Critique my workflow!
 

I've only recently dialed in my workflow to a point where I'm really happy with the results. I know there is always room for improvement, and know that some of the elders of this forum will eagerly give me *friendly* advice.

- JVC HR-S7800U
- out via s-video cable
- into Roland Edirol VMC-1
- out via firewire to a couple of adapters and into
- Macbook Pro, recorded via
- Quicktime, high quality (not max)
- converted to mp4 via HandBrake and uploaded to Google Drive

I'm really impressed the VMC-1. It's beautiful with all the different colored blinking lights, it has done a fantastic job as a TBC. Quicktime maintains a stable time code the entire time - even for files 3 and 4 hours long. I do see some ghosting fairly often, especially when something is strongly backlit or has bright objects, but I haven't done a fair comparison against anything else. The ghosting isn't too distracting to me, but I'm sure it would be to lordsmurf.

My father-in-law put together a PC for me, however it doesn't have a firewire port or built in graphics card. I realize that the VMC-1 is creating an mpeg file, so I'm not sure if it's worth setting up the PC to use VirtualDub.

Is there a huge difference in image quality / compression between "high" and "max" quality in Quicktime? It's an enormous difference in file size, but I can't really see the difference.

Also, I'm in hearing your theories as to why DVDs are still relevant.

Thank you guys!

- VCR good
- s-video good

Edirol, meh, reports/reviews all over the place, it's not a TBC, contains weak frame sync (TBC?). But at least you're trying to use something (more than nothing), and if it gives good results on your source tapes (ie, not all source tapes, just yours) then glad it's working.

- What are "couple of adapters"???
- Are you using the Edirol as a DV encoder/bridge, like a DV camera?
- Mac as OS, but what capture card?

Related: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vcr-...html#post41351

Quicktime? I'd think ProRes422 would be better, smaller files, same quality. But what you're doing isn't bad, not lossy, at least not what I'm reading here.

Handbrake, blah. Hybrid has Mac version, much better at deinterlace especially (QTGMC via Vapoursynth on Mac)

The VMC creates MPEG? Huh? I thought it was a DV box that doubled as a video processor (in DV colorspaces).

DVDs are relevant for distribution. These days, it's mostly institutions/organizations/businesses, not indy users at large. But lots of hobbyists and TV/video/toon collectors still prefer discs. Lots of older folks, rural folks, need discs.

Video sample needed.

Adapters are Thunderbolt to Firewire > Firewire to UBS-C

Yes I'm using the VMC-1 as the capture device.

I only have two options for video quality in Quicktime.

I'm not entirely sure whether or not a VMC is creating an mpeg, but I figure that was the case with all DV devices. As a professional photographer, I imagine devices that create mpegs as someone shooting in JPEG rather than raw. Essentially the device is baking settings or specific presets into the file, rather than rendering a more raw type file. Is this accurate?

Oh, and Edirol seems to be doing quite a good job with TBC - comparable in my experience with the Panasonic EMS-10's TBCishness, which I believe you're fond of. It's giving me good results on tapes from about 20 different people so far.

The Edirol has a line TBC (like ES10/15, maybe not crippled for anti-copy, unconfirmed how strong it is), but frame/framesync TBC is still unknown/debatable.

Maybe this will help you:
MPEG = JPEG ... bitrate is low/med/hi/max settings
DV = compressed TIFF
lossless AVI, ProRes422 = uncompressed TIFF, DNG, RAW
uncompressed = BMP

Sample video clip still required for proper critique.

Here is a clip from a file I did two days ago.

That helps, thank you.

This clip is from right at the beginning of the tape - hence the jitter.

-- merged --

One more clip.

I owned the VMC-1, While it outperforms the ADVC-300 it is nowhere near a lossless AVI capture, I had to recapture all the tapes I did with it and I was lucky enough to sell it for a profit. The worst part is when you compress to h.264. Capturing DV was my biggest mistake, luckily I did not do too many tapes with it.

Why did it feel like such a mistake for you?

As I explained in post #7 and as demonstrated in your clips. By the way the VMC-1 is a DV converter not mpeg-2, If whatever program you are capturing is outputing MPEG-2 that's a double butcher, plus another butcher when you convert to mp4.

I'm capturing using Quicktime.

I understand that converting and converting to mp4 will compress the file, but why do you say it's a "butcher"? Obviously when compressing a file, you're going to have some quality loss.

What major benefits are you seeing from a lossless avi file as compared to a DV file?

lossless means no lossy compression, more chroma resolution 4:2:2, on top of that encoding from a lossless incur less damage than encoding from DV (4:1:1 or 4:2:0 PAL), and in lossless you have the opportunity to set the right frame dimensions losslessly using vdub2. As we all know that analog video recorded on tape has rough frame edges that used for timing the frame itself but cannot be seen on old TV sets.

The video in NTSC for example is recorded in 720x525 (720 pixels is just a representation of frequency, and was chosen according to D1 standard for digital sampling for reasons that are not relevant to this discussion), The video frame would look like this on tape - the picture is not mine, just from a forum:

http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...1&d=1610649345

Broadcast capture card/devices capture at 720x486 and the frame would look like this:
http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...1&d=1610649345

A consumer capture card/device captures according to D1 standard in 720x480, the frame would look like this:
http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...1&d=1610649345

But the active video area is only 704x480 and must be cropped accordingly or you may get a slightly wrong aspect ratio and ugly black bars on the sides, the frame would look like this after cropping:
http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...1&d=1610649345

That's not all, The frame doesn't have an aspect ratio yet, So when encoding to a playback format such as h.264 you can either set a PAR flag to display 704x480 in 4:3 which is a legal digital resolution, or resize to 640x480 for a square pixel, and the frame would look like this:
http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...1&d=1610649345

While the file is still lossless you can de-interlace and encode to h.264 or just encode as interlaced, which ever option you prefer, That's how it should be done and that's how we learned to do it from the experts.

By the way your DV capture device is setting the aspect ratio from 720x480 (720x576 PAL) which is slightly off and not noticeable by most people however it is still not accurate, Only true DV, Digital8 and DVD contain 720x480 (576) as full active area with a completely different PAR flag, The analog digitized video is always 704x480(576).

Excellent post. :congrats:

To add:

Next your need mask overscan noise, not crop, as you'll incur further damage by cropping. The reason is because you'll either harm interlace, or your harm sharpness (crop and resize up to the existing 640x480 4:3 frame). The masked recentered image will not be overly lossy.

FYI, side comment: The chroma noise in those samples is really ugly. On motion, it'll be far worse than the still.

As long as there is no cropping vertically there is no damage, 704x480 is the resolution the D1 standard intended to display, so cropping horizontally is just a matter of removing the padded pixels and correcting the stored aspect ratio, Only DV and DVD are intended to have full 720x480 frame.

The frame used is not from my videos, It was posted by a member at VH and I used it because it has the full 720x525 NTSC resolution.

WaxEgger have a look at the post by jwills #5

http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...agp-winxp.html

I think jwilis has the answer - and a much better alternative to the Roland Edirol VMC-1 - might be worth investigating

Honestech make the Vidbox that can capture VHS SD perfectly at 4:2:2 with current drivers for MacOS

https://vidbox.company/products/video/