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

Hi,

I've started to archive my old family VHS tapes using the following:

Panny SVHS -> ATI 7500 (PCI) -> virtualdub (huffyuv)

640x480 YUY2 (should I use 720x480 if I want to eventually burn it on a playable blu ray or future format?
PCM 48000Hz stereo 16bit
Frame rate: 29.97
No cropping

What are the software/steps I should use to burn these on Blu Ray/DVD (is there a difference between the two set up procedures)? What settings should I archive to be somewhat future proof (4k is coming as well as higher capacity Blu-ray Discs)

I'd like to test out whether the lines in the AVI file would disappear if converted to playable disc on a DVD or Blu Ray player.

Thank you very much!!

Whatever defects are on your tape will still be there if you don't do something to clean them up. The act of encoding analog source doesn't clean up anything. It just encodes whatever is there and makes it more difficult to deal with.

Now the question is, what "lines"? Do they move around? Do they stay in the same place? Are you talking about side borders, or do you mean the usual head-witching noise at the bottom of VHS frames? Maybe a pic or even a short AVI sample of a few frames to show what you mean. If you make a frame capture, do it in something like VirtualDub where you can capture directly from the video. Don't make screen captures of a video playing in your PC media players.
:wink2:

DVD and BluRay are different encoding formats. However, both include standard definition frame sizes. DVD requires that you burn to DVD disc. BluRay requires that you burn to BD-R disc. Each requires a different encoding and authoring procedure, which would be the very last processing steps. Up to that point, lossless huffyuv AVI captures can be processed, edited, filtered, etc., the same way.

Home VHS is ultimately encoded/authored/burned for disc as 720x480 interlaced NTSC video (720x576 for PAL) with a 4:3 display aspect ratio (DAR). If your capture is 640x480, it is interlaced if it's from VHS. You can always resize later at the last minute to 720x480. Many encoders will do that for you during the encode, but I've always done it with best results using Avisynth to deinterlace/resize/re-interlace during the filtering step. This is sometimes necessary because many good capture cards won't allow capturing 4:3 input to 720x480, but it's OK if your drivers allow it. I just feel weird working with stretched video frames on a PC, but many people do it that way.

Depending on which version of huffyuv you're using, you might want to download a copy of the Lagarith lossless compressor, which you can think of as huff's "competition". Some versions of huffyuv won't compress to YV12, but Lagarith works with YV12, YUY2, and RGB. Reason: if you get into Avisynth, many of its best filters only work with YV12 video. DVD and BluRay are encoded as YV12. So you ask: why capture to YUY2 in the first place? Answer: it preserves more of the initial video data, since VHS "color" is more like YUY2. True, you end up YV12 ultimately but there are poor, better, and best ways of getting from other color spaces and into YV12. A lot of NLE's really don't do it that well, nor do they do a very good job of deinterlace and reinterlace -- in fact some software makes a real whack job of all of it.

If by mentioning BluRay you have a mind to upscale VHS to make it look like "high definition", most would advise strongly against it. It won't look like HD, it'll just look like badly resized tape. If you haven't made that capture look cleaner and spiffier, it'll look even more ridiculous if it's blown up. High definition is "high" due to a lot more than just bigger frame sizes. But BluRay does have a standard-def specification, the advantage being that you can encode standard definition to higher bitrates with BluRay's methods. BluRay can be encoded as either AVC/MPEG4 (h264 encoding) or as MPEG2 optimized for BluRay. In both cases the audio must be AC3 or PCM. Anyway, there's nothing wrong with well made DVD.

DVD( PAL & NTSC) encoding standards: http://www.videohelp.com/dvd#tech
DVD disc file structure: http://www.videohelp.com/dvd#struct

BluRay/AVCHD encoding standards: http://www.videohelp.com/hd#tech
BluRay disc file structure: http://www.videohelp.com/hd#filestruct

How much you intend to do with processing your capture is up to you, but I'd recommend Avisynth and VirtualDub to handle VHS defects or any other problems you might notice. You didn't mention what you're using for software. Meanwhile there are several free encoders and authoring apps that give good results, and there's always TMPGenc's line of affordable stuff for cut/edit, encoding, and authoring.

Nice to see that you used one of the best ways to capture VHS. I still use an old 7500 AGP AIW myself.

Thanks Sanlyn! That makes sense to me now.

Sorry, I meant to mention lines due to interlace AVI file

I mentioned blu ray due to the file size. I just realized when finalizing to a disc, the size will probably shrink? With blu ray, I wasn't planning on up scaling it but instead was looking at a media that would fit my file (an hour 23gb). If with DVD, we need to compress to get it to work, does blu ray allow closer to lossless (without upscale)?

This has been about a 7 month long project now (bought and sold my ADVC110) and replaced hardware and software with great advice from Lordsmurf, volksjager, and others.

I haven't mentioned software cause I don't have one yet. That's my next step and what I'm looking for. I have both a 2010 macmini as well as a PC (using I believe an AMD E450 GPU processor)

Yes you need to compress it, and yes with Blu-ray you can use less compression and also use AVC instead of MPEG-2 to get closer to retaining the quality of the captured file.

It looks like according to "set custom video format" under "video" in virtualdub, I can select YUY2, YV12, as well as 16-bit RGB and 32-bit RGB.

What follows is what editors like to call "vast oversimplification", but here goes:

Big files into little files....

All final delivery formats such as BluRay, AVCHD, DVD, DivX, Xvid, etc., are lossy compressed encodes. The amount of compression and loss depends on several factors, but generally higher bitrates involve less loss than lower bitrates. The lower the bitrate, all else being equal, the more you lose. Decoding (un-encoding) lossy encodes doesn't get back what was lost. If you're familiar with JPG compression, you know that JPG images lose quality every time they're edited and re-saved. Depending on what kind of "quality" setting your photo app allows (some will say highest, high, medium, low, etc., or a quality index percentage), what those settings indicate is progressively lower and lower data retention and more and more discarded databits.

Lossless compression is more like ZIP or RAR. What you put into a ZIP file is what you get back. "Higher" compression in a ZIP file simply means slower and more detailed compression operation, not loss. Lossless compressors like huffyuv, Lagarith, UT codec, etc., are designed for video and are usually customized for the colorspace used. They are faster than ZIP or RAR, but they don't compress as tightly because they're designed for real-time, high-speed use. Huffyuv and Lagarith compression result in about 1/3 to 1/2 of the uncompressed video's original size.

Video encoding uses more compression than lossless compressors. That's why it's called lossy. A lower bitrate uses fewer databits to describe the images. Fewer databits mean less detail, lower color resolution, less motion control, less edge definition, etc. The other space-saving technique that gets DVD or BluRay down to 1/10 the size of the input file is that encoded video doesn't contain 100$ complete images. A video of 100,000 frames doesn't contain 100,000 while images. The frames are arranged and encoded in Groups of Pictures (GOP's). Usually with DVD or BluRay this means a Group of 30 or fewer frames (Non-standard BluRay can have hundreds of frames in a GOP, but that's not for serious use), or something like m18 or less for DVD. Each GOP has at last one key or index frame that is a complete image. The rest of the "frames" contain only the changes that occur since the previous key frame. Also, for that same reason, "editing" lossy video encodes while in that lossy state can wreck that frame arrangement. So for simple cuts and joins one would use a smart-rendering editor for lossy encodes. Smart renderers would re-encode or rebuild only the GOP's in the immediate area of the cut. Some smart renderers are "smarter" than others, some use better encoding engines. Without smart rendering, you're forced to cut or add video only in full GOP's. So one good feature of lossless AVI is that AVI has 100% complete images. Yeah, that;s why their bigger files. Lossless AVI has no key frames, because they aren't needed. Another point about lossy encodes: if you'd like to fix up the color or reduce noise in lossy encoded video, you have no choice -- the video has to be re-encoded. Each re-encode involves additional (and permanent) loss. So that's why advanced users will make those modifications using lossless media rather than lossy final delivery formats.

BluRay or AVC/h264 encoding will give better quality retention at somewhat lower bitrates than MPEG would require for the same quality. That doesn't mean you can abuse the feature by using a BD bitrate of 3000 when the equivalent DVD needed a target of 6000 for good motion handling. Video requires a minimum bitrate depending on the nature of the material. Fast action, highly detailed scenes, animation with large flat areas of color or lots of subtle color gradations all come with higher bitrate requirements. That 6000-bitrate MPEG might let you get away with, say, 4500 to 5000 for BluRay or AVCHD, at equivalent GOP sizes. Of course, you can't play BluRay on a DVD player. One good point about lossless capture is that you can encode from there to anything you want, leaving your original unchanged.

If you have two hours of video, you're sneaking into the low-quality bitrate range to get all of it onto a single DVD disc without going into authoring for dual-layer DVD. With SD BluRay you have 25GB to work with, so you're home free.

Now, another vast oversimplification:

I think your "set custom format" question involves everyday VirtualDub processing(?). Almost all VIrtualDub filters, like many in the big apps from Adobe and Vegas, operate in RGB. By default VDub saves its work as uncompressed RGB24. Why 24? There are 8 databits per color channel, and there are 3 channels, so 8 x 3 = 24. Where does the 32-bit RGB come from? If you had video with a transparency layer you'd need 8 more bits. But most video doesn't have a transparency layer, so 32 bits is a waste of space. You have to tell VDub how you want your modified AVI to be compressed, so select huffyuv if you're saving to RGB or to YUY2. If you're saving to YV12 (no particular reason for it at this point), you'd need Lagarith for YV12.

The plain vanilla term for the colorspace of your YUY2 capture is "YUV", which encompasses many things. YUY2 isn't really regulation "YUV", but it's close enough. Going back to your original capture: VCR's do some odd things on playback, one of which is their habit of "enhancing" VHS to heighten contrast, over saturate colors, over sharpen, etc. The biggest problem is capturing with invalid luma and chroma levels. The valid luma and chroma levels for broadcast and most retail video is an RGB range of 16-240. Your TV and you PC monitor will display darkest "black" as RGB 0, brightest white as RGB 255. In other words, YUV 16-240 gets expanded to the equivalent of RGB 0-255 for RGB conversion. Problem with that? Yes. If the YUV capture is already RGB 0-255, or worse, then darkest darks get crushed (destroyed) and brightest brights get clipped (destroyed).

So, what most of us compulsive-obsessive video hobbyists do is to first open that capture in Avisynth, throw up some histograms and other measuring thingies, and then analyze that video for improper luma and chroma levels. This is easier than it sounds; invalid levels generally show themselves quite readily. Because you're still working in YUV, you can use some filters to bring things under control so that your levels don't get clobbered when they go to RGB. Once they're RGB, it's too late.

I was going to mention that Avisynth ought to be part of your toolkit. Yeah, I know, you gotta write that text script. But Avisynth can be used at very simple levels for some simple and basic tasks. True, it has some plugins that can work wonders, but VirtualDub has some pretty clever stuff as well. Anyway, you might give it a thought. Common VHS defects such as rainbows, DCT ringing, vertical jitter or frame hopping, chroma bleed, chroma shift, halos, dropouts, spots, head switching noise, uneven borders, etc., really don't give VirtualDub much of a chance. Avisynth is really the best thing around for that sort of junk.

Yes, 720x480 is ideal. Only use 640x480 (1:1 4x3) for specific editing needs and streaming final products.

For VHS source, I suggest the max BD-R bitrate of 15mbps for MPEG-2, which is the only reason to use a BD-R for such content. The 720x480 is fixed, so you do not have a choice. Since this is VHS source, upscaling it in software will look terrible, and it's not easy anyway.

Note that I do this for all personal home movies. An SD BD-R 720x480 MPEG-2 @ 15mbps is the transparent format to VHS that we all wanted when only DVD existed. And it's why I waited to convert our home movies. (That and some filtering wants that have only existed in the past 5 or so years.) I've found AVC to not be all that useful for VHS conversion. I don't care about the smaller space use -- quality matters most to me.

A standard 25gb Blu-ray wuith 15mbps MPEG-2 content will fit about 3 hours worth. Works for me. That's better than both DVD and VHS. Just note that BD-R is NOT archival, so keep backups on HDD. Or if you like extra work, make a DVD copy -- either 352x480 3-4mbps on SL, or 6-7mbps 720x480 on DL.

The steps?
- Capture
- Edit and/or Restore as needed
- Author
- Burn

Now THAT'S an oversimplification! :)

If you means "lines" as in interlace, yes, they "disappear" when watched on a TV (an interlaced viewing device).

sanlyn is giving some good info from my quick skim, so you're getting what you need. :congrats:

Thanks guys. Do you recommend the Mac or PC for burning?
Which software is recommended? My 2010 macmini doesn't have internal bays so are there 4pin FireWire drives recommended?

Unfortunately my E-450 GPU PC neither has internal bays nor FireWire output. The XP machine does have a 6pin FireWire but not sure how well that PC would handle burning Blu Ray discs (not even sure if Blu Ray was around during the XP SP2 era

Worst case scenario I can perhaps bring my files over to my parents place.

When you say the Blu Ray 15mbps mpeg2 at 720x480 is the transparent format to VHS, do you mean at better settings it would go beyond the original VHS? Since it's getting compressed (whether lossless compression or lossy), wouldn't it lose lossless detail on playback or am I missing something? If that's not the case, would larger capacity discs only extend playback time?

What did you mean by Blu Ray 15mbps mpeg2 at 720x480 isn't archival? I thought either discs hold up for close to 100 years? If not, what's the shelf life? If it doesn't last that long I guess I'd have to get several HDs and back them up everywhere?

Firewire has nothing to do with burning optical discs. If you have no internal storage for DVD or BluRay burners, use a USB external drive.The most reliable software for burning is the free ImgBurn (Windows only). Ignore any extra freeware or toolbar offers when ImgBurn is installed. One good DVD/BD app that has worked well for authoring and burning for years is TMPGenc Video Mastering Works. But you would need ImgBurn anyway for other purposes.

You can archive to backups of optical disc, but hardliners don't consider them to be ideal archives. Ideally, the best permanent archive is your losslessly compressed original capture to external HDD. Other than that, save a copy of the final output encode to hard drive. All an optical disc needs is one scratch in the right place to make it useless. Don't go thinking that you'll be really careful and never scratch a disc. A lot of discs have been ruined by very careful people who were having a bad day. Cheap discs suffer internal fractures and layers that separate, even if they're not used. Verbatim BD-R is well constructed and reliable. Do not use the new "LTH" discs -- inferior in every way and a waste of money.

Sweet! Thanks sanlyn!

I've been hesitating about external USB drives because Lordsmurf mentioned elsewhere it's not enough and that if external, FireWire would be needed. Maybe Lordsmurf can elaborate? I do have USB3.0 on my little E-450 GPU PC (win7). Would that suffice? What amount of ram would I need for it to be stable?

Lordsmurf might be referring to Macs in the matter of Firewire. I'm sure he'll chime in to clarify. Can't use ImgBurn on a Mac anyway.

Win7 sort of "survives" on 2GB of RAM if you don't do much except email and watch an occasional UTube video. You need 4GB for decent performance. If you're going to be doing heavy video work, go for 8GB. If you're working HD video with win7, you'd need 16GB or more, but using a low-power PC won't help much with HD no matter how much RAM you have. A PC for video needs at least 2 hard drives, 1 smaller one for the operating system and installed software, and a second for videos and processing. Processing video on the same drive or partition as the operating system makes for serious bottlenecks, very frequent reboots, and strange behavior --not to mention occasional freezups and crashing.

I don't understand why people use Macs or laptops for video processing. It just doesn't make sense. But if that's all you own, you have to do the best you can.

The physical Blu-ray disc is not archival -- the content is (arguably) archival @ 15mbps MPEG-2 720x480. The construction of a BD-R is an inverted CD-R with a thin condom on the bottom. Neither BD-R and CD-R is archival, unlike the DVD-R sandwich structure.

Unlike DVD, more like CD, several BD-R manufacturers are actually pretty good. Memorex (PHILIPS) is surprising good. Yes, avoid the Verbatim LTH discs -- they're more great, lots of coasters.

USB2 almost always dropped frames because it's not sustained, and because USB goes through CPU. USB3 on a newer system (multi core CPU) may be fine. I've not tested it, because I use internal or eSATA these days.

I really like my Mac for photography, but it's just the wrong tool for video. It takes effort to get video tasks working, often via installing Windows in either Bootcamp or Parallels. It's an ordeal, to be sure, though it can be done.

Oops, I forgot about rplying to mthe rest of your questions:

I think by "transparent" he means that the higher bitrates and other factors that come with standard definition BluRay are closer to the original input than earlier forms of MPEG with its bitrate limits and other limitations.

You can't "improve" analogue source through the encoding process alone.

Yes, you're missing the fact that playback of digital video is not the same thing as encoding or compression. Playback has nothing to do with either, because playback doesn't alter the original. However, it's true that analog tape suffers a bit every time it's played, even if to a small extent -- not because it's "recompressed" but because tape and its magnetic layer is more easily damaged physically.

Possibly, if you go by articles from CNET and other consumer sources who forget to mention that people don't store their discs in lead-lined, radiation-free, temperature controlled and air=free vacuumed enclosures. 10 to 20 years is what I've heard under more normal circumstances. Temperature extremes affect the layer bonding more quickly. Storing discs flat in those nice multi=page vinyl covered binders with the discs on the bottom pages pressed down by all the discs on the other pages, or fumes from non-archival plastic wrappers and envelopes (not to mention acid from those non-archival paper wrappers), and the chemical action of lacqeur based inks used in marking pens that people incorrectly use to write on new discs -- add all that together, and you likely won't get 100 years from those discs, especially home-made discs. Also consider that the blank discs you buy at Amazon and burn at home are not manufactured or recorded the way retail discs are. Retail products aren't burned at all, they're pressed or embossed en masse.

I'm certain it's not as dire as it sounds, but we're talking about the important stuff. Certainly you wouldn't expect to archive hundreds of your movie discs on hard drives (I have about 3500 home-made discs myself). In 100 years you might not be able to find a disc player in stores, just as you can't find a good CRT today (No, that's not quite right. CRT's are still used in mastering labs, but those hefty thingies run several times times the price you and I paid for our old SONY Wega's). Plenty of people make backup copies of movie discs; they're properly kept in a stable area and are unaffected by such things as the heat of playback because they're not played, they're just kept. The important stuff gets burned to hard drive and left there, ready to be revived and transferred during the next media revolution.

You could always tell when a VHS tapes was converted to DVD. It had unavoidable artifacts. Making DVDs was thus an art, and why many people learned to filter, and why there were so many "encoder shootouts" (pros magazones and amateur sites alike).

Assuming the source is relatively clean, even if grainy, it's hard to tell if the VHS source being viewed is still source, a lossless capture, or a BD MPEG @ 15mpbs. It's transparent most of the time.

That's what I mean. :)

A good disc (mostly referring to DVD) lasts at least 30-50 years, and is heavily affected by humidity and disc manufacturing quality. Anything shorter (5-10-15-20) is boogeyman stupidity. Anything too long (100+ years) is ridiculous optimism.

The problem with BD-R is the bottom layer. It's very susceptible to usage -- both scratches and pressure.

As sanlyn says, as I always remind people, the PLAYERS are the future issue -- not the disc. We already have that issue with Betamax and U-matic and CRTs, but in time it will include VHS and eventually even DVD. Can you play a format from 100 years ago? Have any audio cone players laying around?

Just curious, is there a higher mbps that would be exactly the same as playing a VHS tape or will anything additional just look exactly the same as 15mbps?

My E-450 processor is dual core 1.65ghz and has 4gb of ram but doesn't have FireWire (only USB3.0..). Is XP out of the question for Blu Ray? My XP is a tower desktop (got it for capturing purposes) and has the 6pin FireWire from my original attempt with ADVC110 but it only has 2gb of ram with a 2.4ghz P4.

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

MPEG is complex. Most people are only aware of a fraction of what's possible. You can do more yes (bitrate, profiles, etc), but for VHS source the falloff is usually 15mbps.

Hmm I guess anything above 15mbps would be hard to test since it doesn't exist ("HD Blu Ray" not out to most consumers yet).

When you say falloff, you mean when it starts to get significantly diminished returns or that there are no gains whatsoever after 15mbps? I don't want to go off and burn a whole bunch of these only to find out the next disc format (coming relatively soon) or media would make for a better transfer (besides length of time). If Blu Ray is the best we're going to get out of VHS at 15mbps I'm all in

Yes, falloff = diminished returns, but it usually also means there's no gains whatsoever. It depends on the source tape.
Yes = Blu-ray is the best we're going to get out of VHS at 15mbps (720x480 MPEG-2)

The next disc format? There probably won't be any more discs in the future, only downloads.

Just out of curiosity, why isn't H.264 suggested for Blu-Ray as an option?

H.264 doesn't handle interlace very well.

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

Interesting read on HEVC

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

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

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.

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.

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!!

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.

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.

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.

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:
To convert interlaced capture from YUY2 or YV12 to RGB:
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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

@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! :laugh: 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. :congrats:

@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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

- 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.

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!

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

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