digitalFAQ.com Forum

digitalFAQ.com Forum (https://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/)
-   Capture, Record, Transfer (https://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/video-capture/)
-   -   Does anyone have Sony EV-S9000E ? (https://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/video-capture/2733-sony-ev-s9000e.html)

juhok 12-26-2010 06:55 PM

Does anyone have Sony EV-S9000E ?
 
Does anyone have Sony EV-S9000E ? I have a question about the "capture window", about how the image is shifted 8-16 pixels upwards and there's also some chroma errors in the top of the image spanning in the 8-16px range. I'm wondering whether this is normal behavior or something gone wrong in my unit. It's been always like this as long as I've had it.

admin 12-27-2010 02:40 PM

For clarification, this is the Sony EV-S9000E PAL HI8 VCR. It's sometimes referred to as one of the best consumer Hi8 VCRs around.
There's some discussion of it here: http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/3...capturing-NTSC

I would agree with the assessment given by another poster in that thread -- many higher-end Sony Hi8 cameras are known to give exceptional (and accurate) playback results, compared against even the best VTRs. It all comes back to the model of the unit, and the condition.

What you describe is sometimes normal behavior, on other types of equipment. For example, The Elite Video BVP4+ proc amp has some slight chroma noise on the outer edges of the corrected picture, although well into the overscan -- and it can often be tweaked out of frame with screwdriver adjustments. Certain DVD recorders shift a few pixels, too.

juhok 12-27-2010 02:57 PM

My bet is on the normal behavior but confirmation never does harm. It has been serviced 2-3 times, TBC unit redone, calibrated etc and shift's remain.

About VTR Vs Camera. I have EV-S2000 and EV-S9000 PAL VTRs and they both outperform the cameras I've used. EV-S9000 has seen a lot of use and the "out of box" chroma looks uglier than some. But after my usual denoising chain, the cleaned picture is better than video from camera that's been through the same procedure.

Cameras produce DV-compressed video, which sometimes is clipped in the highlights because there's no possibility to adjust the 'procamp' before compression. From VTR lossless capture is possible. One could argue that camera has analog outputs too - which is true. I haven't really tested this ever so I can't comment on the quality of that option.

Other thing to remember is that EV-S9000 is professional "audio device", it records PCM audio. In every case I've tested the same material in both camera and EV-S9000, the latter has clearly better audio performance. Even when the audio is "normal" mono/stereo track.

And the usability. Going thru hundreds of tapes using camera - I'd go mad. :)

There's been cases where I've needed camera to get some tapes with bad tracking to work. EV-S9000 was changing to PCM mode all the time and that produced horrible noise. I didn't have EV-S2000 at that time which might've worked too due to lack of it's PCM support.

admin 12-27-2010 03:02 PM

Am I correct in that this issue you're seeing is completely in the overscan? If so, I'd just look to mask it, and not get too caught up in the imperfections. The fact that you're even noticing puts you ahead of even some of the most skilled broadcasters and TV show editors, who seem to get sloppier every year. If I see another commercial stutter across my screen (broadcast with reversed interlaced!), I think I'm going to scream. And I don't mean the local overdubs, but the national feed national commercials!

Good work. :)

juhok 12-27-2010 03:10 PM

2 Attachment(s)
Yeah, it's in the overscan. I'm a bit anal at times. :p Sample included from 2000/9000 (originally PNG, converted by forum software to JPG).

And thanks.

jmac698 12-27-2010 05:09 PM

1 Attachment(s)
That's easy to fix! I am using only a simple approximation here, in some cases certain colors with texture will look odd.
Code:

#Fix Sony 9000 Digital8 video
#A Script which fixes a problem where the top 6 lines of video have a green color
#Version 0.1 by jmac698  Dec/10
dir="G:\project001a\vcr comparison\"
imagesource(dir+"sony9000.jpg")#change this to:
#avisource(dir+"yourvideo.avi")
pal=1#set to 0 for NTSC (obviously would apply to an equivalent NTSC hi8 deck)
goodline=13#increase this until the color is fixed, refers to the cropped coordinates
newwidth=720#The final width of the new video
newheight=(pal==1)?576:480#The final height of the new video
#This script is not completely general, generally only even numbers are supported
left=4#adjust these to closely crop your video
right=9
top=0
bot=7
Crop(left, top, -right , -bot)#Crop your video
addborders((newwidth-last.width)/2,(newheight-last.height)/2,(newwidth-last.width)/2,(newheight-last.height)/2)#Re-Centre your video
converttoyuy2
badcolor=last.vtoy#This is where the green line comes from
fillcolor=badcolor.crop(0,goodline,0,-(newheight-goodline-2)).pointresize(newwidth/2,goodline)
fixcolor=stackvertical(fillcolor,badcolor.crop(0,goodline,0,0))
ytouv(last.utoy,fixcolor,last)


juhok 12-27-2010 06:02 PM

That works great! :) Approximation is a lot better than the way-off colors before. I'm too tired now to think what exactly is happening in this script but I'll look at it in more depth tomorrow. Thanks.

PS. do you have anything relating to VHS/etc color bleed? I've tried a few scripts utilizing aWarpShap but so far they've introduced some artifacts at times which cannot be tolerared (colorshift is under control).

jmac698 12-27-2010 06:59 PM

The problem is that part of the color is missing. Whenever you see something greenish, think "Pb=0", in other words one of the color channels is always zero. So I just approximate it and it looks ok. I'd like to know more about this problem. Would you be willing to record a test video to a blank tape for me?
It would be really helpful if you knew how to turn an avisynth script into a video and record it to the VTR somehow. Also let me know what capture device you use (it would be great if you have a computer capture card).
There's some other problems with the video, I can fix those too (the greyish line on the left).
I love this, keep the weird little problems coming :)

NJRoadfan 12-27-2010 08:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by admin (Post 13866)
I would agree with the assessment given by another poster in that thread -- many higher-end Sony Hi8 cameras are known to give exceptional (and accurate) playback results, compared against even the best VTRs. It all comes back to the model of the unit, and the condition.

Also keep in mind that the late 90s/early 00 Hi-8 Sony camcorders (excluding D8 cameras) support Sony's "XR" format extension giving 10% better quality on standard and Hi-8 tapes. None of the standalone VTRs have it from what I've seen. Some units even recorded time code to the tape so you can instant recall the date and time of the recording without showing it on the video itself. Something to keep in mind when doing transfers of customer tapes. Did PAL units get the XR extensions?

juhok 12-28-2010 05:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jmac698 (Post 13879)
I'd like to know more about this problem. Would you be willing to record a test video to a blank tape for me?
It would be really helpful if you knew how to turn an avisynth script into a video and record it to the VTR somehow. Also let me know what capture device you use (it would be great if you have a computer capture card).
There's some other problems with the video, I can fix those too (the greyish line on the left).
I love this, keep the weird little problems coming :)

It's possible. I have Blackmagic Design Decklink Studio -card (in+out pretty much anything). Printing .avs to tape is not a problem per se. The problem might turn out to be that the S9000 unit is pretty worn out and it shows in recording - not very good quality. Playback is ok. I could try to record with C2000 and playback in S9000.

Quote:

Originally Posted by NJRoadfan (Post 13880)
Also keep in mind that the late 90s/early 00 Hi-8 Sony camcorders (excluding D8 cameras) support Sony's "XR" format extension giving 10% better quality on standard and Hi-8 tapes. None of the standalone VTRs have it from what I've seen. Some units even recorded time code to the tape so you can instant recall the date and time of the recording without showing it on the video itself. Something to keep in mind when doing transfers of customer tapes. Did PAL units get the XR extensions?

I've read about this but forgot about it. There seem to be PAL cameras with XR extension. To be honest I don't think this 10% is very significant in real life because my client base is very conservative and rarely if ever do they have anything so specialized. I have many formats/extensions I have gear for but never any use for them. Also when I do get Hi8 instead of Video8, Hi8 sharpness and extra bandwith is often used to render "more and sharper noise" and some wicked post processing by the camera and IMHO often end up looking worse than the older Video8 recordings because of this. It's like this many times, the format/idea is good but it's ruined by bad execution. Not to say I haven't seen single good looking Hi8 recording.

To be clear, as far as I can see XR supports "date and time" info embedded like DV-formats etc, and not timecode like professional equipment?

admin 12-28-2010 11:20 AM

Quote:

I could try to record with C2000 and playback in S9000.
That would probably suffice. I have the same situation here on JVC S-VHS gear.


All times are GMT -5. The time now is 02:08 PM

Site design, images and content © 2002-2024 The Digital FAQ, www.digitalFAQ.com
Forum Software by vBulletin · Copyright © 2024 Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.