Huffyuv YUY2 AVI to Blu-ray conversion? (and TBC samples!)

[sanlyn]

I use the same settings, except for "Resync mode". Show below are the default settings. I've never changed them since my first VDub captures more than a dozen years ago.

[premiumcapture]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sanlyn

I use the same settings, except for "Resync mode". Show below are the default settings. I've never changed them since my first VDub captures more than a dozen years ago.

I'll try this out, pretty sure its the base settings. I know that the different options exist for different hardware situations, but I haven't had much of any trouble so far. Going from VCR - AVT - capture device - Windows 8.1 - VirtualDub with Lagarith compression - USB 3.0 external.

[sanlyn]

I'll keep using my AIW and XP for capture until either or both evaporate into the ether. And if they do, I have copies of each.

[premiumcapture]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sanlyn

I'll keep using my AIW and XP for capture until either or both evaporate into the ether. And if they do, I have copies of each.

I owned a Surface RT and hated the new Windows, but 8.1 is to 8 what 7 was to Vista. I'm not saying 8.1 is absolutely better, but I have been surprisingly happy with it. Boots faster than my Mac and I like the look. I never owned an AIW device but I used to use a Pinnacle 801e and was very happy with it. I am using the VC500 right now and its probably the most reliable cheap capture device for VirtualDub you can buy new.

Are the jitter and deviation markers at the bottom of VirtualDub of any significance? I'm sure they wouldn't be there if they weren't, but the MPC statistics read the same (approx. 1 ms.).

[sanlyn]

I never noticed. Do they mean anything, or is it just more info? I monitor the entire capture and watch what I'm doing. I capture in (roughly) 30 minute segments. If I hear bad audio thru the headphones, see bad frames, see the dropped frame count go above 0, etc., everything stops and we take a look around. As far as I can recall, it's only happened four times since I started capturing my VHS tapes, which was about 350 tape hours ago. Only 200 or so hours left.

I tried a few other capture cards, ATI knockoffs, USB, DV, etc. When I saw the results, I searched for and purchased two pristine copies of the original AIW's that I still use, plus another 9600XT that I found in-box that had never been opened for chrissake(!), and built a second PC to match. It would be extremely difficult for me to try working with anything else. If all this AIW stuff disappeared tomorrow, I'd just have to find something else to do.

[premiumcapture]

My best knowledge points towards audio packet loss and sync error, but ironically enough, any error from a properly captured video via VirtualDub usually does better by this measure than many commercial DVDs/Blu-Rays I've ripped with MakeMKV.

I always found it very strange that the AIW cards are rated the best for these purposes, yet many reviews I find online talk about them like they are terrible. I have read site articles about them, but what is the real one up against other 422 options?

One other thing - maybe I am looking at the wrong cards. Any chance you can paste some eBay links to the USB model?

[sanlyn]

eBay: not up to date on eBay recently, having shot the budget on an AG-1980 purchase and rebuild. offhand, I haven't seen a fully-usable AIW on eBay in some time. I already went the course with other cards while they were new to the market, including USB. I thought the ATI 600 USB was a lot like the old AIW's but since it looked no better there was no sense discarding AIW's I already owned and no sense buying and keeping a USB device I wouldn't use.

I believe that installing ATI drivers was the big bugaboo about the AIW line, and gamers complained that PQ appeared to have processing priority over speed for gaming. As for installing, I did have a problem one time with a Win2K PC until I got into the release notes and found that I'd used a manual installation sequence that was the opposite of the one recommended. Another issue was the expectation that capturing directly to MPEG2 with MMC would somehow give "better" results than capturing to lossless (I never cared that much for MMC myself. Nice player in its day, too, but clunky to operate). But I never saw rough complaints fom users who read instructions or knew something about what they were doing.

I, too, have seen audio synch error numbers, but they don't look very big to me and they seem to represent an average. I wouldn't expect absolutely perfect a/v sync anyway on 100% of 275,000 frames. I wonder what the acceptable limits are, numerically. If you compare the size of the AGP or PCI card with that of shop equipment the size of a pile of suitcases, I guess you should expect a little less (and at considerably lower cost) from any graphics card. The connection dongle that came with the card was a source of contention -- took me a while to find a replacement for one with a bad s-video plug a couple years back. Those dongles never inspired that much confidence from me, they just never seemed very solid and I always felt I had to be really really careful. People also complained that the video output to their TV, whether CRT in the old days or LCD later, wasn't as spiffy as the output from their cable box or DVD player. That aspect of adapter performance has improved since (sort of), but I still think it's a case of unreasonable expectations from a relatively miniscule device designed primarily for computer monitors.

The old AIW's were not "professional" capture or display devices. True, they cost several times the price of generic PC graphics cards. But they were nowhere near the cost of shop-grade hardware or software and a bit less than the cyber-powered high speed gaming cards with their hilariously inaccurate color and wimpy blacks. The AIW's came with early OEM versions of Pinnacle Studio -- an OK little learning tool for us noobs, but in short order I discarded the junk freebies for more upscale freebies like VDub and Avisynth. Eventually stopped installing the MMC component, which was no competition for higher-end DVD recorders from Panny and Toshiba for direct-to-DVD recording. Besides, MMC's codecs liked to overwrite some legitimate Windows registry entries, and uninstalling didn't revive the old codec setups. Then there were problems caused by people who were trusting enough to install those ATI drivers from Windows Update. In that case, all it took was one Microsoft update and one consequent total XP re-install to keep me away forever from Microsoft's attempt at monopolizing the world's drivers for stuff they don't make.

I got started with AIW's by accident anyway. One of my first PC's was a Gateway special that came with AIW installed. On first play I could not escape the fact that the ATI's color and clarity simply blew away the nVidia's on my previous Dell PC's (both of which developed hardware or software glitches very early and brought a quick end to my career as a Dell customer). The TV reception was sorta OK but clever, screen repainting was sometimes a bit pokey, and then there were all these instructions on how to use and manage the thing. But it came with a "huge" 8MB of video RAM. Sometime later, my first VirtualDub capture with an AIW had me hooked. The AIW didn't do everything perfectly but it was always tough to beat for a few specific things, like capturing analog video.

[vhsdigital34]

Thank you very much sanlyn!

Just saw you don't get any dropped frames off of your 7500 capture card. Mine consistently have on average 2 dropped frames in the beginning. Is it my processor speed (P4 2.4 ghz)? Or maybe because I originally had MMC installed (saw you mentioning registry issues) and uninstalled? Should I reformat and reinstall everything minus MMC? I'm willing to start over if it means 0 dropped frames and 0 jitter.

Also, how do people get a copy of XP? I have a disc that I'm assuming would only work for the dell it came with so not sure if it would work on another machine if I have to start completely from scratch

[premiumcapture]

Do you start capturing before or after you press play?

[sanlyn]

That happens occasionally, certainly rather rare with my 7500 an 9600XT. But I start capturing as soon as the tape rolls, which often has odities in the leaders and other junk. But if dropped frames continue during the main material, I figure something's wrong. That's when I stop, reboot, and check things out.

Badly stored and damaged tape will cause dropped frames. Poor machine alignment and other mechanics cause it as well, and a tbc can do only so much if the signal is garbage. If you consistently get dropped frames, something's wrong.

[vhsdigital34]

It happens whether I've hit capture first or hit play first. But never after the first few seconds. Jitter counter settles after 10 seconds or so

[premiumcapture]

It sounds like your drive is probably just spinning up.

[sanlyn]

I usually start capture before play, but sometime not. It never seemed to make much difference. Usually I don't see any drops, period. Zero all the way. Now and then 1 drop, rarely 2 at the very start, but not after the first few seconds. On the couple of occasions I mentioned, on one session I got 2 drops during the first couple of minutes, then another drop a minute later, then another. So I stopped everything and rebooted. Problem solved. On another session I got a dropped frame maybe every 30 seconds or so, so I stopped, repacked the tape, and started over. Again, problem solved.

I did get one absolutely horrible tape from a nephew, football game that had been played to death. Required repacking several times, and needed the line tbc pass-thru and the AVT to calm things down. I still had a couple of drops late in the capture, and I recall seeing that jumbled, jittery picture from a really bad spot in the tape, some audio sputter, and 3 dropped frames at exactly the same point. Later, I repacked the tape and re-captured that short segment again, this time with 1 lost frame. Let's face it: some tapes are real crap. As it was, that one damaged spot on the tape had about a dozen bad frames within 2 seconds. On one of my VCRs, that section wouldn't track at all (I got about one and a half seconds of Panny's blue screen). I figured one lost frame was what I'd settle for, rather than risk sending a bad piece of tape thru a good machine again.

I don't think I ever noticed the jitter figure changing.

[vhsdigital34]

Does that mean a faulty hard drive that needs to be replaced? My 2nd 160GB PATA hdd regularly drops frames even after.

Could it be configuration or maybe uninstalling MMC (registry issue)?

[sanlyn]

MMC doesn't have to be installed for capturing with VirtualDub and an ATI card. I haven't installed MMC since 2003. Even with MMC installed, why would it be running when you're capturing with VirtualDub?

A bad drive could be an issue, but dropped frames doesn't necessarily mean the drive is bad. You could have a bad case of HDD constipation (i.e,. fragmentation).

A 160GB drive sounds a little small to me for working with lossless video nowadays, unless you use it only for captures. But dropped frames can also result from: faulty VCR tracking or alignment, hopelessly damaged tape, running too many other programs during capture, malware infections that slow your system as well as some brands of memory-hungry antivirus software, system timers such as screen savers, overheated CPU....shall we go on?

[vhsdigital34]

Thanks sanlyn. I didn't have it on when I had it. I only mentioned MMC cause you've hinted (post#128) that installing it messes with windows registry and uninstalling MMC wouldn't restore it back to the way it was. That's why I was wondering if reformatting and reinstalling everything (without MMC) would be a solution.

Before I start capturing I always run disk clean up followed by defrag. I go into task manager and force turn off whatever is the largest resource hog (antivirus). And I select virtual dub to have one step higher from normal priority (too chicken to force it higher cause not sure if it would make things less stable). I haven't connected the landline (doesn't have wifi) since Microsoft stopped supporting it. So anything I download is from my other computer. After running it through virus scan I transfer it over through a flash drive. The only things installed on the freshly installed XP 7 months ago are virtualdub, huffy, drivers, etc.

Funny thing is, I'll capture the same tape on the 160gb secondary drive like recommended and it'll drop frames like crazy but if I capture it with the OS drive, it'll drop 2 frames in the beginning with the jitter going a little erratic (on every type of tape) and it'll be fine after 15 seconds (whether I hit capture first or play first). I don't have anything running while capturing. Computer is also very responsive cause I keep it lean. I'm stumped. It's a Dell Dimension 2400

The XP machine is strictly for capturing (since I didn't have a larger PATA lying around). The second hdd is on a separate IDE cable. Is that a possible reason? I'll try anything at this point.

I dream of the day I can capture without dropped frames and jitter throughout. Especially on the secondary drive.

Can Lordsmurf, kpmedia, admin, or anybody from the site help bounce ideas around with this as well?

[lordsmurf]

We've all been really busy this week. Projects and site upgrades, mostly. I've been monitoring this thread as the replies have been made for the past few days.

For the most part, I agree with sanlyn on most things.

- Media Player Classic is my favorite for viewing lossless AVI files. VLC only for watch-ready formats: MPEG, Xvid, H.264.

- I disagree about Huffyuv. I've used it across multiple machines for 10+ years now. The main issue with Lagarith is that cross-platform support sucks. It's Windows only, while Huffyuv is Windows, Mac and Linux. It also has better compression by about 5-10gb/hour.

- I don't know why sanlyn has a glitched video screen cap. After thorough troubleshooting, "video" error often turned out to be a dying drive. So beware! If you're getting dropped frames, glitched/corrupted video, etc, the drive may be bad! It's happens. Even good drives die in time. It's why watching the temps and various error codes is important. I use the commercial version of HDTune for this.

- JVC vs. Panasonic "loss of detail" really depends on the tape. Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

- Always leave an external TBC in the chain, unless it's specifically causing harm. Why? Well, it prevents frame drop issues. That's the main purpose, even when the capture card reports no dropped frames. You've got to understand how capturing works. It can capture a corrupt frame just as easily as it can drop them. The TBC fixes this.

- FYI: Leave these test files. DO NOT DELETE THEM! This is a great thread for showing off TBC functionality. I plan to make this a sticky/indexed topic. (If ever you need more FTP space, ask. Don't delete "old" stuff.)

- AVT-8710 frame/field "freeze" is the mark of a bad unit. Good ones do not do this. (Well, usually not. I've seen it once myself, but the tape was completely fubar. I'd not seen it before, and I've not seen it since.)

- Most all video has off IRE levels. Realize it will never be perfect. Clean it as best as possible, and move on. I rarely use histograms, preferring my own two eyes for the final grading. Most videographers get their panties in a wad over this one. Yes, it's better form, but also realize I don't shoot video, and rarely convert good video. I get the videos that are completely screwed up, and these tapes can easily fool the graphs and charts.

- VirtualDub 1.10.x has issues. That's why the 1.9.x branch is still active. Our download also has a lot of pre-installed filters, which are useful for restoring video. The official one comes virgin, and you have to track down filters on your own -- some of which had gone missing in past years.

- Use full processing mode. Only use stream copy when you're just editing with scissors -- cutting thing off or out. Commercials, tape ends, etc. There's no reason to use fast recompress.

- ATI AIW cards were somewhat competing with Matrox 15 years ago. The capture chips were just as professional as the Matrox cards of the day. The only difference was Matrox came with Adobe Premiere, which is why that card was $1000 more. It also had timeline acceleration for MPEG, whereas ATI had capture acceleration with the Ligos-based hybrid hardware/software for MPEG. Quality was arguably the same, but ATI went for the high-end consumer market (recording, capture), while Matrox went for video editors. Since the 90s, I'd wanted a good video system, but what I wanted did not yet exist. In 2001, it finally existed -- an Intel P4 1.8ghz with an ATI AIW Radeon and Pioneer DVR-103 DVD burner -- and I bought one for several grand. Before that, I was mostly analog, though I had access to MPEG encoding from SGI MediaBase (look it up if you've never heard of it).

- Windows Disk Cleanup is useless. Sometimes is deletes good content! If you want to clean the drive, then format it was a non-quick format. Then run a test utility on it. It should be fine for several use at minimum.

- If you're getting dropped frames, then refer to the dropped frames guide. It may be the chipset, if it's a VIA.

[sanlyn]

Thanks for clarifying and filling in the gaps, lordsmurf.

Possibly I should refrain from getting too involved in discussions about dropped frames and audio sync. For one thing, the captures posted aren't consistent concerning dropped frames and frozen fields. It will happen in one capture, but not in others, then another capture does something else. Unless I've done something wrong somewhere or hit the wrong button, or just get a fouled-up tape, I haven't had those problems except for the few I mention -- and in those case it was usually because I got in a rush or didn't watch what I was doing. The only settings I've changed from VirtualDub capture defaults were frame rate (often not needed), capture size, and compressor.

Premiumcapture might have a point about different capture drivers. I've always used whatever ATI installed. The capture drivers must match the same version of ATI's Catalyst being used. The one time I had a problem with that was the one I mentioned (allowing Windows Update to install WDM drivers that screwed up everything in sight). I started using Catalyst 4.7 in 2004 for XP, haven't changed it since, and haven't had all these problems. How other capture cards from other makers handle all this is unknown to me: when I tried other cards, I removed ATI's capture setup and used the maker's software. When I stopped using those other cards, I uninstalled them and reinstalled ATI's setup.

The only time I had bad audio sync was when I started a capture using the F5 key (known as "compatibility mode"). The audio sync was so whacked I had to repeat the capture using F6 to start. I read where VirtualDub was set to erase the difference between F5 and F6, but that wasn't my experience.

As I've always used quality or high-end machines from Panasonic and JVC, I can't remark about other players. When a player gave me problems, I either had it repaired or stopped using it. Except for my rebuilt AG-1980, all of my VCR's are from 1996-1998. The only godawful JVC I ever used were two copies of the 9911 -- I think lordsmurf can comment that this specific JVC model was a serious downturn for JVC, and both units were returned. The best JVC I ever owned was a (model number not recalled) 1992 heavy-duty JVC that predated JVC's with tbc. Beautiful recording, nice audio, great playback. Like an idiot I sold it when I remarried and moved a few years later. No one to blame except myself for that. Today I play a couple of old tapes made on that machine, some of it at 6-hour speed; I have no complaints and am still impressed by what that 1992 machine could do. Have to kick myself every time I think about selling that JVC. The only other VCR I used was a 1991 SONY "HF" series that was rebuilt for a lotta money in 2006 and that I still own and use now and then.

So I'm not sure what's going on when I see a lot of these complaints.

Huffyuv: I have no problem transferring video from one AIW PC to another AIW PC. The problem occurs when I transfer those vids to a PC that doesn't have AIW drivers. The Lagarith videos play anywhere. However, the huff problem doesn't occur if I use Avisynth to open those huff files on other PC's. I have no answer for that except that I see that problem reported in other forums. Some users capture with the huffyuv furnished with ffdshow, which is always a problem on all of my PC's. I have to activate ffdshow's version to work with those files and always convert them to Lagarith.

There are so many variations that I don't have an answer for some of this except to report what has always worked for me.

IDE drives: Both of my capture machines use Western Digital PATA drives mounted on Promise PCI controller cards. I built those PC's with motherboards that can use IDE as well as SATA drives in case the old IDE technology fails and a PATA replacement isn't available. The OS is on a separate drive on a separate controller input and contains only the OS and application installs. I don't even use the "My documents" folder on those drives and I even have Avisynth and VirtualDub on a separate drive. VirtualDub capture uses a "Temp" folder that isn't on the OS drive. The OS on 4 machines is XP SvcPack 3, and one of those XP machines is an exact copy of another. The only difference between the two is an AIW 7500 on one and the AIW 9600XT on the other. Both use the same Catalyst 4.7 drivers. The other two XP machines don't have AIW cards, but use new ATI's. I built a Win7 machine that I use only for processing HD and has nothing to do with SD capture.

I don't know that this information is helpful, but there it is.

[vhsdigital34]

Thank you Lordsmurf!

I will promptly request for a refund on the AVT-8710 to return (hope it's not too late). This was the green/black version. If ghosting is happening just on the one tape and when it's only the AVT's TBC that's on, is it the AVT?
I'll switch all my virtualdub to the download version from this site.
I've already done a full format on the secondary drive before using it but still creating dropped frames like crazy. I'll refer to the guide and come back.

Thanks again!!

[sanlyn]

Probably a good idea with that AVT. I tried the TBC-1000 some time back, I thought image was too soft. Others might disagree there.

I bought my AVT-8710 in 2004 from B&H PhotoVideo. Said to be the most reliable source for that product, and two acquaintances got theirs from the same seller. I've bought lots of gear from B&H. http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/browse...5/N/4294545851 . They have other tbc's (for a lotta money, too), but for some time now the only one I've seen from the broadcast shops is the black model. Haven't seen the green one around for a while, but it seems that the greenies being sold now are used, surplus, clearance, or otherwise suspect. Shops like B&H carry only new stuff and they keep tabs on any product that gives unusual return or defect problems. Over the years I picked up a product or two that didn't work (like the JVC mentioned) and an HP monitor that I just didn't like, but B&H took 'em back no questions asked. Also had a defective SLR lens maybe 20 or 25 years back which B&H exchanged on the spot.

Maybe others have a take on the green models. For tbc as well as anti-macrovision, I'm using a Panasonic DMR-ES15 as pass-thru most of the time, or just my AG-1980.

The new v1.10 VirtualDub ostensibly was fixed for Win7 and Win8, but I see complaints so I haven't used it.