Capture setup; use VirtualDub 64, filters?

[Amanjm]

I wrote to lordsmurf and he recommended I post here to receive responses.

I am trying to figure out a few things and I am looking for some help before starting up the project.

Background

• Converting about 80 VS home videos mostly all originally recorded on the same camera
• Looking to capture these for storage and watching, not planning on doing much editing and not planning on creating DVDs, plan to watch from a hard drive
• Want to capture a high quality digital version

Setup

• JVC-VS30U, TBC-1000, Diamond VC-500, using s-video and audio cables
• 64 bit Windows 10 computer with 64 bit Virtualdub 1.10.4 installed, Huffyuv installed
• I have tested everything and it seems to work.

Some questions:

• I am planning on installing your version of Virtualdub with all plug-ins and copying them to the 64 but folder. Is this worth doing and will they work even if I installed the 64bit version?
• Should I abandon the 64 bit version or just use it?
• I read your thread on settings for VirtualDub. The recommendation is to avoid cropping when capturing. Is that to avoid any dropped frames? Is it worth cropping during capture to avoid having to process the file later?
• For filtering after capture, sounds like the needed filters will vary based on the issues. Is that right? Are there some standard filters always used?

Thanks for your help.

[sanlyn]

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Originally Posted by Amanjm

Looking to capture these for storage and watching, not planning on doing much editing and not planning on creating DVDs, plan to watch from a hard drive

Lossless unencoded avi is playable only on a PC. If you want external players, video sharing, or net posting, learn to uae a good encoder. There are many available, and some are free.

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Originally Posted by Amanjm

Want to capture a high quality digital version

You can't get higher quality archival captures than lossless capture.

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Originally Posted by Amanjm

Setup

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amanjm

• JVC-VS30U, TBC-1000, Diamond VC-500, using s-video and audio cables
• 64 bit Windows 10 computer with 64 bit Virtualdub 1.10.4 installed, Huffyuv installed
• I have tested everything and it seems to work.

The JVC, tbc, VC500 are perfectly acceptable. But if any of your tapes are slow 6-hour recordings, you'll be disappointed with the JVC (this is common knowledge).

64 bit VDub and v.10.x are no-no's. You can't mix 64-bit apps and 32-bit filters, nor can you run 32-bit Avisynth scripts and codecs in 64-bit VDub. 64-bit version of these programs are extremely limited and not expected to improve in the future. There is nothing wrong with the extensive 32-bit resources available for Windows. If anyone tells you 64-bt is "faster", make them prove it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amanjm

I am planning on installing your version of Virtualdub with all plug-ins and copying them to the 64 but folder. Is this worth doing and will they work even if I installed the 64bit version?

No, it won't work. Stay with 32-bit from start to finish.

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Originally Posted by Amanjm

I read your thread on settings for VirtualDub. The recommendation is to avoid cropping when capturing. Is that to avoid any dropped frames?

No. It's to avoid non-standard and unsupported frame sizes.

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Originally Posted by Amanjm

Is it worth cropping during capture to avoid having to process the file later?

No. Crop and filter later. Always capture your source as-is.

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Originally Posted by Amanjm

For filtering after capture, sounds like the needed filters will vary based on the issues.

Yes.

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Originally Posted by Amanjm

Are there some standard filters always used?

Same answer. You will use a few filters often, but not always. Every tape has both common and unique defects.

Good luck.

http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...-settings.html

[lordsmurf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amanjm

I wrote to lordsmurf and he recommended I post here to receive responses.

Yes, never PM me tech questions.

Quote:

Background
Converting about 80 VS home videos mostly all originally recorded on the same camera
Looking to capture these for storage and watching, not planning on doing much editing and not planning on creating DVDs, plan to watch from a hard drive
Want to capture a high quality digital version

Looks good, basic needs.
Did you decide on the storage format on computer? Keeping lossless, MPEG, etc?

Quote:

Setup
JVC-VS30U, TBC-1000, Diamond VC-500, using s-video and audio cables
64 bit Windows 10 computer with 64 bit Virtualdub 1.10.4 installed, Huffyuv installed
I have tested everything and it seems to work.

Setup looks good.

Quote:

Some questions:
I am planning on installing your version of Virtualdub with all plug-ins and copying them to the 64 but folder. Is this worth doing and will they work even if I installed the 64bit version?
Should I abandon the 64 bit version or just use it?

Ignore VirtualDub 64-bit. It has limited value.
Get the standard 1.9.x version of VirtualDub found in the forum. Use that for capture. It has many filters pre-loeaded, so you can also use it later for filtering/restoring if needed.

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I read your thread on settings for VirtualDub. The recommendation is to avoid cropping when capturing. Is that to avoid any dropped frames? Is it worth cropping during capture to avoid having to process the file later?

It should always be avoided. But the reason is yes/no. It messes up the interlacing and aspects, which then cascades into dropped frames. It's not because of dropped frames, no. Capture what you see. The only settings that can be messed with are the image levels. Note that the VC-500 card tends to be dark. I've not yet written my guide on it, so forget exact values offhand.

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For filtering after capture, sounds like the needed filters will vary based on the issues. Is that right? Are there some standard filters always used?

Yes and yes. Most tapes have chroma offset, chroma noise, some grain. The hardware solved a lot of issues as well, related to timing and chroma. But some errors are still left. The exact adjustment amounts depends on the tape, and then some errors will be unique to a tape.

[Amanjm]

Thanks. I reviewed the Virtualdub settings thread recommended and have a few questions.

- Using the histogram is mentioned. Any advice on how to fix issues with histogram if see signal outside of 16-235 even after cropping? It mentions using brightness and contrast but not sure in what order or how to best do this. (Lordsmurf - do you use this in the same way?)

- The settings recommended also indicate not to sharpen VHS, but the setting shown is 128. Was that just default and it should be left there?

- The volumes histogram shows volume levels. Should I use this to help set incoming volume level to the right level and do you have guidance for setting recording volume? I hesitate to base sound on my computer speakers given they are not great speakers.

- What is Audio input vs Audio source? Also not sure how to choose between audio line vs audio tuner in the Audio Source options.

- Lordsmurf, for resolution, you mention never use less than 720x480 or 720x576. Is one of these better or recommended over the other?

Thanks for your help.

[sanlyn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amanjm

Any advice on how to fix issues with histogram if see signal outside of 16-235 even after cropping? It mentions using brightness and contrast but not sure in what order or how to best do this.

Perhaps you need more explanation of how the process works. The reason you crop off dark borders and areas like head-switching noise is because those areas contain luma values that are not related to the image, and those unrelated values throw off the histogram reading. If you temporarily remove those unwanted areas while reading the histogram, you'll have a more accurate reading of the values in the image content. As for black borders, you don't care about those -- They will almost always be y=0 or even darker (yes, YUV can contain luminance values darker than zero-black and brighter than super-white).

Which value would you try first? Take a deep breath and try brightness first, if it needs fixing. If black levels don't need fixing, I'd suggest you try contrast if the brights are too hot. You'll note that both controls tend to interact to a certain degree, so you might have to jockey back forth to keep things straight. If the darks don't need fixing and the brights don't need fixing either, there's not much for you to do except to turn off cropping and start the capture.

The guide goes into detail about brightness and contrast controls, and the details are pretty basic. Brightness adjusts black levels, contrast adjusts highlight levels. If your bright highlight values are flowing off into the red on the right-hand side of the histogram, you would lower contrast. If your dark values are flowing into the red non-safe zone at the left side of the histogram, you would increase the brightness control. If you crop off unwanted borders and let the tape play briefly and find that the histogram changes but you are still within the 16-235 range, there's nothing to do. On the other hand if you see that the darks looks grayed-out and foggy, you likely have black levels set too high and could lower blacks until they just barely touch the left-hand red area or lie jut beside it. If the brights look too dim or flat, try adjusting contrast. Remember, though, that a night scene isn't going to have a lot of bright values unless you have something like a room lamp, street light, searchlight, or other bright object in the dark frame.

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Originally Posted by Amanjm

The settings recommended also indicate not to sharpen VHS, but the setting shown is 128. Was that just default and it should be left there?

128 is the default (non-enabled) value for sharpening with the card used in the example. Your card's default value might vary. Reducing the sharpness value will soften and blur your video. Increasing sharpness will make tape noise look worse and cause oversharpening artifacts such as edge halos and "buzzing" grain. Post-processing apps have much better sharpeners. Sharpen later if necessary, but only after denoising.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amanjm

The volumes histogram shows volume levels. Should I use this to help set incoming volume level to the right level and do you have guidance for setting recording volume? I hesitate to base sound on my computer speakers given they are not great speakers.

The volume meter example in the guide shows typical volume levels at between -30 and -20db. You will notice in the example image that there are red markers at the right-hand side of the volume meter. When your sound level graph approaches those red markers and turns red, audio is loud enough to be seriously clipped and distorted. I guess you realize that if you think the captured volume is a little low, just about any app including VirtualDub can raise the volume later. If you overdo it during capture, your clipped audio can't be fixed later, it's damaged for keeps.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amanjm

What is Audio input vs Audio source?

That depends on your capture card and your sound card. With many AGP or PCIe capture devices, the audio input would usually be the sound card's line input and the audio source would be the sound card. With those capture cards, many of which don't do their own sound processing, the card itself cannot be selected as the audio source -- one would have to select the audio card as the source, because that's where the audio is being processed with those particular types of capture cards. In that case you are actually telling your sound card which input to use.

With other devices like USB cards, the audio input and the audio source itself are usually the same, unless you have somehow managed to misread the card's instructions and are feeding your audio line into your sound card instead of into the USB device itself. Cards differ, but USB cards are usually the "source" and there's usually no choice for "input".

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amanjm

for resolution, you mention never use less than 720x480 or 720x576. Is one of these better or recommended over the other?

720x480 = NTSC format, 29.97 fps.
720x576 = PAL format, 25 fps.
If you mix the wrong frame size for your input format, you have borked your capture and will have serious processing problems later.

[Amanjm]

I downloaded VirtualDub 1.9.11 from the site and was ablw to get it working. However, I cannot seem to control volume levels in capture. I can change the speaker volume no problem, but it has impact in the volume meter. Also, clicking on Windows mixer does nothing.

I have uninstalled my VC500 drivers and reinstalled, same issue.

Some additional detail:
Under audio devices the only option that works is 0 Capture Device. The other options include 1 Analog Audio In (usb 2.0 video capture) and 2 Conexant Polaris Audio Capture.

With the selection of 0 Capture Device I hear audio but not for the others. With this selection, under audio inputs I have no options and under Audio source I have No source or Audio Line.

Any advice? This is driving me crazy as I have not been able to find any solutions by searching the internet.

[Amanjm]

One correction. I reinstalled the 64 bit version of Virtualdub. When I click mixer there it pops up but changes do not impact the bars in the volume meter. Otherwise everything is the same.