S-VHS PAL interlaced acquisition with Huffyuv

[Genu29]

I am looking for help/suggestion on how to setup my system for S-VHS PAL acquisition; my system is made of PANASONIC VCR NVFS90 and ASUS ATI 9600XT.

MATERIAL
S-VHS PAL interlaced

PC
I would like to use VirtualDub with Huffyuv v2.1.1 CCE patch, but without any Filter (cropping/denoising); my idea is to have a master file and then, after acquisition, work on it for filtering and codec conversion. Is it a good strategy ? Afaik, cropping is not suggested for interlaced material, is it true ?

VCR:
Noise Filter/Off/Edit selector: what position should I choose ?
Picture sharpness control: this is a cursor with three milestones (sharp/middle/soft) that seems enabled only if the Noise Filter/Off/Edit selector is put Off; what position should I choose


Really many thanks for your help

[lordsmurf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Genu29

I am looking for help/suggestion on how to setup my system for S-VHS PAL acquisition; my system is made of PANASONIC VCR NVFS90 and ASUS ATI 9600XT.

Good VCR, good capture card.

Quote:

I would like to use VirtualDub with Huffyuv v2.1.1 CCE patch, but without any Filter (cropping/denoising); my idea is to have a master file and then, after acquisition, work on it for filtering and codec conversion. Is it a good strategy ?

It's not just good, it's perfect.

Quote:

Afaik, cropping is not suggested for interlaced material, is it true ?

Again, correct.

Quote:

Noise Filter/Off/Edit selector: what position should I choose ?

Generally it's best to leave this on EDIT, for the Panasonic. But use whatever looks best.

Quote:

Picture sharpness control: this is a cursor with three milestones (sharp/middle/soft) that seems enabled only if the Noise Filter/Off/Edit selector is put Off; what position should I choose

Panasonic is already artificially sharpening the image, even when the slider is at "0" values. For that reason, you can pull it down a a tick mark or two (to get the native "soft" quality of VHS, which lacks the halo/ringing you get from artificial sharpening). Or leave it at the 0 baseline default value. I would not push it sharper except in extreme circumstances with blurry tapes.

I think I answered that one.

Quote:

Really many thanks for your help

No problem. If you need more help, just reply.

And welcome to the site.

[Genu29]

Hi, thanks a lot for your reply. I am just doing some trial and with some tape I got a very high audio level; I tuned line-in with Window Mixer but with just one step more above no audio getting in, I have very high. Do you have any suggestion for this problem ? Besides some of them have very different level between L&R channels (I recall the camcorder had a problem for a period of time). May you help also for this ?
I would appreciate a lot. Many thanks
GB

[lordsmurf]

Be sure you're not using the microphone input, instead of the line-in input. Or if you have one of the more fancy recent cards, with selectable/variable inputs, be sure the "microphone gain" isn't on. That feature may have several names, so be on the prowl for any suspicious, as opposed to that exact name.

That's usually the culprit.