Post-transfer workflow, hiring someone

[gigantorbuzz]

Hello all, late last year I transferred several VHS tapes using gear purchased from LordSmurf. Im happy with the transfer results, and got a couple approvals here from a snippet I posted.

Now its time for post-transfer "clean up", and I quickly realized I dont have the eye for this stuff (color correction, etc). I found someone online who uses Avisynth, and generally "speaks the same language" as a lot of you guys on here. As we were discussing masking vs cropping, I shared him the write up on this site about it. Here was his response:

"Masking" - putting black bars over those parts of the image is exactly what I meant with letterboxing. The effect is about the same. As for cropping, it really depends on your source and the amount that you need cropped. With good resizing and sharpening scrips today, any loss of information or detail is imperceptible. I'd probably do two versions on a sample so you can see for yourself and choose which you prefer. I don't know how old is the article, it might be from the early 00s, at that point in time the information was probably accurate since resizing algorithms were much more crude. These days, I can do this even with HD footage and you'd be none the wiser.

I would love to hear some opinions on this!

Also, what type of file(s) should I get back from him? I will want to edit the "treated" video, with the end goal being to share online via YouTube, etc. Should I get a MOV file?

He sent me a short MOV file with a side by side comparison of the raw/treated. To my novice eye, it looks significantly better, but I would love to show you guys for a second opinion. The file is 126mb and exceeds the 99mb limit. Let me know if theres a workaround for that!

[bookemdano]

You can always upload the file to dropbox, onedrive, google drive, etc. and paste the link here.

A MOV file is just a container--most often used with Macs. Other container files are AVI or MKV (there are many others too). That doesn't tell you anything about the type of compression used on the video and audio inside the container. You can find this out yourself if you want--easiest way probably is to download the VLC video player (videolan.org) and play your MOV file with it. While it's playing open the "Media Information" window from the Window menu and go to "Codec details". Or you can just ask the person who sent it to you what codecs were used.

As for what codec you should request, a couple questions: what codec did you transfer them with? I assume you are providing this person your original files. What format are they in? Also, will you be doing the editing on a Mac or a PC?

[gigantorbuzz]

Thanks Dano

I thought linking to another site was against the rules? Has that eased up? If so, the comparison.mov, and a .mkv sample file of just the treated video are here:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...7l?usp=sharing

VLC says both files are H264 MPEG-4.

My raw file, a copy of which I sent him to work from, was done using YUV422.

Im a Mac guy, and simple editing will be done on a Mac, most likely in iMovie.

[bookemdano]

Not sure that it's against the rules to link to an external site... I think they encourage attaching files because links can disappear days/weeks/months/years later and anyone visiting the thread after that time would be missing that context. But in your case the file is too big to attach, so seems reasonable to use a link in that case.

YUV422 is a color space. I guess if you followed LordSmurf's protocol your files are encoded using huffyuv or Lagarith? That's good--you should keep those files as they can be considered your masters.

H264 is fine as a final delivery method. It's definitely not good if you wanted to do any further restoration, color correction, etc. but you can always go back to your master files if need be.

If you have the disk space you might ask for them to be delivered in ProRes422, which isn't *quite* lossless but is extremely close. Being an Apple-designed codec, Macs love working with it. You can then convert it to h264 (either manually, or iMovie/FCP will do that for you when exporting to YouTube within the app).

[gigantorbuzz]

I used VideoGlide on Mac for the transfers, my settings:

Adjustments - default
Compression - YUV422 / 29.97 frames
Source = S-Video
VideoGlide = USB Bandwidth 100, Offsets at 0, Auto Detect Input and Format is checked

Did you get a chance to view the files?