Problem editing restored video?
 

I recently sent you a VHS video that needed some cleaning up. I received the video yesterday (AVI format) and played it in Windows Media Player. It looked much better. The problem started when I tried to load it in my video editing software, Pinnacle Studio 17. The video would not play, but the sound would. As it was AVI and 22GB I wanted to convert it to MPEG 2 so I could fit it on one disc. I opened it in a video converter software I have used many times, CuCuSoft Video Converter. Would not open, but the program sent me to a web page with various Codec's. I down loaded the K-Lite Codec program with many different Codecs. I still could not get it to open. Any suggestions?

The file uses the lossless Huffyuv codec.

You may simply need to install that codec, and you should be good to go. :congrats:

The downloads are at the bottom of this first post: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...lters-pre.html
It's NOT the multi-threaded version used here.
If using x86 Windows, install the normal version. If using x64 Windows, install the 64-bit version.

K-lite is a codec pack, and codec packs are NOT suggested. They usually make a huge mess on a system.

CuCuSoft is really not an ideal tool to process video high-quality source video (ie, lossless AVI)
Pinnacle Studio is not the best of editors, but it can work if needed.

Avidemux is a good way to convert Huffyuv AVI to MPEG-2 for DVD. We have a guide on it:

- How to Encode MPEG-2 with Avidemux (Freeware) – Part 1
- How to Encode MPEG-2 with Avidemux (Freeware) – Part 2

If you have any problem, just ask. We'll help you. :)

Codec's
 

I converted the VHS file that you cleaned up for me to MPEG4 (Quicktime) and Pinnacle accepted it. After reading your post I deleted the K-Lite Codec pack. I will try the Huffyuv later.
If I am able to use the AVI file in Pinnacle, wouldn't I need a Blu-ray disc to accomodate the 22GB? Would I get significantly better resolution? Or would it just be lipstick on a pig?
Can you recommend a better video converter than CuCuSoft?
Agree, Pinnacle is not the best, but for old low resolution files that I do it's OK. A problem that I have is that most people have converted their old Super 8 movies to VHS back in the '80's or '90's. If they have the old original Super 8 films I can convert them to digital and have a much better product. Unfortunately most no longer have the original films.

A Blu-ray spec version of a VHS tape is MPEG-2 @ 15mbps -- not Huffyuv AVI (which is for editing). The reason for BD-R is not resolution, but the bitrate. At 15mbps, it's mostly transparent to the tape. No artifacts, or low artifacts. DVD had a max of 10mbps, but realistically was usually closer to 5mbps. So it's much better.

Avidemux is better than CuCuSoft, and it's freeware.

Yep, I know all about film. Indeed, it is sad, as the source film was much better than the VHS copy.

Just be sure to NOT deinterlace when editing. You want an interlaced 720x480 MPEG for the DVD or Blu-ray. Otherwise, you're throwing away 50% of the quality by deinterlacing.

restored VHS
 

I completed my editing this am and burned a DVD. Quality was pretty poor. I noticed on your last reply that you said to be sure the source was interlaced. I checked back under properties and on interlacing it said "none". This was the mpeg copy. I looked back at the AVI (which I was unable to use) and it said next to interlacing "top field first". Would I have had a better result had I been able to use the AVI?

What did you use for the editing?
And what did you use for the burning?

Something happened in the that degraded the quality. :hmm:

DVD quality
 

I used an mpeg4 for editing.
I used Pinnacle for burning to a single layer Taiyo Yuden disc. My DVD was playing back at about 7-8 mb.
When I checked Interlacing in the Pinnacle library for the mpeg4 it said "none".
The AVI say's "top field first". I also have a mpeg-2 version that also says "top field first". I didn't notice that when I was editing. Should I use the mpeg-2 or AVI for editing?

Hm. Lot of confusion here. I'm about ready to give up on this thread, but thought I'd give it a try.

When someone asks what you used for editing, they're asking about the software and/or the encoder that was used. From what you posted above, you have an MPEG4 that is being edited, which is odd if you started with lossless huffyuv AVI. You should be editing the lossless AVI, then when you're finished with your modifications you encode and author it to DVD or some other format using somebody's software.

If your original huffyuv was interlaced, it usually would be encoded as interlaced for DVD or BluRay.

I would find something other than Pinnacle for video work, but suit yourself if you can live with its bugs and quality issues. If you used Pinnacle to deinterlace (ouch!), hopefully you still have your huffyuv AVI intact and available. If you encoded to MPEG2 with Pinnacle (ouch #2), well......

You can use whatever software you want, but I find your reply to be confusing. Sorry if I'm reading something incorrectly here. For instance, you say your final output is "low quality". Can you give us a little more detail about that? What kind of "editing" are doing? Is it just cut and join and maybe adding a few titles? Are you using subtitltes or text overlays, color correction, denosiing...?

I decided to try the AVI version so I followed the directions for installing Huffyuv. I was able to download it and unzip both files. Then tried the directions for installing from the command prompt. Nothing I did resembled the results you showed on the instruction page. I got to the DOS page, but there was a command there C:\Windows\system32>. I could not erase it or pressing enter just duplicated it on another line. When I tried typing in "rundll32.exe setupapi.dll,InstallHinfSection DefaultInstall 0 c:\huffyuv.inf" and pressed enter I got an error message stating that "InstallHinfSection" was incorrect. Tried it several times with no luck. The unzipped files are sitting in Documents. I opened them again into Pinnacle and tried the AVI file there but nothing happened.

HuffyUV error
 

I believe I followed your directions to the letter but I cannot get my system to take the codec. I downloaded it and was able to unzip it, (BTW, why compress a 39KB file?)but could not get it to go by following the directions. Any suggestions?
(I don't see the screen shot I attached but maybe it'll show up once I post).

Attachment 4213

Most people install huffyuv in Windows by right-clicking on the huffyuv.inf file and left-clicking "install" from the popup menu.

Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8?
And then 32-bit vs 64-bit?

Each is somewhat different. We need to know what we're working with.

True. pnoyes hasn't yet told us what OS is in use.

Windows 7 Home Premium, Service Pack 1, 64Bit

Did you unzip that file to c:\ ?
The reason the file is zipped is because .dll files are not safe to attach online. Same for .exe and others.

And did you try just the 64-bit version, and right-click and "install" it?

Both files are in folder at C:\HuffyUV.
Yes, I tried right click/install on the file.

Did you try to simply right-click install the 64-bit version?

Yes, I did a couple of times. A dialogue box opened and closed so fast I couldn't read what was in it. BTW, these files are both dated 1/21/2005. Assume they're up to date and will work in Win7?

Read through all of the posts in this thread: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...l-huffyuv.html
It has several tips throughout.

First, copy that file to the root of C:\ and try again. Remember that your DOS session must have admin privileges.
That's for the 32-bit version.

If you use the 64-bit version, again, put both files in the root of C:\ and double-click the INF to install.

HuffyUV error
 

Progress of a sort. Different error message and progress bar that stopped at this point.

Attachment 4215

I think this is a permissions error. Windows will not let you copy to the system32 folder as a non-admin.

HuffyUV error
 

I thought that might be it so I checked them all. Here is the dialogue box.

Attachment 4216

C: and C:\Windows\system32 are two separate paths.

Huffyuv error
 

Not real sure what you meant by "C: and C:\Windows\system32 are two separate paths". I tried a different approach. Did a directory search and found HuffyUV and tried typing in the instructions from your 4-24-2010 post. You can see the results on the screenshot. Not sure where to go from here.

Attachment 4222

I have had trouble getting Huffy to work with my 7 and 8.1 systems, so I use AVIDemux or xmedia recode to open and save as a different 422 YUV format. This is the only acceptable workaround that I have found.

Some people can get it working, but I could not, but if it works for you please report back with steps.

HuffyUV error
 

Thanks, I'll give it a try. Nothing else seems to work.

You want to put it into another 422 medium in YUY2, such as lagarith or even uncompressed.

-- merged --

I just realized you can't do lagarith in XMedia Recode. Best options are either raw video or FFV1 (another lossless codec). Set container as AVI and set audio to copy.

Huffyuv error
 

Note the different error messages. Top one is "Administrator C:\windows\system32\cmd.exe" and the bottom one is just "C:\windows\system32\cmd.exe."
The admin box doesn’t recognize the command while the system only box says "access is denied". Seems like a security error.
What directory does the program need full access to?

Attachment 4226

Did you try to open it with Avidemux?
Because it should use the internal libavcodec library, not the external codec. Try it and see if it will open.

Not yet. Tried yesterday and Malware Bytes blocked it. I think it's OK and will try today. I'm getting closer, you may have noticed on my screenshot that it appears to be a security issue. Will try fixing that too.

-- merged --

OK, I downloaded Avidemux (is this from Avid?) and I opened the Huffyuv file in it and it looks and sounds fine. Do I just convert it to an MPEG now? Or save it with some other file extension?

Nope, not from Avid, it just demuxes an AVI file into its elementary streams or converts it. You have a couple options - if you are going lossless, make sure the container is AVI openDML and an uncompressed format. If you want to go to MPEG, there is an option, though I'm unsure it will go straight to DVD.

WinX Video Converter will actually read Huffy files, I recommend getting a trial copy to see if it fits your needs, it is much simpler, but it does cost money for the full version but will save you the trouble you are facing and make things a bit easier.

I would try XMediaRecode as well, which is free and can encode straight to DVD Mpeg-2, see which one you like better.

huffyuv error
 

I tried Avidemux and all I could get out of it was an mpeg2, with a lot of video problems, dropped frames, slo-mo sections, etc. What I want to do is be able to open the AVI in my video editor (Pinnacle), edit it in AVI, and let the editor convert it to mpeg while it's rendering it to DVD. Something I've done many times without a problem with AVI files.

XMediaRecode is probably better suited then, it offers many more lossless options than Avidemux, and if you weren't editing you could go straight to DVD MPEG with it. Avidemux is a Euro-produced program, so if you wanted to try that again, I would make sure your settings suit your region such as the framerate and resolution, but I haven't had issues with it previously.

Huffyuv install in Win7 64 bit.
 

I finally found a simple way to install Huffyuv in Win7 64bit. Just watch the YouTube video on the iink below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUZBJ7sck3c

Now that it is installed I found out that Pinnacle won't run it. Thanks for the help anyway.

Allow me to rant a little about Pinnacle's software. I stopped using it years ago. Now and then I encounter a PC that has it installed and will try something, and have occasionally installed newer versions as trial -- both because I expect different results from my own experience, but just out of curiosity to see if anything has improved. On every occasion it seems worse to me than it did back in 2004 when I gave up on it. I have no idea what its designers have in mind for it, but it always fails to produce a clean piece of video. Last time I used it extensively was to make a 15-minute slide show. It gave me nothing but fits and grief during the entire effort, which took a month to complete. I finally gave up on its horrible encoder and used TMPGenc Plus 2.5 to get a cleaner final video from the 15-minute lossless AVI. The designers appear to be clueless when it comes to aspects of video processing that other software handles properly, including everything from deinterlace/reinterlace, color correction, resizing, encoding, applying transitions, cuts and joins, etc., tec., and is useless for any kind of denoising or repair.

Just use something else. I never heard of any advanced user who recommends it. I realize that it has a certain appeal in areas of convenience but its glitches, omissions and bugs just aren't worth the trouble.

I'll recap so you don't have to read the whole thread. DigitalFAQ restored a VHS for me and encoded it to HuffyUV. It looks great in XMedia Recode. My software (PInnacle 17 Ultimate) won't handle Huffyuv. So I recoded it in XMedia to DV. File size went from 22gb to 10gb. Still looked pretty good. I burned it in Pinnacle to a Blu-ray. Resolution looks pretty good considering it came from a 15 year old VHS. The video is of some dancing, and when they move fast, horizontal lines trail the movement.
I think when Pinnalce burns a disc it converts to MPEG2. Appreciate any help.

It's a shame you're so married to Pinnacle and had to take two stages of quality loss to get a video. By "BluRay" I assume you mean standard definition BD-R, as upsampling VHS to HD with Pinnacle would be disastrous.

BluRay can be encoded as either MPEG2 or MPEG4/AVC.

You should not see ghost trails in the final video if you didn't see them in the original AVI.

VHS to DVD
 

Yes, it's Standard Definition. I can play the DVD in XMedia Recode and it looks great. But when I play it on the TV the motion blurs occur. The editing in Pinnacle was done from the DV encoded file. Pretty sure Pinnacle encodes it to MPEG2 when burning. I ordinarily use Taiyo Yuden discs but I ran out and used some cheap disc. Could that be the problem? I see that LordSmurf recommended TMPGEnc for burning. Would that help my situation? I think you can do limited editing in that program.

Well, we don't want you to degrade the video. :depressed:

Pinnacle is the program causing these issues. The "ghost trails" are likely caused by it deinterlacing the video.

Download and install ffdshow: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffdshow-tryout/
See if that will give you the ability to at least read Huffyuv. It should. That's an alternate method. Then even Pinnacle should be able to read the file.

These so many programs out there that work better than Pinnacle.

What exactly are you "editing" anyway?

VHS to DVD
 

I can read the HuffyUV file in XMedia Recode. What advantage would ffdshow give me? Could I edit and burn the DVD in it?