Nope :)

Updates!

1) I have the Panasonic AG1980 on its way, *tried* to get the JVC HR-S9800 and 9600, 3 different listings, and got beaten out on Ebay (probably from some peeps here! Sorry lordsmurf I tried!)

2) I scored a brand new ATI 600USB and used 600 PCI-e, I realized I had no more PCI slots, so I just did the USB.

3) Just got it working GREAT in Win10 x64!
HP Envy 750
Intel i7 chipset
USB 2.0 ports
Tested in Vdub 1.10.4 (latest as of now from Sourceforge), 32bit and 64bit.
I have not tried to get the tuner/MPEG2 functions going yet (not as interested in those)
The ProcAmp settings work too

4) Now looking at cables; S-Video and the 2 RCA > 1/8 stereo for my soundcard.

Re: #4.. taking all preferences/favorites suggestions. What cables do you guys like? Sanlyn prefers blue jeans cables.. I know Monster are absolute crap, I sort on ebay/amazon for "best selling" or "highest rated" and its all rocketfish 50-100 foot crap. I guess for S-Video I want: double shielded, copper core, gold (24k) connectors, low impedance? I find some good looking cables on amazon, and click and it says "discontinued by manufacturer" for most of them. Guess S-Video cables just don't sell like they did 10-20 years ago, now that everything's going HDMI.

5) Question for msgohan you said the USB 600 vs the PCI 600 use completely different chipsets.. any pref between the two, and why? Does one do something the other can't? Is it arguably the same image quality?

6) Forgot to mention I also got an AVT 8710 TBC

Way to go, bilbofett! I figured you were still at it and just didn't have time for chit-chat until you encountered trouble.

I wouldn't worry about eBay grabbing the JVC's. eBay is really egtting to be a rip[off when it comes to those high end machines, most of which are used to death and haven't had parts support for decades. If any of your tapes are 6-hour or 4-hour, you're better off with a Panny.

Frankly I don't know what the differences would be. The USB I'm familiar with. Both 600's are recommended alternatives to the old AIW's.

We recommend 32-bit VirtualDub and Avisynth. 64-bit versions require 64-bit plugins and filters. You cant mix 32- and 64-bit. Good luck finding 64-bit plugins. Likely most of them will never show up.

I do like BJC's s-video and other cables for construction, nice contrast, less transmission noise, and good impedance control. But they ain't cheap. Years back I went through more than 2 dozen of those "store brands" from Monster thru AR, Belkin, RocketFish (ick!), Dynex, SONY, Amazon, and you-name-it. Monoprice.com has some good budget s-video but the bottom of the line cheapies will likely fall apart in short order, and nothing's worse than a broken s-video pin stuck in your input jack. Spend a buck or two more on their more upscale cables with heavier insulation and better plugs.

Low impedance: I think you might mean low inductance instead of low impedance, but it's capacitance that's a detail robber with the real cheapies. S-video is 75 ohms impedance. Thicker wire means better impedance specs, but it's really not a problem with the short cables most people use. Gold connectors don't make much difference. Anyway, how much gold would you think is on a cheap cable? For what it's worth, the BJC S-video uses gold mainly to meet marketing hype. Most of their pro cables don't use gold.

I see you've noticed MPEG encoding in the ATI software. I know you'll likely head for lossless anyway. ATI's MPEG ain't too bad, but nothing like the old AIW's. For lossless you don't even need the Media Center, all you need for lossless is the capture drivers and the Control Panel app. But since MC is already there, may as well leave it as-is.

Good luck.

The shorter the cable the better, I got this for myself they work crystal clear and shipped from UK to US:

I use little longer cable for my LCD monitor hooked up to the VCR:

The UK has some pretty nice cables. Mosty of my HDMI's are from the UK except for a couple from Audioquest.

I did get a chuckle from the eBay photo below:

http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...1&d=1459777819

Note "DIGITAL" emblazoned the barrel. S-video doesn't transmit digital or HD, but marketers know what sells I guess. Wire is neither digital nor analog. It's just wire.
:D

Hey guys.
Well, guess I'll add to my thread here.
Test caps w/ all my VHS from the Panasonic AG-1980.
At 720x480 *any* codecs I get this (See attached video..uploaded Mp4 to make a tiny file):

http://imgur.com/a/lFXp0

What do you suppose that noise is at the bottom?
There's even some white scratch line.
Any ideas? Does this look familiar to anyone?

Yeah everyone who has capped VHS has seen that.

http://avaa.bavc.org/artifactatlas/i...witching_Noise

Thanks for the reply msgohan!

well, good to know I'm not in the minority. Is my green showing yet?
I'm using the Ati 600 USB. I also have the PCI-e but that's still boxed up.
I've tried doing the "custom size" in doing uncompressed YUY2 in vdub to 720x486, but it says "the capture device does not support the selected video format".
If I crop those lines, I'm going to end up w/ a weird number and then resizing that to 720 (or 704) for DVD will mess everything (ie. aspect ratio) up.
This piqued my interest: "to obtain a 720x480 image with no switching noise, a device that captures starting from line 22 is required"
Do you have any tips for how I can get rid of that?

Capture at 720x480. It doesn't mess up the aspect ratio, unless what you want to capture is just a 4:3 image. You can't use 640x480 or 4:3 images for DVD or BluRay. Besides, the height on 720x486 is not mod8 or mod16, which most cap devices want to see. It isn't even mod4. 720x480 can be encoded with display aspect ratio flags of 4:3 or 16:9 and will display correctly. Lossless AVI doesn't have aspect ratio flags and will display as 720x480 (which is a 3:2 frame) unless encoded for something else.

You also have to consider the YUV data storage system, especially interlaced YUV, which requires certain block sizes for proper capture.

Hi Sanlyn!
Thanks for the reply sir!
I'm capturing 4:3 (1.33:1) video from VHS as uncompressed AVI, final output is DVD (mpeg2).
So, I need to crop that noise out and then resize to 720x480?

Resizing has a cost. It's a last resort only, but OK for the web.

Capture at 720x480. In my experience many movie tapes will alter the positions of those side borders in many scenes. You get some goofy things going on with movie tapes. The idea behind lossless capture is as true and unaltered a copy of the source as you can get. VHS needs some level of cleanup anyway before encoding. From the looks of that mp4 posted earlier, the tape could muse some work.

I used Avisynth to do the following, without touching the central image content:

original frame from mp4, 720x480 with uneven borders and switching noise on the bottom:
http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...1&d=1460753453

Avisynth crop() and AddBorders() functions. Crop side and bottom, then add black borders to restore frame size, center the image, and leave the central image unaltered:
http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...1&d=1460753572

Same image, but add 8 less border pixels to each side for 704x480:
http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...1&d=1460753674

Upon encoding, 720x480 and 704x480 have different pixel aspect ratios (PAR, or the way a decoder reads the pixel dimensions). Both will display correctly as 4:3. 704x480 is often preferred for 4:3 (thinner side borders). In any case, black borders disappear into the black background on TV and media players. On most HDTV's, overscan hides the borders anyway. Use 720x480 for 16:9 video.

wow sanlyn thanks! This is extremely helpful!
Would you mind sending me the avisynth script you made so I can see exactly what you did?

Sorry for the delay. Kinda busy here tonight (In-laws. Phooey).

I used the code below for the particular mp4 frames posted earlier. The values will differ for other videos or different borders. The idea is to crop off unwanted edge pixels without altering the image content. Sometimes it won't be a perfect fit but it can be so close it's not noticed. CAUTION: cropping without damage to the luma/chroma structure has strict rules based on field structure and colorspace. The rules are here: http://avisynth.nl/index.php/Crop. Note the table of rules summarized near the bottom of the linked web page. Break the rules, and you break your video. It can't be repaired later unless you go back to the original.

for 720x480 result:
for 704x480 result:
The mp4 is YV12 color. It looked telecined at first, but it's progressive with a duplicate frame every 5th frame to get 29.97 fps playback. You can remove the duplicates and return the video to its original 23.976 speed using this code:

should work OK. This started as film speeded up to 25fps for PAL and then dupe frames added for NTSC, I guess ? ? ? ?
Of course if you want DVD you can't use 23.976. If you leave it at 29.97 as-is, it's not interlaced. Some authoring or encoding apps won't let you get away with progressive 29.97 for DVD (and certainly not BluRay) but will force an interlaced encode. Could look like a mess. Better to use TDecimate to get 23.976, then add 3:2 pulldown in the encode step to get 29.97 for DVD or BluRay.

wow sanlyn thanks! This is extremely helpful!
Would you mind sending me the avisynth script you made so I can see exactly what you did?

no worries, you know what they say about in-laws and fish ;)
I appreciate the help!

For the file I uploaded.. I'm a moron, I de-interlaced it. :(

This is as original as we get (see attachment):
Avi, YUV, Lagarith, 720x480, interlaced, 29.97, no audio.
Source was NTSC VHS, 4x3/1.33:1, from a Panasonic AG-1980 w/ AVT-8710 TBC

If I work inside virtualdub (opening *.avs) can I prevent the colorspace conversion all the way to the end?

Extra super bonus question: Any thoughts on Avisynth MT?

A common error. No wonder it looked weird. Movies aren't interlaced, they're telecined. With telecine, one of the telecined frames (actually, a field) appears twice. Not only do you have an extra frame in every 5, and at least 1 of the 5 frames will be blurry (which is what I'm seeing now). You'll also have stuttery motion when that dupe frame shows up, especially on panning shots or other horizontal motion. Don't deinterlace telecined video. Use inverse telecine to return to the original film speed if you must have progressive video for cleanup. Then reinstate 3:2 pulldown flags when encoding.

If you have your original interlaced capture, use a full inverse telecine. Don't use an NLE to do it, not even if the NLE has "pro" in its name, or you'll have another mess on your hands. Use Avisynth's TIVTC plugin and this code:

If you don't have the original capture any more (shame on you, LOL!), use the TDecimate routine quoted earlier to remove duped frames from your current working copy that you partially deinterlaced:

Either method lets you encode later with 3:2 pulldown to get smoother motion. Effectively, players see telecine-encoded video as partially "interlaced", after a fashion. So the better encoding and authoring apps that hold closely to DVD/BluRay standards won't have problems, and neither will your players.

If you have your original capture and use the TFM/TDecimate routine, you'll get a cleaner result. If not, you'll have to just use TDecimate alone and live with it, or recapture.

The VCR and other gear didn't do anything except play what was on the tape, unless you told your capture card to deinterlace. We all hope you didn't do that (it's no good for telecined video anyway). Deinterlacing interlaced source makes no improvement whatever, and always loses something. Always. Deinterlace only when cleanup demands it, or for the web. Hopefully you don't deinterlace every cable TV broadcast or retail DVD before watching them.
:wink2:

From the mp4, the tape looks like a 2nd gen copy of something, which is probably why you have a total 32 pixels of side border instead of the usual 16 or less, as well as shimmer that isn't usually seen on a tbc-equipped player.

I'm not sure what you mean, i.e., don't know what you're doing in Virtualdub other than viewing the script results. VirtualDub doesn't make colorspace conversions if you output using "direct stream copy" and are just using VDub edit controls to make a sample.

If your avs script is filtering or doing other real work, set VirtualDub's Color Depth and Compression to what you want for output, then set "Video" to "fast recompress". Check Color Depth and Compression first, because the default is uncompressed RGB. If you run VirtualDub using "full processing mode", you'll go from YUV to RGB whether you use VDub filters or not and whether you set different output compression or not. "Full processing mode" always makes an RGB conversion.

Waste of time, and often not compatible with other versions of huff. MT = "multi-threading", which isn't the same thing as multi-core, so you gain nothing using MT. Users report next to zero speed gain over others. Won't work in Windows 8 or 10, so I hear.

Most Avisynth filters work only in YV12. Huffyuv doesn't work with YV12. Use Lagarith for that. Note that the TIVTC functions TFM() and TDecimate() work in both YV12 and YUY2.

[EDIT] Thanks for the avi sample. I'll take a look 2nite.

I wrote that portion of the article. As noted at the beginning of the section, only a handful of VCRs have the necessary feature for this to work, and they only play back SP mode tapes.

The ATI 600 captures starting from line 23, which results in two extra rows of head switching noise compared to those that begin with line 22 (this is with every VCR). Most people don't care that much.

Based on the screenshot, your capture (or the tape's content) is way oversharpened, by the way.

Thanks to msgohan for input.

Thanks again for a chunk of the original capture. This "original" is an analog dupe from another player. There's so much noise and junk from the first-stage(s) player it keeps me guessing how many duping sequences this video went through before it got to your AG-1980. I'm pretty sure the ripples and sparkly, buzzing edges didn't come from the 1980. The original player had unstable playback (you can see odd horizontal frame shifting left to right, more obvious in the overhead shot). Handheld camera, maybe? I've heard of frame hopping, but I guess this is frame shifting(?). Not very common to see over-sharpening halos of equal strength on both left and right-edges, but it does happen. I'm thinking most of it came from the earlier source.

You'll note that edge enhancement "enhances" mostly the edges, but much less so the inner content between the main edges. This started out in life as film source, and people just like to floorboard the sharpeners to make film look "sharp" like digital. Film is actually more accurate than digital. Can;t get into debate here over what "sharpness" really means, as the pros would go for "accutance" rather than sharpness, which is a different story. The film's journey to your AG-1980 shows a screwed-up gamma, color corruption, and color density loss. Nothing looks very real, especially skin tones.

I took frame 40 from the original 720x480 and frame 40 from my reworked 704x480 version (attached as ul1_dehalo_re-telecined.mpg). Both frame are resized to 4:3 frames. By "frame 40" I refer to frame numbers after telecine was removed. Below, left=original frame 40, right=new frame 40.
http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...1&d=1460832265

The left-hand original shows shows such junk as the halos, but also fine grungy stuff in skin tones, green color bleed into skin tones (the guy's hairline and hand on the right), downward red shift on his shirt color, and both people have what looks like clinical cases of sunburn. Not sun tan, sun burn. Suntan is tannish, sunburn is pink. Black-green hair is annoying, too.I couldn't stand it -- had to work on color a bit. The woman has brown eyes.

Below: frame 161 (no telecine). This is only the center section of the original 720x480, not the whole frame.
http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...1&d=1460832310

Below: same part of frame 161 after post processing.
http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...1&d=1460832379

The main dehalo tool was the Avisynth plugin FixVHSOversharp. Works only in YUY2. All dehalo filters soften edges somewhat (no other way to do it, really), but this filter isn't as blurry as some others. My script hit the left halos twice:

I had to use QTGMC as a denoiser in progressive mode to smooth some of ripple and spastic edges -- not a 100% cleanup, but the video doesn't look so spastic. I used the ChromaShift plugin to help tidy up color bleed a little more. You can still see some dnr motion smear (watch the guy's face as he looks at the woman); I'm guessing it came from the first player. The 1890's dnr usually doesn't smear that much. In any case, this is why many don't use dnr or internal tbc for some tapes. The use a decent player but with tbc pass-thru and no dnr. Sometimes it's better to clean entirely in post.

Multi-gen tapes are a nightmare. You just do what you can. Either the tape will collapse under too much filtering, or you will. One maybe could do more with that capture, but soon it would start looking less like reconstruction and more like total demolition. I doubt one could remnove 100% of the bright edge, but even worse are the dark edge ghosts. As for detail jitterbugging, I don't think the original player had a line tbc. Not with all those ragged vertical edges. If it did, it didn't accomplish much. You can't correct a later generation that has first-generation timing faults imbedded. By then, it's too late.

The attached mpg has reinstated, soft-coded 3:2 pulldown flags and plays @ 29.97 fps.

Thanks guys! I'm absorbing every single bit of this! Starting to get a bit overwhelmed, but that's the fun of it, right! :)

FYI I just paid for 3-year premium membership.. lordsmurf and "admin" can treat each other to a Big Mac combo meal now :)
[ unless they live in Switzerland? It wouldn't be enough for one meal :( ]

FYI, I calibrated my monitor (by itself, ripped-to-disk bluray)/TBC/-> capture card (via the VCR S-VHS) using DVE's Home Video Essentials. Took me hours. I ended up turning the brightness way down on my monitor, the contrast around 70 (default), and played w/ the RGB colors a bit, getting it to near 6500. The AVT-8710, most settings left default/middle, may have +1 or -1 or 2 on the brightness/contrast. The ATI, most ended up default, again did a tick down/up on brightness/contrast, saturation was left default, hue was changed 1/2 ticks one way. I'll need to re-check the sharpness on the VCR+TBC+Cap card.

Sanlyn that's a commercial studio tape, BTW. Unless its a bootleg.
BTW you're a pro! That looks amazing, everything you did! Wow! I'm truly blown away.

I'll cap a few more commercial tapes and up a few here so we can see if its just the mastering on that one tape (I think it is). Either way, its piss-poor.

Shocking, ain't it? Maybe it's really a bootie. I had a couple old retail tapes that were pretty awful. Color flicker, spots (in the form of what we call dots, comets, berries, lemons, grapes, etc., depending on shape and color), huge red-orange splotches like something off the weather channel radar, projectionist punch holes big as baseballs. And so on.

Oh, well, you don't learn much from a perfect tape I guess. If one existed, I mean. :laugh:

-- merged --

I received a PM asking for the .avs script used to make the avi encoded earlier as ul1_dehalo_re-telecined.mpg. Forum moderators request that if anyone wants a script for a posted project, please ask to have it appear in the forum. The forum is public, where others come to learn and critique. Readers can't learn from private PM's.

Below are the .avs script details. I'm also attaching the .vcf settings file for the VirtualDub tweaks and color correction used in the final avi.

A ,vcf is a filter settings file used by VirtualDub. To load the filters described in the file, start VirtualDub and click on "File", then click "Load processing settings...". In the dialog window navigate to the location of the .vcf file that you want, select it, and click "Open". The filters will load into VDub using the same positions and settings described in the .vcf. (Note that if you already have other filters loaded in VDub, they will be overwritten when you load a .,vcf).

I used two .avs scripts. The first STEP ONE is a simple inverse telecine using the TIVTC plugin to create a progressive .avi for test and tweaking. The second script STEP TWO takes the file from STEP ONE as input.

STEP TWO output is saved as RGB32. One can also load and run Virtualdub filters and the script at the same time. But it could be slow going if you want to move back and forth to check any changes.

NOTE -- to load filters described in any .vcf file you must have the VirtualDub filters the .vcf calls for. The filters should be in your VirtualDub plugins folder. The filters required by the attached ul1_VDub_Settings.vcf are:
- Temporal Smoother (VirtualDub built-in)
- HSV Adjust (VirtualDub built-in)
- Gradation Curves (plugin)
- Color Mill 2.1 (plugin)

If you don't have gradation curves or Color Mill, they are in the attached .zip. TemporalSmoother and HSV Adjust are inside VirtualDub itself.

If anyone wants more detail I can post more sometime Sunday.

Sanlyn, thanks for this!
Is there any way to avoid the YUV > YV12 conversion at the end of STEP TWO?
Different (but comparable) plugins to chromashift and mergechromas?

"ConvertToYV12(interlaced=false)
RemoveDirtMC(20,false)
nnedi3_rpow2(2, cshift="Spline36Resize", fwidth=width*2, fheight=height*2)
ChromaShift(L=-4)
mergechroma(aWarpSharp2(depth=30))"