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01-21-2019, 09:04 PM
buncho buncho is offline
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Here’s where I’m at currently with hardware/software/flow (NTSC)…

3 medias to be captured….
VHS (JVC9600), Hi8 (Sony GV-A500 video Walkman), and MiniDV (Panasonic PVGS400)
(All S-Video/RCA)…
…through BVP-4/DR-1000…
…(currently) USB2&3 (2013 Asus P9X79 motherboard)…
…(capture card? Brand? Model? )…
… using Premier Pro CS4 software (Windows 7)…
… GTX GeForce 680 graphics card out…
…Output/use: … Panasonic Plasma TV/monitor (HDMI), Pioneer BDR-208M burner, YouTube posting…

1. I’m guessing for best results I want to capture uncompressed and save as raw AVI (on many external portable drives which I have some new ones ready in anticipation) for editing/cleaning and viewing/saving at the highest resolution (720x480?) for viewing on 1080 TV and disc burning (file watching and DVD/BR viewing).

2. Is a capture card a lot better than just going into a USB 2 (or 3) port?

3. If it’s justifiable to spend a few hundred dollars on a card… do you recommend a certain brand/model? 1080p60? 60 fps? Onboard H.264 encoder? Elgato? Magwell? Blackmagic? 1080 shouldn’t matter if VHS won’t look good at that res output… I want to save at 720x480, right?

4. Assuming I need/get a good/newer capture card - I see many cards have HDMI in/out… do I just get an S-video and RCA to HDMI adaptor/converter box also or get a card that comes with the adaptors? There seems to be so many brands and different type out there? Hauppauge USB Live2, Diamond VC500, ATI 600 USB?

5. Someone said HDMI is a poor choice for standard definition… if true do I get a capture card with USB or just an adaptor/converter box and go into the motherboard’s USB? Do cards compress?

6. Is using Premiere Pro ok or do I need something like Huffyuv?

Thanks again, LS!

-- merged --

1. Is my Workflow right - Detailer before Proc Amp?
Workflow: VCR (JVC HRS9600) → Detailer (DR-1000) → Proc Amp (BVP4+) → Capture Card (ATI 600 USB) → Computer (Asus P9X79 motherboard/GTX GeForce 680 graphics card) → Monitor (Panasonic TC-P65ST50) → VirturalDub (capture) → Premiere Pro (editing)

2. Saw this info on line... I'm assuming it's right (?)
VHS TV Broadcast – interlaced, 4.2 MHz, 300-340 lines, 29.97fps, 4:2:2, capture 352x480
VHS Video Camcorder/8mm – 3.0 Mhz, 240 lines, 29.97fps, 4:2:2, capture 352x480
S-VHS/Hi8 – 5.0 Mhz, 400-425 lines, 29.97fps, 4:2:2, capture 720x480
(Digital 8 = 720x480)

3. With the ATI 600 you are sending me:
A. Audio goes right from VCR to card/stick inputs?
B. Probably a dumb question but... will there be a sync issue since the video from the same source is going through the detailer and proc amp first?
C. Any reason to instead send audio from VCR to 1/8" in motherboard input jack.

4. Regarding unit placement (and electrical signals/magnetics/etc):
A. Is it ok the stack DR-1000 on top of the BVP4+?
B. If so is it ok to stack both on top of the VCR (not directly since the BVP4+ is a bit heave for the top lid of the VCR - but say if i built a wooden shelf to straddle the VCR) or is it better to have them beside the VCR for some reason.
I mostly ask because of desk space and purchasing cable length (i.e. 1.5' or 3").

5. Regarding cables (the last piece of the my puzzle)
I'm still needing get one 3' RCA audio cable (VCR to Card)
and three S-video cables:
1.5' VCR to detailer
1.5' detailer to Proc Amp
3' Proc Amp to card).

For the 3' audio cable:
(I'm not up on the difference in AWG, double braided, double shielded, OFC conductors, etc.)
A. Is the Blue Jeans or Belden worth the $30-$40?
https://www.bluejeanscable.com/store/audio/index.htm

B. Or the Monoprice Monoliths at $15.70x2
https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=18534

C. Or just go with the Monoprice Premium for $3.19?
https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=5346

For the S-Video cables:

Since Monoprice don't seem to have single S-video cables in 1.5' or 3' -
A. Do you think the Blue Jeans $31.75/$33.75 each worth it...
https://www.bluejeanscable.com/store/svideo/index.htm

B. How do you feel about the Pearstone brand sanlyn recommends?
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...d_Premium.html

Thanks a million sir.
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  #2  
01-21-2019, 09:27 PM
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Wow, lot of questions...

VCR, fine.
Not sure about walkman.
MiniDV probably fine, so many models are decent.

BVP4 / DR-1000 detailer only as needed.
And I think you now have the ATI 600 USB, yes?
Premiere is fine for advanced editing, color correction in software, not capture.
Graphics card almost never matters for video capture.
Don't post samples on Youtube, just use that for your distribution needs.

Lossless, not uncompressed.

Capturing is independent of USB, Firewire, AGP, PCIe, etc. Those are just comm ports used by capture devices.

You never capture H.264, never capture SD/VHS/etc as HD.
Elgato mostly bad stuff.
Magewell and Blackmagic are HD cards that do crappy SD job, afterthought feature.
720x480 is NTSC max SD res, yes.

No HDMI adapters, etc, straight s-video.
Yes, lots of captures cards -- but not all of them are good, not even the majority.
The 3 you mentioned are contenders.

Huffyuv is codec, VirtualDub captures

VCR > external TBC > detail or proc amp (as needed, doesn't really matter the order if using both) > capture card

Capture all at 720x480 if using lossless, 352x480 only for MPEG capturing.

Audio direct from VCR to capture card. And ATI 600 USB has an audio hack that is needed. There are posts in the forum, but I need to finish my glossary entry for this.
No audio sync issue from that, other devices may insert 1 frame at most lag (less than 100ms, and you really do not notice sync until 200ms).
Motherboard audio often inferior. In years past, always was. In this decade, it depends.

Yes, stack, Tip: Put piece of cardboard between, so don't scratch.
Piece of wood fine, just watch all the heat buildup. I often put rubber bumpers between gear, give each breathing room.

I don't have any issue with the cheap Monoprice cables.
I'd never buy an s-video cable for $30.
I have no issue with the cables sanlyn suggested, but just know my preference is to avoid gold cables. Spend too much time on gold nonsense, not enough on aspects that matter for quality (ie, no noise). But if he says they're good, then I'd listen. Also note the head size seems wide, can sometimes be an issue on some gear.

For me, more important is ease to use. So flat on one side, not entirely round. Have to always whip out flashlight to read which end is up. With flattop, I know already. And those are often easier to insert, for whatever reason. The round ones are, more often than not, a PITA. You really want to put careful about plugging in VCRs and TBCs, don't ruin the soldered connectors!

Alright, done with this post.

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  #3  
01-22-2019, 01:14 PM
sanlyn sanlyn is offline
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That's good advice from lordsmurf. To elaborate, if I may:

Quote:
Originally Posted by buncho View Post
Here’s where I’m at currently with hardware/software/flow (NTSC)…
Gosh. It's good to make plans, but it sounds as if you haven't made a capture yet. Once you do, a lot will change.

Quote:
Originally Posted by buncho View Post
using Premier Pro CS4 software (Windows 7)…
What are you going to use it for? That is, in detail, what can you do to an image with Premier Pro Cs4? Can you improve the color of skin tones and make them look more realistic and convincing, or correct color casts? Yes. Can you remove VHS tape noise (aka "floating grunge"), clarify detail, smooth out shimmer on motion, remove spots and dropouts, clean up deinterlace aliasing, recover details from out-of-spec luminance levels, remove excess grain without destroying detail, smooth hard edges in large gradient areas, resize without creating visible edge artifacts or line twitter, make chroma noise invisible, convert YUV colorspaces to RGB and back again while correcting for chroma shift and interpolation errors, reduce or remove oversharpening edge halos, clean up dct ringing, deinterlace with motion compensation to avoid distortion, shimmer and aliasing .....?

Let me stop there, although we could go on. In the above list of corrections, the only one you can do in Premier Pro is color correction. For the rest, you'll have to use something else. Also, consider that if you aren't using a calibrated monitor your color corrections won't be correct. To its credit, Adobe color and broadcast standards docs have a lot to say about that.

Quote:
Originally Posted by buncho View Post
I’m guessing for best results I want to capture uncompressed and save as raw AVI
Not quite right. Uncompressed is really tough on CPUs and is a waste of space. It also says you don't yet know about colorspaces. Your analog sources would more accurately be captured as YUY2 color into lossless AVI using huffYUV lossless compression. You can use other lossless codecs such as Lagarith or UT Video, but good ol' huffYUV is still the champ for economical (and fast) CPU and drive i/o usage. Lagarith or UT Video is more ideal for lossless intermediate working files. You don't have to worry about recompressing or converting between these codecs -- they're lossless, which is why they're used in the first place.

Quote:
Originally Posted by buncho View Post
If it’s justifiable to spend a few hundred dollars on a card… do you recommend a certain brand/model? 1080p60? 60 fps? Onboard H.264 encoder? Elgato? Magwell? Blackmagic? 1080 shouldn’t matter if VHS won’t look good at that res output… I want to save at 720x480, right?
If you're going to spend that much, it would be worth your time and money to spend it on a system optimized and designed specifically for capture from analog sources. That does not include anything you mentioned in your list of methods or components. But you're right about VHS not looking good when stretched out for HD resolutions (HD is based on source resolution, not on little pictures blown up to big blurry frame sizes. There are better ways to get there). Never capture low-resolution high-noise analog sources to lossy codecs. You might not regret it, but many of your viewers will. You might think it looks great, but it won't look so good to those who know better, and there are still plenty of people on the planet who know better. On the other hand they're your videos, not ours.

If you did spend a couple of hundred bucks you could get an XP system with an ATI All in Wonder 7500 or 9600XT AGP card that would make today's pricey digital cards look like a lame waste of money. Don't use equipment designed primarily for pristine digital sources. The Ati 600 USB that you mention is more ideally suited for analog sources. The Diamond VC500 that you quoted is also decent and has been around for years.

720x480 is the most workable and flexible frame size for most analog capture and post-process purposes and it gives good horizontal resolution to work with. Interlaced video should be captured as interlaced. In fact many taped videos that are interlaced aren't really interlaced, they're hard-code telecined and should never be deinterlaced -- inverse telecine is required for those, which is not something Adobe CS4 can do very well. For web posting, there are far better deinterlacers than Adobe (that's a hint about QTGMC, about which you will likely hear a great deal). I often see suggestions for capturing directly to MPEG using 352x480 half-width resolution. I've done that in the past. The results are obvious. I suggest that you try it, and then watch it on your TV. I bet you'll never do it again.

Quote:
Originally Posted by buncho View Post
Someone said HDMI is a poor choice for standard definition…
Not just "someone", but a lot of pros say the same thing. And they're right. HDMI circuitry is a terrible choice for analog SD, and the fact that HDMi wire is just stranded-core Ethernet stuff doesn't help.

Quote:
Originally Posted by buncho View Post
viewing/saving at the highest resolution (720x480?) for viewing on 1080 TV and disc burning (file watching and DVD/BR viewing)
Now that you mention it, the official BluRay spec does include standard definition video at 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios. It might surprise you to know that SD BluRay NTSC disc is 720x480 @29.97 fps interlaced or telecined (interlace or telecine is required for SD BluRay). The advantage over DVD? You can use much higher bitrates than DVD allows, and you have your choice of MPEG, h.264, or VC1 encoding. With higher bitrates, does SD-BD it look better than DVD? Yep. Would you want to upscale your nice cleaned-up SD 720x480 capture to HD resolutions? No way. Your player or Tv can do that far better than you can do it with software. Would software-upscaled SD look like HD, even if you do it with Avisynth or Premier? No, it will look like accidentally blurred SD, and it will be wearing a great big sign screaming "I'm A Video Newbie". However, there are software upscaling plugins for Adobe and FCP that look pretty decent. If you win at least a small lottery, you can probably afford those accessories. But if you're not highly skilled at cleaning up VHS defects, you'd be wasting your money.

Quote:
Originally Posted by buncho View Post
Is my Workflow right - Detailer before Proc Amp?
Workflow: VCR (JVC HRS9600) → Detailer (DR-1000) → Proc Amp (BVP4+) → Capture Card (ATI 600 USB)
Detailers affect signal signals, so put the detailer before the proc amp.

Looks OK, but what are you going to do with the detailer? You can't create detail where no detail exists (nothing can do that). Detailers were designed for the CRT era, when noise wasn't such a problem. What you can do with a detailer is sharpen VHS noise, grain, and defects and make it impossible to clean them up later. I'm certain that you didn't have this in mind. For color correction you can't do all that much with a proc amp, because it only works in a limited YUV environment (and you'll find this out very quickly, too). It works if you have a uniform color cast in a tape from beginning to end, and if you are satisfied with working only one color at a time (mostly cyan or magenta only, not green very well). Often you just end up replacing one color cast with another. Color is best worked during post-capture and with more sophisticated controls. But you can use the proc amp to control signal level, which is extremely important. You should know all about the y=16-235 level requirement. Note that side borders and head-switching noise affect the way you measure that signal.

There is information elsewhere in
post #3 (capture histogram) and in post #4 on internal proc amp and crop settings in the updated thread, http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...-settings.html.

The objective behind much capture-time accessory marketing is to sell you on the idea that with enough fiddling you can make captures from analog and DV that look like perfectly finished products. That's not possible, of course. It's more possible and practical to get a capture that doesn't look worse than the source and is in a format that brings a more finished product likely within practical means.

Quote:
Originally Posted by buncho View Post
will there be a sync issue since the video from the same source is going through the detailer and proc amp first?
External proc amps and frame-level tbc's don't do anything to audio. Most of them don't even have audio jacks.

Quote:
Originally Posted by buncho View Post
Since Monoprice don't seem to have single S-video cables in 1.5' or 3' -
A. Do you think the Blue Jeans $31.75/$33.75 each worth it...
Yes. Superior contrast retention, excellent sharpness, accurate color with no chroma blotching or fogging, low transmission noise, no phony edge buzz or sparkle, precision connector.

I know that some people say all wire is alike, but obviously it isn't because it's not all made from the same stuff or in the same way. It's like saying all speakers sound alike and all sound cards sound alike (I'm sure lordsmurf wouldn't agree with that last one!). Whether you can see/hear a difference or not, the pro engineer version of what makes a "good" wire is that good wire doesn't massage or modify the signal. Rather, good wire sends a signal from A to B with as little damage as possible. That's why pro wire makers publish detailed tech specs about their products rather than make claims that no one can verify.

My primary s-video wires are BlueJeans/Belden but after trying some 40 cables over the years I found only one series of cheapies that make all the others look sick. They have a distinctive round termination barrel and a unique connector head with a small embossed directional arrow at the forward edge. Gold or chromium-alloy coating makes no difference whatever. It's said they were made by Mogami (take that with a grain of salt) and marketed by Recoton. And they are getting very difficult to find:

3 Foot S-Video/SVHS Cable
https://www.ebay.com/itm/3-Foot-S-Vi...2wcn:rk:6:pf:0
(And please note: there is no such thing as "SVHS" cable. S-video is a type of circuit and wire transission. SVHS is a tape format. The two are not related).

S-Video Cable 6 ft. Gold Plated (https://www.amazon.com/S-Video-Cable...%2C208&sr=8-13). NOTE: 6-FT length only!! If the cable connectors look like the other two cables shown on the Amazon page, send them back or throw them away.

My audio cables are old Belden 1694A, but just about any solid-core 75-ohm analog audio connect will do for VHS. I don't hear anything special in the BlueJeans' LC-1 audio cable.

Worst s-video cables I ever used:
Monster
Monoprice
Acoustic Research
Belkin (that"s "Belkin" with a "K", not "Belden")
Cables Unlimited Pro Series
Velocity Series
Better Cables
Comprehensive
QVS
Amazon Basics
Kardas ($300/2 meters, and absolutely horrible. Good thing I got a refund)
silver-coated or OFC wire at stupid prices
Countless BestBuy and Amazon wires whose names I can't remember

Quote:
Originally Posted by buncho View Post
How do you feel about the Pearstone brand sanlyn recommends?
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...d_Premium.html
I never recommended these. They look like some I tried a while back that were definitely fuzzy-average types. The Pearstone name is news to me. Years ago at B&H I could find the cheapo Recotons, which is where I first discovered them out of desperation. The cheapies also used to be the 14-ft version at Circuit City under the RCA name. They're disappearing now in favor of higher markup models.


Good luck, and take your time. It's a lot to learn at first, but you only have to learn it once.
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  #4  
01-22-2019, 03:13 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
Detailers were designed for the CRT era, when noise wasn't such a problem. What you can do with a detailer is sharpen VHS noise, grain, and defects and make it impossible to clean them up later.
Have you ever used the SgnVideo units? It has 2x sharpening and 2x NR. These adjustments offset one another, arriving at the eventual sharpening without adding or increasing noise. It's true sharpening, both edge and inner. Almost magical, better than what software can do, excellent analog-domain task.

Quote:
For color correction you can't do all that much with a proc amp, because it only works in a limited YUV environment (and you'll find this out very quickly, too). It works if you have a uniform color cast in a tape from beginning to end, and if you are satisfied with working only one color at a time (mostly cyan or magenta only, not green very well). Often you just end up replacing one color cast with another. Color is best worked during post-capture and with more sophisticated controls. But you can use the proc amp to control signal level, which is extremely important. You should know all about the y=16-235 level requirement. Note that side borders and head-switching noise affect the way you measure that signal.
The BVP4+ is really powerful, more correction abilities than you're suggesting. The BVP4 has some side effects, all processing hardware does, so it should only be used when needed. And if you have homeshot tapes, odds are it'll be needed more than not. I actually bought my 1st unit to correct really horrible nth gen tapes, but it was extremely useful for the bad homemade VHS camcorder tapes.

Quote:
It's like saying all speakers sound alike and all sound cards sound alike (I'm sure lordsmurf wouldn't agree with that last one!).
Nope, definitely do not agree.

Quote:
Worst s-video cables I ever used:
Monster
Belkin (that"s "Belkin" with a "K", not "Belden")
Agree entirely. Terrible.

I've really not had to buy many cables in the past decade or more. Why? Remember all those VCRs and TBCs that I have or had? Almost all of those came with cables when new, and most of my stuff was bought new. I put all of them in my cable stash. And anytime a cable misbehaved, to the trashcan it went, without hesitation. The JVC cables are by far my favorite, followed by some other various freebies (example: SignVideo), with DataVideo my least favorite due to tight head and bulbous round connectors (which ironically put the most stress on TBCs!) And the DataVideo are the thicker supposed "better grade" cables.

Admittedly, I've probably had exception luck with cables.

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  #5  
01-22-2019, 04:01 PM
sanlyn sanlyn is offline
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I used the SignVideo units (still use my PA-100) and still have my BVP4. I'm afraid I'm more obsessive about VHS color correction than any two-color hue controls can handle, and mods made with the detailer hit areas I didn't want and had too many unwanted side effects. I suppose a detailer might work in some circumstances, but anything you do in capture stays with the capture and is difficult to undo later. You have to keep tabs on that BVP4, it can convolute levels if you're not careful. I always thought the PA-100 looked "cleaner". The luminance LED meter in the SignVideo proc amp is alone worth the price of the unit. I see that T.Grant had a rebuilt PA-100 on sale yesterday. The sale price is nearly the selling price of a few years ago. He also has rebuilt BVP's.

I wonder if he rebuilds AVT-8710's (mine is original 2004 and still working. I also have the original a.c. wall wart, user brochure, and retail box). T.grant does rebuild other tbc's, but I haven't seen any AVT's.
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  #6  
01-22-2019, 04:26 PM
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In the digital age, proc amps are really more for pre-processing the color, and post-processing in software. But there are still times where one-and-done color correction is possible. And others that no matters what you try, nothing will fix it. Sort of mixed bag, as it is with everything else.

I have an extra dual-channel SignVideo proc amp that I need to list on the marketplace. I made some further equipment gyrations, and it's now excess.

Buncho here got my last BVP4+ unit. I wonder if TGrant calibrates his. That's a real PITA to do. The units can get fiddly once you take the lid off, start jabbing it with tiny adjustment screwdrivers. I also learned it hates the SR-VS30, at least all of mine, another reason I'd always test complete workflows for others when selling/sending. Good gear, but it can react badly to other hardware. Always remember that, if you see issues with hardware that others praise (and know the others to be knowledgeable). Are we having fun yet?

Last I knew, Tom won't touch DataVideo or Cypress TBCs. We asked. My oldest AVT-8710 overheated in Dec, now has an attitude problem. Sometimes it starts, sometimes not. Have to let it rest a while, try again, and it eventually functions. It's been retired to backup, swapped in my TBC-1000 off the sidelines. It'd be great if somebody could trace the issue, fix it, but I'm not holding out hope.

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  #7  
01-22-2019, 05:26 PM
sanlyn sanlyn is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lordsmurf View Post
I
Last I knew, Tom won't touch DataVideo or Cypress TBCs. We asked.
Can't say I blame him. They do seem to come out of a schizo gene pool. My 2004 greenie is just plain stubborn. I've dropped it and/or stepped on it multiple times, once left it plugged in and forgot about it for 6 days. For all I know, the customer who walked into B&H behind me and purchased the next copy might never have got it to work, period.

Knock wood.
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  #8  
01-22-2019, 06:26 PM
captainvic captainvic is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
That's good advice from lordsmurf. To elaborate, if I may:

What are you going to use it for? That is, in detail, what can you do to an image with Premier Pro Cs4? Can you improve the color of skin tones and make them look more realistic and convincing, or correct color casts? Yes. Can you remove VHS tape noise (aka "floating grunge"), clarify detail, smooth out shimmer on motion, remove spots and dropouts, clean up deinterlace aliasing, recover details from out-of-spec luminance levels, remove excess grain without destroying detail, smooth hard edges in large gradient areas, resize without creating visible edge artifacts or line twitter, make chroma noise invisible, convert YUV colorspaces to RGB and back again while correcting for chroma shift and interpolation errors, reduce or remove oversharpening edge halos, clean up dct ringing, deinterlace with motion compensation to avoid distortion, shimmer and aliasing .....?

Let me stop there, although we could go on.

sanlyn, this is all very useful info. Thanks, I've learned a lot by reading your posts.

Just curious, are there before/after videos available on DF or somewhere else in order to see the results of these types of restoration tweaks? I'd be curious to see how successful some of these look.

Thanks again!
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01-22-2019, 08:21 PM
sanlyn sanlyn is offline
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Can find plenty of links and before-after samples, but most of the "before" vids are compressed with Huffyuv or Lagarith (most of the afters are mp4 or mpg). So if you don't have huffyuv and/or Lagarith on your system you'd have to view them with a player like VLC, Media Player Classic, MPC-BE, etc.

Gimme a while, I'll look up some ugly but workable samples.
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01-23-2019, 01:49 PM
sanlyn sanlyn is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by captainvic View Post
Just curious, are there before/after videos available on DF or somewhere else in order to see the results of these types of restoration tweaks? I'd be curious to see how successful some of these look.
Caveats: Following are examples of cleanup from VHS captures or other sources having various glitches. The sample still images posted below do not accurately depict noise problems, which look entirely different with motion. Noise is more obvious on a PC than on TV. The original captures and equipment vary greatly in quality. Repairs were made with Avisynth, tweaked with VirtualDub. All repairs are, of course, compromises. Not everything can be fixed. Any color correction was done initially with Avisynth in the original colorspace and tweaked with VirtualDub in RGB. Many project threads demonstrate "garbage in = garbage out".

Huffyuv or Lagarith lossless samples can be played with most Windows media players but are large files and take longer to download.

1. July 2017.
Severe dropouts over length of multiple frame sequence, elevated black levels, color washout, bright clipping. Demonstrates use of replacement frame interpolation, median averaging denoise filters, chroma looping. Source sample marred by lossy encoding and has subtle Hanover lines, common to many PAL projects. The "After" isn't a complete denoising, which would have destroyed too much of the lossy source video.

And, yes, the baby is moving and so is the camera.

Before: severe dropout:


After:


Before: Dropout and mistracking color loss:


After:


Player & capture chain: Panasonic NV-HS1000 (PAL), no frame-level tbc, other info not posted.

Before: original supplied as resized lossy mp4: Raw.mp4 (6.82 MB). Note that the supplied 768x576 original is not a "raw" capture sample as named, but is a lossy encode.
After: Raw_Fix_PAL.mp4 (8.5 mb)

3. Posted January 2016, samples made in 2009.
Demo of cleanup results from low-quality original, slow 6-hour EP VHS circa 1979. Cheap 2-head RCA VCR, low quality analog cable input, cheap cable amp and multiple splitters, cheap tape, cable noise, shimmer (dig how the big black train engine wiggles and twitters as it approaches), chroma bleed, chroma displacement, grainy chromatic noise, fuzzy sawtooth edges, noisy frame border, excessive hard-coded telecine combing, one frame has huge gray blob in center. Demonstrates Avisynth inverse telecine.

Before: bad cable tv and tape noise:


After:


Player & capture chain: Panasonic PV-S4670 -> Panasonic ES15 line tbc pass-thru -> AVT-8710 frame tbc (to cancel false copy protection error caused by tape noise) -> ATI All in Wonder AGP either 7500 or 9600XT (can't recall which) -> HuffYUV YUY2 640x480.

Before: Unfiltered, telecined mp4 encode of original lossless .avi: Liv5A_cut_EP_original_cap.mp4 (33 mb). Original lossless capture never posted, archived long ago.
After: Liv5A_ivtc_cut_EP_playback sample.mp4 (32.31 MB).


3. January 2019.
Original sample capture; dropouts, white horizontal comets, horizontal cuts in image, fuzzy edges, chroma smear and displacement, chroma noise, moire, corrupt color, tape aging effects, camera luminance pumping. Corrections cause invalid luma output levels. Demonstrates severe quality loss in 3rd generation tape dub. Not possible to 100% undo camera autogain pumping.

Before: Comets & fuzz:


After:


Player & capture chain: AG-1980 -> TBC3000 -> Studio One proc amp -> ATI All In Wonder 7500 AGP -> lossless Huffyuv YUY2 (info assumed from earlier posts).

Before: mp4 encode of original lossless avi: CHS82Sample_capture.mp4 (8.3 mb). Attached.
(original huffYUV YUY2 lossless sample: CHS82Sample.avi (98.39 MB). )
After denoise: CHS82_640x480.mp4 (8.94 MB)

process details starting with post #10 in Doubling Avisynth script to remove comets?

(Continued, next post.....)


Attached Images
File Type: jpg comets and fuzz before.jpg (91.8 KB, 128 downloads)
File Type: jpg comets and fuzz after.jpg (92.2 KB, 126 downloads)
File Type: jpg severe dropout before.jpg (148.4 KB, 125 downloads)
File Type: jpg severe dropout after.jpg (65.0 KB, 124 downloads)
File Type: jpg dropout and mistracking color loss before.jpg (81.7 KB, 125 downloads)
File Type: jpg dropout and mistracking color loss after.jpg (65.9 KB, 127 downloads)
File Type: jpg bad cable tv and tape noise before.jpg (62.0 KB, 126 downloads)
File Type: jpg bad cable tv and tape noise after.jpg (87.8 KB, 127 downloads)
Attached Files
File Type: mp4 CHS82Sample_capture.mp4 (8.04 MB, 0 downloads)

Last edited by sanlyn; 01-23-2019 at 02:31 PM.
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  #11  
01-23-2019, 02:17 PM
sanlyn sanlyn is offline
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(Continued from previous post....)

More ugly project samples using Avisynth and Virtualdub. Same caveats as before.....

4. July 2007, referenced in several threads, 2014 and later, originally with audio.
Personal project (Note: NO AUDIO in these cuts below). 11 years later, the After's look a little yellow to me. Demo of damage control. There are 4 short scenes. Besides horrible color that varied from scene to scene, there are spots, blotches, projector punch holes, chroma bleed, dark halos, white stringy stuff and whitish flareups, the usual tape noise, blotchy color, etc. Demo of DVD recorder used as line tbc pass-thru. Original capture on lossless YUY2. Original forum downloads have bad audio.

Before: bad noisy color and ugly color blotch, upper right:


After:


Player & capture chain (this version of cuts): Panasonic PV-8664 circa 1998 -> Panasonic Es15 as line tbc pass thru -> AVT-8710 frame tbc -> ATI All In Wonder 9600XT AGP -> HuffYUV YUY2 avi 640x480. Originals located somewhere deep in archived DVDs.

Before: MPEG encode of lossless original: C1_defect_samples_original.mpg (24 mb). Attached.
After: D1_defect_samples_after.mpg (25 mb). Attached.


Quickies:

5.
Distorted flashing, mistracking, vertical film scratches, source film damage. Demonstrates new frames created using Avisynth motion interpolation filters and partial frame replacment using Crop & Overlay functions.

Before & After clip:


Capture: original is lossy DVD extract converted to mp4. Lossless original doesn't exist.

Before & After: combination clip has original "before" on left side of frame, "after' on right side of frame. Chinnvar bad frames before_vs_after.mp4 (5.39 MB)
Avisynth project details, post #33 Removing Horizontal and Vertical lines ?.

Note: Vertical film scratches can seldom be 100% repaired, especially if the line is the same line across multiple frames. In this instance some can be removed or mitigated, but only on a tedious frame-by-frame manual basis using still images of each frame. What application would be used to modify the images? Adobe Photoshop, of course! Or CS4 perhaps?

6.
Noisy, severe red saturation, invalid levels beyond y=16-235, chroma bleed and rapid flicker, specular edge ghost trails, atypical generational tape dub damage.

Before: severe red saturation, noisy tape dub


After:


Player & capture chain: Panasonic NV-HS1000 (PAL) -> TBC 1000 -> Hauppauge USB Live-2 capture -> lossless Lagarith YUY2 avi 720x576.

Before: 720x576 mp4 encode of original lossless avi, Intro_capture_avi.mp4 (4 mb). Attached.
(original lossless sample: Intro.avi (45.97 MB) - Lossless Lagarith compression, YUY2.)
After: Intro_Script3.mp4 (3.49 MB)

Avisynth project details, post #71, Flickering colours on VHS tape?

7. (browse the restoration forum for more):
Qickie Avisynth project page of fix for bad home camera video: "Information Overload #5" in Encoding from Huffyuv?, post #21.


Attached Images
File Type: jpg bad noisy color and ugly color blotch before.jpg (38.8 KB, 129 downloads)
File Type: jpg bad noisy color and ugly color blotch after.jpg (38.0 KB, 126 downloads)
File Type: jpg before and after create new frame.jpg (51.6 KB, 127 downloads)
File Type: jpg severe red aturation noisy tape dub before.jpg (77.1 KB, 126 downloads)
File Type: jpg severe red aturation noisy tape dub after.jpg (46.0 KB, 126 downloads)
Attached Files
File Type: mpg C1_defect_samples_original.mpg (22.93 MB, 1 downloads)
File Type: mpg D1_defect_samples_after.mpg (23.67 MB, 1 downloads)
File Type: mp4 Intro_capture_avi.mp4 (3.88 MB, 1 downloads)

Last edited by sanlyn; 01-23-2019 at 02:54 PM.
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01-24-2019, 03:40 PM
captainvic captainvic is offline
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Wow. Many thanks sanlyn for these samples.

These may be the best testaments I've seen for video restoration using Avisynth and VirtualDub. To clarify, I presume there is nothing available on the Mac platform that could produce similar results?

Moreover, if I had SD videos captured on a Mac in Apple ProRes format, could those videos be imported directly into Avisynth and VirtualDub for similar restorations? Or would they need to be converted first into another format that Avisynth and VirtualDub could work with?

Thanks again. These visuals are very helpful.
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01-24-2019, 04:56 PM
sanlyn sanlyn is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by captainvic View Post
These may be the best testaments I've seen for video restoration using Avisynth and VirtualDub. To clarify, I presume there is nothing available on the Mac platform that could produce similar results?
Not that I've ever been aware of. Avisynth and VirtualDub are Windows only.

Quote:
Originally Posted by captainvic View Post
Moreover, if I had SD videos captured on a Mac in Apple ProRes format, could those videos be imported directly into Avisynth and VirtualDub for similar restorations? Or would they need to be converted first into another format that Avisynth and VirtualDub could work with?
Windows can decode ProRes if the codec is installed in Windows. There are Windows versions of ProRes. Avisynth has various file opening utilities; they use the codecs that are installed on the Windows machine. However, I suggest that intermediate working files be converted to Lagarith, as ProRes is not 100% lossless. Lagarith can work with YV12, YUY2, and RGB, which can be converted from most similar color matrices using Avisynth's converters. Avisynth and Virtualdub are generally used in their 32-bit versions, which have many more plugins and free utilities available than their 64-bit counterparts and which have no problem running in either 32-bit or 64-bit Windows. Everything runs more or less trouble-free in Windows 10, although XP and Windows 7 accept a wider variety of free auxilliary video software. Windows 10 might require installing earlier Microsoft VisualC++ runtime support files, but these are fully documented by the plugins, are free and easily available, and are a commonplace requirement for many other Windows programs. Plugins are very small files that are simply copied into plugin folders, no installer required.



While Avisynth has hundreds of built-in functions and filters and VirtualDub has dozens of its own, most of the work shown here used additional and widely popular Avisynth and VirtualDub plugins, all of which are free. Avisynth is a scripted utility with fairly easy to learn high-level English word syntax; scripts are run and output is saved in Virtualdub's GUI interface. Avisynth's output is fully decoded and uncompressed video and audio. Once saved by VirtualDub or any other Avisynth client, using any of several video and audio codecs, the files can be used in any editor or encoder that can read the codecs. Virtualdub output is saved as .avi, most often as lossless YV12 ready for encoders or as lossless RGB ready for more complex timeline editors/encoders. The output choices are too numerous to cover here. The output can also be saved as ProRes if a ProRes encoder is installed. At last look, I believe a Prores decoder for Windows is free but the encoder isn't. But that might have changed since I last looked.

Last edited by sanlyn; 01-24-2019 at 05:09 PM.
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