The list isn't referring to used prices for the pro gear. But anyway, the card that you linked to is completely worthless without its large rackmount breakout box. It can't be connected to anything directly. It also can't be connected to consumer audio sources, at all (adapters would be required).
That particular page is old enough that it pre-dates decent USB 2.0 capture devices.
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Is there any thread or post around here that updates, I don't know annually, on which is the best one?
The "best alternatives to All-in-Wonder" thread that you already linked to is considered up-to-date.
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And somebody that posted examples of them capturing with a USB one that was identical as compared to a capture card like what you use? Is there someone that did that actual test before with the same footage?
What exactly do you want in a comparison? I have more capture devices than is reasonable for any human being to possess.
Below is a capture of original frame 111 from the interlaced test2b.avi.
I believe you already know that levels and chroma are out of spec here, exceeding RGB 255. Levels should be corrected during capture as well as you can within the preferred range RGB16-235 to prevent clipped brights and crushed darks. One can always tweak later. Once data gets clipped, it can't be recovered. The frame below shows clipping in facial highlights and in the open book pages, podium trim, and other areas. There's a lot of chroma noise, rainbows, discoloration, and bad red flicker on the front red apron of the podium (or whatever it's called. Pulpit?).
Below, a YUV histogram of this frame. The arrow points to clipped brights at the right edge of the histogram.
Below, and RGB display histogram of the same frame. Arrows point to both brightness and chroma exceeding RGB255 and crashing against or climbing up the right side of the histogram.
Below: 2X blowups of three sections taken from the original frame 111. In still images this noise doesn't move -- but during play this noise jumps around everywhere and looks much worse. This kind of noise and discoloration (rainbows and blotches) eats up encoded data bits that waste more time on noise than on content. Top image: in the lower left corner of the frame, there is discoloration, excessive grain, tiny dropouts ("pinholes"), streaks. Lower left: from the front of the podium, severe red flutter and flicker, with more pinholes, streaks, etc. Lower right: from the upper corner of the frame -- the same noise, different color.
f
The attached video test2b_old_new_compare.mp4 compares two videos. I combined the left-hand half of frame from the original test2b and the left-hand half of the same frames from the denoised video I posted earlier as test2b_reworked_60p.mp4 in my post #12 on 4/14/2016. In the comparison video, frames from test2b are on the left, frames from the denoised video are on the right. My emphasis was on denoising and attaining a more natural look and balance for interior lighting, avoiding oversaturation and flared colors. The targets you set for your final output determine the choices made for processing. The script I used is similar to the one from jagabo, with just a few differences. The output from my script added three VirtualDub filters to Avisynth's output: Camcorder Color Denoise, some mild color correction with ColorMill, and a very low-power NeatVideo tweak. Compare the noisy half with the denoised half and you'll begin to learn how to recognize some problems.
From this capture it seems to me the tape isn't playing smoothly. Any line tbc you might have in your gear is fairly weak, as there are notched verticals and horizontal shimmer during the play. Those issued can't be completely repaired without severe over filtering.
The following users thank sanlyn for this useful post:
CZbwoi (04-28-2016)
Can you give a rundown list of your typical dozen or so filters in VirtualDub and Avisynth you like to dabble with when restoring these types of tapes? Just by name, you don't have to explain what each one does, so I can know what to experiment with.
LOL! Well, often the name doesn't tell you much. For example, the "deen.dll" plugin is often used as an edge smoother, among other things. Most plugins come as a package including the filter and documentation. Don't ignore the docs, they tell you what's going on.
Download Avisynth and VirtualDub plugins into separate folders. Plugin zip's have other files you don't want in your plugin folders. I keep a subfolder for each filter, where I unzip the package and keep other articles and web links about the filter.
Below are filters I use most frequently. There are many others, but these get a lot of use. If you've downloaded plugins from scripts posted in the other forum, you might already have some of them:
- The attached Deen_FixVHSoversharp.zip has Deen v1.b1, and FixVHSoversharp
Some filter packages like QTGMC use support plugins that are filters in their own right, such as dfttest.dll.
VirtualDub:
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TemporalSmoother (VirtualDub built-in)
The attached VirtualDub_5.zip has 5 Virtuadub fileters, docs, and some web links:
- Camcorder Color Denoise ("CCD")
- Color Mill
- Gradation curves ("curves")
- Hue-Saturation-Intensity
- SmartSmoother1.1
I sometimes use NeatVideo v2 or v3 for touch up as a final step. Sometimes, not often. Not free. Worth it, but only for special and very specific conditions. Cannot be used as an all-in-one filter. Care is required or you'll ruin your video. The new version 4 is overpriced and over-hyped.
General workflow for analog capture:
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VCR -> frame or pass-thru tbc-> capture -> Avisynth/VirtualDub cleanup -> Encode -> Author
Playback, tbc, capture cards, etc.
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- Panasonic AG-1980P (rebuilt)
- Panasonic PV-S4670 (SVHS, no tbc, uses pass-thru tbc)
- Panasonic PV-4664 (VHS, no tbc, uses pass-thru tbc)
Some of the glitches in your old testb.avi were mentioned in the another forum. I'm using here the Test2b.avi sample
Ah, I should've specified earlier to only refer to the Hi8 sample now as that might be better for me at the moment, but nevertheless it should all be the same in the end. Because I'm not sure if I'll be doing the capturing for my VHS-C and VHS tapes anymore, and will instead resort to people like the DigitalFaq team doing it for me or something, as I've heard it'll be cheaper than me investing in an AG-1980 myself. But they still haven't gotten back to me...speaking of, are you part of that team or used their capturing/restoring services before?
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I believe you already know that levels and chroma are out of spec here, exceeding RGB 255. Levels should be corrected during capture as well as you can within the preferred range RGB16-235 to prevent clipped brights and crushed darks. One can always tweak later.
Alright, this is the part that I still don't fully understand how to do.
* First off, if I'm capturing with Vdub and a compressor like Huffyuv or UT Video, since I'm capturing it in YUVY/YV12 do the levels I change still get changed in the "RGB" format?
* How exactly do I pull up those bars and histograms in Vdub before capturing while getting a live preview of what I'm changing as well? In AvsP (Avisynth) I can pull it up by typing histogram, but that's after the capturing is done.
* Lastly, how do I read the data and know what I'm supposed to alter before capture (and then after)? I see your graphs and your arrows but I still don't understand what they mean. I see 3 different sections in one, then 4 in another, strange wavelines. But I don't exactly get how to read any of it...and then what to alter or do after reading it. Anywhere that describes it *all* in full in the simplest way? (if you don't want to write an essay on it yourself)
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The attached video test2b_old_new_compare.mp4 compares two videos. I combined the left-hand half of frame from the original test2b and the left-hand half of the same frames from the denoised video I posted earlier as test2b_reworked_60p.mp4 in my post #12 on 4/14/2016. In the comparison video, frames from test2b are on the left, frames from the denoised video are on the right. My emphasis was on denoising and attaining a more natural look and balance for interior lighting, avoiding oversaturation and flared colors. The targets you set for your final output determine the choices made for processing. The script I used is similar to the one from jagabo, with just a few differences. The output from my script added three VirtualDub filters to Avisynth's output: Camcorder Color Denoise, some mild color correction with ColorMill, and a very low-power NeatVideo tweak. Compare the noisy half with the denoised half and you'll begin to learn how to recognize some problems.
That looks great.
Here's what I don't get, do you go from Vdub capture > Avisynth > back to Vdub? Is this how you usually do it? And then how do you get what you did in Vdub lastly to be part of the export when you encode the .avs file (I don't see an option to save what you did in Vdub last to the .avs file)?
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From this capture it seems to me the tape isn't playing smoothly. Any line tbc you might have in your gear is fairly weak, as there are notched verticals and horizontal shimmer during the play. Those issued can't be completely repaired without severe over filtering.
Yep, it's the original JVC VHS-C camcorder it was recorded on, but now since it spat out a tape almost horribly and the aforementioned problems make it unwise to use for capture again...that's why I'm going to resort to something or someone else for these tapes (like I stated at the start of the post).
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I sometimes use NeatVideo v2 or v3 for touch up as a final step
I take it this is a standalone software only? And do you use it as a final step meaning after you do all your filtering in Avisynth/Vdub and it can accept .avs scripts? Or do you use it after already encoding to x264 or whatever? And if the latter is true, do you encode/process it once more after using said program since it has to be and won't that degrade quality since more encodes = bad?
Thank you for the filters and download links BTW! Once I get the capturing part down and learn how to do those adjustments beforehand and get back to it I'll return here and download everything you linked to/uploaded when I get to filtering for my Hi8 tapes (and maybe also my VHS/VHS-C tapes if I'm left with having to do it myself and ordering an AG-1980).
I'm not sure if I'll be doing the capturing for my VHS-C and VHS tapes anymore, and will instead resort to people like the DigitalFaq team doing it for me or something, as I've heard it'll be cheaper than me investing in an AG-1980 myself. But they still haven't gotten back to me...speaking of, are you part of that team or used their capturing/restoring services before?
It would cost less than building a proper capture system. I used their service years ago before I learned to do it. I don't work for digitalfaq.
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Originally Posted by CZbwoi
* First off, if I'm capturing with Vdub and a compressor like Huffyuv or UT Video, since I'm capturing it in YUVY/YV12 do the levels I change still get changed in the "RGB" format?
Yes.
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Originally Posted by CZbwoi
* How exactly do I pull up those bars and histograms in Vdub before capturing while getting a live preview of what I'm changing as well? In AvsP (Avisynth) I can pull it up by typing histogram, but that's after the capturing is done.
* Lastly, how do I read the data and know what I'm supposed to alter before capture (and then after)? I see your graphs and your arrows but I still don't understand what they mean. I see 3 different sections in one, then 4 in another, strange wavelines. But I don't exactly get how to read any of it...and then what to alter or do after reading it. Anywhere that describes it *all* in full in the simplest way? (if you don't want to write an essay on it yourself)
The upper histogram with three horizontal colored channels is an Avisynth YUV histogram. The histogram with 4 horizontal channels is a VirtualDub RGB histogram. The arrows point to places where the histograms show clipping. Seems a little odd that you own and use Adobe Premiere Pro but don't know about histograms, of which Adobe Pro has many (those features are one of the reasons for buying an advanced NLE). Anyway, histograms are a graphic breakdown of how colors and brightness are arranged in an image. You make changes in the image with color filters or Avisynth commands and monitor the effect of the changes in a histogram.
The VDUb capture histrogram is a simple YUV luma levels graph. But it works like any horizontal histogram, with dark data at the left side and brights at the right. For reading histograms in general, there are 2 good intros with good images on how to understand what are called "RGB parade" histograms that show three color channels. The links are Photoshop pages for still cameras and Photoshop histograms -- but remember that the graphics principles are the same for motion video. Video is really a stream of still images.
Understanding histograms Part 1 and Part 2 http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tut...istograms1.htm http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tut...istograms2.htm
A YUV histogram usually has 3 horizontal bands, one for luma at the top, and one band each for the U and V data. VDub's capture histogram, like many digital camera histograms, shows lume (Y channel) only. YUV stores chroma data separately from luma. RGB stores brightness and color together in the same group of data bits.
How to know what alterations to make? Most are rather simple. If you see in YUV that your levels at the bright end are smashing against the right-hand wall of the graph, then obviously you have to tone down the brights. The ColorYUV filter has plenty of functions for that. In your test2b sample it was obvious that the entire luma spectrum started in the lighter grays at the left end (black levels too high) and overran the histogram at the right. So you could say that all of the luma data in that "white" horizontal band was shifted toward the right during capture. COLORYUV(off_y=-21) in the script I used is an offset with a negative value that reduces all brightness values both dark and bright by 21 points, or about (roughly) 20RGB values. So the entire luma spectrum gets shifted toward the left or darker side, like taking a straight white stick and moving it to the left from one position to another.
During capture, control darks and brights with proc amp controls. Brightness raises or lowers black levels. Contrast raises or lowers brights. The two controls interact somewhat, so you have to fiddle a bit to keep things inside the desired range. It doesn't take long to get the hang of it. I believe jagabo covered that partially in the other forum. During capture it won't be perfect, just do the best you can to keep darks and brights away from the "red" zone. Tweak later.
When you first start with Avisynth, VirtualDub, color filters, histograms, etc., and even color in Premiere, you do need some initial readup on what the controls do and how to use them. Color correction itself is a big country. But almost anyone can develop an eye and the knowledge to fix color problems. There are tons of free color correction tutorials on the internet for Premiere, AfterEffects, Vegas Pro, and even Photoshop. Because correction principles are effectively the same in all those products, almost any tutorial can be informative. But if you run into a tutor who depends on automated controls for setting color balance, go elsewhere. Those autowhites create disasters. Their authors aren't teaching you anything, they're just pulling off a cheap cop-out.
Except for adjusting basic levels, almost all touchy or very precise color work is impossible during capture. It's a subject more suited to post processing.
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Originally Posted by CZbwoi
Here's what I don't get, do you go from Vdub capture > Avisynth > back to Vdub? Is this how you usually do it? And then how do you get what you did in Vdub lastly to be part of the export when you encode the .avs file (I don't see an option to save what you did in Vdub last to the .avs file)?
I think you're still tied to the all-in-one concept of post processing. That's probably what attracts you to something like AvsPmod.
The captured video is opened in Virtualdub by opening an avs script written for that capture. VirtualDub runs that script and displays the results. The output from Avisynth, including the effects of any Virtualdub filters that might also be applied, is saved to a new, lossless huffyuv or Lagarith avi as a separate avi (VirtualDub top menu: "File..." -> "Save as AVI..."). Sometimes there might be other things I'd want to do with that new avi, usually because doing everything at once can really be slow-running. Sometimes I open one of those new avi's or partial edit into AfterEffects for some special processing, composite work, titling, or whatever, which I also save as a new lossless avi. When I have the final avi results I want, I open the avi in an encoder. After encoding, I either use the encoded video as-is or, more often, I open the encode in an authoring program. Then I burn it to disc or other media for playback. After the project is complete I delete the intermediate avi workfiles (but I save the scripts!) and archive the initial capture to other media.
Because most most analog sources are usually inconsistent in noise, color balance or levels, different parts of the captured video need different processing, color work, or other cleanup. These scenes are cut with an Avisynth script and processed as separate lossless avi's. When all of the segments I want are complete as lossless media, I join them in the encoder.
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Originally Posted by CZbwoi
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Originally Posted by sanlyn
I sometimes use NeatVideo v2 or v3 for touch up as a final step
I take it this is a standalone software only?
It's a filter plugin. There are speclfic versions for Premiere Pro, Premiere Elements. After Effects. Final Cut Pro, Final Cut Express, Vegas Pro, Sony Movie Studio, VirtualDub, and others. https://www.neatvideo.com/
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Originally Posted by CZbwoi
And do you use it as a final step meaning after you do all your filtering in Avisynth/Vdub....
As I mentioned earlier, you can add VirtualDub filters in VDub's filter chain and apply them to the output of an Avisynth script while the script is running in VirtualDub.
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Originally Posted by CZbwoi
and it can accept .avs scripts?
No.
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Originally Posted by CZbwoi
Or do you use it after already encoding to x264 or whatever?
Never.
I should mention that "x264" isn't a codec. The codec is "h.264". X264 is one of many h.264 encoders.
The following users thank sanlyn for this useful post:
CZbwoi (04-30-2016)
What would you say about Ut Video or the (newer) MagicYUV? Have you used either of them, specifically the more battle-tested Ut Video? I hear Ut Video is the new "standard" in terms of compression and size while the new chief in town is Magic (barring some small bugs).
Thank you for all the help! If I get stuck on converting/restoring I'll come back to this topic and ask away, you're a great teacher.
I've used all of them. Huffyuv and Lagarith have been around for a long time. Most media players either have them bult-in or can use them if they're installed. The other two are newer, some media players can't use them. I use huffyuv for capture, Lagarith for post-processing (very slightly smaller files, and it works with YV12).
Most media players either have them bult-in or can use them if they're installed. The other two are newer, some media players can't use them.
Do you mean that if you capture something with Ut Video some media players won't be able to play it even after filtering/encoding to x264, because of what it was captured in?
If you capture something using the UT video codec, it can't be UT and h.264 at the same time. In order for a program or encoding app to encode a video to h.264, the video must be decompressed or decoded , then encoded to h.264. A video that is compressed with UT codec and then encoded to h.264 is no longer a UT-compressed video. Video can't be two codecs at the same time.
Some media players can play a UT compressed video, some can't. I think MPC-BE will play the audio but not the video. I've never had a problem with huffyuv or Lagarith.
Aha, I see, if I go from Ut Video Vdub capture -> encoding to x264(H.264) I should have no playback problems whatsoever. I should stick with Huffyuv unless Ut proves to be significantly better, but it is good to know.
Thanks for correcting. I don't remember specifically which players had the problem. I have 6 players, 2 only played the video. Really doesn't matter, if you have at least 1 player that works it's OK, but it's inconvenient.
