Is my computer too slow to encode?

[Sac John]

I’m so close to finally encoding my first 90’s era Hi8 tape. After I’ve got that one done, it’ll be about 250 more to go.

Still can’t make it work though. I’ll share all settings here and perhaps someone more experienced than me will know what I need to change.

I’ve got my original Sony TRV-81 Hi8 camcorder ... connected to a DataVideo TBC1000 ... connected to a Tevion High Speed DVD Maker. I believe the Tevion is a rebranded ATI 600 USB clone. The TBC and the Tevion I bought from Lord Smurf.

The video is running into an iMac ... Late 2013, 10.13.6, 2.7 GHz Intel Core i5, 8GB 1600 MHz DDR3, Mac SSD.

The Mac is running VideoGlide capture software. Pretty much trying to use Lord Smurf’s recommendations and preferred gear wherever possible.

Camcorder is s-videoed into the TBC (bypassing audio), TBC is s-videoed into the Tevion.

VideoGlide settings that I understand so far:

Compression type: YUV422. (I assume that’s the best there is. I am looking for best video quality, given my equipment.)
Frames per second: Best
Source: S-Video
USB Bandwidth: 100
Size: 640 x 480
“record video” and “record sound” are both checked

Everything else is set to the defaults.

(I also know to close all other apps during recording.)

I clicked on “record” in VideoGlide and pressed play on the Sony Hi8. I get the popup window that says video is being recorded.

What I’m seeing in the video window is, give or take, about two frames per second. Choppy, to say the least. More like a slide-show presentation. I let it play for several minutes - it didn’t improve. After 3-4 minutes I clicked to stop recording and the video suddenly plays smoothly. So when I record, it’s badly choppy. When it’s not recording, the Mac plays the video perfectly.

And the real kicker ... I then go to my supposedly recorded video in the assigned folder. There is a MOV file there with my desired title, but it’s zero mb file size.

Since all these settings seem correct to me, I’m thinking perhaps my iMac is too old and slow? It seems to me people were already getting good encodes on Macs in 2013, but I don’t know about these things.

Am I looking at a new computer just to encode these videos? Or is there a setting I’ve overlooked that’s going to fix this?

[lordsmurf]

Too slow? Nah. Newer is faster, but it does depends on per-core, the software (and core support), etc. I encoded just fine, and still can, on a Mac Mini 2010. Can use it to even capture ATI AIW or Tevion clone Videglide, if I wanted.

Don't confuse "capture" with "encode" (a post-capture process). You're capturing now.

The bigger issue is settings.

"Frames per second: Best" -- Uh, what? fps is either 25 (PAL) or 29.97 (NTSC), not "best", whatever that means.

YUY2 is the colorspace (and colorspace compression), but not data compression. What may be happening here is you're trying to encode 75gb/hour huge uncompressed files. That has a bandwidth problem on drives. Are you trying to capture to a USB drive?

Zero files means there's something wrong somewhere. That happens on Windows and Linux, too. Not even an error, just a 0 file.

Remember than the Tevion (or Videoglide) will not work post-10.14.

I'm waiting for the (hopefully) new Mac Mini M2 myself. Unless M1 Pro/whatever specs out better CPU-wise.

[Sac John]

Hi LS,

Thanks for the reply. These 90's era videos have been on my back burner for years now and I'm intent on finally getting them done this year. Literally about 250 tapes, and this week I've set up a dedicated large workstation for this project. DigitalFAQ and the gear you sold me is my lifeline to making this happen.

Okay, got it, capturing is not the same as encoding. I am currently capturing, not encoding. re Frames per second ... "best" is an option in VideoGlide and supposedly VideoGlide knows from my footage what setting to use. Regardless, I changed it to 29.97 per your suggestion.

Screen Shot 2022-01-02 at 11.25.06 AM.jpg

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Two years ago when I bought the hardware, you told me to use "Pro Res 422" for the capture setting. I don't have Pro Res 422 as an option, but I see YUV422, so I assume that's the same thing, VideoGlide's uncompressed data setting. (I also assume it's the same as the "YUY2" you referred to above.)

Since I posted last night, I've learned that YUV422 uses a gig+ per minute. Most of my Hi8 tapes are full (2 hours, and a few 4 hours EP) so I'm looking at about 120-150 gigs per tape.

My goal was to capture all my tapes into single two-hour video files to stop the aging/degradation process ... and then edit them into watchable movies after all 250 tapes are captured. I did the math and, using YUV422, that would be six 5TB hard drives for my 250 tapes, and another six drives for backups. That’s a lot of drives at $100 a pop, but $1200 is still do-able if a compressed format creates significant image degradation to my precious family home movies.

Can you give me some advice there, LS? Should I make it a necessity to buy a whopping twelve 5TB drives this year to do this project? Or is there a compressed format that I can capture these two-hour files to for later editing that you believe is a good compromise?

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You asked what kind of drive I’m capturing to. For this first tape, I was trying to capture to the Mac’s built in SSD. That resulting in me seeing a choppy video on the screen and getting a zero MB video file.

Just now, your question prompted me to hook up an external Seagate USB drive and I still see a choppy video on the screen. But, lo and behold, it resulted in an actual saved video file on the external drive that plays back smoothly. So somehow using an external drive instead of the Mac’s built in SSD solved the zero MB file problem. I assume the resulting video is as good as I’m going to get so I’m now officially very close to having this thing up and running.

Do you have any idea how to get the video I’m seeing on the screen smooth while it’s being captured? I’m capturing 250 videos here and I really had hoped to watch them and enjoy them WHILE they are being captured, not after ... not just for the enjoying, but also to catalog the contents of each tape in real time. I really had my heart set on watching smooth video on the computer screen during capture. Any idea what I need to do to make that happen?

_____________


Thanks again for all your help so far, LS. You sold me some good stuff here - the TBC1000 and the Tevion. If I can get the first one or two tapes completed, I know I can confidently go into the rest of this very long project.

-JOHN

[hodgey]

What options do you have available? A codec labeled "YUV422" is likely uncompressed. ProRes tends to be what is most suited to a mac ecosystem as most stuff on macos has support for it. If it's not available you can try installing the mac version of the lossless UT Video codec. Don't remember if it shows up in VideoGlide or not as it's been some time since I've used it but worth a try (if it does work you can use something like avidemux or ffmpeg to convert it to prores 422 later for stuff that doesn't support it). Codec support on mac os can be a bit of a pain. It's possible one needs one of apples video apps installed for prores to be available but not sure.

The name YUY2 simply describes how video is stored in memory. 422 describes the type of chroma subsampling. In practice it means the resolution of the color part of the image is halved in the horizontal direction (and is what you typically get from a analog to digital device, hence why the 422 variant of Prores fits best).

I've done test captures on a slightly older iMac before, and people here have/are capturing on way slower windows computers so it should be more than fast enough.

[Sac John]

Quote:

Originally Posted by hodgey

What options do you have available?

Here are the compression options I have. I understand now that YUV422 is uncompressed, but you can read my concern above about the number of drives I would need to buy to do all my tapes in YUV422. Not impossible and I'm sure some power users here on the forum don't even blink at buying ten or twelve drives in one go, but the question is still whether there is a reasonable high-quality alternative.

Or are all compressed formats noticeably inferior and will I eventually regret saving my videos in any format other than YUV422?

Again, I'll be saving all tapes in single two-hour video files - to be edited at some point in the future. I'm just looking to capture all tapes for now non-stop, nothing more.

-JOHN

formats.jpg

Quote:

Originally Posted by hodgey

I've done test captures on a slightly older iMac before, and people here have/are capturing on way slower windows computers so it should be more than fast enough.

Takk, hodgey.

[hodgey]

Digging a bit, it seems prores support is part of a Apple Pro Video formats package, which may or may need workarounds to install if you don't have final cut or similar software, and you may or may not need an older version for the prores codec specifically, argh

Alternatively if you don't want to mess with that, try installing the mac version of ut video as noted. It's a lossless codec, akin to huffyuv, lagarith etc and will reduce file size by maybe 1/2 to 1/3 with no quality loss at all. I think it should be available once installed but not sure since I can't test.

If neither works, I think the highest quality one of those would be DVCPRO50 (unless you can crank the bitrate of h.264 up really high), unlike standard DV it's 4:2:2 and higher bandwidth.

[Sac John]

Thanks, hodgey. I'm looking at the Ut Video download page right now. Interesting that a different program can cut a file size of lossless capture down to half the size.

Does anyone have any insight to the problem I posted above? Right now, when I playback a captured video file, it plays smoothly and properly. But the video on screen while it's being captured is choppy in the extreme - showing about two frames per second.

I want to watch these videos in real time while they are being captured and obviously want to see smooth video during the digitizing process, not just after as I'm watching the finished files.

No idea what to change in settings, or if this is even the standard situation when using VideoGlide or possibly another program like Ut Video.

[lordsmurf]

No, not standard situation. Unsure why just yet.

Also MagicYUV is option, maybe? Donationware, can donate $0 (for now, give some bucks later).

[Sac John]

So frustrating. I was not able to find out why the real-time viewing window of the video being captured stutters, playing only two frames or so per minute ... while the finished video plays just fine. No way to watch the videos being captured as it's happening.

I guess the only choice now is to start installing other video capture programs and see if the problem was in VideoGlide, or if it's a Mac issue that will show up regardless of what software I use.