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I'll put this aside and move in to the digital realm, accepting that DV probably is 'junk' and that the Canopus was something found in stores from 2002 - what is the best option for capturing S-Video signals, this isn't something we usually deal with. The rack actually has a prehistoric professional DAW in it so I have a well spec'd XP machine (SSD conversion, 4GB RAM, industrial audio hardware) so if that can be put to use any suggestions welcome. |
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Back in 2005, I had conversations on this model on VH and in PMs elsewhere, and feedback on it was very mixed. It was very haevily dependent on the source tapes. I made for a terrible general-use deck, but it was decent (15 years ago) for certain specific capture tasks. These decks have been infamous since inception. For example, this old webpage: https://www.cameratim.com/electronic.../modifications I don't like D-VHS decks, but I'd rather have one of those than one of these, for capturing VHS tapes. That alone should say something. Quote:
What's been done, exactly? You must remember that age is age, and time takes a toll on video gear. Gravity affects alignments, various tolerances undo themselves, grease dries and powders, metal warps, rubber brittles. These old decks were made for thousands of hours of use, and yet weren't made with a decade lifespan in mind. This is especially true of Panasonic decks, with the worst-aged units being the AG-1980s. Anyway... I think you've run into a situation where multiple shortcomings in multiple devices are giving you an overall degraded quality, and possibly miserable capturing experience. Something you wouldn't face with better gear. I would be interested in seeing some tiny captures. |
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I'm only looking at PAL cassettes, no call for NTSC here - if I could get in to the Canopus and turn off some of the additional processing it's doing I might be able to make a more objective assessment but it's trying to do all sorts of processing which I think is doing naught but creating havoc. The disc has been long since lost, and I am struggling to find the software to control it. I'm also experimenting with the 'Big Bertha' VHS machines as line TBC's, I have a Video8, Hi8 deck as well as the pretty much unknown Stateside Video2000 machine too, look up V2K if you've not heard of it before, it was the European third horse in the format war, technically ahead in every way to Beta/VHS but eye-wateringly expensive and notoriously unreliable. Computer firepower isn't a problem (we're a media company after-all, just not usually in the analogue realm) I have a suite of video workstations at my disposal, that said I've found Avisync runs like absolute crap on our video workstations. There's a lot to ingest on here, and I've had one almighty refresher in videotape/signal chain and learnt a few things too. Cheers, RR |
You still don't get the idea, It is not about firewire, If you are a pro you should be capturing lossless AVI 4:2:2 720x576 not DV, DV is an obsolete video format that died about 20 years ago and was never intended as a conversion format, It was a portable camcorder format for storing video files on a tape that served its purpose back then.
In 2020 the options are USB 2/3, PCIe (and the likes inside a desktop), SDI (pro). |
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However, I think there's an asumption I'm transferring these tapes for some deep archival use ir for restoration, neither of which is true, as said they're RoTs and it's more a case of interest as to what's on them and where anything is found of interest we can go back to the source tapes anyway which is not handled by us. I'm just interested in getting the best results without capital outlay, we have an AVDC which is not giving fantastic results and I'm happy to accept DV isn't the best format but I'm happy to do the best I can with what's in the office. Quote:
I think there are a lot of assumptions here and I'm willing to invest a few thousand in hardware if it's really required or we start getting archival work, but at the moment I was just interested in the best options with what we have. There's a lot of very interesting information on here, don't think I'm being obtuse but I don't think I've been very clear. Thanks everybody for their help. |
Yes you were not clear in your first post as you said you are transferring for clients.
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If you just want the easiest workflow for digitizing analog video, DV/firewire is fine. It shouldn't give you much digital noise, unless the analog source is really noisy or shaky. DV compresses the colors slightly; and unless you have op-amp controls or an external video processor, your workflow may not be able to recover information from really dark or really bright areas; so your options for restoring the video would be limited. |
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What fps (or hour:encode time) do you think is slow? Sometimes Avisynth is about the scripts, and that is what determines speed. Too many newbies make wrong choices. (Open a new thread about your Avisynth, We can guide you.) Quote:
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You want a rough catalog of footage. In a decent quality for review, but not necessarily archival. I get that. I do this often with JVC LSI DVD recorders, or ATI AIW 15mbps MEPG captures, run a full tape. If something looks important, I go back and fetch that piece in lossless for full software workflow processing. What we don't want to see is when clients get charged $$ or $$$ for poor quality results. We sometimes get "I wants to makes moneys, how can I convert these tapes cheap???? k thx bye", and so that has to be nipped early. Other times, actual pros get snookered by "pro brand name" marketing, and sneer at better gear. And those people need re-education ASAP. Quote:
DV is non-GOP at 25mbps, and acts more like a super-super-bitrates DVD-Video MPEG encode than anything else. It's inferior even to MPEG 15mbps with GOP, but is consider archival (especially at 4:2:2 profile). I'm not anti-DV, when used in the right setting. DV probably would suffice here. But that ADVC-300 filtering is just dreadful, and probably needs replacing. Quote:
If you wanted best lossless, then I'd suggest certain capture cards under $200 (see also marketplace forum here). I do think that VCR is causing quality hits. But if your sources is more than VHS, how are other format encodes looking on that DV box? Still bad? Not as bad? Lack of frame TBC will cause various issues. Some visually, most not. |
Within the context of of his sentence, it seems RoTs means Right on the spot. Though his spelling of the acronym is odd.
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Record of Transmission (Or indeed Recording of Transmission), I've heard both used.
broadcaster overnight material mostly, proof of what was 'actually' transmitted cf. broadcast logs. Can't say too much really, a did try and give another clue when I said these are all 3M Anti Static broadcast tapes. These are not archival because the sources are I believe still extant and held on Betacam SP or MII depending on company. These tapes whilst interesting have no value as they are off-air recordings, a few interesting adverts ('commercials' stateside) and a lot of dull overnight filler. It's a long story I not really at liberty to tell. Anyway... Switched off all of the additional processing in the Canopus and things are looking much tidier, bit of work in Premiere (all methods suggested here are too slow for me, I personally don't have time for the 18fps I could muster deinterlacing with Avisynth & Virtual Dub) and they're 'good enough' for their duty. I do like the lightweight VirtualDub for capture though. I will try it again for some different client tapes though, when I have more time and incentive. Thanks again all, still a lot to learn and take in. Still looking at capture options, thinking about AIW cards at the moment as the next step, possibly... Don't fancy anything USB. |
Avisynth+ x64, using QTGMC preset=faster, should not be 18fps slow on any system built new in the past 5 years.
Ah, RoT, gotcha. I've not heard "record of transmission" in at least 15-20 years now. It's been so long that I don't even remember the context of how it was used anymore. My broadcast experiences ended with analog transmissions. |
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Well this is on a 'Threadripper' with 128GB of RAM, it has almighty graphics capability too but I doubt there's any GPU offload with this software. We usually work with VMG and post-processing, we spend most of our time in 3D software. Admittedly though I'm just running plain old x86 version of it without multithreadding support, I'm sure if I opened the hood of the software and changed to a MT/x64 version things would improve dramatically. Thanks again, RR |
Vapoursynth is another option.
Or using Hybrid for the GUI to either Avisynth or Vapoursynth. Some filters do offload to GPU, but not a deinterlace. |
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