VHS-C to PC file type for editing in Premiere?
Hi All,
I have some experience in premiere pro in editing and exporting progressive 720p or 1080p. Normally I would export into H264 and create mkv while adding chapters.But need help with the following... I need to capture some PAL vhs-c home videos in virtualdub using a USB capture device. Then I want to do some editing in premiere pro. I only plan to watch final video on pc monitor, hdtv plugged as a monitor or on hdtv built in media player from USB. Does that mean I should deinterlace in this case for better visuals although there is some information lost during the process? I do not see the need to create a DVD unless thats the only way. What could be my final video file options? Mpeg or interlaced (?) h264 made into mkv container or a deinterlaced file of some type. Thanks in advance. |
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So I assume you don't want standard DVD/BD/AVCHD but simply "generic" 4:3 or 16:9 with h.264 encoding. There were cameras that created anamorphic analog tape at 16:9 DAR, but most record for 4:3 aspect ratio. VHS and VHS-C are interlaced. They are captured as interlaced, usually at 720x576/PAL or, since standard-spec formats aren't what you want, capture at 640x480 (which is a 4:3 aspect ratio frame). Analog source is best captured at a frame size in the neighborhood of its "normal" playback frame size of 640x480. There are at least two ways to create a permanently inferior and probably damaged-looking video capture: (a) deinterlace while capturing, and (b) upscale to large frame sizes that make standard def's low source resolution look blurred, noisy, and washed-out. "High Definition" means "high resolution", not low resolution in a big frame. MKV is a universal container recognized by many players, but not by all. MP4 is more universal nowadays. I do have a negative "thing" about using PC monitors and PC graphics cards for video that was designed for TV or projection screens. But most viewers aren't that picky. Keep in mind that the playback capabilities of a good graphics card lack much of the power and output corrections of the display circuitry in a good TV. The biggest problem with PC-to-TV viewing is that the PC's grayscale, saturation d-levels, luma curves and other factors are seldom calibrated properly for TV display. If you are not familiar with the concept of PC monitor or TV calibration, the differences probably won't bother you. But be careful about ever video on a properly calibrated TV -- once you see the difference, you won't be able to accept anything else. Unfortunately calibration is not a BestBuy specialty, despite BB's marketing and low prices. The last BB calibration I saw in a BB store had people with green skin and bluish hair. Ick!! [quote=Bruce75;42607]I need to capture some PAL vhs-c home videos in virtualdub using a USB capture device.]Using what operating system? XP is still the champ for flexibility and the widest choice of capture devices. Vista/Win7 are more limited. Win8 and Win10 are a dead end. VHS/VHS-C video is stored on tape using a YPbPr color system. It's closest equivalent for proper PC capture is lossless interlaced YUY2. Save space with real-time lossless compressors like huffyuv or Lagarith. There are 3 main reasons for lossless capture and lossless compression: (1) Lossless is lossless, with no added artifacts or additional compression noise from lossy compressors like DV, MPEG, or h.264. (2) Lossless is the preferred media type for restoration, cleanup, special effects, timeline edits, and color work, (3) After post-processing, lossless media can be encoded to any of umpteen different final delivery formats, then archived as-is or reduced in size with very high-bitrate h.264 encodes. Quote:
If "edit" also means denoising, defect repair, resizing, deinterlacing, or other restoration work, PP is not a great choice. In particular, it's deinterlacing/re-interlacing and rescaling are visibly inferior to many other (and many cheaper) tools. I'd suggest Avisynth and VirtualDub for denoise/repair. Quote:
For hobbyists and many pros, the best deinterlacer out there is QTGMC. But deinterlacing always has a cost. If you deinterlace with lesser methods or tools (such as PP), the cost goes up, quality goes down. Quote:
Many people don;t make DVDs. They;ve been sold on two catchy myths: (1) h.264 is "better" than MPEG, (2) retail BluRays are always h.264, (3) h.264 is the commercial broadcast standard. All 3 myths are false. DVD/MPEG is the most universally playable media, whether from a PC, hard drives or optical discs. All h.264 encodes require media players, external playback hardware or set top boxes, and/or smartTV, many of which can recognize mkv (some can't), many of which can't play .TS, m2T, MP4, MPEG4/AVC, or other containers with excessively high or low bitrates or weird GOP sizes, etc. Sticking close to recognized specs for DVD/BluRay/AVCHD encoding standards is the best way to ensure compatibility with h.264 encodes into popular video containers. For what they're worth, below are h.264/MPEG/AVC BluRay and AVCHD spec frames sizes and other parameters that you might adapt to your non-spec square pixel frame sizes, while sticking with frame structures and encoding parameters to ensure playback on various HDD or USB player, most of which are programmed to accept video somewhere in these "spec" ranges. A PC player can play just about anything, but remember that external devices and SmartTVs aren't equipped with as much video software as a good PC media player. For HD and Standard Definition: BD/AVCHD spec: http://www.videohelp.com/hd#tech h.264/MPEG BD/AVCHD encoding specs: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=154533 Of course if you want to send an h.264 encoded family video event on a USB stick to a maiden aunt or cousin who doesn't have a BluRay device, they'll have problems with it. Or you could drive around in your car with your PC and hook it up to their TVs on holidays. Of course, that would be ridiculous. If you have your original archive around, encode to whatever you want. |
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True, I should have been more clear about 1440x1080. If you want a 4:3 video at what people like to call "1080p" or "1080i", but as square-pixel 4:3 video rather than anamorphic 16:9, then 1440x1080 is what one would use for 4:3 square-pixel video.
For a 4:3 "720" frame in square-pixel format, it would be 960x720. For 4:3 standard definition square-pixel PAL, it's 768x576. And there's always square-pixel 640x480. |
Still not sure whether we're on the same page.
BD doesn't support 4:3 square-pixel. If you encode 1440x1080 square-pixel, that's fine for file playback on devices that can handle it, but a Blu-ray player will stretch it out to 16:9 because BD 1440x1080 is not square pixel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray#Video |
Depends on how 1440x1080 is encoded. I hope you're not saying that you can't tell an encoder to flag the video as square pixel playback, whether 4:3, 16:9, 1.87:1, 2.35:1, or whatever. The owner says they don't want "regulation" DVD/BD/AVCHD. And of course, they won't get a valid DVD/or BD disc by flagging the video that way.
The owner has 4:3 video from analog tape. He can: 1) capture at 720x576 for anamorphic 4:3 DVD. If he caps to lossless, he can encode with h264 for standard definition anamorphic 4:3 BluRay or AVCHD. Or he can encode lossless to anamorphic h264 in an mkv or mp4 container. 2) Capture as 640x480 lossless (or any other size, whatever he wants), and encode as h264 mkv or mp4 square-pixel for playback from a PC or USB stick or external hard drive with a player that will accept an external storage device in its USB input. He cannot make "regulation" DVD, BluRay, or AVCHD using this method. 3) Capture to lossless media at whatever size he wants, deinterlace and resize it to any of the standard DVD/BD/AVCHD formats (all of which have to be re-interlaced except for 1280x720p), and encode as "official" DVD or BD/AVCHD with authored menus and whatnot, burn to disc or play from a PC. For all of the 16:9 sizes from 1280x720 to 1920x1080 he will have to add black side borders to have the video image display properly as 4:3. However, the owner has already stated he doesn't care about "regulation" formats for burned and authored discs. 4) Or he can capture as in (3) above and resize to anything he wants, then encode it as "generic" h264 mkv/mp4, deinterlaced or progressive or whatever he likes, and hope that anything other than a PC will play it. He can crop the original, stretch it, shrink it, make it 1.66:1 VistaVision, or whatever. Other choices are possible. I don't think we need to list them all, but if the owner has anything specific in mind he can ask. |
Shame to OP never replied back.
For first inclination is to capture as Huffyuv lossless, the deinterlace QTGMC Huffyuv lossless, edit in Premiere. Reason for deinterlace = likely merging with HD workflow, or at very least viewing in same manner. Make 15mbps MPEG-2 interlaced copy for archives from captured Huffyuv file. |
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Thanks for all the input. I took a lot of time to figure out why the audio was cutting out randomly while using the camera as the player. Then got another vcr and at the end I have captured all of them using Huffyuv.
Now I need a relatively quick filter solution and process the files in virtualdub and then starting timeline and maybe color editing in PremierePro to continue and finish this project. Could you name me some very popular filters in virtualdub to get a OK quality? Still haven't decided what to with interlacing but inclining to leave it as it is. |
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Magenta chroma noise is visible in the landscape and waterscape image. Highlights are blown out in all the images. The cityscape shot's black levels are too high, bright detail in the upper portion is clipped (destroyed and unrecoverable). You might be able to recover some bright detail that was clipped in the other two shots, but it has to be done in the original YUV colorspace before doing anything else. Those problems and fixing uneven borders and bottom-border head switching noise can be handled in Avisynth without affecting the core image. The waterscape image is OK but the sky is clipped. All three captures could be improved, but a lot of tedious trial and error color work could be avoided by controlling black and white levels during capture -- doing so afterwards is a real chore, often impossible. Some of this bright clippping might have been done in-camera. Color work for problems shown here requires learning to use histograms and more sophisticated filters than the usual contrast, brightness, and Red-Green-Blue controls, espedcially with VHS where color problems tend to be inconsistent (blue whites and green blacks in the same image are not uncommon), so filters like gradation curves, levels, and individual color saturation controls give better results -- these are all in Premiere Pro and to some extent in VirtualDub. sh00002: looks as if the camera over exposed this? You can't get a snappy dynamic tonal range when brights are badly clipped, so most of the work I did was to use a luma offset in YUV to lower black levels and work with the color range mostly in the darks and midtones in RGB. I used VirtualDub's ColorMill to boost saturation a small amount, Avisynth's LSFMod to sharpen a little. http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...1&d=1469467308 sh00003: a contrast range difficult for digital video to handle, and sky detail is mostly blown away. I used the HDRagc filter to define darks (an Avisynth filter), tamed the brights in the range RGB 180-220 with gradation curves, and used the same filter to pull up the RGB 40-80 range a bit. You can see that some crushed darks have discolored and blurred detail some of the trees. http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...1&d=1469467383 Sh00002: Not much needed with that shot and color looks OK, so I didn't do anything. You could brighten the midtones a bit and leave darks as-is, but the sky is too bright. If youbreduce the luma level of the bright sky you'll definitely see residual chroma rainbows and smudges. Color balance and other factors are personal matters. Give a video for color work to three people, you'll get three different results -- and I'm still looking at some areas in the images posted above that need more tweaks: the shot with the trees looks like an early or late angular sun shot and could probably be warmer. Blurring of the time/date is likely an effect of not working with the original interlaced frames. And so on. Most scenes in home videos will need separate color work, as the variations can be enormous. |
Thanks a lot. You gave me some ideas to try on the colors.
On the issue of deinterlacing, whats the best filter to use in virtualdub as I do not feel comfortable using Avisynth. Just want to make some trials to see how much detail I will loose. As the final output wont be leaving PC, I still feel like it could be a better choice and deinterlaced footage increases my final output file options. |
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