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10-15-2004, 09:42 AM
blazey blazey is offline
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Hi LS,

We have spoken a bit over at Video Help. Just wondering if you have any thoughts here. ATI AIW 9000 MMC 8.0 When using Huffy codec DL'd from here the video & audio is in synch when played with ATI file player but out of synch in Vegas (on the timeline) and when encoded in TMPGEnc. Caps direct to Vegas (no codec) or Mpeg caps are fine. Caps with VDUB Synch are good as well.

All caps are from Laserdisc.

Dell P4 3.0
80 Gig HD for caps only (OS on second drive)
Win XP SP1
Soundblaster Audigy card
512 DDR2
FSB ?
Motherboard?


Any thoughts?
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  #2  
10-15-2004, 11:42 AM
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I would look at using either another HUFFYUV, or just go with an MJPEG codec instead. Or if you have the room, just go with completely uncompressed.

I've used this MJPEG before just fine:
http://www.softpile.com/Multimedia/V...oad_10792_1.ht ml

Remember that while quite decent HUFFYUV is not perfect, and little more than beta-class freeware. As to what little thing on your PC may have set it off, no idea.

Let's first see if another equally-good alternative can work just as well. If not, then there's a larger problem to track down.

I'll also add that I cannot stand ATI MMC 8.0 at all. Terrible, terrible MMC version. The 8.7 is most stable, and quite a few (me too!) have good experiences on 9.0.

It may simply be VEGAS being stubborn. We'll work around that.

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  #3  
10-15-2004, 01:20 PM
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I would prefer completely uncompressed, but I don't have the space. Another Huffy? I didn't realize there was more than one! I have never liked the quality of Mjpeg, but I was probably my settings.

I will look into the 8.7 mmc.

Now with V Dub and Huffy I am dropping about 11 frames per hour. My system is more than adaquate and I have followed your dropped frames guide too.

I am getting very discouraged.
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  #4  
10-16-2004, 01:38 AM
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Can I get 8.7 at ATI's site? I can't seem to find it.
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  #5  
10-16-2004, 01:47 AM
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http://www2.ati.com/drivers/mmc-8-7-0-0.exe

HuffYUV has a few versions. The one on my site is specific for addressing interlace like it does.

Dropping 11 frames per hour isn't bad necessarily. It may be the source causing something as small as that. What is the source? VHS tapes?

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  #6  
10-16-2004, 02:19 AM
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Source is laserdisc. Composite connection. Room is ICY COLD from the A/C. I mean uncomfortably cold. LOL! (I am anal about this stuff). I actually got a 1 drop 2 hour capture last night by stopping and staring the capture a few times until it started with 0 drops. It seems that if doesn't drop in the beginning of the capture, it won't for the duration.

I have SO many questions, I will ask them all, but if I need to upgrade to L2, LMK and I happily will.

Here's one that is weird. I encode interlaced AVI. If I output with TMP lower field first, looks great. In Vegas, I need to output Progressive to get the same results on the TV. Weird, huh? If I output interlaced (upper or lower) from Vegas, I get a sort of stop motion effect. Progressive looks perfect. Truly perferct. Like the laserdisc, but a bit sharper from the filters. I author with DVD Architect 2.0, perhaps it handles the Vegas output files differently than the TMP?

I may skip the MMC and use V Dub Synch since it is working unless there are specific advantages to using the ATI software for AVI caps.

That Morgan Mjpeg codec you recommended is not the one I've used, so I may give it a try as well. I've used the Pic Video codec.

Thanks for all your help. It is most appreciated. My wife and I have a baby on the way and I want to get my video skills in order to make good quality dvd's of first steps, first words and what not for the family.
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  #7  
10-16-2004, 10:13 AM
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For AVI caps, there is really no big advantage to MMC. Convenience mainly.

You hit the nail on the head. Different software handles files oddly sometimes. Ulead NLE's are especially bad at this. You've just got to experiment a bit when you get new software. I don't really know why Vegas would act like that. I'll ask around and see if I can think of anything.

With MJPEG, most have a scale of up to 20 "quality" or so. Just go for 19 (one less than max), not 10-16 default. Only lower to see if frames drops go away.

You may want to get the trial of iuVCR and capture with it. Don't use it for capturing (some sync issues), but just use the trial, and watch your CPU activity. Very helpful! The AVI FOR OTHER CARDS guide uses this software. I just want to use it for testing, maybe we can see how the spikes look (if any!) and what may be attacking the captures.

FYI... you will almost ALWAYS drop a couple of frames within the first 30 seconds of capturing. Don't let this get you down. Beyond that is a problem. This is why you capture extra before the important part. The edit out the extra later.


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  #8  
10-16-2004, 10:53 AM
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Is it my imagination or does B&W capture better than color films? (i.e. zero dropped frames regardless of filter applied while capturing)

Is 35%-55% normal CPU usage in VDUB during capture or do I have hidden TRS's running?

Vegas is a very odd program (but good!) CBR Mpeg2 @ 8kbps is awful. Unusable crap. 2 Pass VBR at 8 down to 6 is phenominal. Can't figure this out and Sony's tech support S-U-C-K-S!!! Sonic Foundry was VERY good in the early days of Sound Forge and such, but now?

Thanks for all your help and this great site. I am really enjoying this hobby.

BTW - So many threads on DVDR Help about standalone DVD recorders being better - In my setup, a good AVI cap BLOWS away my JVC recorder for quality! Every time.
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  #9  
10-17-2004, 02:30 AM
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Color takes more bandwidth, no imagination. In fact, do yourself a favor, and get some sort of filter that 100% strips out color. I can do this on my proc amp, and even on my $40 Sima SED-CM. Removes nasty red/green tints from the B&W image. Pure B&W this way.

That's a bit high. 30% is normal. On your PC, I'd expect it to actually be a bit lower in the 20s even! Something, somewhere, isn't right.

Have you run MSCONFIG (start->run->msconfig) and then see what you have in the STARTUPS tab? This will tell you what autostarts. Find out what each one is, then only keep those starting. Have you run SPYBOT SEARCH & DESTROY? You could have spyware, junkware runnning.

About JVC DVD recorders, in the limited spectrum you're at right now, I surely agree. A Laserdisc source, with uncompressed AVI capturing, no contest. Just be sure to use a good encoder to keep that quality edge, and use VBR 2-pass. If you want a better MPEG encoder, you may want to look at PROCODER, preferably an older version (shop ebay!), but the new 2.0 or EXPRESS may work too. The encoder you have now is the MAINCONCEPT engine, known for having various quality errors.

The JVC is a direct-to-MPEG capture method, so those LSI hardware encoders are top of the line at the moment. It'll blow away the ATI AIW MPEG2 captures, by a small degree, especially on unclean sources (VHS, cable, etc). The LSI has an embedded chroma correction, so it's quite valuable for VHS. The JVC also includes its digipure on their units with this chip, quite nice. For your current setup, it probably won't be all that useful.




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  #10  
10-17-2004, 02:46 AM
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I agree about the Mainconcept quality errors, - only on fast motion - but the quality is very good overall. Just tell me it's better than TMPGEnc and I'll be a happy camper. Otherwise all my hard work is for sh*t and I will have to start over which is something I've done 4 times on 2 Laserdiscs in the last week trying to get a nice final product. Isn't Procoder 2.0 $500 now? I just spent a fortune on Vegas/DVD Architect. I'm not sure I feel comfortable buying something to make this package work better! Can't afford it either! LOL!

Will Vegas let me encode with Procoder?

I agree something must be wrong. I capped The Invisible Ray (1936 - B&W) last night a 1hr. 16min laser. Added the 100% B&W filter, Median light noise reduction filter, and Black restore. I am trying some new settings on the encode and I went with an 8mbps CBR. The encode time is 23 hours!?! I'm letting it run because I have another PC to work withm but isn't this excessive? The P4 is a Hyper Threading machine too! TMPGEnc times are usually about equal.

I've run Ad Aware's new version and the system comes up clean. I haven't done the MS CONFIG thing. I will try. The system should be very clean overall, as I formatted the HD and reinstalled Windows 6 months ago and I don't connect that machine to the net. It's really just my Photoshop/Video machine.

Awww crap. Now I'm all bummed out about MainConcept.

Thanks. LOL!
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  #11  
10-17-2004, 03:02 AM
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It is better than TMPGENC. The ONLY... ONLY... advantage to TMPGENC is that is can accept almost any kind of source and has filters. Good filters, better than ones you can find in most NLE's even. Encoder-wise, it's quite mediocre.

For Canopus Procoder, apparently not. It only supports EDIUS (Canopus NLE) and Adobe Premiere (what I use). You may be stuck on the Vegas version of Mainconcept.

Be careful on black restore. Remember PC monitor colorspace is 0-255 while a tv set is 16-235. This means all values from 0-15 and 236-255 will be the same on the tv. Never balance image quality on a PC, do it on a NTSC tv monitor. You could make the image too dark. I learned all of this the hard way. Most of video, I learned the hard way, not much documentation existed 3-4 years ago like it does now.

When you add filters, you add time. Period. NLE filters are the worst. You frameserve the timeline from an NLE to MPEG encoders, takes even longer this way. To gauge how well the encode is, try a test clip with no filters. See how it compares to realtime. Do a 10 minute clip with no filters. Is is 1x realtime (10 min) or 2x realtime (20 min) or ½ realtime (5 min) to encode? Or something else?

Adaware misses things. This is why I quit using it. Spybot Search/Destroy (www.safer-networking.org) is much better.

Some of MC is settings. Settings, settings, settings. That's all I hear from supporters. Now, I'm fine with tweaking things, as you've seen in my site. But I could not ever find "settings" in MC to make me happy, so I quit trying. Whatever it is, it's obviously not easy or simple. To make matter worse, they seem to give more attention to PAL than to NTSC with MC software.


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  #12  
10-17-2004, 03:20 AM
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Spybot DL'd and running...

I hate like hell to connect my Video PC to the net for updates on this. Think it's necessary?

You know, it's funny. I'm not bashing anyone, but quality is so subjective. Many regulars (who seem to be respected as knowledgable) on DVDHelp post screenshots of their work, and honestly, I don't think I could even watch what they are so proud of!! I am very critical of things like color (I am a printer, so it's in my nature) and quality so maybe I've gone too far in my expectations. Unfortunately, the only person I can ask their opinion on what I've done is my wife and she likes anything I wish I could show you a DVD to get your opinion, since most everything I do is based on your guides. I'd post a screenshot, but it's kinda pointless without motion to gauge quality IMHO.

I am looking into a 1394 to Composite adapter to utilize Vegas' "preview on an extrernal monitor" setting. I too have screwed myself "restoring" on the PC only to have absolute CRAP on the TV!
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10-17-2004, 03:53 AM
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I have high expectations myself, but the cruel reality is our own equipment and even our own knowledge can often leave us walking away from a project thinking "that's mine, but it sucks", yet it's still good enough and probably better than what 99% of the rest of the crowd could do anyway.

Even now, I have to live with a bad cable signal. Herringbone on a few favorite channels, nothing I can do but minimize the damage and move on. You almost have to sit in a person's home, on their equipment, with their source, to realize if they're doing well or not. Even sample discs are no real determination.

We're so limited on the technology (what we wish existed vs. what does exist), and then in a straight-jacket from the source.

I think one session online won't kill you. It's best to know than not to know. Some software installs it's own crapware (Adobe is bad, as is Microsoft), so it's best to at least see what can be cleaned off. I think the risk of going on once is quite minimal. Just don't surf the web or anything like that. Get on, do the deed, get off, no more.

On your ATI AIW card, you can adjust the OVERLAY mode, so video that shows in the overlay has it's own settings. I made a custom "NTSC" setting for myself, plopped a tv on the desk beside the monitor one day to do it. It's under windows control panels, display, advanced, ... way back in there. You need to have PowerDVD running a video, the overlay adjustment controls only work while a video is in overlay mode.

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10-17-2004, 05:02 AM
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Spybot found a bunch of crap. You were right. Adobe installs malware? I had no idea. That sucks.

You mentined Premier. I have tried it, but it didn't seem as intuitive as Vegas, so I passed it by. I didn't like Encore either. I've been with Sound Forge forever, so I suppose I am biased by the similiar interfaces. I am an amateur musician and Sound Forge is my life! Couldn't live without the Noise Reduction and Wave Hammer plug in's. The Noise Reduction is absolutely magical on Video tracks and in vegas you can apply it on the timeline (non destructively) without going into Sound Forge. For anaglog hiss it can't be beat.

I will check out that overlay mode. I didn't know about it. I can easily plug the output into the TV like a dual display but using the settings in window XP alone, it dosen't help much. You need to drag the preview window onto the TV which is pretty lame if you are looking for what is missed in the overscan area.

Mainconcept is all about settings. I always find TMPGenc makes a decent enough picture, but the fimal output has no "snap" for lack of a better term. Like the crappy color film used on 70's sitcoms. You know? I too don't know what they are all about and I think the encoder in Vegas is limited. The manual is useless for the encoding as is a book I bought about Vegas. They recommend their settings which are REAL sucky. I agree that the filters in TMPGEnc are better (actually, just the noise reduction I find useful) but if you learn a bit about Vegas's f/x you can replicate what's in TMPGEnc. I will let you know how the Median Round Noise filter works. I have a feeling it will be as good as the TMP. Another great plug in (esp. if you only work on the PC monitor) is the Remove Minor Color Noise filter. It keeps colors in the "broadcast legal" range to eliminate false artificating when played on a television. The Broadcast Colors plug in is too harsh IMO. and softens the picture.
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10-17-2004, 05:33 AM
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Premiere and Vegas do the same thing pretty much. Premiere is just a bit harder. Vegas has some minor effects that Premiere does not have natively, but once you add in Adobe After Effects, Vegas can pale in comparison.

I've used SoundForge since v4 came out. I still use v6. I've always been a fan of using the paragraphic EQ for carving away bad frequencies and adjusting what was left to recreate the sound quality. You can get about 50 of my filters on this site (Soundforge pages).

I've never been able to get YUV color filters to work well in an NLE of any kind. Not like TMPGENC. And then the noise reduction is great, especially having a temporal axis. The edge correction is also nice, in a negative usage (softening).

I hate pretty much every "broadcast safe" filter I've ever seen.

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10-18-2004, 05:29 AM
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Well, you called it on the Black Restore. It created some artifacting I can't live with. The Median filter did an excellent job of replicating TMPGEnc's noise filter. Settings of 10,10,500 and circular if you are interested.

I do still have issues with motion in my encodes. I may need to check my source. I keep re-encoding and trying again, but I never bothered to watch the damn laserdisc on the TV. Just the small preview in VDub. I may actually have nailed it, but I doubt it. I think I found the limitation of the Main Concept plug in.

Unfortunately, you can't even upgrade it like you can in Premier. There is a Pro version (WAY cheaper than Procoder) that may be better, but it's useless in Vegas.

I may need to move on to Premier and use Procoder. Sigh.

Thanks for all your advice so far.
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10-18-2004, 05:48 AM
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When it comes to MainConcept and Vegas, I see you're talking with BJ_M. He's the man to go to on this one. If his advice doesn't get you where you need to be, as you concluded, it's probably just software limitations. He has done some decent software encoder comparisons in the past, and we've discussed a bit in private (PM), and the MC encoder can vary in how it acts.

Personally, I think Premiere is a heftier package, especially once you add in your choice encoder (CCE, MC, PC, LSX, whatever) and choice effects add-ins (After Effects, whatever). The only draw to Vegas, that I can see, is that it comes with a few extra goodies and is supposedly easier. Though simplicity is nice, I value quality and control more.

On the flipside, I hate to spend more money changing to a rival. I like to buy into one company and stay as long as possible, especially if the products do what I want.


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10-18-2004, 06:23 AM
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BJ_M pretty much gave me no other options, so it is a software thing. Granted, Premier is much more extensive, but let's be realistic about what I am doing! Like in your guides, this isn't quite "editing", is it. I am joining 2 sides of my Laserdiscs with a mild fade out/in rather than an abrupt stop/start from say, Mpeg2VCR, I may drop on a noise reduction filter and pull back some red because my system seems to capture over saturated reds (I could also hook up my Sima SCC, but I was unsure if it was good to add to the signal chain - in the audio world, it's a no-no to put more between the source and the recorder unless necessary - plus the fact that the SCC is not a pro level machine either so I am dubious about it's signal output and quality).

But for editing, that's it! These are Laserdiscs, so there is no restoration really necessary. Maybe I should learn to V Dub further and encode with Procoder. You can edeit the AVI's with V Dub, can't you?

Or maybe I should be happy with what I CAN do right now. (not gonna happen, LOL!)
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10-18-2004, 06:36 AM
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MPEG2VCR does fades. For that matter, PROCODER can do fades in the encoder (v1 only does FADE IN, a bit stupid to not have OUT, I cannot remember if the newer ones have OUT too). Then you can use Womble or even TMPGENC (MPEG TOOLS) to merge the files. This would be the best.

You can hook up several devices for video. Only do it if it helps, remove anything that hurts. You would be helping by screening out the color on B&W footage.



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