Captured VHS footage is already deinterlaced?
 

Hello.

Earlier this year, I started a small project where I wanted to convert a few of my old VHS tapes to digital. I have watched numerous videos and have realized that a few things can be difficult.

My problem is that when I capture video from the camera, the footage is already deinterlaced and it is captured in progressive. This is a problem because the signal coming from my camera is 30 fields per second (interlaced) but it is capturing at 30 frames per second, meaning I can't then deinterlace to make it a smooth 60fps.

The camera I am using is an 8MM Hitachi VM-E310A. I don't have (or plan on getting) a VCR, so the camera is my main means of playing and recording the tapes. The capture device I am using is a cheap $15 USB 2.0 converter from Amazon. My setup is as simple as using the camera to play the tapes, then the converter is plugged in through the composite ports on the side, and the USB end of the converter is plugged into my PC through a USB 2.0 port. I am then using VirtualDub to capture the video.

Now there are a few things that I am aware could be causing it, like incorrect settings in VirtualDub or the camera having issues, but after all of the troubleshooting and reading forum posts online, I am 90% sure the problem is my cheap capture device.

So this begs my main question, what is a capturing device that is guaranteed to capture interlaced video from an old camera? It seems that all of the ones that are available on amazon are the same cheap rebranded converters that always capture progressive video instead of true interlaced footage.

I am all ears for answering any questions about my setup!

SURELY there is a cable that can do this one simple task, right? right....

Perhaps it's just a bad parameter. What's the model exactly ?
As far as "guaranted device for 30i", i'd recommend any old pci card (2002-2010) (from hauppauge, terratec etc.) that has TV-in, s-video-in, composite-in (all 3).
By the way, have you tried Virtualvcr (i still prefer it over virtualdub), works on Win7 (win10 not sure)

How do you know it is progressive?

I'd suggest installing Mediainfo and opening your captured file in it. Go to the "tree" view and copy and paste that here so we can have a look. Or if you have a short capture file, less than 99mb, you can post it here as an attachment for us to look at.

Here's a link to the exact converter I bought off of Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

For clarification, I would buy an old PCI card and install it into my PC and then connect composite cables from the camera to the back of the card? Would this make it recognizable to VirtualDub as a capture source? This reminds me of when I used a PCIe firewire card that had a cable that was firewire on one end and DV on the other which plugged into my Canon camcorder, but this Hitachi camera has no such port meaning I need to use composite cables.

I have used VirturalVcr and it works decent in my experience but it is usually my 2nd option if Virtualdub is giving me issues.

I have to ask, can you provide me with a link to a card you recommend? I don't want to take any chances with me looking up the wrong ones.

MediaInfo shows me the following for NTSC sources:

It doesn't say whether it's interlaced or progressive. But by looking at motion in the video using VirtualDub, I can tell that it's interlaced. This is why Hushpower asked, how do you know it is progressive?

Mediainfo is not reliable for establishing if a video is interlaced or progressive: it does not analyze the video, but only reports at the metadata tags, that can be present or not, and right or wrong.

The only way to understand the nature of the video is "manually" looking to it: http://web.archive.org/web/201212061...//neuron2.net/

Lollo, it would be pretty easy to compare a standard Mediainfo readout with the OP's capture. There are telltale signs; 5:4, codec, lack of any interlacing flags, as Traal is alluding to.

With respect, that link serves no purpose in helping someone work out the interlacing of a file. Sure, the tool/technique is probably in there somewhere, but a link to DG's home page isn't going to help.

We really need a short capture to help the OP.

Once more, Mediainfo does not analyze any video, but only reports the tags that are written, or not, with the right value, or not, by the capture software and/or by the user.

I apologize, the link was broken in cut and paste. Here what I meant: http://web.archive.org/web/201301162....html#analysis
It explains how to understand the nature of a video.

This works the first time. But then what the OP will do for all the other videos? Will he post a sample in the forum and wait for our feedback? Is it not better to tell him how to find the nature of his videos by himself? :wink2:

Lollo, thanks, that new link makes sense.

Correct me if I am wrong, but you can achieve the same thing more simply by applying the "deinterlace" filter in VDub and choosing Yadif with Field Order set to Double Frame Rate, TFF or BFF.

Yes. I prefere to avoid the usage of a deinterlacing filter to do not insert additional variables: for example Yadif and QTGMC in not lossless mode alter the fields, in particolar the edges, and with sequences with low motion the judgement can be confused.

I'm only suggesting using the VDub deinterlacing filter technique to analyse the video, not necessarily to process it.

The VirtualDub/deinterlacing methodology we are talking about is to just analyze the video and understand its nature, not to process it. In this contest, I prefer to not deinterlace the video to be analyzed