Best capture format for master VHS-to-digital? (Huffyuv vs Lagarith vs MPEG)
OK, So I have Faithfully followed the DFAQ Thang,(win XP computer,AIW 9600XT,)with great results,But my Question is...Which is the best file format to Archive My VHS Tapes To, For future Reference (Utube,DVD,home fun)So I only have to do one pass of my Tapes???
|
There are four possible workflows:
Note that my size for H.264 may be off (up to 2GB/hour max), as I've not measured it to date. The downside to H.264 is that you cannot (and/or SHOULD not) capture to it directly. It's not a capturing format. HTPC = plays in a "media center" like the Western Digital WDTV, and is stored on hard drives. With an ATI All In Wonder card, you can capture to lower-end MPEG-2 broadcast, up to 20MB/s Or capture directly to MPEG-2 for DVD, with slight quality loss against lossless > 2-pass MPEG conversions. And it can capture lossless AVI via VirtualDub or ATI MMC, but VirtualDub is suggested. So ... which one interests you most? I use all four, depending on what I feel is best for the scenario. There's no one right answer.
|
Thank you!,and just to clarify, First I will mostly be capturing my homemade (one of a kind) VHS Masters from camera,(live footage),and then use that master file to edit,and then prepare for DVD or Utube,or both from that same file,so it sounds like Huffyuv AVI is best for the most precious stuff,But I will need to watch-n-pause while capturing, to keep AVI file size minimized???
|
Quote:
You can capture, and then trim in VirtualDub, saving a new file with the "Direct stream copy" option under the Video menu. Mark In/Out the sections you want to delete, then hit DELETE on the keyboard. Then save as the new file -- direct stream copy does not re-encode, but simply saves the remaining selected video into a new file. I do this all the time. :D |
|
Quote:
Lagarith is compressed more (even if losslessly), and incurs a harder hit to CPU and RAM, and ultimately speed as the video is decoded. Encoding isn't really an issue as much as decoding is. That's not too dissimilar from CABAC encoded H.264, where there's a massive hit to resources on decode. (Unlike lossless, of course, CABAC H.264 takes a ton of resources to encode.) The size benefit of Lagarith over Huffyuv is maybe 10-15% at best. So instead of 35-40GB/hour, you're now looking at 30-35GB/hour, but with more decode overhead. Ut Video simply is not as widely support, and can be rejected by software even when system-wide codecs are present. It's very non-standard, and most would consider it the same as Huffyuv -- possibly slightly worse/slow than Huffyuv. Size is comparable, performance may lag slightly. Disk space tends to outpace CPU/RAM bottlenecks, so I'd much rather take a 10% space hit than a 25% speed hit. Or deal with a non-standard codec. It used to be argued that "CPU is always getting faster", but many have learned that adding cores doesn't always mean more speed. There's a performance plateau for certain tasks, and we long ago hit that for a number of video codecs. By contrast, hard drive size tends to increase almost 33% every 6 months in recent years, and that's not happened in CPU capacity. Remember that Huffyuv is one of the few "universal" type codecs that works equally well on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. The base version, not the multi-threaded or 64 versions. Fat chance getting Ut Video or Lagarith to work. It's just not supported. That hints at a future where Windows could also not support it. I'd much rather use a high bitrate MPEG-2 (10-20Mb/s sub-broadcast bit rate), if space was such a big concern that Huffyuv needed to be avoided. It's standard, it can look just as good as a lossless format, and it has a decent balance of both speed and size. With some of the MPEG-aware hardware we have these days, decode can be partially handled in CPU/GPU, making it quite peppy. |
Quote:
I am currently trying to sell the ATI/Huffyuv set-up to a group, but among the bunch there was a Mac guy who was complaining that I could use this codec on Mac. I did some research but there is very few information about it, and I don't always trust the source as I trust you Lord:D Regards |
Quote:
The post-capture intermediary of choice is now Lagarith on Windows, because it works both in x86/x64 (32/64-bit) OS. Mac is less fun. You have MagicYUV as an intermediary non-capture option, but I've fond some of the newest software like Adobe Premiere CC 2018 and VLC 3 hates it. That's more a statement about Adobe/VideoLAN breaking stuff than Mac, but broken is broken. The easiest choice is to capture Huffyuv 32-bit in Windows, and then transcode in Windows via VirtualDub2 to ProRes422 (FFMPEG encoder). Configure it to level 1, don't use the default. File size is always estimate 2x size, and final encode is almost always same size as the Huffyuv file. The ProRes is native to Mac, their proprietary format, no issues so far (even if using the reverse-engineered FFMPEG encoder). Yes, roundabout, but that's the penalty of using a Mac for video. :wink2: This is one of the few things that changed over time, but nothing impossible to resolve without much effort. |
Quote:
What about existing Huffy captured tapes? Should they be recaptured in Lagarith? |
Quote:
Post-capture, when editing/restoring/etc, using modern Mac/Windows systems, you'll swap the lossless encoding to Lagarith. (This only applies if you're having issues. If you're not, then feel free to stay Huffyuv throughout the process.) Quote:
Note: VirtualDub FilterMod's new name = VirtualDub2, a version of VirtualDub that embeds more decode/encode options. |
Thank you for the clarification.
|
Site design, images and content © 2002-2024 The Digital FAQ, www.digitalFAQ.com
Forum Software by vBulletin · Copyright © 2024 Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.