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With the VC500, should I capture at 720 x 480 and then resize to 640 x 480? I'm thinking that the resize should be last right after masking (Crop and Addborder). What resize filter should I use in Avisynth?
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Yes, capture 720, resize last after all other processing. :congrats:
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The favored resizer has been Spline36Resize. Best compromise between clean detail retention and minimum artifacts. Be very careful resizing interlaced, telecined, or unfiltered video.
Capturing at 720 width gives you more horizontal resolution for later processing. |
spline36 is fine:
avisource() filters..... spline36(1280,720) # example |
I 'm trying to learn more about adjusting levels. I get that luminance values levels should be 16-235 to prevent clipping when expanded to RGB 0-255. I adjust the brightness and contrast before capture. Of course, scene to scene this can change so I get it pretty close. After capture, I need to manually tweak the values. Some scenes may have some pixels below or above 16 and/or below or above 235. Is there anything wrong with doing it this way?
Avisource("Video.avi") AssumeTFF() Levels(0,1.0,255,16,235,dither=true,coring=false) If that is not really correct, then what should I use? Levels? ColorYUV? Tweak? Why? Can Autoadjust be good enough for my purposes with the right parameters? I'm using AVS+ if that matters. |
So, as usual, life got in the way and I had to put this on hold for a few months. Time to try again.
I just bought an ES10 for about $50 and it should be here in about 1 week. I have the VC500 and a JVC HR-S3500U SVHS. I know the JVC is not one of the top recommended, but I got it for $5 at the thrift store and I figure it's better than what I had. The SVHS has a "Video Stabilizer." Should this be on or off? It also has "Video Calibration." Should it be on or off? Is the "Tape Dub Mode" the same as "Edit Mode" that I've read about? If so, should it be on? I will turn the ES10's DNR off. So I run a S-Video cable and red/white rca audio cables from the SVHS output to the ES10 rear input. Then from the ES10 rear output, run S-Video and audio cables to the VC500. Does this all sound correct? |
From what I've been able to gather from reading threads here is that the current recommendations are for Video Calibration to be off. I can't tell from the manual if your VCR has any kind of TBC/NR, but I think not. If it does, turning on Video Stabilizer turns that off. I have a couple tapes that need it turned on for the tape to play properly. I've done test captures with the various options turned on and off, and frankly other than Video Stabilizer I have a very hard time seeing any difference in the captures, but then the tapes I'm using are fairly noise free, they're first generation, etc. Best way is to try the options yourself and see what you see.
Erich |
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The bigger problem is that your questions imply that you don't yet understand what brightness and contrast adjustments are doing. A sample of what you're trying to correct would make it easier to explain and understand. Quote:
I keep re-reading the earlier posts but I still don't see why you're resizing. Is it for internet posting? |
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For denoising and chroma noise, I will be using the VHS Denoise script in the first post. I am pretty happy with the results. I understand that brightness controls the black point and contrast the white point. You adjust the brightness until all or most the pixels are at or close to 16 and adjust the contrast so that the highest values are at or near 235. Is this wrong? I will not be manually adjusting scene by scene. I will manually adjust so that overall each capture is close enough. I may then use AutoAdjust to get closer. My monitor could probably use some calibration, but it is going to have to be by sight. I honestly don't know exactly how to do it. Do I use my graphics card settings? The Win10 calibration? The monitor controls? ICC profiles? |
Which one would be better then?
ATI 600 USB, ATI AIW USB or Diamond VC500 USB? |
Forget the AIW USB.
It's difficult to tell the difference between the ATI 600 USB and the Diamond VC500 USB. Many can tell the difference right away, especially with a histogram that shows black clipping at y=16 with the 600. But some people don't see that well, and others wouldn't know a histogram from a Popsicle. Both devices are decent performers for lossless capture. Any way you look at it, VHS requires cleanup after capture. |
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I'm just not a VC500 fan, seen too many weird things. I wonder if it's like some Hauppauge products, where the chip shifted mid-production. Perhaps we need to start cracking open cards that have odd reports and samples? The 600 is obviously good, as are many (not all) of the clones/near-clones. |
Now that I have better equipment, I want to take this one step at a time. I'm using the ES10 for pass-through.
The clip titled "No Adjustment" is a capture without changing the levels. On the "Levels Adjusted" I raised the brightness until the VDub histogram did not show any red on the left side. I used crop so the the black edges did not affect the histogram. I also slightly raised the contrast. Then I captured. To me, "Levels Adjusted" looks a little too bright. Is it actually correct or am I doing it wrong? I know there are other problems, but I'd like to focus on levels right now if that is a good first step to getting the capture "pretty good." I'm not going to be as picky as some may be, but I do want it to look better. I have way too many hours of tape to be overly picky. No Adjustment https://drive.google.com/open?id=16b...PU6jfL45vynV8I Levels Adjusted https://drive.google.com/open?id=1qb...83WNIKOsCxQGvN |
In "No Adjustment" darks are crushed throughout.
The "Adjusted" version has a high gamma that makes the second shot look almost overexposed -- but, my friends, is so common with VHS that it should be standard procedure to have to adjust levels differently for different scenes. Unlike digital video, analog levels vary with waveforms, and they're rarely consistent from moment to moment. The idea behind adjusting levels during capture is to avoid crushed darks and clipped brights that can't be recovered later. Post-processing is the refinement and repair of the many faults of VHS, of which murky shadow rendition is an eternal fault. There are two shots in the the "Adjusted' video. Both need some tweaking. The first shot of the audience is the one that's too bright. It's an almost-available-light audience shot that could stand to have its gamma and bright contrast lowered a bit. We don'tn really care about seeing that much bright detail in a shot of this type, and it probably looked even darker when broadcast on tv. The second shot needs slightly lower gamma (midtones) and brighter brights (the contrast setting in Tweak() should give the right effect for the bright end). Does this mean that many scenes in typical VHS projects need different processing for some (but not all) maverick levels and/or color changes? Yes. And the audience shot has a lot of low-exposure camera noise. The second, brighter shot has much less noise. If you used a denoiser that targets the darker shot and used the same denoiser for both shots, the brighter shot will look over-filtered (and it probably will be). |
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I understand it can change scene to scene, but if I can at least get it so that no scene clips or is too terrible, can I later use something like AutoAdjust or something similar to "automatically" get each scene closer? There is just no way I can spend time adjusting scene by scene for 100's of hours of video. I get that it won't be "as good as possible", but I'm ok with good enough, better than it is, or as close as possible without manually doing scene by scene. Also, how do I determine if gamma needs adjusting and how much to adjust it? |
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