Is this VCR menu screen typical or too noisy?
 

I have amended this thread to include additional information.

The first images show separate menu captures from a Mitsubishi HS-HD2000U and a Panasonic DMR-ES15 through a HVR-2250 capture card at 352x288 via S-Video. The images look bad. It may not show but there is considerable blockiness and image smearing. Are the images appropriate? Images come out the same with RF suppression on the cable.

Attachment 8789

Attachment 8790

I did the same test with a VC500 capture card. It only captures at720x480. The images look considerably better.

Attachment 8791

Attachment 8792

Since the VC500 came out better with a 720x480 format, I reconnected the VCR to the HVR2250 card and set the capture format as 720x480. The image is better but softer than the image from the VC500.

Attachment 8793

Are these results appropriate for the cards and settings I've tried? If not, anything I should do to minimize the noise? I'm trying to ensure that I won't be introducing any extra noise when I start capturing VHS video.

Thanks,
Steve

That may be simply the default menu view and does not relate to capture results if capturing video. Experts will soon chime in, I shall duck under my desk.

352x288 is PAL CIF
720x480 is NTSC Full D1
If you're PAL, feeding it PAL source, you need to do 720x576.

352x288 is not going to look good on capture, drop-frame deinterlacing happens. Not worth talking about. Don't do that.

The HVR2250 vs VC500 may be the sharpness settings on the card. Tweak those in VirtualDub settings in Video menu in capture mode.

The HVR2250 is not recommended, from what I remember offhand. It's an HD PVR card, right?

So much to learn.

Thanks for the information. I thought 352x288 was PAL, but it's odd that the card assumes this from the start.

Part of my current confusion comes from reading old discussions on what the proper format should be. The biggest issue from those discussions seems to be the proper number of lines. Some people swore by 240, 288, or 480. Proper horizontal pixels had similar discussions. To me, the number of pixels per line should be somewhat arbitrary since it relates to how many data points you want on an analog signal. I guess this becomes an issue when considering square or rectangular pixels.

As far as the one image being softer than the other, you are right that it's probably the sharpness setting. I forgot that I had reduced the sharpness level for the 2250 card to 0.

Thanks,
Steve

Your confusion may come from "lines of resolution" analog and #x# (ie 720x480) digital.

This is analog lines:
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
VHS has about 240, S-VHS (and s-video carrier) has about 480
The ------ is fixed at x486 in digital terms.

This is digital: x# = ||||||||||||||| (ie 720x)
#x = (ie x480)
------------------
------------------
------------------

The "240" number was often used in the VCD era, but flipped. So there was this clueless notion that 352x240 = "VHS resolution", which wasn't at all the case. More like 250x480 was correct, and interlaced.

The threshold for interlace allowed for x288 interlacing, but it was weird and wrong. Just trivia more than anything. It did create some fun xVCD encoding scenarios, but nothing valid or compliant to anything.

Rectangle/square doesn't exist in analog.

What matters is that the digital capture palette allows for acquiring the analog data. So 352x480 technically suffices, and was great in the DVD MPEG-capture era. For lossless, just do 720x480, especially since most capture cards and capture software are attuned to it. They can get confused by anything not Full D1 (720x480 pr 720x576).

Does this all make sense? :)

Next topic...

The sharpness of the 2250 was probably more accurate than the VC500. The VC500 sample has very distinct haloing around the letters, black edging. Both of them do, but the VC500 image is just juiced a bit. I'm not a fan of falsely sharp images, because it creates noise. Noise isn't detail.

I knew that the square/rectangle distinction is digital because it relates to pixels. Analog nomenclature has nothing to do with pixels. Many years ago, I used to be an electrical engineer designing digital telecom equipment. I never had the chance before to deal with video so this is an interesting challenge.

You're right about the vc500 sharpness. I had left the default sharpness at 50 which is the mid-point for this device. At the time of the capture, I forgot to zero out the sharpness, which I had done with the 2250.

Thanks for the feedback!
Steve