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

[vhsdigital34]

Hi Lordsmurf/msgohan/sanlyn,

Here's a new set with less jerky movement. TBC on the Sony DCRTRV520 camcorder was kept on for all four. Please let me know which produces the most faithful to the tape. Taking the AVT out on these captures creates continuous jitter as well as dropped frames on Virtualdub. Thank you very much!!

-DNR on, with AVT:
http://cdn4.digitalfaq.com/vhsdigita...R_DCRTRV52.avi
-DNR off, with AVT:
http://cdn4.digitalfaq.com/vhsdigita...R_DCRTRV52.avi
-DNR on, without AVT:
http://cdn4.digitalfaq.com/vhsdigita...R_DCRTRV52.avi
-DNR off, without AVT:
http://cdn4.digitalfaq.com/vhsdigita...R_DCRTRV52.avi

[sanlyn]

You seem to have some seriously damaged tapes. The last 4 captures, like previous batches, each have different results. One of them disputes the theory that the AVT is causing bright top-border flashing -- in this last group, the only top flashing that occurs is in the capture that has NoNDR and NoAVT.

You appear to have tape damage at about 400 frames into each capture. This bad spot plays with different defects in every setup, including one or more frame hops in all 4 captures. The capture that plays this damage most steadily had DNR and AVT both turned on. The others had multiple hops and/or reversed fields on one or more frames.

The link to Frame_Demo_5fps.mp4 (https://www.mediafire.com/?bv9ely92u61pbuq, 54MB, no popup ads) plays the same segment from each capture, starting with the first non-disturbed frame in each capture. There are 4 segments separated by 1/2 second of black frames. Each segment is played twice before moving to the next segment. The frames are deinterlaced to study motion and noise field-by-field. Frame motion is slowed to 5 fps. The segments are played and identified in this order:
DNR AVT
NoDNR AVT
DNR NoAVT
NoDNR NoAVT

The link to STARTUP_NoDNR_NoAVT_1fps.mp4 (https://www.mediafire.com/?18sb9my7tzf8cka, 6.3 MB, no popup ads) is deinterlaced playback of even and odd frames from the startup noise of the "NoDNR_NoAVT" capture. You will see one bright flash and two instances of field reversal during play. The video plays at 1 fps. I'm not certain about the purpose of all the startup noise in these captures -- maybe I missed the explanation somewhere along the way.

While it's true that analog tape never plays back exactly the same way twice, this is pushing the issue past normal. Either these tapes are in horrible condition, or your players need service and adjustment, or both. I don't think the AVT's can be blamed for every possible capture problem, especially when the problems occur without an AVT in the circuit. Of course, every component can develop problems, no doubting that. I've had my AVT since 2004 and haven't encountered the problems I see here, but I have seen problems like this with poorly adjusted players and wrecked tape.

-- merged --

Sorry to see these problems keep popping up. Have you had any of your tape players inspected by pro shop? Cameras tend to be somewhat lightweight tracking device, but there are many variations among models. Didn't you also have a VCR with tbc built in?

-- merged --

Oh, well, this morning the 1fps demo plays differently on every media player. No surprise. There are better ways of doing this sort of thing, but I don't have time right now. Anyway I think it demos the field and frame oddities I'm seeing in those noisy intro frames.

[lordsmurf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sanlyn

Oh, well, this morning the 1fps demo plays differently on every media player.

Gotta love software players.

[sanlyn]

Can't say I blame the players as my much as my own careless encoding, set up with a haywire GOP size and frame sequence that didn't translate well as 1fps. 5fps works better at valid GOP sizes and a different frame structure, so the linked video should work. It's a slightly abbreviated look at field-by-field play in the noisy startup section of the NoDNR_NoAVT sample. Two instances of filed reversal (one near the start, one near the end) and a bright luma-blazing flash in just about the middle. I think there might be 3 field reverses instead of 2, but I got tired of watching it.

STARTUP_NoDNR_NoAVT_5fps.mp4, 8.1MB
https://www.mediafire.com/?hlnsvfzd0vb292v

[msgohan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by vhsdigital34

If I use a DCR-TRV520 just for playback purposes and use SVideo out and Audio out from it, am I safe or does it convert to DV and reconvert to SVideo/Audio analog mucking up my image?

There is no DV conversion happening. There are no DCT compression artifacts.

That said, the video in your captures is oversharpened. Assuming you have Sharpness at 0 on the ATI 600, you may want to look into a different camera after all.

[lordsmurf]

@sanlyn: I've attached your files to the forum. We increased attachments to 99mb max yesterday.

[sanlyn]

Thank you, lordsmurf. I had been getting odd errors trying to attach small jpg files lately, but I guess that was part of the forum revamp.

[vhsdigital34]

Thanks sanlyn/msgohan!!

The odd/even videos are really cool (how do you create one?)! Is the hop during regular playback caused by the field reversals (I'm assuming field reversal is when the fuzzy lines stay from top to top or bottom to bottom instead of alternating)? Why does the bright luma flash happen in the middle? I didn't put the start up noise in there on purpose. Is there a way to capture without them or is that just plain damaged tape?

I do have a VCR but I've started to capture my Video8/Hi8 tapes off of my camcorder (our old Sony DCRTRV520 my parents used).

I haven't touched any of the sharpening tools (I have an ATI VE 7500 PCI card) nor do I know how on the card. Should I go with DNR on and AVT on or DNR off with AVT on? I think the camcorder can also adjust sharpness but doesn't tell me what the default setting is. Given this info, should I go this route? If I purchase another camcorder, which should I shoot for? Is there a Hi8/Video8 to VCR converter (Much like a microSD to SD converter)? Is that a better option?

Thanks guys! This is really informative/cool!!

[sanlyn]

Don't sharpen analog tape, especially home-made, and especially damaged tape. You'll be sorry you did. There are better sharpeners and denoisers in post-processing. Denoising with a capture card during processing is too slow for real-time capture and simply blurs everyrthing., considering what your. The only VCR with decent denoising (not that it's a complete denoiser) that doesn't smear or blur motion is in the Panasonic AG-1980, AFAIK.*

*But I had a couple of noisy, badly made retail tapes where built-in DNR created posterizing effects ("clay-face") in the results. I had to forego the AG-1980 and use one of my old Pansonic SVHS players that didn't have denoising or tbc, so I used a Panasonic ES15 for tbc pass-thru and to defeat Macrovision. The caps required other repair besides denosing, so I did all that in post-processing. Thus, an example of the same tape getting better results with another player. That particular problem didn't exist on other tapes with the AG-1980 -- it's just the oddball character of the noise on those couple of goofy tapes themselves.

The bright flashes might be caused by playback signal errors making your camera think it was seeing copy protection, which itself is a series of imbedded signal errors applied on purpose. The field reversal is playback field timing errors interpreted digitally. As was said earlier, digital processors don't see analog tape the way your TV does. Line level and frame level tbc's are designed to prevent those errors. However two line tbc's and/or two frame tbc's in combo can be problematic -- in some cases one will simply ignore the other, in other cases one will get thrown off and create problems.

Members of the forum are constantly advising people to use good equipment -- not necessarily the most expensive but at least in good working order. Your ATI card would be the best capture device for analog tape to lossslessly compressed AVI, especially since the tapes obviously need post-processing work. I'm not an expert in playing VHC-C tapes, but it looks as if your camera isn't playing them well. I've seen other members advise on playing those tapes, so hopefully others will chime in.

If capturing to DV is your only option or out of the budget, then so be it -- analog-to-DV can always be cleaned up to look better, even if it is a pain in the neck. Meanwhile the AVT seems to be working OK, though you'll notice that it does raise gamma a bit, but that can be corrected with VirtualDub capture using brightness and contrast filters (which are usually the only capture-time filters you should use). VirtualDub doesn't use it's own filters for that, it hooks into the filters in ATI's capture software.

The frame-stop clips were made by deinterlacing with QTGMC in Avisynth and using Virtualdub output to set the frame rate. But this didn't work for the 1fps demo: I had to make 5 copies of each frame in Avisynth and output the results at 1fps. The output of both clips was encoded to mp4 with TMPGEnc Video Mastering Works. Deinterlacing demonstrated how each field was being played differently and where the field reversals occurred.

To show you the kind of stuff you can use in Avisynth to get that pesky 1fps demo:

The first step was to trim only the first 72 frames of the sample clip. Your original sample clip was earlier recompressd with Lagarith from huffyuv (your version of huffyuv would open only using DirecTShow plugins with ffdshow on my machine) :

vidpath="E:\forum\vhsdigital34\B\"
AviSource(vidpath+"D_Test2_noAVT_noDNR_DCRTRV52.avi")
ConvertToYV12(matrix="Rec601",interlaced=true)

# --- deinterlace ---
AssumeTFF().QTGMC(preset="super fast")
Trim(0,71)

# --- separate even/odd frames, place caption on each ---
E=SelectEven().Subtitle("EVEN", y=96, size=48)
O=SelectOdd().Subtitle("ODD", y=96, size=48)

# --- rejoin the frames in their original sequence ---
Interleave(E,O)
EO=last

# --- Not all frames are needed, so trim the ------
# --- desired sequences and join into new video.---
vid1=EO.Trim(0,15)
vid2=EO.Trim(42,55)
vid3=EO.Trim(62,0)
vid4=vid1 + vid2 + vid3
return vid4 
# --- save this output file as "2A.avi"

I then made 4 copies of the "2A" file using plain old "Copy"+"Paste" and renamed them "2B", "2C", etc., for a total of 5 exact copies. Then I wrote another script to interleave each frame from each copy of the video into a new video that could be encoded at 1fps:

vidpath="E:\forum\vhsdigital34\B\"
2A=AviSource(vidpath+"2A.avi")
2B=AviSource(vidpath+"2B.avi")
2C=AviSource(vidpath+"2C.avi")
2D=AviSource(vidpath+"2D.avi")
2E=AviSource(vidpath+"2E.avi")

Interleave(2A,2B,2C,2D,2E)
return last

The "Interleave" would join frame 0 of 2A, frame 0 of 2B, frame 0 of 2C, frame 0 of 2D, and frame 0 of 2E in sequence, then join frame 1 of each input file in sequence, then frame 2 of each file, etc., etc. These scripts worked with lossless Lagarith media, so nothing was re-encoded at any step.

If you view the 1fps mp4 one frame at a time, you'll see that here are 5 copies of each frame. You'll also see that some odd/even frames are duplicate fields. I suppose there are other ways it could be done. These scripts were improvised quickly. Each script took about 5 seconds or less to run.

[vhsdigital34]

Thanks Sanlyn! That's awesome!
Just checked again on my camcorder. It looks like it doesn't have an option to sharpen

Is there any recommendations for a camcorder for capturing Hi8/Video8 tapes through SVideo?

-- merged --

Does anyone have a camcorder/player model to recommend Huffyuv Hi8/Video8 capture?

-- merged --

Am I not getting a response because I didn't start a separate thread?

[lordsmurf]

Look at this thread: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...cr-buying.html

It starts out being about Betamax, but quickly turns into a Hi/Video8 topic as well.

Personally, I find most Hi8 cameras from Sony to be perfectly fine, stereo or not. Remember that "stereo" camcorders are still recording from a single location, so it's not truly stereo anyway. The bigger issue is the cameras cleanliness and alignment -- that can be more elusive. Lots of old Hi8 cameras have alignment issues there days.

[vhsdigital34]

Thank you lordsmurf!

[vhsdigital34]

Does anyone know what the "edit" function on a Sony hi8/video8 camcorder does? Only gives the choice of on or off and states "to minimize picture deterioration when dubbing". What is it doing and should I turn this on or off when capturing through SVideo? I can't seem to find any further literature on this. Thanks!!

[sanlyn]

On most players and camcorder outputs, the "Edit" setting disables processing such a dnr, etc., and sends the unaltered signal to output.

[vhsdigital34]

Thank you sanlyn. Does turning edit on turn off the TBC? If not, is it best to keep edit on if not using DNR?

[lordsmurf]

In the case of JVC VCRs, the 'edit' setting is not suggested. That ruins the point of owning the JVC S-VHS VCRs.
Same goes for the TBC.
It really just depends on how that video camera behaves.

Why do you ask? What are you observing?

[vhsdigital34]

Thank you Lordsmurf. Was asking because couldn't find much info beyond "to minimize picture deterioration when dubbing". If it turns off the TBC on the camcorder I agree edit should stay off. Thanks again!

[sanlyn]

Nope. Sorry, I beg to differ. The "EDIT" mode on JVC SVHS VCR's has nothing to do with enable/disable TBC or enable/disable DNR. All other JVC "Picture" modes will give you an image that makes retail SP tapes look as soft, blurry, and unwatchable as EP tapes played on a typical JVC. But if the tbc is turned on in those modes, at least the side borders will be steady in the capture.

I'd like to say something though, to questions such as posed here about tbc or dnr turned off/on, EDIT/AUTO/SOFT/SHARP turned on/off, etc.. If you can't see well enough to recognize that a tbc or dnr circuit or other setting isn't having any effect at all, you should be sending your sources to a professional instead of wasting your time and money. Seriously. The effects of line-tbc stabilization on a good VCR are as easy to spot as the appearance of a great many disturbances that occur when a tbc is not working. It would be nice if we had a sticky around here that shows examples of overdone/underdone VCR processing with various picture modes, examples of tbc on/off, DigitalR3 on/off, and all that, sharpen on/off/high/low/default, etc. The difference between these modes and settings is anything but subtle.

Try a short capture with your camera's "EDIT" turned off, then capture the same scenes with it turned on. If you can't see any differences, then submit samples of each and we'll help teach you to recognize the difference. I don't think many here are quite sure whether "EDIT" mode on your camera affects tbc or not, but I don't see why it should. How to find out? Make comparison captures and watch them.

[vhsdigital34]

Hi Sanlyn,

I'm with you that a sticky should exist with examples of differences shown. I can see differences of TBC on and off. Sharp/soft is obvious as well (if you can turn it on or off which my previous camcorder did not have). When it just says Edit or Auto without much description as to what it means (could be anything), it's not as easy to pinpoint what to look out for especially when looking at it for the first time)

My question wasn't with JVC VCRs, my question was specific to the Sony camcorders that are recommended for capturing Hi8/Video8 tapes. I'm in between camcorders as the one I've purchased was not as described. I was doing my homework in the meantime going through the manual and noticed "edit" with the description I've provided above. I am not going to a professional at this point after I've gotten this far... My question was more for those who've used the Sony camcorders for Hi8/Video8 capture who would have knowledge of the desirable/undesirable effects of turning this on and off. I obviously can't provide screen shots of that and probably not for a while (somehow shipping takes forever with the current purchase). Again, as described on my original post about this edit feature, I was asking around since there's no literature on it.

If anyone who's had experience capturing with Sony camcorders (I'm assuming there are many) can provide some insight I'd be much obliged. If not, we can go the capture screen shots route to compare.

[lordsmurf]

@vhdigital43: I've been gathering samples for this very thing.

@sanlyn: I've started to dislike the JVC term "DNR". It's too confusing.

DNR stands for "digital noise reduction". Have you ever seen analog noise reduction? I haven't. I'm not even sure that such a beast exists. All noise reduction (NR) is digital. So "DNR" is redundant. It's like a "PDF document" (portable document format document!)

Too many have confused "DNR" to mean that a JVC VCR only has NR when the "DNR/TBC" is enabled.

With a JVC, the TBC enables some NR. It's not separate. But the other filters on the deck are still NR! The "picture modes" (also a somewhat dumb descriptor) are a type of NR. All the different NR's on the S-VHS VCRs are why you own S-VHS VCRs. It's not *just* the TBC. It's everything, from the superior transports to the various NR circuits. And yes, the TBC.

Some tapes will look better on 'EDIT' mode (the picture mode NR = off), but most look best with 'NORM'.

On NORM, the picture mode does NOT affect clarity as it does with either 'SOFT' or 'SHARP', but simply applies an intraframe NR. I need to doublecheck myself, but I believe the TBC applies a tiny fractional interframe NR (hence all the accusations of a TBC making footage blurry). I may have those flipped. Either way, the 'Norm' NR doesn't affect the resolution.