Hello.
Thank you for answers.
You are right because I didn't tell the whole long story
so as not to bore you, and I tried to be brief.
Sorry for the delay in replying, but to avoid unuseful rounds in the forum,
I prepared the whole novel by writing it for 10 minutes a day...
Here is the papyrus
There might also be something wrong in everything I'm about to tell you,
but I think the units are all high/top level, and I have no intention
of spending any money again ...after the "bleeding" of the 90s
THE PURPOSE OF THIS POST IS THAT I AM NOT AN EXPERT IN CODECS
and of the myriad of digital formats, especially the free ones for free use.
But the commercial ones, unfortunately, are specific and only for some NLEs.
This is my problem, and I don't want to re-encode anything for reasons of time,
for reasons of disk space and, above all, to not to lose a bit quality portion along the way.
There are very knowledgeable people here who, in a friendly way and with a constructive dialogue,
can surely help me understand things that I never had the time, the possibility or the need to learn.
As I mentioned, aside from the old days of pure Tape-to-Tape analog,
I've subsequently always worked in proprietary uncompressed formats of the NLEs I've used:
///FAST Videomachine DPR, AVID Media Composer with Mojo Box
(which I hate: I have completely forgotten it, it's powerful but it's in own world ...it's perverse!),
Pinnacle/AVID Liquid, (my love!), Davinci Resolve Studio
(powerful, the one I currently use, but not very user friendly for simple things),
Sony/
Magix Vegas (intricate, a bit like Resolve, with its pros and cons).
I don't like Premiere. But everyone has their own tastes and habits ...please have understanding.
I had a commission to digitize over 200 analog tapes of different types.
Vhs, S-Vhs, U-Matic, Betacam, and also the beautiful Video2000!
It's not the first time I've captured analog tapes,
but this time I have to preserve the quality throughout the process, right up to the end.
All this material represents a copy of a historical archive
of an old television station from the 80s and 90s.
Unfortunately only this copy has been saved and therefore it is necessary
to recover it at the highest possible quality, largely restore it,
in order to be able to preserve and archive it digitally.
I think I'm already well organized to digitize them.:
I have four For.A FA320P TBC broadcasts from the 90s (all perfectly functional
and correctly calibrated), several top players for reading and also many computers.
For VHS I use JVC BR-S525E, I own 3 units, they are war tanks, a bit delicate and mangy
in some respects, but, absolutely, there is nothing better than this for VHS and S-VHS.
Them have 9 head for very very very high quality smooth slow-motion (not important in this case)
and this help very much to avoid drop-outs, tape defects etc. Digital DOC is also available.
For the Betacam I have two PVW-2600P units. ALL these machines have an onboard "true" TBC,
Y-Luminance and C-Chroma DNR, Chroma phase, H phase shift control, Black-video-Croma level,
Y/C delay and more, Y gain, composite, Y/C and component output.
I also have some cheap Philips VHS players in which I control the tapes
before putting them into the serious machines. I own analog Tektronix
Vectorscopes and Waveform, professional CRT Monitors, analog-Y/C-component Matrix and
a modern new digital Oscilloscope. All calibrated.
In short, some equipment that I bought in the 90s and which each cost as much
as a car, ...and even more. Really, in those days, a money bleed!
)
I am an electronic technician, High Frequency transmission tecnician,
cameraman for broadcast and editor for myself and for thirth
and I have always personally maintained my work machines.
Over the years I have sold all the Analog edit controllers, video mixers,
tape recorders and some effects generators that I no longer need.
Precisely for this reason I thought of capturing multiple cassettes at the same time
on different machines to try to shorten processing times as much as possible,
which promise to be very long!
For the occasion I will dust my Pinnacle/Avid Liquid workstations.
I own two stations of Liquid with with Breakout Box ("BOB" for Liqud users)
and une Liquid Chrome workstation equipped with AJA Xena-LHe.
The Liquid Box is outstanding, it has SD broadcast output quality,
with all Composite, Y/C, Component inputs/outputs.
AJA Xena-LHe needs no comment.
Too bad it's that the BOB is only compatible with Liquid (but also Virtuadub, by installing the drivers,
recognizes it, but I would like to use
Virtualdub only with ATI AIW 7200).
I would like to use Liquid, particularly for capturing some higher quality tapes,
but most of all, for primary editing of ALL captured tapes (useless scenes, duplicate clips, long blacks removal, news separation, etc)
The liquid box is just an input/output interface, no coding is done in it and it's very convenient
to have various composite, Y/C and component video outputs in real time directly to the
TV monitor, distributors and matrix.
The aim is to edit everything in Liquid because it is really very quick to use, comfortable and friendly,
to do quick scrubs and cuts directly in the timeline. The speed of use of Liquid for a trained user is unique!
I love Liquid.
AVID killed Liquid.
All those who have seriously and intensively used Liquid, despite more than 15 years having passed
since his death, are still looking for something similar, for the concept, philosophy, practicality and potential,
which unfortunately does not exist in anyone else.
There are no comparisons of speed and versatility of Liquid towards the cumbersomeness of Resolve
which by now, I've been using for a long time for my new works, and also towards all the other NLEs.
The other NLEs have only grown because, meanwhile it has been many years since AVID buried Liquid in the coffin.
Unfortunately there are no more forums on Liquid.
The one from AVID is useless and the previous one from Pinnacle, very rich in information, has been removed.
There are only a few reviews left on the web, many biased, badly made, made by inexperienced people capable
only of commenting on Brocures and who have no idea what Liquid really is and probably only opened it to take
screenshots for their website. ...otherwise AVID would never have bought it to take it off the bucket forever.
As I anticipated before, digging in the closet of my old days, I found two ATI All in Wonder AGP 7200 cards
complete with purple Box,
I installed them on two clean XP systems along with
Virtualdub 1.9.x
(without installing MMC and various frills) and everything works, but, ...here's the problem:
not only for the need for quality, but above all for the need for compatibility with Liquid,
captured files, exclusively in 100% uncompressed format, cannot be imported into Liquid.
I work in PAL, so 720x576 25 fps interlaced.
If someone is a good connoisseur of Liquid perhaps it would take much sooner to understand
For IMPORT, as an uncompressed format. Liquid accepts ONLY files in: .AVI RGB24 bit DIB CCIR601 PAL.
(but I'm talking about files that can be imported without re-encoding or rendering in order to play them,
mmediately ready to play).
For CAPTURE, Liquid PRO (with the BOB) gives me that options:
-DV (AVI)
-DV (DIF)
-DVCPRO 25 (DIF)
-DVCPRO 50 (DIF)
-I MPEG-2 422P@ML (M2V)
-MPEG-2 MP@HL (M2V)
-RGB (AVI) - Used ONLY for internal Rendering and for Fuse and Export
-Uncompressed 2VUY (2VUY) - SD Format for CCIR 601 Color Space (selectable 8 o 10 bit)
Please, note that the "2" is BEFORE "VUY" and Liquid save the file with .2vuy estension
Seems impossible to import this kind of files from virtualdub and from everywhere
-Uncompressed 2VUY (2VUY) (HD) (2VUY) - HD Format ITU 709 Color Space
-Uncompressed YUV (YUV) - Legacy SD Format for Silver and Chrome
(for Silver dedicate old ///FAST hardware is required, for Chrome AJA Xena LHe is required)
There are many other detail about Liquid's Import/Export/Capture that in this moment after some year
they don't come quik to mind and it would take a long time to explain in details.
I am very expert of Liquid. I can use it blindfolded in the more complex functions,
but this time I got stuck, because I've never had experiences like this.
The questions are:
first of all, how much difference in quality could there be between the capture with the Liquid Box
and the one made with the ATI AIW 7200?
Of course, by eye, visually, there is no difference in playing the files on a TV monitor
Has anyone had experience with this comparison?
And then, the major snag, the question I already asked in the subject of the thread:
which codec in virtualdub 1.9.x should I use?
Let's immediately exclude
Huffyuv which is not imported by Liquid and I discarded it right away,
other uncompressed codecs appear to be equally incompatible with Liquid.
Again, I emphasize that I'm talking about capture, Virtualdub will not be used for other purposes,
even if, in some cases after the capture, I should still use it to do some processing in Avisynth.
I repeat what I have said many times:
I'm not a codec expert, so I'm poorly informed, and for the same reason,
I'm not very good at setting settings in Virtualdub.
...and finally...the good news...but I'm not very convinced
because here, it seems, that Virtualdub2 doesn't like it very much
(I also read the reasons, but I haven't found any problems ...for now).
While in Virtualdub 1.9.x Video/Compression
the first entry is: Uncompressed YUY2 without the possibility of settings,
in Virtualdub2 (which I used for the first time yesterday),
Video/Compression the first entry is: Uncompressed (RGB/YCbCr) with the
"PixelFormat" button that allows me to set in RGB24, but I have to disable
the Check-Box YUYV on the top to make captured clips recognizable by Liquid,
without re-encoding and without rendering.
I did some tests of max 25 minutes and I didn't even lose a single frame with
perfectly synchronized audio/video.
I know that virtualdub2 doesn't show you dropped frames,
but in Liquid I reviewed the captured clip very closely and didn't notice
any dropped frames (for the occasion I digitized a very dynamic video with
scenes with many rapid movements),
Today I'll do a 2 hour capture and I'll see what happens...
BUT I noticed that if I make these settings, in Vitualdub2,
after closing the PixelFormat window, the message appears:
"Using Conversion YUYV ->RGB24", so I assume that a translation
of the color space takes place. Is it a serious thing?
Small note: when I play the clip in the Liquid timeline I have a short
latency only when I press the Play button.
I changed the FourCC from [ ] (empty) to [DIB ] and the clip starts
fast like all native Liquid clips.
WOW, I feel like I've written a little novel!
Excuse me. but I written a little at a time I didn't notice it,
but I hope I was clearer and more complete this time.
I'm sorry if this sounds like a Liquid Spot, but it was necessary
to underline the reasons for this long post.
I also helped myself a bit with the translator.
As I get older, it becomes slower for me to learn new things, sorry.
Thanks again for reading,
I hope I helped someone who suffers from boredom spend some time
)
Now I await your enlightenment
