Planning transfer project, incomplete setup, what to pick?

[BW37]

I can't personally attest to the sound quality of the AIW USB. (I have one to try, but all my capture hardware playthings are packed away for a pending move. )

From what I've read here, the Xonar would likely produce the best sound quality (with either capture device), then the AIW USB, then the onboard if it works at all. If you have multiple options available in the system, Virtualdub lets you chose amongst them. If you haven't read it
this thread is a goldmine for learning Virtualdub.

The X600 should be able to capture sound directly (without any sound card). The Theater chips can do it. Most PCIe AIW's can be set up to capture sound from the AIW itself though I failed in my attempts to get it to work and fell back the the Xonar. Again, the Xonar should produce better sound quality anyway.

As I understand it, putting the sound through the passthrough is debatable. There could be a tiny delay though the passthrough but I believe on actual TBC's it won't be more than one frame so not noticeable. Other passthrough devices might add more delay. But in general, the fewer connections the better. When using a soundcard, you can also bypass the domino box and connect directly to the line-in of the soundcard.

BW

[bbmaster123]

Quote:

pending move.

best of luck. Wishing you a smooth issue-free move!

Quote:

If you have multiple options available in the system, Virtualdub lets you chose amongst them.

They all appear, but it won't let me select the audio from aiw usb when using the x600 as video device.

Quote:

The X600 should be able to capture sound directly (without any sound card). The Theater chips can do it.

then in that case I never used the onboard at all, the theatre chip must just be that poor at audio. Didn't think it was possible to be that bad! I'll definitely try the xonar tonight after work.

Quote:

There could be a tiny delay though the passthrough but I believe on actual TBC's it won't be more than one frame so not noticeable

good to know, thanks. 1 frame off doesn't bother me, but 15-30 frames delay does. I'll keep the direct connection from the jvc out.

-- merged --

So here are the clips. The capture started right at the beginning of the tape but the original sample started a few seconds late, so its about 3 seconds shorter, but contain the same frames within those ~10 seconds. Both untouched of course. Too bad the limit is 99mb, I'd have been happy to upload longer clips if the limit was higher.

I can see right away the sample clip was taken before I started setting up levels (default everything) while the capture clip has higher brightness and less contrast/saturation. So The capture clip is better in that regard, but if you flip between them, the sample looks less horizontally smeared.

The audio from both were taken from the aiw usb, but of course since this is the beginning of the tape its still in sync. not that anyone pays attention to the wind sounds. I believe this one is vhs only and has no hifi track.

And of course if you can spot any other issues that I didn't, then I'd be happy for you to point them out

One other thing - On a capture of the next tape I did after this one, the preview (both peview and overlay mode) had heavy snow along approx 1/4 of the bottom of the image for nearly the entire length of the tape. I couldn't remove it by adjusting the tracking or by fast forwarding and rewinding, but when I played the file back the entire video was fine. It just the regular head switching noise along the bottom few lines. how? Not that I'm complaining aha but it would be good to know if what I preview is whats getting saved. Any thoughts/ideas on that?

thanks again

[bbmaster123]

well until I figure out why that capture looked smeary, I thought to try an external audio interface (scarlett 3rd gen) as its the only other audio capture device I have, save for some sound blasters that I really don't need.

Only issue is scarlett 3rd gen requires at least windows 7, so I installed 7 32 bit on a seperate ssd, installed my drivers for x600 and aiw usb, and while I had to manually point device manager to the drivers, both show up in vdub. I don't yet know if this will help, but I didn't even think I'd get this far, since everyone says its not even possible too begin with...

x600 with onboard sounds good on a hifi tape, but now stutters with audio playback enabled. No big deal. AIW USB does not stutter with audio playback, but it clips hard unless I have my preamp in the chain. I'll test a capture with the x600 and see if sync is okay and check if sound is the same as I hear going in, and if not I'll try the scarlett, just to see.

I would still have 2 things to work through however, as neither device exposes the proc amp in windows 7 and I have no external proc amps, and vdub is reporting every single frame as an inserted frame even though a short clip I saved looked like it had no missing frames...

This was just an experiment really, I intend to capture with the best overall quality so if that means go back to xp ill just swap my ssd with the one I just pulled. Nice to have multiple spare drives

-- merged --

So as expected windows 7 was not the way to go. I tried a program called vistaEnabler, which actually did let me change the proc amp settings directly in virtualdub, and the image did change. However the settings didn't stick, and often turned the preview to a black screen. That tells me the driver can access and modify those settings, but are by default disabled/blocked in windows. Most likely this is because while some drivers might work most wont, so Microsoft disabled access to prevent people from using a mostly broken feature, at least that's what I'd think.

What's also interesting is that moving the sliders that are greyed out in xp also partially work (gamma, color enable, etc)
for example setting color enable to off made the video grayscale. cool.

I found a config that seems to be working, windows vista, ati usb for video, asus xonar for audio. Driver seems to work a lot better this time for the sound card. Maybe an XP driver was causing conflicts...
Audio quality slightly better, and almost perfect sync by the end of the tape (only off by approx 0.25ms as measured in adobe audition)

I think I should be good to go, now I just need to get some sticker labels so I can keep track of which tape is which.

[BW37]

It sounds like you are getting to a solid capture process/system.

Did you ever determine the cause of the "smearing"? I wouldn't have been able to even guess (just not that experienced) but wondered if you'd accidently changed the "sharpness" setting in the Virtualdub/AIW process amp settings. I hoped that either lordsmurf or jwillis84 might have commented on their observations when their AIW USB 2.0 devices overheated, ie. how does the overheating manifest itself during use/capture??? Maybe that will happen yet .

Very interesting that you are making it all work with Vista (32 bit I assume). If you haven't seen it already, you might find this thread interesting. jwillis84 discusses the trials and tribulations of working with the AIW USB on Win7. I believe he also fell back to Vista with better results. I don't know whether he ever got to what he felt was a solid, stable solution. Maybe he'll chime in here. All of this is WAY beyond my knowledge/experience but I've followed just to try to learn/understand .

I've had good results with my Xonar DX both in Win 7 and Win XP. For XP, it does require an MS HD audio hotfix to be installed. Did you install that? Also, IIRC, there are multiple Xonar driver options to try. Some might work better, maybe even the older ones.

BW

[bbmaster123]

Quote:

It sounds like you are getting to a solid capture process/system

Yesssss the research is paying off

Quote:

Did you ever determine the cause of the "smearing"?

No I didn't, I suppose its possible I had changed settings like the sharpness, or maybe r3 got turned back on without me noticing? It seems okay now, I'm going to try that tape again and see if it looks any different but I think its looking good now.

Quote:

Very interesting that you are making it all work with Vista (32 bit I assume).

Yes 32-bit clean install. Can't imagine I'd have much fun trying to get 64 bit to work. I will definitely read through that thread today after work

Quote:

For XP, it does require an MS HD audio hotfix to be installed. did you install that?

NOPE! I didn't even know there was a hotfix for XP. I used the same drivers I used back when this was my primary sound card, the xonar unified drivers. It used to work better for me than the asus drivers, though I can't remember exactly why.

I Never liked the C-Panel so I went with low latency mode, in vista this particular driver seems to work much better than in XP, at least with my config (its a xonar STX 1st gen)

I believe I'm pretty much ready, although I haven't figured out one last issue that I mentioned earlier, that the avi doesn't seem to close off when I hit esc, and it wont playback until after I run a chkdsk /x almost every time. Still want to solve that so hot plugging isn't an issue.

-- merged --

Quote:

you might find this thread interesting. jwillis84 discusses the trials and tribulations of working with the AIW USB on Win7.

You're right, I do find that thread very interesting. I read through it all. It looks like we both got about as far on windows 7, but I never bothered with MMC since I always intended to capture lossless. A lot of that is trying to get MMC working correctly, or at least somewhat working, but a lot of very good info on the drivers too.

I used Uniextract2rc3 to unpack the drivers around a week ago and found similar info(very useful tool btw), but of course I too hit a wall and went back to vista. Before I did though, I had managed to force my way to the point where everything except the proc amp was working correctly in virtualdub.

I wonder if a beta version of windows 7 might work. I remember at the time, I had trialed pretty much every leaked build, beta, and release canditate of 7, then codenamed Windows Vienna. I was a kid, so I guess I had nothing important to back up at the time.

Of course, the only reason to do this would be for compatibility in a single particular instance, and of course even if it worked for one person, it wouldn't mean it would be reproduceable for everyone. I think its interesting though, I'm sure at some point between vista and 7 directx was still fully in tact, while possibly working with some drivers that are only windows 7 and up.

Maybe one day, someone with more free time than I could put that to the test. Unless someone already has and I totally missed it.

One interesting thing to me was that they both mentioned how hot the usb was getting. Mine definitely gets hot, but I wouldn't be concerned with putting it next to anything. I would say it feels like maybe 50c. The metal bits that stick out get the hottest. Cooler is always better, but I'm not worried about it melting or anything.

-- merged --

Incoming wall of text -sorry

I checked the FAQ because I have 2 new questions but I'm still unsure if I should start a new thread or just continue here. Someone pls direct me if there's something specific that I should do.

First, to update how things are going so far, my captures seem to be going well overall. I've done almost 20 tapes now. around 15 more to go. I've been watching the footage, a lot of which I've never seen. I only had 1 s-vhs so far. Sync issues are now gone, and there's no horizontal smearing.

Most of these tapes are mixed footage, sometimes spanning multiple years, different camcorders, etc. Because of this, first of all, a lot of scenes appear on multiple tapes in various levels of quality. This is great as some scenes don't track well on one tape (or have baked in issues) that it wont have on another tape.

High quality/well treated tapes are playing back pretty much perfectly. perfectly straight borders, centered image, no horizontal wiggles etc. Most of my tapes from the 80s play very well (near perfect playback, but camcorder had some colour issues and bright lights streak for several seconds). My 90s tapes vary a lot in playback. On the worst tapes I get mild to moderate tracking issues during certain sections. I can hear the plastic reel scraping as it rotates, at the same time/rate as tracking lines sweep downward through the image, during these sections(other sections are fine). These were the tapes that were handled by children, and spent 25+ years in a heavy smoker's home. I've put aside 3 of these tapes for later.

With that out of the way, here are my 2 questions.

1. Many of these 90s tapes I have vary al lot in content and quality, so some scenes need different level settings. So far, I haven't ever upped the contrast, always lowered to 107-110 depending on the tape. I don't have the time or patience to capture each scene individually, so logic tells me use the histogram, find the darkest and brightest scenes or objects on the tape, turn on crop and adjust for no red, turn off crop and capture.

Do I lose anything by doing this? Some scenes may have more contrast reduction than absolutely necessary. I know you can't bring back clipped details, but I figured you can expand afterwards and everything should look okay. Is that correct, or do you lose luma accuracy or something due the expansion?

2. I have a particular tape that tracks well, but there's a bit of a story to it as it pertains to my question.

The content is all footage from the mid 50s to early 60s, colour and monochrome, at what looks to me like maybe 12 frames per second equivalent. I haven't looked too closely yet. This would have obviously been filmed and not taped.

This footage was dumped to tape sometime in the late 70s. Apparently, the footage was in such poor physical condition by this point that "it disintegrated as it went through the machine" and we do not have this original footage anymore. The projector was a clearly a POS by today's standards, but at least the footage had been preserved.

Some of the footage is passable. Much of it very oversaturated, all 4 borders have a heavy vignette, and all of it has dirt, gashes, and other physical damage. I'll deal with that somewhat later during post, but the worst are the scenes that shake. I will prep a sample because I don't think this description will get the issue across correctly but here it goes.

Imagine it like this. There is the main image, and a ghost image, the ghost image is the entire frame of the main image, but with a lower opacity, and shifted down, and to the the right by an estimated 150 pixel in each direction. The ghost image will overlay the main image then disappear at a non constant rate, making the image look like it is shaking. This is definitely baked into the tape. I even checked direct from the jvc to a small rca crt tv that I still have. The original footage was just that damaged I guess.

If I had to guess what caused the issue originally, the individual cells from the original film may have creased and folded over itself somewhat as it was fed through the projector. Just a guess though, I'm probably wrong.

Is there anything I can do to save or even slightly improve those scenes?

Again, sorry for the wall of text. In my head it sounds like a 2 minute conversation

[bookemdano]

Glad to hear things are going well overall.

Not sure about #1. Hopefully someone with more experience tweaking levels can comment on that.

RE: #2 - It's highly likely you're dealing with 8mm film (not to be confused with 8mm video cassettes), which ran at 16fps. Ever since video cameras came onto the market, people have "transferred" their old movie films to video by projecting the film onto a surface (either a projector screen, white wall, bedsheet, or there were also mirror/ground glass contraptions built for the task) and then recording the projection with a video camera. As you can see, the quality leaves a lot to be desired (and being film, even tiny 8mm frames can hold a lot of detail and look pretty nice when scanned).

If you still had the original film, there are much better methods to capture it now. But as you said, if the original film was falling apart anyway, it's great that your relatives found a way to preserve it, even if the quality isn't the best by today's standards.

Please do upload an example of the shaking you're talking about. That could be something an avisynth filter can help correct.

If you don't get other responses here you may want to repost your questions in the Restoration subforum. You can also post over at videohelp.com--there's a bit more traffic there.

[bbmaster123]

Quote:

It's highly likely you're dealing with 8mm film

yes, it must be 8mm film then, 16fps sounds like what I'm seeing. I'll post a sample today after work.

Quote:

people have "transferred" their old movie films to video by projecting the film onto a surface (either a projector screen, white wall, bedsheet, or there were also mirror/ground glass contraptions built for the task) and then recording the projection with a video camera

Yea that's what they did. Most likely just a white wall with a dim light. Better than nothing, but if I could rescan it with modern techniques, I would definitely start looking into it.

Quote:

even tiny 8mm frames can hold a lot of detail and look pretty nice when scanned

You sound like you know what you're talking about here. I know that 35mm film can digitize to approximately to just under 5k from what I've read online (and seen in certain blu ray remastered movies). Does 8mm use the same size grain? like, would the maximum equivalent digital version come out to approx just over 1440x1080 ish? Just curious.

Quote:

If you don't get other responses here you may want to repost your questions in the Restoration subforum. You can also post over at videohelp.com--there's a bit more traffic there.

oh really? good to know, thank you!

-- merged --

I've now captured all but my 3 problem tapes, each having a different issue. The tape with the shaking footage is not one of them, it at least plays back ok. the others:

1. tape is moderately crinkled at beginning
2. cassette had cracked screw post by supply reel, and metal guide roller just rolling around inside. Transplanted reels to new shell from a blank tape. Also has errors near the bottom of the image, might be baked in. Changes from scene to scene, and even moves during a scene. Then about halfway through the tape, it stops and doesn't come back. The tape itself looks ok, not visibly damaged. samples included
3. video dropouts every 3-4 seconds. tried ff and rw a few times but hasn't helped. does this on both vcr's and manual tracking doesn't help.

I'm uploading samples of the shaking video and number 2 above.

Clips 1 and 2 - shaking footage
Clips 3, 4, 5 - problem tape 2

-- merged --

Weird effect on that 8mm film. Could be due to damaged sprocket holes, so that the frames weren't in exactly the same place when projected.

I know that avisynth has some filters that can help correct frame registration, but I'm not sure if that can be done on an interlaced capture of a film source. It probably needs an "inverse telecine" first to get back to the original progressive frames of film and remove the duplicates. I would definitely post over at videohelp and/or doom9. There are a bunch of avisynth experts over there. One guy in particular (johnmeyer) is really familiar with transferring film sources and could probably best advise you what can be done (if anything) to fix that ghost image.

Oh, and haha that tape was likely done in the mid/late 80s--the song in clip2 is "Cherish" by Kool and the Gang which was released in '84.

Not sure if anything can be done with your tape #2. If the original cassette was defective/damaged the tape may have been misaligned during recording/dubbing. I'd see what those segments look like in another VCR if you have one. If they look similar then it's probably inherent in the recording.

[BW37]

@bbmaster123: Hopefully better late than never...

Going back to your post # 53, I believe your plan of setting levels for the entire tape is the accepted compromise for capturing entire tapes with varying levels throughout. It does "compress" the capture range for luma so you aren't getting the optimum captures but at least they won't have crushed blacks or blown highlights. You can always go back and recapture more critical/valuable scenes later to optimize the levels specifically for those scenes.

On the 8mm film captures, the ghosting might have been in the original film or might be an artifact of the projector used or the frame rate incompatibility of film vs. video. As bookemdano has suggested, you will have to restore them as best you can in post. I have a bunch of old regular 8 and Super 8 family films that I will be sending out for digitization. I'm previewing them using an old GOKO film viewer. In doing so it has become clear that the Super 8 camera's transport was failing near the end of it's use producing double exposed frames, pretty much destroying those films usefulness. As an aside, from what I've read, even playing an old 8mm film through a projector can damage it because typically, the film has shrunk over time so the sprocket holes don't register properly and thus get damaged as they are "forced" back to their original locations in the projector. The viewer is very gentle by comparison.

Lastly, I suggest you start a new thread in the Restore, Filter, Improve Quality forum asking for help on your "problem tapes". I suspect some of the old hands on this forum use the post titles as a "first sort" as to what to read and may not be reading your latest posts on this thread. I'd just link back to this thread for the sample's you've uploaded rather than re-uploading them. Maybe a few stills could at least give hint at the problems you are looking for help on.

BW

[bbmaster123]

bookemdano

Quote:

Could be due to damaged sprocket holes, so that the frames weren't in exactly the same place when projected.

that sounds plausible.

Quote:

It probably needs an "inverse telecine" first to get back to the original progressive frames of film and remove the duplicates.

That sounds like it could get complicated, but I hope I'm wrong. I'm new to avisynth, but I'm not new to scripting in general so maybe it wont be so difficult.

Quote:

Oh, and haha that tape was likely done in the mid/late 80s--the song in clip2 is "Cherish" by Kool and the Gang which was released in '84.

never heard of them! aha I guess that means the dump would have been done in 84, my mum picked the soundtrack so it wasn't just silent. In post I'll just replace them with cd quality wavs.

Quote:

I'd see what those segments look like in another VCR if you have one. If they look similar then it's probably inherent in the recording.

Yea they look the same on both my vcr's. I guess it must have been a problem with the original dub to tape. I can't remember if I mentioned this a few pages back, but in the footage you see a scence with the noisy lines, then the vcr/camcorder repair shop, and the next scene the video looks fine.

BW37

Quote:

Hopefully better late than never...

nope, not too late at all

Quote:

It does "compress" the capture range for luma so you aren't getting the optimum captures but at least they won't have crushed blacks or blown highlights

thank you, that confirms it then. Most scences on my tapes seem to need contrast set to 107-109, only a handful of scenes need it higher (none needed lower than 107 contrast).

Quote:

Lastly, I suggest you start a new thread in the Restore, Filter, Improve Quality forum asking for help on your "problem tapes"

Thank you I will do that!

[lordsmurf]

In those last 5 clips, I just see typical bad film>VHS conversion, and tracking/alignment errors. Both may be impossible to fix. You can attempt unfilming the VHS (not easy, but something I've done before several times) and dumping the bad fields/frames. And cropping the tracking/ But that's really it.

Yes, as others mentioned, as you guess, find a single value, and capture the whole tape. If it realy matters, something is too over- or underexposed, you can go back to that scene in particular, recapture with analog proc amp. The digital capture card proc amp is usually not much different than post-capture in NLE/Avisynth/VirtualDub.

Earlier in thread, lots of talk of tearing. Ugly error, sometimes TBC can help, sometimes TBC makes it worse (or "causes" it, but not really, just made it worse, ie now very visible).

Doom9 and VH has Avisynth users yes, but so does this site.
Doom9 is mostly filter devs (not always helpful with actual usage), VH and here are the filter users.

johnmeyer is a whiz at film -- his Avisynth film script is a masterpiece, albeit it complicated, based on videofred's much older antiquated script -- but his knowledge breaks down at VHS, including film>VHS conversions. But that's a good thing, as I've gotten some good ideas from him in the past (from a film-centric Avisynth POV), which enabled me to pull more film from the bad film>VHS job. I see you've been posting with him at VH, and he hit a brick wall. I wish I could see his scripting, as I may have the missing link for it. I think his knowledge, and mine, are good complements for these ugly film>VHS botch jobs.

[bbmaster123]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lordsmurf

In those last 5 clips, I just see typical bad film>VHS conversion, and tracking/alignment errors. Both may be impossible to fix. You can attempt unfilming the VHS (not easy, but something I've done before several times) and dumping the bad fields/frames. And cropping the tracking/ But that's really it.

Yes, as others mentioned, as you guess, find a single value, and capture the whole tape. If it realy matters, something is too over- or underexposed, you can go back to that scene in particular, recapture with analog proc amp. The digital capture card proc amp is usually not much different than post-capture in NLE/Avisynth/VirtualDub.

Earlier in thread, lots of talk of tearing. Ugly error, sometimes TBC can help, sometimes TBC makes it worse (or "causes" it, but not really, just made it worse, ie now very visible).

Doom9 and VH has Avisynth users yes, but so does this site.
Doom9 is mostly filter devs (not always helpful with actual usage), VH and here are the filter users.

johnmeyer is a whiz at film -- his Avisynth film script is a masterpiece, albeit it complicated, based on videofred's much older antiquated script -- but his knowledge breaks down at VHS, including film>VHS conversions. But that's a good thing, as I've gotten some good ideas from him in the past (from a film-centric Avisynth POV), which enabled me to pull more film from the bad film>VHS job. I see you've been posting with him at VH, and he hit a brick wall. I wish I could see his scripting, as I may have the missing link for it. I think his knowledge, and mine, are good complements for these ugly film>VHS botch jobs.

Hey LS! Been a couple weeks, how's everything since the power surge? I hope it hasn't been too stressful!

I see you've posted over on the videohelp thread as well.
For anyone else who wants to follow all the posts, here's a direct link to that thread: https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/...shaky-8mm-film

I'm not 100% sure what you mean by unfilming, are you referring to splitting the fields into png images to make it easier to remove bad frames?

Yes Johnmeyer has been very helpful in clarifying my current understanding, and his input, as well as everyone else's is much appreciated

Are you saying the proc amp in the capture device is a digital proc amp and takes place after sampling the video? Compared to the gaming capture setup I had before, there is definitely much less clipping of whites and maybe a bit less black crush.

In regards to tbc/dnr, I captured almost every tape twice, with and without tbc for more flexibility later. The crinkled tape I spooled past the first 1-2 seconds and captured from the earliest clean part of the tape. This was the same tape I first captured with my gaming capture setup, so I can see I'm only missing 1-2 seconds of footage. I can also see while all the detail is there (other than what got clipped/crushed), wow are there obvious compression artifacts all over.

[lordsmurf]

film>VHS conversion destroy film, make a really crappy videotape version. So by "unfilming", I more meant "untape the film". Try to restore the underlying film, remove all the VHS problems and damage. It's not easy, very content based.

I'm not referring to crush/clip (legal captures).
Think of capture card proc amp like digital zoom. Fake.
I capture whole tapes, good overall value. If a scene capture is unacceptable, I recapture using a proc amp. That has nothing to do with crushing/etc.

I don't really see the point in non-TBC captures unless you know it helps that specific tape.

[bbmaster123]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lordsmurf

film>VHS conversion destroy film, make a really crappy videotape version. So by "unfilming", I more meant "untape the film". Try to restore the underlying film, remove all the VHS problems and damage. It's not easy, very content based.

ahhhhh gotcha. Now I get what you're saying.
I found some original reels at my grandparents which, thankfully will make this all moot, so I'll post over on videohelp to keep everything together.

Quote:

I'm not referring to crush/clip (legal captures).
Think of capture card proc amp like digital zoom. Fake.
I capture whole tapes, good overall value. If a scene capture is unacceptable, I recapture using a proc amp. That has nothing to do with crushing/etc.

so little benefit really, best to use external proc amp when necessary, got it! I Don't believe my tapes reached the unacceptable threshold, but could you post a quick example of something that would be unacceptable? Or link to one?

Quote:

I don't really see the point in non-TBC captures unless you know it helps that specific tape.

Yea, many of my tapes needed tbc off, primarily the ones recorded in the 90s. The worse the condition of the tape, the more likely tbc was causing intermittent flagging for sections of that tape. I figured I could take the scenes where tbc caused the issue, and splice in the same whole scene from the tbc off capture. My tbc off captures don't suffer from obvious wavy lines, just mainly chroma noise.

Thanks again!