Finally think I have an acceptable work flow!

[sanlyn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrsark87

Hello, I apologize for jumping on this thread. But, I sort of understand what's been said and I want to ask some questions. I've been here before, about a year ago and read a ton and asked a lot of questions. Just like everyone else, I have a bunch of vhs home movies to convert. I understand some of it but the language just gets so industry specific and often I just don't know what it means. but, here's where I am. I want these tapes converted in order to preserve them. It's not something we will watch often. I want them very good, possible better than they are if that's doable. They do not have to be the level that you guys would do. I don't have the time or money to get that deeply into this. Same old song, right?

Right.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrsark87

That being said, I bought a used Panasonic 1980 locally (have no clue if it's in great shape. It works but nothing to compare to). I have the ATI wonder thing and a TBC 8710. I believe I start with the player, connect with svideo cable to tbc, then svideo to ATI and into something else.

And you've been reading " a ton" for a year? Okay, the AG-1980 tis a great start, assuming it works the way it's supposed to. What's with the AVT-8710 tbc? Are your home made tapes copy protected?

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrsark87

That's where I get a little hung up. I know it can go to a dvd recorder or a pc.

You know incorrectly. The ATI capture device connects to a pc. You have to install ATI's capture drivers and software. You can capture to the PC with ATI's MPEG capture (OK at very high birates), or use VirtualDub to capture to lossless media for the best results. You'll see a similar discussion about this in the videohelp forum: http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/3...=1#post2350210.

Looking at the rest of your post, and judging from the beginning, maybe you want to slow down a bit. At this point there are some basics that you really need to get a handle on. Take it easy and start here:
http://www.digitalfaq.com/guides/vid...-workflows.htm
http://www.digitalfaq.com/guides/vid...rd-capture.htm
http://www.digitalfaq.com/guides/vid...nd-sources.htm

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrsark87

I think I want to capture as mpeg for broadcast or just mpeg2 for dvd?

DVD is MPEG2. DVD can't be anything else. MPEG2 is a codec. "MPEG" is a container for MPEG1 or MPEG2 codecs. The lingo on the street is "DVD" and "MPEG" for the same thing, roughly.

What do you mean by "broadcast"? If you mean web posting, consider this -- Video captured from VHS is interlaced or telecined, as are most DVD's and BluRay discs. Web video is almost always progressive. The best and cleanest way to go from interlaced/telecined source to web video is to properly deinterlace or inverse telecine with tools like Avisynth (best) or VirtualDub (mmm, okay, but stick with Avisynth). The very worst way to get progressive web video is to use the typical budget NLE from Adobe or SONY or, even worse, Pinnacle (gasp!). If you capture to DV, note that DV was deigned for PC-only or thru-camera display. It'll have to be re-encoded for any other output or playback device.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrsark87

So, my question is, if I capture to a dvd burner, is that still raw data that I can, then, load into my pc and edit with adobe or sony or something and then render and burn to vd?

I don't know what you mean by "raw video", and chances are, you don't know either. MPEG2 is encoded video, it's not raw. If you want raw, capture to losslessl AVI using huffyuv or Lagarith lossless compression with your USB Wonder. There's nothing in between -- You capture to lossless or capture to lossy (MPEG, h264, DV, etc).

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrsark87

Or do I have to capture to laptop (which I do have and do not have a dvd burner) and just save to an external drive?

Laptop + video processing is (shudder) a very difficult way to go through life. Lots of people do it. The results are often depressing to watch.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrsark87

Then I could pull into edit/authoring software and make my dvd? I know that's a lot of questions. Thanks so much for the time you take to help.

Sorry there's not more answers to give you in a single post. Problem here is that you're still in the very basic stages. If you want to get going in a hurry with at least viewable results without inflicting too much damage on your captures, record (ahem, I mean capture) to DV on your PC. Not the best way, not the worst. Use something decent like SONY Movie Studio Platinum to handle the grunt work from edit to encoding to authoring and DVD. SONY gets at least decent results, and does it all without requiring you to know very much about what you're doing. Caution, though: you really do have to get into the documentation and user guides, no matter which way you go. Or you'll get some rather unpleasant surprises.

[mrsark87]

I truly appreciate your help and I will do more reading and trying to come up to speed. But, I think it's apparent I don't know what I'm doing and I don't need anyone to mock me or point it out. I'm an idiot in this world but pretty darn smart in my world.

[lordsmurf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrsark87

I truly appreciate your help and I will do more reading and trying to come up to speed. But, I think it's apparent I don't know what I'm doing and I don't need anyone to mock me or point it out. I'm an idiot in this world but pretty darn smart in my world.

Nobody's mocking you.

... at least they'd better not be. That's not something that happens on this site, as it does on others.

I've been unable to reply to posts for a few weeks now (dealing with medical issues again, temporary minor setback), but will be at it again very soon. I'll look your question over, and see if I can help you better.

[sanlyn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrsark87

I truly appreciate your help and I will do more reading and trying to come up to speed. But, I think it's apparent I don't know what I'm doing and I don't need anyone to mock me or point it out. I'm an idiot in this world but pretty darn smart in my world.

No, no mocking here, but we do have to save time and angst by getting to the point. Sorry if it I came off a little forward, didn't mean to. Saying that you don't have a good handle on this subject doesn't mean you're stupid and isn't a personal comment. Everyone here and in similar forums had to start somewhere.

Tell ya about my very first DVD. Spent a week gathering all the equipment and software, spent 2 days working on a 15-minute capture off cable TV. Finally authored and burned the DVD, then eagerly jumped over to my DVD player and inserted the DVD disc. My player thought about it for maybe 15 seconds, then spit the disc right back out at me. To say I was set back ain't half of it.

The guides I posted links to are where I ended up the next day. And, yeah, I started all over again. The guides might be a bit dated as far as hardware goes, though not entirely, and it took a weekend of study to get me fired up again. When I started posting samples, I got a pretty good chewing out by a few people, but most were good teachers and kept me going. I still make some booboos (and sometimes catch the devil for it from lordsmuf), but that comes with the territory, just like any endeavor.

Anyway, good luck.

[mrsark87]

Thanks to you both. This is important to me. I am so willing to buy what I need and learn what I need to learn. But, there isn't enough years left in my life for me to get to your level. I've read almost everything on these forums trying to understand. The biggest problem is that it's all disjointed and uses terminology that is unknown to me. I'm extremely computer literate and have done a lot of video work in Pinnacle over the years. So, even though that is elementary to you, I'm not completely starting from scratch.

Here's where I am now. I ordered a jvc 7800. I have the ATI TBC which I had understood from reading that it was necessary. I also have the USB600 to capture with. And early on (before the usb600), I had purchased the Canopus 110. At this point, I think I can play on the jvc, using the tbc?, and capture to pc with the usb. I have virtual dub downloaded. Have not tried to use it, but surely I can. I will also buy Sony editing software. Capture as Mpeg? Then edit (only identifying information and combining clips) and burn?

I have also considered and would like to know if I need to purchase....the Processor Amp and the Detailer and put those into my string from vcr to pc.

I've read the definiting of "authoring." Is it the equivalent of "rendering," which is the term I'm familiar with.

[mrsark87]

Okay, I've done some reading on "authoring." It seems that it's just the entire process from editing to burning final dvd?

[mrsark87]

Here's one quote from Lord Smurf regarding the TBC. There are many other places I've read about this. That's why I bought it.

99%+ of the time, it's fact -- TBC is needed for analog video.

Read more: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/myth...#ixzz3FZKjTwRl

[sanlyn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrsark87

Thanks to you both. This is important to me. I am so willing to buy what I need and learn what I need to learn. But, there isn't enough years left in my life for me to get to your level.

Tell me about it, LOL! I still have about 200 hours of VHS to go. As for levels, well.....it all depends on what you expect and how much you're willing to put into it. If you're limited, and your goals aren't perfectionist (I wish I could be less picky!), you can still get pretty good results that will have friends nodding approval.

I've used Pinnacle myself and auditioned several versions since good old version 8. It's really for low-tier stuff, as you'll see from comments from other members. It would do, I guess, but I'd say Movie Studio Platinum can give better results with more features and about the same effort. That's not the way advanced users would do it, but I think you're correct: no sense getting into heavy duty processing if you don't have the time for it -- and it does take time.

The 7800 is OK. I've used it in the past until it died, and its cousin the 7600. You could do better when it comes to 6-hour tapes, as its better with 2-hour and retail stuff. But you can always augment with a good used Panasonic later. Take it from experience, used VCR's can choke at a moment's notice, which is why many members here have more than one VCR.

The 7800 has a built-in line level tbc for in-frame line sync errors. Those errors produce wiggling lines and edges and subtle but visible and annoying horizontal "ripples" during playback, along with bent borders, especially on old tapes. The AVT 8710 is a frame level tbc, does nothing for line sync errors, but many use a frame tbc all the time to help with overall frame sync smoothness and audio sync, not to mention defeating copy protection.

So if you have two capture cards, both are used to capture VHS to a PC. There are differences. Most would say that the image quality and color from the 110 is not as clean as with the 600. The 110 can give you somewhat compressed DV AVI and (I think) MPEG2 or possibly some other compressed format. You use that card's software for the capture. The 600 won't do DV-AVI, but it will give you a pretty good MPEG at high bitrates and can be used with VirtualDUb to capture to lossless AVI using huffyuv or Lagarith lossless compression. Huffyuv is faster. Many use huffyuv for capture, then use Lagarith to make slightly smaller intermediate working files. This is what you would use if you were working with lossless video. I don't think you will, for several reasons. Although VHS to lossless is the best way to get the cleanest editable archive for cleanup and other work, a 90-minute huffyuv capture would be about 35GB. SONY's software can work with lossless AVI. Lossless means what it says -- what comes into the capture device is what you get in the capture, with no additional compression, color changes, compression artifacts, etc. Lossless capture can be uncompressed, which can be 3 times the size I just quoted, which is why lossless compressors like huffyuv and Lagarith are recommended to save some working space.

Now, why would anyone in their right mind work with these big lossless files? Well, if you ever see a real capture from VHS you're going to see lots of noise, both analog playback defects and plain old tape noise (floating, dancing, horizontal grain and vague horizontal "stripes"). You'll also see spots, dots, rips, dropouts, chroma noise, chroma shift and bleeding colors, rainbows, edge stains, edge halos, and whatnot. Once those defects get encoded to compressed formats like MPEG or DV-AVI, you'd have to be an advanced user to clean them up and some of it is futile. Digital encoders don't like noise, which becomes artifacts rather than "just noise". Both MPEG and DV-AVI tend to encode this grainy stuff as mosquito noise on edges or sometimes bright tiny "sparkles" that twitter and dance on playback. You can clean it up in something like Avisynth with filters like DeComb and others, but they have after-effects, notably loss of clarity that has to be restored with some very sophisticated sharpeners and masking techniques. That's a lot to handle if you expect to get quick results. Lossless capture tends to avoid some of this, doesn't have compression artifacts, and is easier to clean up. That kind of cleanup, even with lossless media, is not a feature of consumer NLE's. So that's why I recommended that you'd probably be happier with DV, which does need some cleanup but is not so inimical to editing with smart-rendering editors like the SONY stuff.

Capping to MPEG is another story. It's difficult to edit without smart-rendering. If you decide to modify color, impose subtitles, do some denoising, there is no smart-rendering for MPEG (or for DV for that matter) if you get into more complicated processing. Each time you modify in lossy formats in that way, you go to another lossy re-encode, so you lose even more data and get more compression artifacts. Simple cuts and joins involve re-encoding only for a few groups of frames in the area of the cut (smart rendering).

Authoring for DVD isn't an encoding step. It's a reorganization of the encoded video into a file structure that can be read by DVD players. For standard DVD the file has to be previously encoded as MPEG2. Some NLE's refer to encoding as "rendering", some call it encoding. Some NLE's use "render" to refer to just about anything, including joining, cuttiing, re-encoding, and authoring. With lossless video, changes involve "rendering" (processing the requesting modifications) to a new output file, but not re-encoding. Encoding a lossless file to the final output format is the only encoding step involved with lossless media.

To greatly simplify matters, encoding for DVD involves the following: a lossless AVI (AVI is a container, not an encoding codec) is usually a completely decoded video file. Every frame in that file is a complete, full-sized image. An encoder takes that video and breaks it into GOP's (Groups of Pictures), usually groups of 12 to 18 frames. The first frame in that GOP is a complete image, known as an index or "I" frame or "key" frame. The other frames in the GOP are P and B frames, which are not complete images. P and B frames contain only the data that has changed since the previous key frame. That's how encoded video files get a whole lot smaller than the original, decoded file -- only a small percentage of the images in lossy encoded video are complete images. Another size reduction occurs with further compression of the GOPs -- something like JPG compression, but in this case 100% of the data isn't there. How much of the data remains depends on bitrate. Some data bits are dropped if you specify a low bitrate. Specify a lower bitrate, and more data about details and motion changes gets dropped. Specify a higher bitrate, and more data is retained. If you retain more data bits, then changes between those I, P, and B frames have more clarity and cleaner motion and details. If you specify more compression (lower bitrates), you start losing data bits. Some areas show show up with blocky edges in 8x8 blocks, color banding, smeared motion, lost detail, and other artifacts. Once those data bits are gone, they don't come back. Each subsequent re-encode loses more of them. This principle of lossy compression and GOP structure applies to DVD, BluRay, AVCHD, and to a somewhat lesser extent with DV. Ultimately lossy DV has to be lossy re-encoded if you want to get standard playing formats with it.

Still trying to keep this simple, imagine what happens if you have an MPEG encoded as GOP's, and you want to cut out some frames. Some of those "frames" are not complete images. The software rendering engine has to re-create new GOPs with new key frames and new P and B frames, which means lossy re-encoding. A smart-rendering app reworks only the immediate GOPs involved and leaves the rest unchanged. If you make a major mod such as changing the color balance, whether its lossy MPEG or DV, every frame has to be re-encoded. This isn't a problem with lossless video, in which every frame is a complete, decoded image -- i.e, in lossless video there are no key frames, or another way of looking at is that all frames in a lossless video can be thought of as key frames.

Using a proc amp and/or detailer with VHS capture is usually not a good idea. At best, it's a frustrating experience because VHS changes luma and chroma properties from minute to minute. What works with one scene won't work with other scenes. You can sharpen VHS details if you want, but you're also sharpening noise and defects, making it more visible and more difficult to clean up if not impossible.

If you want to capture to MPEG and your edits are just simple cuts and joins and adding a few MPEG2 titles, keep your bitrates high enough for just a 90-minute limit on a DVD disc, which is about 5500 to 6200 variable bitrate. A smart-rendering NLE such as the SONY product with a decent smart-rendering engine is what you should use. I've never cared for Pinnacle's lack of talent in that area. Note, too, that if you apply a transition effect such as a dissolve or fade, the entire duration of the transition has to be re-encoded.

Once you actually see a capture from VHS, regardless of how you do it, you'll see these problems more clearly.

[mrsark87]

Thanks for such a long and thought out response. I'm printing it out to read and absorb. I'll be back with more questions, I'm sure.