Thanks. Will do. Lordsmurf recommends installing the CMC (http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...i-600-usb.html) but considering that looks like it only records in MPEG2, assume it has no value to me.

-- merged --

Always hated ATI. Never buy their stuff. Great hardware. The worst software. When I installed the driver of Diamond's site the first time I had a 2009 driver installed. When I reinstalled and installed the version off the disk first, had a 2007 driver. So I then ran the setup for the Diamond one, it just wanted to repair or remove, not upgrade. I repaired and it was still at the 2007 version. Go figure.

Even the latest version of the AMD site said latest version was already installed which obviously wasn't the case. Though when I originally just installed the Diamond MM version, I know the name of the company was something odd. Not ATI, or AMD, or Diamond.

JR

It won't. lordsmurf does use CMC for some purposes. You can always install it later, but a decent DVD recorder would be better. CMC uses older encoding that looks good only at very high bitrates IMO.

It's normal. As nightshiver noted, you won't see CMC in the Start menu if you don't install CMC. The dongle input appears only in capture.

Adding to nightshiver's comments on your list of settings:
Video decoder tab: "NTSC_M" is all that matters. "VCR" is probably grayed out.

You can use 720x480 or 640x480. I cap VHS at 640x480 because I hate working with stretched images. Normal folks would likely use 720x480 because DVD/BluRay SD sizes require that frame size. When I'm ready for 720x480 at the very end of all the work, I use 16-bit Avisynth plugins for resizing. My advice on resizing: always use Avisynth resizing functions and filters, otherwise just avoid resizing. Period.

Below are VDub capture settings I've used since 2002 or so. Most of them are defaults.

Capture ->
- Timing.....Below are the settings I've used since 2002.

http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...re-timing-rpng

I've been unavailable for the past few weeks, focusing on client projects instead, and that will remain true for a few more. But I am monitoring the site threads and posts, outside of the Helpdesk. And I couldn't let this one go unchallenged...

Quoting sanlyn, but mostly speaking to the OP...

It really depends on the recorder. It's not an easy yes/no situation. (Better/worse, whatever.) :hmm:

I actually don't use ATI CMC all that much, because I do not often use the ATI USB cards that much. I have AGP, PCI and PCIe ATI AIW cards at my disposal. and those are better for both MPEG and AVI work. So it's true that ATI CMC is not as good as ATI MMC. And sometimes not as good as a recorder.

But again, it depends on the recorder AND the recording mode/settings. For example, at DVD bitrates, then JVC DR-M10/100 recorders blow away the ATI USB cards -- perhaps even the ATI AIW cards! But when it comes to the 15mbps ATI CMC MPEG-2 streams for Blu-ray, there's not way a mere DVD recorder can compete.

I'm not sure how much in/out of context to the conversation this post is right now -- I need to read the past 5 pages to refresh my memory on what's happening here -- but I just wanted to mention all this.

Video is not easy. There's lots of decisions to be made. :congrats:

Never use ATI CMC, or ATI CMC, for AVI capturing. (Yes, I know, I use to profess the opposite, but that was when VirtualDub had errors in the pre-1.8.x days. And before ATI screwed up ATI MMC AVI capturing in later versions, where it'd go out of sync.) In fact, I'm not entirely sure ATI CMC can capture AVI -- I thought it only did DivX/MPEG-4 and MPEG-2. Not even MPEG-1. I'd have to re-look at it again.

From what I can see, you're getting great advice in this thread. :)

It's odd that you're having problems with the drivers, especially on XP. I never had any such problems when I was using XP.

Seems odd to me as well. I know others who never had problems with ATI, and I haven't had a mishap since Windows 3.1, several PCs, and 8 ATI cards -- yet I see occasional "problem" posts now and then in forums. The only ATI mishap I had was in 2004 or 2005 when I foolishly allowed Microsoft to install "optional" ATI divers from the Windows Update site. Oops! Uninstall/reinstall time, and on that specific Windows PC I had to remember to never let Windows search the internet for new ATI or WDM drivers at bootup (tell Windows to never search and never remind you again about that specific hardware).

I'm sure that makes jriker1 feel great (Oops again), but there's usually a simple answer every time a problem comes up.

I think we've all learned that lesson the hard way. :o

Thank you all for the input. Sanlyn, major props for going thru all those settings for me and anyone else who comes upon this thread. Figured out the problem with the drivers but it was a bit odd. I installed as my usesr who is an admin, and for some reason it pulled up a menu to update existing components saying they were all up to date. I chose to run as Administrator and then it just updated the drivers. Probably no different than if I never used the CD at all to begin with but now the driver shows 2009. Oddly the provider is eMPIA Technology whoever that is.

With my capture device, I read a lot of threads on DigitalFAQ that sounded like the HD 600 USB was a good capture device, but sounds like some of the responses here it may not be as good as I thought and should have gone with an internal based card. Oh well, going to go with what I have. Sure it's "decent".

With the VirtualDub settings.

For Capture Device Choices I have:

- Microsoft WDM Image Capture (Win32) (VFW)
- ATI TV Wonder 600 USB 2.0 (DirectShow)
- Screen capture
- Video file (Emulation)

Right now set on ATI TV Wonder...

Video Levels are now set to:
Brightness: 110
Contrast: 32
Hue: 64
Saturation: 32
Sharpness: was 2 set to 0

I changed Sharpness to 0 as it's my understanding that disables any internal sharpening action. What should the rest be set to as to not impact the import? I would prefer Virtualdub accepted the content without any changes in the look. Right now a lot darker than the original DV imports I was doing. For good or bad. Are there settings that would force VDub to just pass in the content untouched?

For the Audio part, Audio Input for me says "No audio inputs". Is this normal?
Audio Source is set for "Audio Line"
Audio Source Selection is set to "Capture Device"

Thanks.

JR

It is. You would have a tough time seeing the difference between the two.

Correct.
From memory of seeng that that device a long, long time ago, I don't recall what the defaults are. 0 sharpening is a good idea. If things look too dark, work with Brightness and Contrast. The way most of those two filters work is this: Brightness, contrary to what you might think, controls the black level (darks). If you see shadows and whatnot turn into blackish inky blobs with no detail, black levels are too low. Contrast controls the opposite end of the spectrum -- brights and highlights. The two interact to some degree, so you have fuss back and forth with them.

Hue and saturation are iffy. Unless you have a badly discolored tape, it's best to keep Hue neutral. If you try to to use Hue to control the color balance of VHS, you're in for a futile struggle -- color balance will change from shot to shot, sometimes within shots. So until you get accustomed to post-capture color work, try to find a neutral position for Hue.

Saturation: most players over saturate color, red especially. Over saturation effectively increases contrast to the point where colors exceed RGB 255 (washing out colors in the brights) and make darks look gloomy, lacking detail. It's almost impossible to set saturation correctly if Brightnesss and Contrast aren't set up well. If "32" is the neutral saturation point in that setup, use it or try to find something more sensible. Oversaturated colors tend to bloom (glow) or look like day-glo, neon, or some such artificial effect. With tape it will vary all the time anyway. With poor brightness, color will almost always look oversaturated. Fix Brightness and Contrast first.
"No audio inputs" would sound right, because you're not plugging the video cable into your sound card. Sound is coming from the capture device. My fuzzy memory doesn't serve me well concerning the "Line In" entry, because you're not using the Line-In jack on your audio card. Someone with more recent experience with the 600 should be able to advise on that.

-- merged --

digitalfaq and videohelp have a number of threads dealing with ATI/Virtualdub capture, as well as other cards with VDub. ANd other capture software, too. What we might have to straighten out if you have trouble is audio sync. Let us know if problems crop up. The AIW cards handled sound differently -- video and audio went into the card together, but the AIW's then separated audio and fed it thru the audio card. The 600 passes audio+video together thru the USB stick. So if anything has to be adjusted, it's a setting or two in the Audio settings in the image I included in post #94. Will keep chec king back to see what happens.

Meanwhile it appears that others are using "Line-In" for this USB device, so your setting is probably correct. The Line-In is on the capture device. Meanwhile I suggest that you turn on the Audio graph viewer by finding "Audio -> Volume meter" and turning it ON to check for audio input.

Alright. Found a good article or no longer available article (retrieved on internet wayback archives), on how to use the histogram to adjust the brightness, contrast, and saturation for a device in VDub so will give that a try. Not sure if it's OK to reference an external site to share it. Question. I did a one and a half hour recording on a tape to see what it would do. Got 2 dropped frames and 60 frames inserted. Is this a concern that I need to use the TBC-1000?

Thanks.

JR

You can try the ES15 and the TBC-1000 together to see if it fixes the problem. If it doesn't, the couple of dropped frames isn't all that unusual, but 60 inserted frames is. The Panasonic has to be first in the chain, then the TBC-1000. IF you place the TBC-1000 in the circuit first, the Panny won't do anything.

If that doesn't improve the situation, the settings in that "timing" dialog panel can be optimized to suit the way the card and your OS behave together. That's almost always the area where framing and sync problems occur.

I find inserted frames is usually one of two issues:
- dropped frames -- ie, lack of TBC on the video. It's a video hardware issue, not computer-side issue.
- I/O problems, most likely caused by fragmentation on the hard drive being captured to. Or using the OS drive, like you're not supposed to.

True. A capture PC needs two hard drives. Capture and processing shouldn't be done n the same drive that contains the OS.

OK, I tried a different bad approach. I say bad because history tells me when troubleshooting a problem don't try multiple solves at once. I defragged the hard drive even though I just built the system. Never know. Also tried a different "higher quality" VHS tape. Original from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Figured if I was going to watch something convert might as well be enjoyable. That went thru with no issues. Other than being 80GB and converting on a computer with no wired network so moving the file proves fun.

Brings me to your comment quoted above sanlyn. When you say "processing", are you referring to post cleanup? For me the system just sits there while encoding. Don't do anything else. I do know frequently in Virtualdub when I hit F6 to start encoding the inserted frames thing happens like one or two counts at the very start. Not sure if at that point I'm doomed and should try again.

Also note, oddly enough in the analog world, I ran the issue tape thru again (before defragging), and it had the exact same amount of dropped frames and inserted frames. It was about an hour and fifteen into a two hour video and noticed it seemed to be moving in slow-mo at that point.

Imagine it makes sense to run thru all the tapes that don't need a TBC and then return to the problem ones at the end. I now need to figure out my best options for cleanup of the video before converting a bunch of tapes and finding my encoding process is flawed or something and having to start all over again.

I'm thinking of a few workflows right now. Note I work on the IT side at a creative agency so am thinking of trying some higher end tools I have access to that the designers use here:

Thought 1:

1. Open video in AutoDesk Smoke
2. Learn and use their denoising tools
3. Learn and use their color correction tools
4. Figure out how to black bar the outer edged.

I've heard AutoDesk Smoke is killer so figured I'd maybe learn how to use some of it's basics to clean things up a bit.

Thought 2:

1. Open video in Adobe Premiere CC
2. Add NeatVideo filter and create noise profile to reduce noise
3. Use the Fast Color Corrector or Three-Way Color Corrector to adjust coloring
4. Black bar the outer edges

This process above I'm highly familiar with cleaning up digital film content (minus needing the black bars)

Thought 3:
Try and adapt some of the AviSynth filters and scripts I've seen out there to my materials.

I won't even start to think of what bitrate to encode this material in. Low quality VHS, cleaned, color corrected. Makes me go hmmm... trying to think what bitrate this content should be encoded in but will worry about that one later.

Open to any other suggestions or examples.

-- merged --

Side note since editing my prior post is locked. REALLY? I think AutoDesk Smoke ($3500) can't open AVI files. So unless I find out otherwise from AutoDesk, looks like that option may be a bust.

JR

80GB at huffyuv YUY2 must be 2 hours or more. Notes later on how to get 2 hours of DVD on a disc without making it look like VHS again.

I'm referring to everything. This has been mentioned so many times in so many posts and guides over so many years, it goes without saying that trying to buck the system will usually get the same results again and again. Buck at your own risk.
:wink2:

No it doesn't. It's reading and writing to memory and your hard drive, checking network status, running antivirus, checking time and clock status, writing to temp folders and the system work area, and your one-drive controller is trying to keep track of what the OS does and what you're doing -- all of which uses a series of system and drive controller interrupts and slows down everything.

I also saw some old posts here and elsewhere about specific ATI 6900 USB settings in the timing area that can affect a number of things. I'll have to look those up. Meanwhile it's not unusual to get a dropped frame or two in early sections of a tape or capture, especially when your hard drive controller is trying to sort things out and Windows is trying to create temp caching areas on the same drive.

Meanwhile I don't agree with your work flow. Most people make a capture or two, then learn how to work with it. But that's up to you.

AutoDesk is vast overkill.

Before you start throwing YUY2 interlaced captures into Adobe and NeatVideo, I think you should consider submitting an unprocessed edit of a sample capture. I'll guarantee it will be more than enlightening and will save time, effort, and money you shouldn't have to spend. One example is how to work with the black side borders and (don't forget) the bottom-border head switching noise and working with a slightly modified DVD frame size that won 't distort the original image display aspect ratio.

Not much anyone can add until we've seen some video.
:)

Thanks sanlyn. Let me get a snippet together. The 80GB video was 3 hours 13 minutes. Just as a reminder, I have zero intent to put these on DVD. I strictly plan to keep these on my video server as files. Stay tuned.

Oh by the way, as a side topic, I found a place I can get a brand new x-rite i1display pro monitor calibration tool for $154. They were selling it for one day for $179 and free shipping. No tax where I'm at. Plus the vendor for people's reference has a $25 rebate going on right now (http://www.rapid-rebates.com/xrite/). I missed the deal while negotiating but they said they would still honor it. Digital rebate so nothing to physically mail in. Thinking that's a good deal.

Edit: Forgot to mention in my doing multiple things at once thing. I disabled the network card during capturing to limit extra stuff going on.

-- merged --

What size video should I upload? I can cut a piece with avidemux however even a small segment is hundreds of megs?

JR

Posts can be edited for one hour. After that, just make a new post if you have more to add. We'll probably merge them. I just merged a bunch of posts in this thread. (But don't make our work harder here -- edit when possible!)

The OS drive is for the OS, programs, maybe documents -- NEVER the video. At all. Sometimes you can get away with capturing or encoding to the OS drives, but more likely not. Realize this is Windows specific, as the page file resides there. A Mac or Linux system has a separate partition for swap. Of course, Mac and Linux are not video platforms.

Here's a sample. If you want something different or smaller let me know. Video segment is 400 megs. Assumed it wasn't something I could/should upload physically into the forum.

File: HHGTTG.avi

Note this is with Video Levels adjusted so black is black without crushing and white was white without crushing. I used a different video than this one to calibrate using the histogram. They are set to:

Brightness: 104
Contract: 44
Hue: 64
Saturation: 32
Sharpness: 0

Hue and Saturation are centered on the line in Video Levels, Contrast is up from 32 being the middle, and Brightness is lower than center being about 128 centered. Assuming center is "normal" and anything out of that is an adjustment to it. Letting you know in case you want me to re-capture with a different levels setting.

Thanks.

JR

Say, thanks for the sample! Will take a longer look tomorrow A.M.

I don't envy you, though. Color and detail are petty much a shambles. This video looks as if it's been around the block a few times before it made it to your house. But nothing unusual about that when it comes to VHS. It looks as if this was hard-telecined movie source at one time, then somehow got interlaced, then was erroneously deintelaced, filtered like mad, then interlaced again. Sad to say, there's no fix for that particular kind of damage.

Thanks sanlyn. This is a commercial recording so was hoping it would be the cleanest over my camcorder family stuff. It does come from the BBC so perhaps it went thru some changes to make it to NTSC world.

-- merged --

I've attached a link for reference with approximately the same segment of video without the ES15. Slight tearing on top but wanted to see if that was causing what you were seeing. I'm thinking no difference. Maybe even slightly better with the ES15.

Watch some of the coloring. I think in a lot of the segments colors are heavily saturated on purpose for effect.

Link without ES15: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...nodvd-part.avi

Hmmm...well, the tape might be a commercial recording but I'm accustomed to much better work from the BBC, even with washed-out looking BBC translations on VHS from shows in the 70's. Hate to say it, but whatever the source the tape looks like an amateur job. Got some serious problems ahead.

As you say, it's saturated but it still shows bad off-color problems, and the loss of chroma resolution and density kinda smacks you in the face. That's not counting the disappearance of detail and clumpy grain instead of fine gradations. Levels are a problem, too, mostly with clipped brights and murky shadows (two hallmarks of VHS).

The image below are copies of and Avisynth YUV levels histogram (on the left) and Virtualdub RGB waveforms (on the right). Both show clipping and crushed darks, some of which seem to come from the tape creation process. (pink arrows point to a couple of sample trouble spots).

From frame 93 (original):
http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...1&d=1415370659

From frame 1432:
http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...1&d=1415370670

Tell you what, I'll say this tape was made from another tape, and one player along the line either had no tbc or a very weak one. No line tbc can repair bad ripples from a tape that came from another tape, but at least your ES15 shows it can keep bad ripples from getting worse. The movie also shows tell-tale signs of VHS capped to some form of DV compression (mosquito noise, poorly defined edges, signs of posterizing and other compression artifacts). The extracted images below are 2X blowups from portions of frame 93 of the capture. Lower left, you can see red chroma noise (rainbows) in the guy's dark jacket. Upper left is chroma upsampling error in the red letters with red color shift and bleeding, and look at the "sparkles" and other edge artifacts. In the ladies' faces you'll see more sparkles and other mosquito effects, edge halos, signs of dark right-edge oversharpening ghosts (in the dark background to the left of bright faces), and remnants of dot crawl.

http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...1&d=1415371238

In still shots this junk doesn't too bad (by today's very low standards, anyway). But The noise changes shape and moves around in every frame. As you'll see in the following post.......

Attached, four different versions from the first few dozen frames of your sample clip. Examples A, B and C run at a slow 2 frames per second. They demonstrate something of the history of this movie. It likely originated as 23.976fps progressive film. Some pulldown (telecine) was applied every few frames to run it up to 25fps. Unfortunately PAL 25fps is almost always interlaced, so likely this "new" tape was interlaced as well as telecined (ouch!). In preparing it for NTSC, the makers should have removed the telecine frames and replaced it with 3:2 pulldown. Instead, looks like they field-blend deinterlaced the movie (ouch again!), then added 3:2 pulldown. Big mistake. You can remove the 3:2 pulldown, but not the field-blended frames.

With most telecined clips you should see 2 "interlaced" frames in every 5. Not here. Running attachment A_HHG_00.mp4 at 2fps, you'll see 3 or 4 successive telecined frames. The fact that there's no combing in the other frames tells us that this is progressive video with 3:2 pulldown and some field-blended frames mixed in, and all of it encoded as interlaced.

Attachment B_HHG_01y.mp4 at 2fps has been deinterlaced and thus has double the number of frames. You would expect that there would be no combing in progressive video, but the combing and double-image frames show that the clip is indeed progressive film with 3:2 pulldown mixed with blended frames. You'll also notice that the Even fields (0, 2, 4, etc.) are far "dirtier" and disturbed than the Odd frames (1, 3, 5, etc.). With each image you'll see how noise and distortion change with each frame.

Attachment C_HHG_01ivtc.mp4 has been inverse telecined. This should have removed all double-image and combing, but you can see that the field-blends are still there.

Couple of ways to handle this. You can treat the whole thing as interlaced, just deinterlace and denoise it, then re-interlace. Smooth movement and better cleaning, but all the combed frames will still there. Or, deinterlace and use the sRestore() filter to remove duplicate frames -- this gets rid of almost all the double images, but unfortunately it sees the field-blended deinterlaced frames as duplicates and removes them. Result: dropped frames and jerky movement.

What I chose was to inverse telecine to make the movie entirely progressive, and keep the occasional field-blends. This at least made cleanup possible and gave pretty smooth motion. BTW, in the original sample there is a missing frame between 13 and 14, and probably a few more. I suspect those drops were in the original....which by any measure I'm familiar with is a really sloppy job of movie making. Attachment D_HHG_09MC_mv_prog.mp4 was processed this way.

The "D" sample is the first scene of the movie and runs at 23.976fps. For D_HHG_09MC_mv_prog.mp4 I used several Avisynth plugins, then in RGB and VirtualDub I tweaked color with ColorMill and gradation curves, and some very light cleaner and sharpening with NeatVideo. It seems impossible to avoid poster effects, given the defects in the original -- there really isn't much contour detail or color data to work with. At least the chimpanzee doesn't look green. The main denoisers were QTGMC in progressive mode (it uses DFTTest) and MDegrain2 from mvtools. Then some stuff for chroma bleed and fuzzy edges, some resize, blur, GradFun3, filters to add film-like fine grain, plus dithering and 16-bit color resampling. The conversion from YUV to RGB was done with 16-bit dithering in Avisynth.

Good luck with this one.

Thanks for the detailed analysis sanlyn. Been reading thru your last two posts multiple times and reading up on inverse telecine. Trying to learn thru your attachments and posts how to see these things myself in the conversions I do. The work you did with D_HHG_09MC_mv.mp4 looks really good. Funny enough, I got my hands on an original of that same video on DVD and it's horrible looking. So starting from the beginning on capturing the content. You talked about crushed levels. Are any of these due to the settings I have on VDub?

http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/imag...1/smsinq-1.png

I'm guessing, that having everything centered (even with Hue/Saturation) is no adjustment. Based on the above, black levels are slightly darker and whites are slightly brighter. Default VDub for Brightness is 110 when I extracted the zip so not assuming centered is no change, however want to make sure my initial capture is good to start with.

As a side inquiry, all the images I see of using histograms to find the optimal black levels and white levels without crushing showed blacks touching the far left and whites touching the far right. Any reason when opening a histogram on VDub today whites go all the way to the right but blacks cut off about an inch from the side? If you look at a pure black image (nothing on), it shows the line where the histogram cuts off and the inch of area not used.

http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/imag.../15s36gm-1.jpg

JR

well..ahem, thank you. Looks a tad dark to me and oversharpened, but I was in a rush to get stuff posted.

There are some crushed darks in the capture, but some of that looks as if it's in the original -- not unusual for VHS. Clipped brights are usually more of a problem. Your image settings for capture show defaults that aren't the same as on my AIW's, but usually the defaults are neutral. If you use a histogram to judge this, the graph covers RGB 0 to 255, but the ideal range for YUV capture is RGB 16-235. Pure black RGB 000 will always hit the left-hand side. If you see the bright end hitting or climbing up the right side it's either clipping during capture or will clip when displayed as RGB. Lowering contrast will calm the brights, raising brightness opens up the darks. Black borders will usually be a "spike" at the left. The two controls interact, so as I say you have to fuss back and forth to find a good balance. Many sources like VHS will vary in those levels from minute to minute. So what most do is set capture for a worst-case scenario. Sometimes they'll run into a maverick source that changes dramatically, so they'll stop the capture and make new settings, or recapture a certain outlaw segment and patch it in later.

In this case the overshoots at each end weren't too bad. Some tapes (and some players) almost look impossible when you first see them.

Many ways to analyze captured video or parts of them. I viewed your sample in VirtualDub using an Avisynth script to open the clips. For the "A" version I viewed the video in VDUb as-is using the frame-by-frame controls at the bottom of the VDub window. I had to use DirectShowSource to open the capture, as huffyuv seems to act differently in different PC's (even on all three of mine, and I'm using the same huffyuv version you are). The way huffyuv installs will differ just about anywhere, even in the same OS. To avoid a hassle I capture with huffyuv then recompress to Lagarith lossless, which has fewer compatibility problems between machines. The Lagarith copy is the one I keep. When processing YUY2, many filters work only in YV12, so usually you have to go to Lagarith anyway for YV12. That conversion is always made in Avisyth and differs with the video structure (interlaced, progressive, telecine, etc.). Most NLE's -- even expensive ones -- don't do it properly.

Viewing the clip as-is was simple: open it with DirectShowSource (or with whatever opener is required) and view it in VDub as-is, frame by frame. If you open YUV directly in VirtualDub, VDub will make assumptions that often give you the wrong idea about color issues. In your case you could probably use AviSource instead of DirectShowSource.

To view the deinterlaced version frame by frame I used yadif deinterlacing -- pretty good deinterlacer, not the best but very fast. VLC player can be set up to use it instead of the default Bob() filter. The results are softer and a little more noisy than QTGMC. This was my code for viewing the yadif deinterlaced version:

To view the inverse telecined version:
To view Avisynth's "Levels" histogram you need this statement after opening the video, and likely you have to treat it as interlaced because the telecined and blended frames are interlaced and the whole tape plays as interlaced from a VCR:
To make the posted videos I trimmed the clip in Avisynth to get the frames I wanted. Then in VirtualDub I converted the frame rate (without audio) to 2fps before saving the output.

The RGB waveform histogram is a VirtualDub filter (ColorTools). It won't work in Win7 or later.

I did the "D" full scene version using two Avisynth scripts, for various reasons -- mainly to be able to tweak the second part without having to re-run the whole thing.

First script:
2nd Script:
The RGB conversion was for work in VirtualDub, where I used CamcorderColordenoise (to clean up the last of the rainbows), ColorMill, gradation curves, and some low-power NeatVideo. Ther inverse telecine plugin used (contains TFM() and TDecimate()) was Avisynth's TIVTC plugin.

After all that, I'd probably change most of that script. Rule of thumb with troublesome video: if it looks OK save it, then come back 2 days later.

The DMR-ES15 is being used as pass-thru line tbc. Unfortunately that won't correct weak line tbc corrections that appear to be in an earlier tape from which the captured tape seems to have been made. jriker1 linked to a second capture made without the ES15 that looks worse.

Ditch this sample.

Capture something else, something that originated in the US. There is too much GIGO happening here.

Don't do that. Always calibrate using the tape you are going to capture. At least until you establish a baseline rule that you can group your tapes into.

None of the artifacts are related to DV. It appears jriker1 has the Sharpness control on his VCR turned up, turning bad edges into more-contrasty bad edges.

It's a TV miniseries from 1981 that mixed 16mm footage with PAL video footage. The film portion was likely shot at 25fps; there are several good reasons to do so and only one reason not to (4% higher film usage). I bought the NTSC DVD before I realized this; it has the same field-blending problem. Once the series was produced for the PAL audience, they really had no other option than to run it through the standards-conversion hardware at the time to produce field-blended crap.

I don't think the HS-U747 had the PerfectTape soft/sharp/norm conrol. Didn't that come with its cousin, the HS-U748? If that PerfectTape function is available on the '747', it should be on "Normal". The video is obviously oversharpened, either in the long-ago master or in the tape that was captured, but that doesn't explain the severe color and detail loss -- unless the 747 just isn't a very good player, but I thought they were pretty decent Panasonic rebrands.

If it's this release, it's EP mode. In that case I wouldn't be surprised if it is a Panasonic rebrand from a year they were overdoing processing, as the sample reminds me of what my AG-1970 + ES-15 incurs upon my EP tapes. SP looks great, but EP is a sad mess.

Yep, that be the exact one. I think when I recorded it years ago off the TV and cleaned it up with what I had back then was better than the "original" VHS and DVD copies.

As for sharpening, nothing I'm knowingly doing. For my devices:

VDub: As my screen shot showed, video levels sharpening set to 0.
SVHS:

• Video Mute: On
• Auto Power Save: On
• RF converter: Off
• Auto PerfecTape: Off
• Rental Xpress: Off
• S-VHS Auto Record: Off
• S-ET record: Auto ON
• Rear S-input: On

And think that's all it has in the menus and assuming based on the below On is on and OFf is off:

http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/imag...1/5uikbr-1.jpg

DVD Display Button Settings:

• Video Line-in NR: Off
• Other: Position 1

DVD Setup Button Settings:

• Channel Signal Source: Cable TV
• Setup Off Timer: Off
• Remote Control Code; Set Code 1
• Disk Settings for Playback Ratings: Level 8
• Disk Settings for Playback Play DVD_Audio in Vide Mode: Video Off
• Disk Settings for Recording Recording Time in EP Mode; EP (6H)
• Video Still Mode (paused video): Frame
• Video Black Level Control Input Level: Darker
• Video Black Level Control Output Level (SVideo): Lighter
• Video Black Level Control Output Level (Component): Normal
• Video Black Level Control Output Level (SVideo): Lighter
• Audio Dynamic Range Compression: Off
• Audio Multi-channel TV Sound (MTS): Main
• Digital Audio Output PCM Down Conversion: Off
• Digital Audio Output Dolby DIgital: Bitstream
• Digital Audio Output DTS: Bitstream
• Select Audio Channel for DV Input: Stereo 1
• Display Status Messages: Automatic
• Display On-screen Language: English
• Display Blue Background: On
• Display FL Display: Bright
• TV Screen TV Type: 4:3 (480i)
• TV Screen 4:3 TV Settings for DVD-Video: Letterbox
• TV Screen 4:3 TV Settings for DVD-RAM: Letterbox
  

I'll try another tape. Those will probably be more annoying as will be giant on the shoulder camcorder videos of my family and stuff so lighting is all over the place and bouncing around as I walk. Stay tuned on that front. Let me know if I'm missing anything with sharpening that I may be doing and don't realize.

JR

I don't see sharpening in those settings (keep that "PerfectTape" thingie turned off.

AFAIK the HS-U747/748 was made around 2000-2002, imn tyhe "golden age of over-sharpening" that started around 1998 and just got worse with every model from most makers. Fortunately the prosumer and pro models didn't follow suite. The AG-1980 is still the best AFAIK for EP tape, although the old Panny PV-S4600 series SVHS players (1996) did a nice job too.

I think we all agree that EP is the pits on anything except a few top-end players, and even then you're still talking about tons of time-consuming cleanup.

Sorry for my absenteeism. Been playing with a lot of videos, avisynth, premiere, etc. Will get into that more later. Was wondering if there were any suggestions on how to deal with this streaking/bleeding of the text in the film. Perhaps it's just something to live with but wanted to check.

http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/imag...1/sv1d0i-1.png

Thanks.

JR

I don't see any streaking or bleeding. :question:

Maybe a terminology thing or a different monitor thing, however you don't see the yellow coming out to the right of the text and all the way to the right side of the picture? Note on my LCD, I can't see it if I look directly at the computer monitor but if I look on an angle can see it in the attached picture.

JR

I see yellow text on crisp black background. My monitor is calibrated IPS.

How was the picture made? It's kinda small for working. Actual size cut directly from the video?

Chroma smears and ghost trails, not to mention some halo, and blue stain at the right border. You'll also see lighter bands of dark gray noise at the top and bottom (2X blowup, Gamma raised 36%, midtones +10% with gradation curves, so the effects are highly exagerrated):

http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...1&d=1416178292

Depends on how the posted image was made. The ghosting in the original image measures only 2 RGB points lighter than the darkest blacks, the blue measures only 4 RGB points over black. If you find that easy to see on your PC monitor, your monitor is too bright and gamma is too high and uneven. If you find it even easier to see at an angle, you should be using an IPS or similar monitor instead of plain-vanilla TFT.

Stuff like this is difficult to catch in a still image, even if most viewers will never see something at RGB 4 on their TV -- it would all look black. People who use their TVs in "torch mode" as well as oversaturated, which most people do, would never see it because blacks are always crushed at factory settings.

This is rather common with VHS and with TV movie broadcasts. Sometimes it's the player, but more often it's the source. A few seconds of video would be much better than a still pic. Anyway, filters that can help with it are usually time-based and won't work on single frames.

Thanks guys. Unfortunately the computer I was looking at this on is a laptop with no working USB ports. So I can't use my monitor calibrator on it. Chances are, as you said sanlyn, the monitor is to bright. The picture I provided was a windows screen capture while the footage was open in Premiere Pro so is just the small Premiere preview window I snipped.

Thanks.

JR

OK I have a few captures under my belt. Two went thru with no issues, three went thru with a lot of inserted frames so put those aside to use the TBC-1000 with later.

Spending time on each video to scroll thru the video and use the histogram to make sure things aren't in the red on the left or right. Though my version of VirtualDub has red on the right when it's clipping, but a one inch black bar on the left that the Histogram just disappears into when it's clipping the blacks so try and keep it from "disappearing" into that black area. A bit of a pain as on my system the video goes away when you enable the histogram so don't know what scene it's on when reviewing the histogram and have to keep looking back. One item that concerns me as I'm starting to encode to final format which takes a lot of time due to using QTGMC deinterlacing and then NeatVideo cleanup and have concerns I may have to do a do over again. I had provided some pictures of my VCR and the settings.

http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/imag...1/5uikbr-1.jpg

It was assumed in discussions that Auto PerfecTape is off because the Off above looks pushed in and the On is colored bur raised. Part that concerns me though is every time the video gets to the end of the tape, it rewinds and ejects it. Wouldn't that mean that Rental Xpress is on? I have similar settings for Rear S-Video port enabled that based on our assumptions is on. After all, I'm capturing thru it. Based on discussions I am assuming it's best to make sure any noise reduction in my VCR is disabled.

Note: Per the above, I will be storing these as MP4 files on my computer and watching with different tools including WMP so figured deinterlacing with a good deinterlacer was the way to go.

JR

I'm pretty sure teal-colored options are selected there. You have "Video mute" highlighted and "OFF" is highlighted in the same manner, hence "Video mute" is off.

You can test this by tuning to any analog channel. If you see static that should mean it's off. If you change it to On you should see a blue background on each channel instead.

OK so I have been chugging along here capturing all my tapes before I start cleanup. I took all the tapes that had no dropped frames or inserted frames and saved those with just the DVD recorder as a TBC. Now going back to any tapes with inserted frames or dropped frames. This particular one just had inserted frames. I have added the TBC-1000 to the end of the chain. I am still getting the inserted frames. Any idea why that is? For reference about 10 of my tapes went thru with 0 dropped and 0 inserted with just the DVD recorder.

Thanks.

JR

Not to be impatient but thinking my inquiry above was missed. Any thoughts? Holding of on my remaining tapes that have dropped frames or inserted frames until I get some advice if this is fixable in some way or just the tapes.

Thanks.

JR

VDub capture settings might have something to do with it. Look at "Capture" -> "Timing...".