Huffyuv YUY2 AVI to Blu-ray conversion? (and TBC samples!)

[premiumcapture]

http://ngcodec.com/news/2014/1/15/do...ort-interlaced

Interesting read on HEVC

[lordsmurf]

I'm curious how H.265 is supposed to be better than MPEG-2 for interlacing.

[vhsdigital34]

This is what I meant by next gen blu ray. Supposedly coming next year and will eventually improve to 1TB per disc. Would this still be a max of 15mbps? I know you said there's no improvement past that depending on the VHS source meaning there are others that can benefit from a higher mbps? I'm curious to find out where that maxes out

http://mobile.extremetech.com/latest...xt-gen-blu-ray

[premiumcapture]

15 mps can be considered overkill in some cases. The largest damage to the original file takes place when it is downsampled to 4:2:0 and the codec applies its intraframe compression. Even if you pump a larger data rate, the difference between 15 and higher will not be noticeable unless its extremely noisy or its high action. Better to stick your originals on a disc like that rather than encode unless you plan to play it.

My unfiltered H.264 conversions peak out qulaity-wise around 8mbps, but better quality at much lower rates can be achieved with proper filtering.

Quote:

Originally Posted by vhsdigital34

This is what I meant by next gen blu ray. Supposedly coming next year and will eventually improve to 1TB per disc. Would this still be a max of 15mbps? I know you said there's no improvement past that depending on the VHS source meaning there are others that can benefit from a higher mbps? I'm curious to find out where that maxes out

http://mobile.extremetech.com/latest...xt-gen-blu-ray

[msgohan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lordsmurf

15mpbs is the max for Blu-ray MPEG-2 @ 720x480/576.

I think I asked before where you get that number from but I can't recall the answer (sorry). Is it your authoring program? Blu-ray Disc Demystified never mentioned any limit for SD discs; just the regular 40Mbps limit for everything. Apple's Compressor apparently only allows 15Mbps for SD content on an HD DVD, but doesn't mention such a limit for SD Blu-ray.

I understand that higher bitrates may be overkill, but I don't think the spec itself maxes out at 15.

[premiumcapture]

Quote:

Originally Posted by msgohan

I think I asked before where you get that number from but I can't recall the answer (sorry). Is it your authoring program? Blu-ray Disc Demystified never mentioned any limit for SD discs; just the regular 40Mbps limit for everything. Apple's Compressor apparently only allows 15Mbps for SD content on an HD DVD, but doesn't mention such a limit for SD Blu-ray.

I understand that higher bitrates may be overkill, but I don't think the spec itself maxes out at 15.

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=154533

It maxes out at 15 for SD but 40 for HD. Top commercial Blu Ray bitrates are around 35-38 at most.

[vhsdigital34]

Hi sanlyn/lordsmurf,

Thanks for your explanations. Definitely got me a better understanding as to what I'm potentially heading into. If you capture with YUY2, is that automatically YUV 16-240? When encoding to MPEG2 for SD Blu Ray, does it convert YUY2 to YV12 to MPEG2? If so, when going from YUY2 to YV12, does it go through RGB 0-255 or does that happen at capture because the PC monitor sets darkest at 0 and brightest at 255 (implying my capture is RGB 0-255 converted to YUY2 16-240 instead and already crushed and clipped). What's the best way to get to YV12 (including capture so best quality remains?). I may want to do two different captures depending on answers. Trying to better understand crushing and clipping. Sounds like it's not produced by a bad tape but inherent within the conversion process itself?

How do you encode from AVI to mpeg2? Avisynth/virtualdub? What are the scripts to get from YUY2 to 15mbps MPEG2 720x480 (I'll recapture using 720x480 since my TBC is coming tomorrow)? What are the scripts for detecting and filtering crushing and clipping?

Is TMPGEnc good because of authoring options? If not looking to create a GUI (not a concern on my end unless someone can convince me otherwise), is "Simple DVD Creator" just as good for Blu Ray authoring?

I'll go with imgburn for burning

Which blu ray burner drive? PC spec recommendations for the whole job? I might now need to get a PC for the second half of this job.

Thanks!!

[sanlyn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by vhsdigital34

If you capture with YUY2, is that automatically YUV 16-240?

No. You have to monitor the results. It's best (and easiest) to use a histogram or other graphic display. VirtualDub capture has a built-in histogram. VHS is almost always "enhanced" during playback -- too much contrast, crushed darks, clipped brights, etc., etc., and many mastering labs aren't all that careful. You use brightness and contrast real-time filters to control the incoming signal. Don't use filters for color enhancers, sharpeners, denoisers, autogain, or autocolor. They're all too slow anyway, and most work only in RGB.

Quote:

Originally Posted by vhsdigital34

When encoding to MPEG2 for SD Blu Ray, does it convert YUY2 to YV12 to MPEG2?

Yes. But you can do it a bit cleaner in Avisynth or even VirtualDub. There are also some circumstances in which ugly video requires a more sophisticated conversion routines such as Avisynth's 16-bit dither plugins. Most well-cleaned videos don't need it, though.

Quote:

Originally Posted by vhsdigital34

If so, when going from YUY2 to YV12, does it go through RGB 0-255 or does that happen at capture because the PC monitor sets darkest at 0 and brightest at 255 (implying my capture is RGB 0-255 converted to YUY2 16-240 instead and already crushed and clipped).

None of the above. Your capture should not be RGB 0-255. VHS enters the capture chain as YCbCr and gets captured as YUY2 if YUY2 is what you specify.

Quote:

Originally Posted by vhsdigital34

What's the best way to get to YV12 (including capture so best quality remains?).

You don't go to YV12 during capture, although you can if you want. But that's not the best idea. Best way to go from YUY2 to YV12 depends on whether or not your capture is interlaced. More than likely, from VHS it's interlaced. But the source, if it's a movie, would play as interlaced and enter capture as progressive + hard-coded telecine.

For strictly interlaced sources, use Avisynth:

ConvertToYV12(interlaced=true)

To convert interlaced capture from YUY2 or YV12 to RGB:

ConvertToRGB32(matrix="Rec601", interlaced=true)

For purely progressive (non-interlaced) material, use "interlaced=false" instead of "interlaced=true". It might not be necessary to perform those conversions. Depends on what kind of processing you need.

Telecine: movie sources are usually telecined in some way. Most NTSC movie sources use 3:2 pulldown. Within every 5 frames, two of the frames are interlaced and consist of fields from two frames. Removing telecine is one of the very first steps if you intend to do any edits, cleanup, etc. You inverse-telecine to remove telecine effects and get progressive non-interlaced video. The Avisynth plugin for that is called TIVTC. Don't use VirtualDub to perform inverse telecine. Typically, after TIVTC your 29.97fps video will be 23.976fps progressive video. You don't restore telecine until you encode as the last step. 3:2 is a common telecine scheme, but there are several others. How can you tell? You have to analyze the capture to see what's going on.

It's not always necessary to deinterlace or remove telecine. For color correction alone, it's not required. For denoisers, frame repair, etc., is usually is. Color corrections can be done in YUV and in RGB.

Quote:

Originally Posted by vhsdigital34

Trying to better understand crushing and clipping. Sounds like it's not produced by a bad tape but inherent within the conversion process itself?

YUV color spaces are expanded at the dark and bright ends when going to RGB. With a good capture, the luma and chroma values if properly monitored should be safe when going to RGB. If they're not, it can be fixed in Avisynth/YUV before going to RGB if it's needed.

I use the terms "crushed" to describe visual info that's below the RGB 16 threshold, and "clipped" to describe brights that are out of range. Actually "clipped" can refer to either. One reason for this is that most YUV color spaces can contain a wider spectrum of values than most RGB spaces. Consider that you have a capture with brights that exceed RGB 255 in RGB terms. The brights are, say, bright blue with a little red and green color mixed in at slightly lower values. Converted to RGB, those over-255 blue values get clipped -- sorry, folks, but RGB says that 255 is as high as it can go. So anything over 255 in blue gets converted to 255. Effectively, anything brighter is destroyed. Now you have a bright blue that was supposed to be very very blue, but now it's turned a little yellow because red and green are still intact. And some of the over-255 pixels that described detail are gone as well. Instead of detail, you have a blob. The same thing happens to the dark end. Lots of other strange things happen as well.

Here's a link to a digital camera website that covers the use of histograms. It's for still photo, but the principles for reading and using video histograms are exactly the same. http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tut...istograms1.htm

Quote:

Originally Posted by vhsdigital34

How do you encode from AVI to mpeg2?

Use an MPEG or BluRay encoder. Encoders don't need scripts, unless you want to frame-serve from AVI to the encoder using Avisynth. Some people do it, running Avisynth filters and whatnot and having the encoder "accept" the script's results. This way, encoding will never run faster than the script. Make a mistake, and run filtering and everything else all over again. I prefer one step and one set of problems at a time. One thing you'll need a script for is the excellent HCenc MPEG encoder -- but you really need the script only to open an AVI for it, if nothing else. HCenc is designed that way in order to be integrated with many different processing apps.

Quote:

Originally Posted by vhsdigital34

What are the scripts for detecting and filtering crushing and clipping?

I hear there are scripts around that detect invalid luma and chroma (usually luma only). But you can see bad values yourself in a capture, and you can use histograms and vectorscopes to make certain. Meanwhile, even if you had a script that "adjusts", how does it adjust? Usually they clamp values (which means that they clip anyway), or what values would you want? It's the sort of thing you do by eye and by using a few graphic tools to tell you what's happening and to check the results of your adjustments.

Quote:

Originally Posted by vhsdigital34

Is TMPGEnc good because of authoring options? If not looking to create a GUI (not a concern on my end unless someone can convince me otherwise)

Authoring and encoding are two different steps. Authoring doesn't encode, it simply copies files into the correct folder organization for DVD/BluRay/AVCHD, builds indexes, menus, etc. TMPGenc Authoring Works does have encoding features, but they are far more limited than those in TMPGenc Video Mastering Works, which is a multi-purpose, full-featured encoder. TVMW5 has other features, but encoding is its main purpose and works best with lossless input. There are several other (free) encoders around that use the same x264 engine. TMPGenc has its own MPEG engines.

Quote:

Originally Posted by vhsdigital34

is "Simple DVD Creator" just as good for Blu Ray authoring?

No. Among the worst and buggiest products around. Very popular with users who have no idea what they're doing and wouldn't know an artifact if one jumped out of their food and bit them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by vhsdigital34

I'll go with imgburn for burning

Good choice. Free. Lots of illustrated guides on using it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by vhsdigital34

Which blu ray burner drive? PC spec recommendations for the whole job?

I can speak only for my two LG BD burners, which have done well for 3 years now. I hear Pioneer is highly rated. I never worried about PC specs -- if the PC is good enough to make BluRay and handle HD, it's very likely good enough for burning. The makers usually have a spec sheet of minimum requirements.

For BD-R discs, stick with Verbatim. Don't use the cheaper LTH discs. There are reasons why they're cheaper.

[vhsdigital34]

Wow! Thanks sanlyn!!

My project strictly deals with Hi8/Video8 and VHS tape to Blu Ray conversions.

Am I correct to assume Hi8/Video8 would also require YUY2 capture just like VHS?

As for the authoring/encoding portion, I understood the general difference between the two. I was looking more for an alternative to TMPGEnc for authoring. My apologies as I probably didn't properly describe what I was looking for. I personally don't need menus or GUIs so I was hoping there's something else out there that's either better or just as good. Looks like clean DVD creator is out.

Also, what should I avoid to prevent crushing/clipping? Is there no way around it? I find it interesting there's no program out there that would just capture incoming SVideo stream frame by frame and capture as is as lossless and another program to burn that video as a blu ray playable disc. I'm assuming that doesn't exist because of the want/need to be able to filter/correct through software which would need something more complex.

As for PC specs, I'm looking for something that'd be able to handle all the encoding/authoring/burning portion of my project.

[sanlyn]

Hi8/video8 are similar to VHS. Digital 8, however, should be transferred directly via FireWire to DV (which is not lossless).

Minimum quad-core or better Intel (faster) or AMD CPU (somewhat slower at some tasks). 3GHz or faster. More cores = better. These could also handle HD, but at a slow pace. For HD, more cores and as much GHz as you can afford.

One small SATA hard drive for the operating system, one or more additional hard drives in the 500GB to 1TB range. Anything bigger than 1 TB is very difficult to maintain. Use the small drive for the OS and program installs. Use the other drive(s) for video files and read/write processing. Don't try to read and write big or long filtering jobs to your main OS drive. You will also need some external hard drives, preferably external A.C.-powered units with cooling fans (about $30, plus the hard drive), or smaller 2.5-inch portable USB drives for working storage and permanent archives. When I say "need", I'm serious. They won't be luxuries.

A good AMD/ATI-chip add-on graphics card, 250MB minimum video RAM, more would be better. You do not need a cyber-powered gaming card, which would be a waste of money for video editing.

A SoundBlaster add-on audio card is good enough, even the under-$50 models.

Windows XP is still preferred for video editing. The maximum RAM that XP can use is about 3.5 MB. You can go for Vista (less compatibility with some of the software mentioned), Win 7 (even less compatibility but still workable), Win8 will "mostly" work, sometimes, maybe (Microsoft's biggest clue yet that the only video stuff they want you use is their own software). Later Windows versions have troublesome limits with capture devices. Everything after XP can use more RAM (Start with 8GB). 64-bit by and large doesn't run faster, it just accesses more memory. You would be using 32-bit Avisynth, 32-bit VirtualDub, and 32-bit capture.

An ISP front panel display monitor, well calibrated (preferably calibrated with a colorimeter kit such as those from XRite and EyeOne). If you can't get a colorimeter, try free utilities from the lagom website (http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/). Trying to work with video, noise detection, levels, etc with an uncalibrated monitor is an exercise in futility.

If you don't want DVD or BluRay menus, but you want a DVD disc or BluRay disc that will play properly in DVD or BluRay set top players, you must still use an authoring program to construct the file organization required by standard DVD and BluRay discs. Otherwise, you can burn encoded MPEG, BluRay, or AVCHD unauthored videos as "data" to blank disc without authoring. Some players can handle those discs, some can't. You don't even need discs. Copy unauthored video to portable USB hard drives or an external media server.

Most ready-made PC's have lousy cooling systems and sub-par power supplies. OEM's tend to use the cheapest, cheesiest stuff they can get their hands on. A good 500-watt power supply costs at least $50 bare minimum on Black Friday, and $100 or better normally. However, you will not need a 1000-watt PSU. A good case cooling fan (or two) for high-speed video processing will ouput 80 or more CFM's at full throttle (cubic feet per minute) and will make a noise like flowing air. If you can't hear your cooling system pushing air while you run big-time filtering or encoding, your cooling system is too anemic to protect your hardware. You likely won't need a water cooling system (good luck installing one on a ready-made!), but you will probably need something better than the wimpy fans that come with most PC's.

Get a backup power battery, with at least a 1-hour emergency power provision. Do not buy cheap $30 "surge protectors" (aka, overpriced extension cords). A good external battery unit goes for under $100, and many go on sale for less. The smaller battery units with less reserve power don't clean/scrub incoming A.C. power that well. The first time you have one of those quickie on/off power brownouts while your PC is trying to encode video on all cores and accessing/writing tons of stuff to your hard drive, you will understand why people buy emergency PSU's. It's one of those things where learning the hard way is always learning too late, and it can be an exceptional expense as well the occasion for a long period of depression and self-flagellation. No kidding. Been there, done that. Won't go there again.

Software: take a look at TMPGenc Video Mastering Works. Has some basic authoring and burning features as well. Most of the free authoring programs seen at VideoHelp are lacking in features and/or usability. Usually the best encoders, authoring, and burning apps for each of those specialized tasks are separate components. To get better, with enough sophistication and features to let you play 'til you puke, be prepared to spend a load of cash (talking 4 or more digits here, and no decimal point). TMPGenc's MPEG encoder is as good as or better than many -- and reputedn to be even a little better for SD encoding is their ancient TMPGenc Plus 2.5, still dirt cheap and still sold online. TVMW5's x264 engine is the same one found in lots of free apps and in some very expensive jobs (Adobe and SONY not included). HCenc is a great free MPEG2 SD encoder. It's so specialized, it only does video, no audio -- have to add audio later. The x264 bare-bones encoding engine itself is a command-line app, kinda like the 10-speed-shift of Zen encoding for those who like to live dangerously on their way to nirvana.

Other members can lead you to the really high-priced spreads among software and hardware. I'm mostly into peasant-ware myself, except for my AfterEffects, Photoshop Pro, and a few other things like OPPO players. First, however, you have to begin with a decent capture.

[vhsdigital34]

This is beautiful. I really appreciate it!!

Is XP use for capturing and editing only? My current PC rig captures fine but nowhere near those specs. Would it be edit as well? It's a P4 2.4ghz, 2gb ram, (1) 80gb HD. I do have AC powered external HD (4tb) to save my lossless files. The capturing rig is off of an old dell I bought with the ATI ve 7500 PCI card as well as a turtle beach sound card. If this capturing rig is good for encoding as well, can a computer with a newer OS work well for authoring/burning jobs with less specs? I'm with you with going with less cost but meeting good demands. Seems like if they're still selling both TMPGEnc software they'd still work with newer OS up to win8? Are these false assumptions? I'm also assuming imgburn would work with the later OS. Not that I love Win8 but if the newer windows support more ram I'd figure splitting processes between the PC I already have and the newer one would be ideal? It already sounds like it's going to cost a lot more just to get these files to play on a stand alone Blu Ray player. Would the specs drop down significantly (including power source and fan) if it would just be encoding (no major editing if any), basic authoring (with no menus), and burning? Do the crushing/clipping adjustments require a better PC? If I took the original capture as is and encoded/authored/burned, would the specs change? If it doesn't, I'm going to have to purchase the software now, find and hold onto an XP install disc, and purchase a computer in the future when the price drops hoping my lossless files don't get corrupted/HD fail.

[lordsmurf]

@vhsdigital34:

Disc size will not affect the Blu-ray specs. It would have to be a whole new revision, which I doubt would happen. Anyway, until 1tb hits market, it should be considered vaporware.

FYI: That site requires Javascript to read anything. I don't do JS on untrusted sites.

@premiumcapture: 15mbps is not overkill.

The 25-50mbps broadcast spec is overkill, depending on the GOP structure, and is why cable and satellite carriers never really used it. Only aerial networks did. Satellites loved long GOP transport streams, and overloaded transponders more and more from 2003 onward. Some even used odd resolutions to compress it more.

At this late date, everybody is H.264 anyway.

Only streaming providers like Amazon or iTunes require broadcast specs for ingest, since they do all encoding in-house. The major TV networks vary highly, and change all the time. DVD spec 9.8-10.08 mbps max was over-compressed, which is why certain filtering was so important.

@msgohan: The bitrate/resolution spec information is found in most Blu-ray authoring apps. 15mbps is the max for SD 720x480 MPEG-2 streams. This is suggested for SD content, not H.264. Save the H.264 for the progressive HD content.

@premiumcapture, sanlyn: I'm not overly concerned about YUY2 and YV12 conversions.

Converting to RGB is the one you want to avoid, if possible. Filters will determine what's needed, so there's often no way to avoid this. I group my filters as best as possible, as you'll see in my MultiScript. See also: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/news...-avisynth.html

Tip: Change VirtualDun color depths to YUY2, both in the editor and in capturing mode.

@sanlyn: I need to inject some quick disagreement and corrections here.

- Simple DVD Creator is excellent freeware DVD authoring software. It doesn't do Blu-ray at all. You must be thinking of something else. I use SDC all the time for creating menu-less DVDs. It's as easy as TMPGEnc DVD Author (or TMPGEnc Authoring Works) for this process, but costs $0. It can make menus, but it's very manual to do so, as takes (wastes!) lots of time. For menu work, I use the abandonware Ulead DVD Workshop 2 (DVDWS2) for Windows DVD authoring, or DVD Studio Pro for Mac DVD authoring, And TMPGEnc software for Blu-ray authoring -- it does surprising well at it!

- 3.5gb, not mb! I actually get about 3.75gb on mine.

- You allude to it, but never say it outright -- source is rarely the correct IRE. So the goal is to always use good methods -- YUV, not RGB, etc. And then to use your eyes to see if something looks crushed/clipped, and correct/filter it as best you can. Make it better, not worse! Feel free to use histrograms, but those can lie too. This is all harder to see and do if your monitor is not calibrated!

- For Blu-ray, PHILIPS discs are quite good too, not just MKM/Verbatim. Most Memorex is PHILIPS. I know, it's surprising!

- 2tb is the max suggested drive size, for all kinds of reasons. We use lots and lots of 2tb drives here. A few of the oldest are 1.5tb. I think one 1tb is still around in a system, and one 500gb is what I use for my personal files. Seagate makes the best internal drives, and Fantom makes the best external drives (because of the enclosure).

- IPS LCD, not ISP.

But as usual, you gives lots of good information.

@vhsdigital34: P4 2.4ghz with 2gb RAM is fine to capture.

But you must capture to a second drive, not the main OS drive. It always drops frames capturing the OS drive. Are those 4tb drives via USB? If you ever connect a 3tb+ drive via eSATA, the drive will corrupt, and you'll lose everything on it. Be very, very careful with 2tb+ size drives!

XP systems are only best for capturing. You can process, edit, author and burn on whatever you want.

[premiumcapture]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lordsmurf

@premiumcapture: 15mbps is not overkill.

The 25-50mbps broadcast spec is overkill, depending on the GOP structure, and is why cable and satellite carriers never really used it. Only aerial networks did. Satellites loved long GOP transport streams, and overloaded transponders more and more from 2003 onward. Some even used odd resolutions to compress it more.

Wasn't Mpeg-2 broadcast @ 4:2:2 with less compression and a higher data rate?

[lordsmurf]

Yes and no.

MPEG-2 is a large spec, and adoption of it varied by station or network. Even at 4:2:2, the 50mbps was overkill for final distribution. It was often used internally, however, for editing. 4:2:2 MPEG is way better than DV, and just as transparent as most lossless formats in a smaller size. You'd need specialized MPEG NLE systems, however, which is where companies like Pinnacle, Matrox, Canopus, Harris, and others shined.

In addition to doing some of these things, I used to read about a lot of this in Broadcast Engineering. I had a subscription to it from 2002-2012, during the heaviest of the MPEG age. In more recent years, it was all about H.264 and 4k and internal networking, and I just let it lapse. It was no longer interesting to read.

[premiumcapture]

The last time I was at an actual broadcast station, the tech showed me their workflow. They use a combination of encoders, but often the sources do not meet spec per-se but get encoded as such.

Quote:

Originally Posted by lordsmurf

Yes and no.

MPEG-2 is a large spec, and adoption of it varied by station or network. Even at 4:2:2, the 50mbps was overkill for final distribution. It was often used internally, however, for editing. 4:2:2 MPEG is way better than DV, and just as transparent as most lossless formats in a smaller size. You'd need specialized MPEG NLE systems, however, which is where companies like Pinnacle, Matrox, Canopus, Harris, and others shined.

In addition to doing some of these things, I used to read about a lot of this in Broadcast Engineering. I had a subscription to it from 2002-2012, during the heaviest of the MPEG age. In more recent years, it was all about H.264 and 4k and internal networking, and I just let it lapse. It was no longer interesting to read.

[vhsdigital34]

Thanks Lordsmurf

Here's an article from BBC just in case still interested:
http://m.bbc.com/news/technology-26528507

My external is 4tb WD USB 3.0 drive with AC power. Should I not be using this because it's over 2tb? What are some of the reasons why I should shoot for getting 2tb drives instead (good thing I didn't pick up another one today on sale)?

I've captured the 1hr lossless to the OS drive without dropped frames. Did I get lucky and I'll be seeing dropped frames in future captures or is 1hr long enough to say it's ok as is? I'm receiving my green/black AVT-8710 tomorrow btw. Very excited!!

If I can encode (TMPGEnc)/author (TMPGEnc)/burn (imgburn) with little to no editing/filtering, which PC specs would you recommend? I'd still have to purchase another PC as I don't seem to have an acceptable PC for that portion. Is it still the same as what sanlyn recommended?

[lordsmurf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by premiumcapture

The last time I was at an actual broadcast station, the tech showed me their workflow. They use a combination of encoders, but often the sources do not meet spec per-se but get encoded as such.

Yep. As long as it's decent (or better), then it just gets transcoded into the preferred workflow of that facility. I used to get anything from DV MXF to ProRes422 HD or DNxHD HD files. Sometimes ugly source would be given to you, but a majority of it was comparable or better than what you needed.

A lot of software would be needed for it. I'd use Avid one day, and find myself in Final Cut the next. It wasn't unusual to find me in Avisynth or VirtualDub, either! Some pros are software snobs, and refuse to use anything less than the so-called "best" (most expensive!) programs. But I always used whatever tool was best for the job.

Quote:

Originally Posted by vhsdigital34

My external is 4tb WD USB 3.0 drive with AC power. Should I not be using this because it's over 2tb? What are some of the reasons why I should shoot for getting 2tb drives instead (good thing I didn't pick up another one today on sale)?

I've captured the 1hr lossless to the OS drive without dropped frames. Did I get lucky and I'll be seeing dropped frames in future captures or is 1hr long enough to say it's ok as is? I'm receiving my green/black AVT-8710 tomorrow btw. Very excited!!

If I can encode (TMPGEnc)/author (TMPGEnc)/burn (imgburn) with little to no editing/filtering, which PC specs would you recommend? I'd still have to purchase another PC as I don't seem to have an acceptable PC for that portion. Is it still the same as what sanlyn recommended?

- 4tb is bad for aforementioned data loss issues via non-USB connections
- No dropped frames = yes, lucky, so you can see if your luck holds out
- We used to encode and author MPEG on lesser computers than yours, way back in the early 2000s. It's just slower is all.

[sanlyn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lordsmurf

@sanlyn: I need to inject some quick disagreement and corrections here.

- Simple DVD Creator is excellent freeware DVD authoring software. It doesn't do Blu-ray at all. You must be thinking of something else.

Yes, I was thinking of Cyberlink. Shows you how many years I spent avoiding the old "DVD Creator" series. Simple DVD Creator is a different product, much better. I just wish they hadn't used that old monicker for a name.

Thank you for checking. I really apologize for the typos. The characters move around when I'm not looking!

[lordsmurf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sanlyn

Thank you for checking. I really apologize for the typos. The characters move around when I'm not looking!

Because of my blind spots, they move when I *am* looking!

[vhsdigital34]

Thank you Lordsmurf

So 4tb is good for my USB HD and if going with a second internal HD 2tb should be the max (is that issue just with eSATA)? Does XP recognize that size? I've been transferring captures via small USB flash drives and then watching the end results/saving them through my Mac/PC that has USB 3.0.

When you say encoding/authoring on lesser computers than mine do you mean my P4 XP or my E-450 Win7? Would it work better on the P4 XP (2gb ram) or E-450 Win7 (4gb ram)? Would burning to blu ray via imgburn be good with the P4 XP or do I need another computer that's compatible with the BD-R burner? Which burner is good these days? I hear pioneer but not sure which model would be best. Don't want to make the mistake of buying the wrong series if such a thing exists