Workflow to save time, better quality + ghosting in video?
I own honestech VHStoDVD 4 Deluxe. I tried this plug and play capture but it didn't go very well. Laggy video and video output quality could be better (despite the highest setting set). I have a 8mm camcorder directly plugged into the device. It has one video out (yellow) and one channel audio out (white). The Honestech device is this http://www.honestech.com/main/vhs-to...deluxe-old.asp
So I searched the internet, and found out I could use this hardware combined to VirtualDub to capture video. After having a look at the captured video, I wondered what was those horizontal lines, and discovered this was interlacing.... And so on for many other things observed. I had questions/encountered issues, so googled a lot, hence learned a lot on the subject. So what was first intended to be plug and play work, is now consuming me a lot of time (which is ok for me since I like learning everyday). Still I consider myself a noob because I'm never 100% sure of what I'm doing. First of all, I have a workflow question and was wondering if I'm proceeding ok: 1 Capture Honestech Hardware RCA cable USB 2.0 Virtual Dub Software Video (Lagarith) Audio Uncompressed (Direct Stream) I get audio sync issue, but it is fixed value so.... 2 Edit (for audio) Virtual Dub Software Video (Direct Stream) Audio Uncompressed (Direct Stream) + Interleaving (value for Skew) 3 Deinterlacing From web search, found Avisynth and QTGMC VirtualDub Avisynth script loaded Here is the script AVISource("filename_with_audio_corrected.avi") AssumeTFF() QTGMC( Preset="Slow" ) Video (Fast Recompress) Audio Uncompressed (Direct Stream) 4 Encoding I wish to use x264 encoding, and mp3. Already did once, worked, but have ghosting (I think)... So my first question would be: Am I proceeding ok? Is there a step I could avoid to save some time or to have better quality? My second question is about this (see images below). I thought this was chroma shift but after noticing it on many capture, I guess this is ghosting. I would like to confirm with you what is this phenomena. This is an example of raw capture (interlaced) http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...ve-time-a_2jpg These are examples of deinterlaced video with qtgmc in virtualdub Notice the halo (ghosting?) aside the man's shirt... http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...-b_capture2jpg Notice the strange effect on the car's rear light (chroma shift or bleeding? Noise? Ghosting? I couldn't point out from web search...) http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...c_capture01jpg Notice the Referee (edge of his pants showing on the boards, and white of the boards showing on his pants) http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...-d_ghostingjpg All this being said, any help would be appreciated. Thanks (a lot) in advance! PS: I have posted on Doom9 forum, but have no answers yet (after many views). I'm thinking maybe someone could help here :) Hope it does not offend anyone because of the duplicate |
Welcome.
It looks as if you've done research and accomplished much on your own. Good work. A few points.... Quote:
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Why are you deinterlacing? (If you want web streaming, that's different). Quote:
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BTW, QTGMC's default is "Slow" and doesn't have to be specified. You could use this simplified statement and get the same results: Code:
AssumeTFF.QTGMC() Quote:
I'm getting the idea that you're preparing these videos for web display -- especially since mp3 won't work with standard video formats like DVD or BluRay. It's lower-quality audio compression, but it's usually favored for web streaming. Quote:
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It's not really 'raw", which happens to be the name of a specific graphics/video format. Maybe avoid confusion and say it's "an unaltered image" or some such nonsense. But we know what you mean. Quote:
We all hope that you aren't upscaling your SD image to HD frames. It never works. In this case, the cropping and resizing have an invalid height (all dimensions of encoded video should be mod-8, or evenly divisible by 8). The height of the image isn't mod-8. It isn't mod-4, either. When you crop, take that into account when laying out your final image. Also note that the bright luma and bright chroma are visibly clipped. They exceed the RGB 235 upper limit for TV, and even exceed the RGB 255 limit for PC display. The histogram below tells the story. Everything that's climbing up the right-hand wall of the histogram indicates clipped detail -- another word for "destroyed". Clipped detail can't be retrieved. Overall, image gamma is too high and looks washed out. Aside from other problems, it looks over-filtered. Quote:
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Anyway, you're off to a start. You'd be surprised how many newcomers don't get as far as you have. :wink2: Excuse the many typos you might (will) find in this reply. It's getting late here. |
(EDIT: My post was composed at the same time as Sanlyn's.)
Yeah those are some huge halos. "Ghosting" is used to refer to many different things, so "halos" is more clear. The effect is typically caused by artificial sharpening. If you have Proc Amp adjustments available in VirtualDub (Video -> Levels ideally; if not Video -> Capture Filter -> Video Proc Amp tab), turn Sharpness all the way down on the capture device. If the halos remain, the problem is with the playback machine or the recordings themselves. The chroma issue on the car lights may be dot crawl, though it looks unusually diagonal in your case. The best way to minimize dot crawl would be to use a playback machine with S-Video output, but that means investing in a Hi8 or Digital8 device. Regarding your workflow, well the audio sync thing is unfortunate. I don't know what to suggest there. (Oh wait, altering the Capture -> Timing settings may help. But different devices seem to need different settings.) For the deinterlacing, it seems like you're saying you put the script into VirtualDub and created an AVI output using Fast Recompress, then encoded that using x264. You don't need to do that; you can feed the Avisynth script straight into x264. x264 + MP3 is a weird combination. x264 + AAC would be the typical configuration, and AAC is a more efficient audio compressor. (EDIT2: Just replies to above post.) Quote:
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Thanks for the additions, msgohan. I mentioned AAC but somehow half a paragraph got deleted. It was getting to be too long anyway.
To get more specific about the ghost/halo problem, we'd have to see a few seconds of original unprocessed AVI capture. Looks like there's some y/c comb filtering somewhere along the capture line, as I don't see much generic dot crawl in those images. That cross-hatch -- or whatever it's called -- appeared in several examples of CUE (chroma upsampling error) I saw in years passed. Some of the cheap EZCap spinoffs often showed it, too, and so do some older DVD-player decoders. |
All the images seem to be broken now, so I cannot help here. :(
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Leading audio is an unnatural state and more noticeable than lagging audio. |
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That "D" ghost picture is in such bad shape, it's difficult to tell a uniform stripe from a ghost or halo. Dark details are seriously murky and crushed somewhere along the line, so recognizing an artifact from something else in nearly impossible. Tape-to-tape dupes usually look like that. All the images look like tape dupes to me, but I could be wrong (won't be the first time). Can't give much more advice without a sample of an original, unprocessed capture. That might give some clue about the sync problem as well. The capture device is known to bring sync problems with it. |
Hi! Lots of reading here! This is AWESOME. Thanks for your support first of all.
I will separate my answer by section because quoting everyone would be too long. Btw, I speak French, so sorry for using words that might not be suitable to describe what I want to describe hehe For the capture device and/or method I own honestech as you know. So this could be part of the culprit. I would like better quality indeed. Friend of mine lent me the EasyCap device. Could it be better? I will try tonight anyways I also have access to a Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1250. It is on my HTPC (constantly in use so I was looking for something else to capture since I don't want my girlfriend to yell at me because I'm using the TV... ok I'm just kidding here about the g/f but I can capture during the night even if it is on my HTPC.) Should I buy a S-Video to rca adapter? The output from the camcorder is RCA (only white and yellow). Would it help. My guess is no since the cam has no S-Video out. Capture settings I must confess that (without knowing what I was really doing) I pumped up contrast a bit from 3 to 5 in the virtualdub settings (device settings). I guess it did not help at all Deinterlacing The goal of deinterlacing is for PC watching. I want to archive those videos in digital format. QTGMC use I use this script because it seems to be the best for the task. Well I think so, from web search (unless you say else than this) The output file is YUY2, not YV12 Audio Sync issue What I meant by "fixed value" is that it is out of sync from the same value all the way through the video. So quite an easy fix. Audio is lagging (roughly by 500ms) btw, not leading. Other points Sorry, I used "raw" because I'm used to this term in photography editing (Canon CR2, etc...) I'm not upscaling my SD image to HD frames Thanks for the QTMGC simplified script Thanks for the encoding clarifications and suggestions I don't mind you reposted the pictures. In fact, thank you! But the links are still up on my side. How is it possible for me to upload some unprocessed captured footage? (Nevermind, just saw the "How to Upload/View/Download Images & Attachments" thread) Summary Gamma is too high and looks washed out Over-sharpening halos and edge ringing Have Chroma upsampling error CUE / dot crawl Bright luma and bright chroma are clipped Thanks in advance! |
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The underlying issue is that there are three dimensions to the problem; i.e., cost, speed, and quality - called good, fast, cheap. And you cannot have all three at the same time. |
Had a look at S-video 8mm player. Kind of expensive, which is in one of your dimension ;)
Will try to find someone in my family that have this hehe Who knows |
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There several giveaways for older models of the EasyCap. For older "EasyCaps": The fakes have very thin or overly thick fonts in the product name on the barrell. fake has SMI Grabber or EZ Grabber on cyclinder or in software CD. Real has "USB2.0 ATV" or "USB 2.0 Grabber". Fake has 64-bit software on CD, real has 32 + 64-bit. Fake has black inside the USB plug, real has white. Fake has no s-video jack, real has s-video + composite. Old and new fakes have similar differences. All of that notwithstanding, your research should have sooner or later led you to the frequently quoted, world-wide nickname for anything that has EasyCap/EZCap on the label -- "EasyCrap". That should tell you something. Quote:
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msgohan mentioned earlier the conflict with speed, cost, and quality. You can't have everything, even if BestBuy and the rest of the world are based on instant gratification without effort. Analog capture is a real pisser. You're dealing with two different worlds, neither of which are on speaking terms with the other. Digital translators and encoders don't see analog tape the way your TV does; that's not the way digital encoders were designed. There are capture devices out there that are aware of those two different lingos and have some adjustments to help make the outcome livable. An inappropriate player, no line sync or frame sync corrections, inappropriate or poorly designed capture devices -- ill considered compromise at any point in the signal path degrades the entire process. There are $1000-plus capture cards out there, but they can't improve a bad signal from a sub-par tape player. The nearest thing to the legacy AGP AIW devices are somewhat newer model 600 and 650 USB devices from AMD/ATI and Diamond Multimedia. No, no longer sold at Walmart. Now and then you find an AIW AGP 7500 or 9000 pro at auction for what you think is a ripoff at $100 (they cost a lot more than that when they were new 10 or 15 years ago). There are newer post-650 models of the USB gear, apparently designed by people who don't know decent video from bad but who do know that hype brings money. There really are reasons why forums like this recommend certain devices over others. No one here has any income to gain by doing so. They're recommended because they're tried, proven, and work as intended. http://www.digitalfaq.com/guides/video.htm |
Hi!
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I found a cheapo S-video and composite adapter (similar to this http://pisces.bbystatic.com/image2/B...anvasWidth=500) but it is giving me B&W image and some diagonals/diamond pattern visible on the screen (instead of interlaced footage with hor. lines). Tried NTSC_433, didn't change anything, so I kind of gave up with this adapter. Quote:
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Sorry for the terms used, again, I'm a novice :) Quote:
I didn't think it was possible to compress interlaced footage. I thought I had to deinterlace before compressing/encoding. If you tell me that it is possible to lower the filesize by a good amout (It creates 50GB files for less than 2 hours which is too big for my archiving capacity), then I'm in. May you recommend a good software that can deinterlace on the go, despite I know it will not be as nice as on TV display! Quote:
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I have not started any other captures yet, but I will do some tests later (if it'S not getting too late!) Thanks again for your time |
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http://telestreamblog.telestream.net...hen-editing-2/ Quote:
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By the way, "yadif" gets its name from "Yet Another DeInterlace Filter". QTGMC is still king of the hill, so far. Better players are MPC-BE and MPC-HC. They deinterlace well but tend to overshapen a bit. They need more CPU time and graphics power than VLC or Windows Media Player. Then again, if you're not using a calibrated monitor it's pretty much a waste of these players. MPC-BE and MPC-HC have image adjustments that get you closer to sane rendering. VLC's color adjustment is useless. Windows Media Player's image controls were disabled with version 9. Best way to get better rendering without calibration gear is to get a b&w movie and adjust tint/colors in MPC-BE or -HC until the grays are really gray and don't look tinted. You won't get it perfect because the image controls and the monitor's uncalibrated response aren't linear from black to bright -- but middle, neutral grays should be more workable. The only way to really calibrate a monitor or TV is with a colorimeter. I'm assuming you won't go that far, but for your information this is the way a PC monitor is supposed to be calibrated: http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/...e_display2.htm. Lacking that, there's always the fun manual test charts at http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/, which are free. Quote:
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Once you finish your edit or restoration, yeah, you need archive space. Best bet for a cleaner but smaller archive is encoding to very high bitrate MPEG or h264. MPEG handles interlace and telecine better than h264 and the BluRay version of MPEG offers very high bitrates for standard def BluRay or AVCHD. That would get 50GB down to 6 or 7 GB for 2 hours. Such a video would burn to DualLayer DVD. Or fit more than one movie on BluRay disc. You could get even smaller with lower bitrates, but the hard, cruel truth about bitrates is: lower bitrate = lower quality = more garbage. A popular and decent encoder offering several final delivery formats is TMPGenc Video Mastering Works, nicknamed TVMW. You'll always get better encodes with dedicated encoding apps than with all-in-one NLE's, many of which have trimmed-down or just plain bad encoders. Quote:
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Hi again,
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So to sum up: I could capture (with a better device), and still use Lagarith lossless compressor in YUY2 (file A) Edit this file in virtualdub for what I want to, and then use fast recompress option before saving (file A) Still in virtualdub, encode with Mpeg or H264 (with AAC audio) to compress interlaced footage to get a new file (so File A gives file B, which is smaller) Then watch file B with proposed software using software deinterlacing I'm still not sure to completely understand how virtualdub manage video before saving as avi (directstream, fast recompress, slow recompress, full processing) despite some research on the web. Thanks in advance! |
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There's always badly made tape with all kinds of noise and defects, among them bad interlacing. You can also blame inferior capture cards for that when they create captured images. And don't forget, you need a VCR with good tracking and time a time base corrector to reduce a lot of those problems. Quote:
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I guess it's time for a few old samples of problems and possibilities, and why you need to do things a certain way. All of these samples are posted elsewhere in the forum. The first 2 small samples are a piece of MTV video captured from MTV as interlaced. It has bad vertical and horizontal jitter, and some frames are reversed as well as in the wrong sequence. It also has typical VHS chroma noise, bad color, and looks generally awful. Likely the frame sequence problem occurred by previously deinterlacing a telecined video, which is a big no-no. First two samples are a piece of MTV video captured as interlaced. It has bad vertical and horizontal jitter, and some frames are reversed as well as in the wrong sequence. It also has typical VHS chroma noise, bad color, and looks generally awful. This is the original m2v posted in the forum (m2v = mpeg without audio): jitter_2.m2v jitter2.mpg is the repaired version with frames in proper sequence, frame hopping smoothed, head switching noise and bad borders fixed in a manner that didn't change the original image aspect ratio. Done in Avisynth. Color tweaked in VirtualDub: jitter2.mpg Below, "A" and "B" are examples of trying to clean up bad chroma flicker. The "A" version is the original telecined YUY2 AVI capture, encoded for posting directly to MPEG with no added processing. This retail tape is one of the world's worst film-to-VHS transfers. It's noisy, has all kinds of defects (spots, noisy edges, bad color, excessive grain). The tape is beat up and played to death. The chroma flicker can be seen in bright areas, which alternately turn reddish, bluish, then greenish. Although a tbc cleared Macrovision for capture, Macrovision typically can have many residual side effects (such as the flicker shown here). On the original tape, the flicker gradually dissipates about 30 minutes into the tape. "A" is the original, "B" is the clean-up. Original: A_flicker_samples_original.mpg cleanup: B_flicker_samples_after.mpg "C" and "D" are examples of other damage control from the same tape. There are 4 short scenes. Besides horrible color differences from scene to scene, there are spots, huge color blotch "explosions", projector punch holes, chroma bleed, dark halos, white stringy stuff and whitish flareups, the usual tape noise, etc. Avisynth and TIVTC was used for starters, then VirtualDub for more cleanup and color. "C" is the original. "D" is the clean-up. C_defect_samples_original.mpg D_defect_samples_after.mpg All samples were MPEG encoded separately from other processing. Not all of the "repaired" samples are fully finished as posted. An AVi sample that you might post would likely use a workflow similar to the above, but we have no sample yet to get into detail. |
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I was talking about virtualdub on my pc. I know that editors are meant for editing and not playback, but I just don't see how I can decide to correct this and that on a video when during editing, I see it as interlace (i.e. image not that smooth) Thanks for the explanations the way virtualdub process the files. Quote:
Good examples you gave for processed videos. As you request, I'll cut a short clip of unprocessed captures and upload it here. I think I will go with 2 samples. The hockey game and the Jeep trail (as in my initial screeshots) Please allow me sometime to do so, I'll try to do as fast as possible. Thanks for your incredible support, really appreciated! Btw, should I submit lagarith capture or totally uncompressed video and audio as the option in virtualdub? Thanks in advance! |
Never attach uncompressed files.
In many cases, even lossless AVI is unnecessary, and a high bitrate MPEG can just as easily show problems. |
Alright, will work on this!
High bitrate is 3000kbps and above? Remember seeing 8000 max for h264 (I think, not sure) Thanks! |
Reading this over now...
@sanlyn: I don't trust Avisynth devs to not change things, and without telling users. While the default for QTGMC may be "slow", I'd like to ensure this fact. (This also hopes that they don't monkey around with what "slow" means.) I've run into far too many issues over the years where something has been changed. @mo414: Interlace can hide issues, when viewed progressive. When you deinterlace it, those issues can become obvious. It's one more reason that interlaced video should be left alone, if TV viewing is the target. @sanyln: I often say "raw". I think the .raw format needs to find another name. :) @mo414: QTGMC can cause halos, but not ghosting. The default setting sharpens, thus adding the ringing/halos. This can be turned off or reduced with advanced uses of the script. From what I see, you're getting good advice from others. Nothing else for me to really add. Doom9 is fine, I'm a member there too. But it's mostly for the filter developers or film restorers. You get better usage advice elsewhere. As sanlyn suggests, non-shooting video is a fairly small community, and members tend to be on several sites. However, many sites also have specialties. And since you need help with tape-sourced video, so digitalFAQ.com is the right place. @mo414: High bitrate MPEG-2 starts at 15mbps. Be aware that H.264 is always filtered, and can hide issues. It's the main reason that "Youtube samples" are 100% useless. |
I shall try new capture and processing with less or no sharpening at all, before uploading samples. This might help in issue resolving
Thanks for your advice, I'll keep you posted asap :) |
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