlyn sanlyn is offline
Premium Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: N. Carolina and NY, USA
Posts: 3,648
Thanked 1,307 Times in 982 Posts
Thanks for the new sample. Nice job.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Liberty610 View Post
In order for me to see the video I am capturing with the Happauge Live 2, I need to select 'Overlay' in the video tab on Vdub. This mode, makes the histogram NOT respond at all. It's all black, or has very few blue graph showing, and it does not move at all. If I switch to 'preview' mode,the histogram works/moves around with video without any issues. The problem with that is, the video itself goes away and doesn't show, so I can't see the video itself to see exactly what changes I am making to it. I have to switch back and forth between 'Overlay' mode and 'Preview' mode to get a happy balance for the histogram. Is this normal?
Yes, and it's documented in the detailed settings guide (). The histogram is preview mode only. http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...-settings.html

There's a special setup for audio and USB capture, also in the guide.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Liberty610 View Post
I am assuming that was correct since the current VHS-C is not a S-VHS tape?
Correct.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Liberty610 View Post
I adjusted the brightness/contrast based on what I thought I should by looking at the histogram, but I am not sure about changes to hue, saturation, sharpness, ect should be made because none of them seemed to make the histogram change much. Wasn't sure if it was because they don't effect the histogram, or if the video itself and the way it was shot was causing it.
Many elements affect the histogram. Unless you have a constant start-to-end discoloration that never changes, leave hue, saturation, etc., alone.

Nice capture. I set the black levels a little darker, which is an arbitrary choice that adds a little "snap" to the image without blocking up shadows. On TV it will be visibly brighter than on a PC. It's amazing that amateurs think they can shoot in dark available light and get the same results Hollywood gets with 6 hours of setup and gigawatts of lighting. As usual the consumer camera fills the frame with plenty of grainy residual CMOS noise. It's good that you had the AG-1980 for tyhis -- it reduces CMOS a little but keeps detail (a JVC would have turned this video to mush). The rest is post-processing, with QTGMC (Step 1) to do an initial cleanup and TemporalDegrain (Step 2) with some 16-bit tweaks for the heavy lifting. All are very slow filters, CPU intensive, so I had to run the script in 2 steps. I encoded two versions, one 480i for DVD, then 640x480 square pixel for the 'net.

Step 1 script (used for Step 2 DVD and Step 2 web output):
Code:
AviSource("E:\forum\faq\Liberty610\B\vhs_sample.avi")
ColorYUV(off_y=-6)
Levels(16,1.05,255,16,255,dither=true,coring=false)
ConvertToYV12(interlaced=true)
AssumeTFF()
QTGMC(preset="medium",border=true)
vInverse()
return last

## -- save as VHS_01.avi, YV12 w/lossless Lagarith compression ------
Step 2 for DVD (uses Step 1 as YV12 input):
Code:
[# ------- Load 16-bit DITHER plugins ------------
dppath="D:\Avisynth 2.5\plugins\AVS26\dither\"
Import(dppath+"Dither.avs")
Import(dppath+"mt_xxpand_multi.avs")
LoadPlugin(dppath+"avstp.dll")
LoadPlugin(dppath+"dither.dll")
LoadPlugin(dppath+"dfttest.dll")
LoadPlugin(dppath+"mvtools2.dll")
LoadPlugin(dppath+"masktools2.dll")

AviSource("E:\forum\faq\Liberty610\B\vhs_01.avi")
AssumeTFF()
TemporalDegrain(SAD1=400, SAD2=300, Sigma=12)
santiag(2,2)
RemoveDirtMC(20,false)
# ----- run 16-bit GradFun3 to smooth block noise ------
Dither_convert_8_to_16 ()
GradFun3(thr=0.8,mask=0,lsb_in=true,lsb=false,smode=1)
AddGrainC(1.1,1.1)
LimitedSharpenFaster(edgemode=2)
Crop(2,0,-12,-8).AddBorders(8,4,6,4)
# -------------- re-interlace for DVD  ---------------
SeparateFields().SelectEvery(4,0,3).Weave()
return last
Step 2 for 59.94 fps 480p web use (uses Step 1 as YV12 input):
Code:
# ------- Load 16-bit DITHER plugins ------------
dppath="D:\Avisynth 2.5\plugins\AVS26\dither\"
Import(dppath+"Dither.avs")
Import(dppath+"mt_xxpand_multi.avs")
LoadPlugin(dppath+"avstp.dll")
LoadPlugin(dppath+"dither.dll")
LoadPlugin(dppath+"dfttest.dll")  ####<- optional
LoadPlugin(dppath+"mvtools2.dll")
LoadPlugin(dppath+"masktools2.dll")

AviSource(vidpath+"vhs_02_1.avi")
AssumeTFF()
TemporalDegrain(SAD1=400, SAD2=300, Sigma=12)
santiag(2,2)
RemoveDirtMC(20,false)
# ----- run 16-bit GradFun3 to smooth block noise ------
Dither_convert_8_to_16 ()
GradFun3(thr=0.8,mask=0,lsb_in=true,lsb=false,smode=1)
AddGrainC(1.1,1.1)
LimitedSharpenFaster(edgemode=2)
Crop(2,0,-12,-8).AddBorders(8,4,6,4)
# -------------- resize for web posting  ---------------
Spline36Resize(640,height)
return last


Attached Files
File Type: mpg vhs_02_480i_DVD.mpg (8.66 MB, 3 downloads)
File Type: mp4 vhs_02_59.94p.mp4 (5.81 MB, 5 downloads)

Last edited by sanlyn; 02-14-2018 at 07:16 PM.
Reply With Quote
The following users thank sanlyn for this useful post: Liberty610 (02-15-2018), wimvs (02-15-2018)
  #27  
02-15-2018, 04:20 AM
sanlyn sanlyn is offline
Premium Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: N. Carolina and NY, USA
Posts: 3,648
Thanked 1,307 Times in 982 Posts
It might make more sense if I correct a couple of lines in the script from above that creates the double frame rate progressive 59.94 fps version for web posting (I forgot to change the input avi file name name from my own copy of the original):

Step 2 for 59.94 fps 480p web use (uses Step 1 as YV12 input):
Code:
# ------- Load 16-bit DITHER plugins ------------
dppath="D:\Avisynth 2.5\plugins\AVS26\dither\"
Import(dppath+"Dither.avs")
Import(dppath+"mt_xxpand_multi.avs")
LoadPlugin(dppath+"avstp.dll")
LoadPlugin(dppath+"dither.dll")
LoadPlugin(dppath+"dfttest.dll")  
LoadPlugin(dppath+"mvtools2.dll")
LoadPlugin(dppath+"masktools2.dll")

AviSource("E:\forum\faq\Liberty610\B\vhs_01.avi")
TemporalDegrain(SAD1=400, SAD2=300, Sigma=12)
santiag(2,2)
RemoveDirtMC(20,false)
# ----- run 16-bit GradFun3 to smooth block noise ------
Dither_convert_8_to_16 ()
GradFun3(thr=0.8,mask=0,lsb_in=true,lsb=false,smode=1)
AddGrainC(1.1,1.1)
LimitedSharpenFaster(edgemode=2)
Crop(2,0,-12,-8).AddBorders(8,4,6,4)
# -------------- resize for web posting  ---------------
Spline36Resize(640,height)
return last
Note that the capture samples were originally YUY2, which is the correct way to capture, but the output from Step 1 is YV12. You save the Step 1 file in VirtualDub by specifying in vDub what colorspace and compression you want for output. Note, also, that huffyuv can't compress YV12. So I used the Lagarith lossless compressor, which is popular for intermediate processing files and is one of huffyuv's major competitors, so to speak. I still use huffyuv for capture because it's easier on the CPU at capture time.

Lagarith: https://lags.leetcode.net/codec.html

If you adapt these scripts for your own use, be certain to change the path statements to the actual location of various files in your own system. In my case I keep all updates to the 16-but dither plugin package in a separate folder in my Avisynth program files, to maintain compatibility with older scripts.

Last edited by sanlyn; 02-15-2018 at 05:20 AM.
Reply With Quote
The following users thank sanlyn for this useful post: Liberty610 (02-15-2018), wimvs (02-15-2018)
  #28  
02-15-2018, 04:35 PM
Liberty610 Liberty610 is offline
Free Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2018
Location: USA
Posts: 43
Thanked 1 Time in 1 Post
Wow! Those AVisynth codes worked awesome! I have not dabbled in AVisynth yet, so it's still somewhat greek to me, but the fact that those clips turned out like that from one of my captures is exciting to see!

I am in between projects this week, and I am not sure how often I will be back to add on to this topic, but I am thrilled with the results of that video. I am still having a hard time wrapping my head around the YUY2 ordeal and what not, but again; it is encouraging to see the results I can get from my captures if I continue to learn the AVIsynth coding.

Will these two codes you posted be a standard in most VHS captures? Or does it vary from project to project. I have about 39 hours of VHS footage I now see I should be re-capturing and prepping for my archive.

Speaking of, what is best for archiving to a hard drive? That is one of my biggest hobbies and passions when it comes to my personal collection. I have 2 hard drives for a total of 6TBs that are for nothing but my personal vidoes, audio recordings, and videos; all sorted by date. From 2008 and on is all raw digital files from either MiniDV tapes (HDV) or tape-less cameras with memory cards (or cell phone video files). But these analog captures? do i capture them, then do all the edits into a compressed file of some sort? Or do I try and keep the raw AVI files to make changes to them after?
Reply With Quote
  #29  
02-15-2018, 05:55 PM
sanlyn sanlyn is offline
Premium Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: N. Carolina and NY, USA
Posts: 3,648
Thanked 1,307 Times in 982 Posts
Quote:
Originally Posted by Liberty610 View Post
I have not dabbled in AVisynth yet, so it's still somewhat greek to me
AVisynth looked even worse than that to me at first. I had a morbid fear of it for years, but Lordsmurf and other forum members dragged me kicking and screaming into it until one day, just out of the blue, everything clicked. The coding is actually simple in structure -- each line executes a filter or operation and the code is executed in sequence, one line after another. until the end. The first statement usually opens a video file, which of course has to be done before you can run filters on the vuideo. These scripts used the built-in AviSource() function, which opens several encoded and unencoded AVI formats.

This isn't to disparage VirtualDub, which has its own virtues. Besides being a great tool for running AVisynth scripts and saving files in lossless or encoded formats, it has several dozen filters of its own and has great tools for color correction.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Liberty610 View Post
I am still having a hard time wrapping my head around the YUY2 ordeal and what not
The intyernet has loads of articles on video colorspaces which are excellent guides. YUY2 is is a YUV color space, meaning that it stores video data in three channels: "Y" for brightness values, "U" for blue, "V" red. In processing, green is derived by subtracting "U and "V" from "Y". YUY2 most closely resembles the YPbPr system used in VHS. The Y, U, and V channels can be worked with separately without affecting the other. Brightness "Y" can be varied without affecting "U" and "V". The YUV system was developed for TV, when engineers needed a way to make color video work with both black-and-white and color TV. A color TV could translate all three channels for color TV, while b&w TV's ignored U and V and worked only with the "Y" channel.

For every 4 chunks of "Y" data, YUY2 stores 2 "U" pixels and 2 "V" pixels. It's known as a 4:2:2 system. The YV12 colorspace, used in DVD, BluRay, broadcasting, internet, and DV, stores 1 "U" and 1 "V" pixel for every 4 "Y" pixels. So it's classed as either 4:1:1 or 4:2:0 depending on how the chroma is stored. RGB, used for display, is a different story. In RGB, each pixels stores data for brightness and all three colors in the same data chunk (4:4:4). If you vary brightness you also vary the brightness of all colors. You can work with each R, G, or B color separately without affecting the others, and with RGB you have the advantage of being able to use color tools that can work with extremely precise targeted color ranges -- very helpful with nonlinear color response as with VHS.

Avisynth has buuilt-in functions for clean and precise color conversion -- something that many high-priced NLE's perform either incorrectly or with less than stellar results. For example, Avisynth requires that you specify whether a video is interlaced or not, which some NLE's simply ignore. Yes, it does matter.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Liberty610 View Post
Will these two codes you posted be a standard in most VHS captures? Or does it vary from project to project. I have about 39 hours of VHS footage I now see I should be re-capturing and prepping for my archive.
With experience, users typically settle on a toolbox of 12 plugins or so, sometimes less, along with many built-in Avisynth quickie functions like Crop() and AddBorders(). The variation in this case is that I didn't need TemporalDegrain on the earlier samples. Most Filters are specific, such as TemporalDegrain (not used that often, but good with camera CMOS noise) which is an industrial-strength degrainer that runs really slow in practise and is a memory hog. It's helped with plugins like AddGrainC, a filter that adds very fine film-like grain to video to keep it from looking over-filtered and plastic after degraining. Another favorite is aWarpSharp2(), used to help clean up edge color bleed, and Santiag(), used to smooth aliasing and ragged edges.

Now and then you encounter really horrible problems like severe dropouts (snowy static, white or black horizontal ripples, spots of all kinds, etc.) for which there are other specific filters. VirtualDub has some good tweak filters like temporalsmoother and CamcorderColorDenoise, and good ones for color work like ColorMill, gradation curves, and a battery of different histograms in ColorTools.

FYI, when I started this insane endeavor I had approx 350 hours of tapes, most of them in terrible condition recorded on cheap VCRs with a bad incoming cable signal. Pristine video isn't much of a problem. It's bad video that requires learning.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Liberty610 View Post
what is best for archiving to a hard drive?
I keep my pet projects and fondest memories as original YUY2 lossless captures. Lordsmurf suggests high-bitrate (~15mbps) MPEG2 for smaller archive files. Some people use high=bitrate, small-GOP h.264 encoded to standard-def BluRay standards (Yes, the BluRay spec does include standard definition). Needless to say, I didn't keep all 350 hours of my captures.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Liberty610 View Post
But these analog captures? do i capture them, then do all the edits into a compressed file of some sort? Or do I try and keep the raw AVI files to make changes to them after?
Most workflows are like the ones shown in this thread. Capture to lossless, cleanup and edit, then encode to final delivery formats. After that, archive the originals in any of the styles mentioned above. The same for DV, which you'll notice -- after you've seen a lot of video and learn what compression artifacts and real color look like -- could stand a little cleanup before encoding for final delivery.
Reply With Quote
The following users thank sanlyn for this useful post: Liberty610 (02-16-2018)
  #30  
02-16-2018, 07:43 AM
Liberty610 Liberty610 is offline
Free Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2018
Location: USA
Posts: 43
Thanked 1 Time in 1 Post
Thanks for color space lesson. I will look around at some more in depth information, but your basic explanation here makes a lot of sense to me. I always got confused when I saw people talking about the color sapcing and numbers ordeal, and just never really ventured in to it.

Quote:
Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
Now and then you encounter really horrible problems like severe dropouts (snowy static, white or black horizontal ripples, spots of all kinds, etc.) for which there are other specific filters. VirtualDub has some good tweak filters like temporalsmoother and CamcorderColorDenoise, and good ones for color work like ColorMill, gradation curves, and a battery of different histograms in ColorTools.

FYI, when I started this insane endeavor I had approx 350 hours of tapes, most of them in terrible condition recorded on cheap VCRs with a bad incoming cable signal. Pristine video isn't much of a problem. It's bad video that requires learning.
This is where I feel like some of my upcoming captures from my earlier home movie collection are going to be a little weird to handle due to 2nd, 3rd generation copying from one consumer VHS player to another. Back in the day when I was around 14 years old, my Grandma gave me a RCA VHS-C video camera that she bought back in 1993 -- the RCA CC180 (I have attached a couple pics from an eBay listing). And up until JUST NOW, I was NEVER able to find the exact model I had in any web search. For this reply, I wanted to give it another shot, and it was the very first search result from eBay that had the camera in it ha.

Anyways, I didn't have a huge amount of tapes for the camera, so I was always dropping the tapes into a VHS-C adapter, throwing together 2 VCRs (all my family had 2 or more for dubbing purposes), and once I copied them over, I ended up recording over the VHS-C tapes to reuse them. Rinse and repeat this quite a few times, and you can see where I started to have some pretty worn out VHS-C tapes that I was using to record with.

However, a lot of the VHS tapes that I used to copy the VHS-C tapes over to where brand new and only used for copying the home movies too. So I would say 28 of the 6 hour VHS tapes I have full of home movies where brand new, and only used to copy home movies over to. The only other wear and tear they have seen are playback. But the VHS-C tapes where lack luster at best, and there are several of the videos that have some damage to them, but it was because of the VHS-C tapes they were recorded from.I am not sure if much of these issues can be fixed because the source tape was the bad tape, or not.

I feel like now that this 8mm capture thread has been some what hijacked to the VHS topic. So, should we jump back over to my original VHS thread I started to continue? The link for that is here:
http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...roper-vhs.html

Quote:
Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
I keep my pet projects and fondest memories as original YUY2 lossless captures. Lordsmurf suggests high-bitrate (~15mbps) MPEG2 for smaller archive files. Some people use high=bitrate, small-GOP h.264 encoded to standard-def BluRay standards (Yes, the BluRay spec does include standard definition). Needless to say, I didn't keep all 350 hours of my captures.

Most workflows are like the ones shown in this thread. Capture to lossless, cleanup and edit, then encode to final delivery formats. After that, archive the originals in any of the styles mentioned above. The same for DV, which you'll notice -- after you've seen a lot of video and learn what compression artifacts and real color look like -- could stand a little cleanup before encoding for final delivery.
My problem is, the only capturing I plan on doing for myself is pet projects that include family videos and what not. Looks like I better look into upgrading hard drive space real quick lol. Thanks for the help as always! And again, I wanted to see if we should switch back over to the VHS thread I started. From what I have seen, Lordsmurf and the admins like to keep topics organized for other users when they are looking for help, so I figured that would be the way to go. Let me know and I'll post the reply!


Attached Images
File Type: jpg 001.jpg (48.3 KB, 4 downloads)
File Type: jpg 004.jpg (37.9 KB, 3 downloads)
Reply With Quote
  #31  
02-16-2018, 08:53 AM
sanlyn sanlyn is offline
Premium Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: N. Carolina and NY, USA
Posts: 3,648
Thanked 1,307 Times in 982 Posts
I haven't experienced VHS-C work and know it only from what I see in other posts. The only camera recordings I've worked with personally were VHS, and they're all nightmares because of the way the cameras were (mis-)handled. WIth any tape format, tape-to-tape dubs are generally awful and require some patience. Some of the noise is mechanically caused and problems such as scanline sync distortion are unfortunately permanent aspects of the recordings and can't be corrected by a tbc during capture. Still, people do what they can with these dubs. The tapes remain important, and while they can't be fully corrected they can be improved.

If VHS is now a focus for you, probably better to return to that thread.
Reply With Quote
  #32  
02-16-2018, 09:46 AM
Liberty610 Liberty610 is offline
Free Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2018
Location: USA
Posts: 43
Thanked 1 Time in 1 Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
I haven't experienced VHS-C work and know it only from what I see in other posts. The only camera recordings I've worked with personally were VHS, and they're all nightmares because of the way the cameras were (mis-)handled. WIth any tape format, tape-to-tape dubs are generally awful and require some patience. Some of the noise is mechanically caused and problems such as scanline sync distortion are unfortunately permanent aspects of the recordings and can't be corrected by a tbc during capture. Still, people do what they can with these dubs. The tapes remain important, and while they can't be fully corrected they can be improved.

If VHS is now a focus for you, probably better to return to that thread.
I will move over to that thread and share a couple samples of a current capture I am working on. VHS is my focus at this point now that I have received my Panasonic AG-1980. Thanks again!
Reply With Quote
Reply




Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
VHS to PC digitization project, what to capture with? (ATI 600 vs EZCap samples) tywald Capture, Record, Transfer 18 11-24-2013 12:47 PM
Step two in project, what hardware/software to capture in? rappy Project Planning, Workflows 26 04-25-2012 06:07 AM
Video capture project, what direction is best? + Proc amp vs TBC + Best capture card? admin Project Planning, Workflows 11 06-16-2011 09:35 AM
Sony DVD Architect crashing with DVD project cp32 Author, Make Menus, Slideshows, Burn 1 07-15-2006 02:45 PM

Thread Tools



 
All times are GMT -5. The time now is 03:53 PM