Goal of the video hobbyist?

[Steen4]

Even before I began posting on this site, I used to lurk around in the forums, reading opinions and techniques about processing analog video. Although I learned a great deal about practical aspects of dealing with video from these forums, I thought that a little too much of the thrust of these processing discussions was centered on trying to obtain nearly frame-perfect results, with forum members posting single frames and examining artifacts left behind in them as a result of various filterchains. I guess that when your aim is to extract frame after frame for individual viewing divorced from motion, then this is a worthwhile aim; however, most of the time, these videos will only be shown as a moving picture, not as a series of freeze-frames. Under these circumstances, people would be oblivious to frame-by-frame perfection as long as it remains perceptually correct - that is to say that as long as artifacts are below the threshold of the eyes' perception of them. We already know that the after-images that the eye retains and carry over through the blanking intervals help create the illusion of motion from a series of static images. Without that stroboscopic effect, I'm not sure what we would see, but it wouldn't be what we want to see! Anyway, the eye is already carrying over its own artifacts from one frame to the next. My questions are these:

1. at what point do the artifacts introduced by the video processing methods become objectionable or even noticeable?

2. What should be the goal of the video hobbyist... to produce excellent "frame by frame" results, or to produce a moving image in which motion artifacts left behind by the filters are below the threshold of our vision's ability to detect them?

[indolikaa]

1) For me, that is hard to qualify. It depends on the source.

2) MPEG is about motion pictures, and keeping the artifacts below the visual threshold is what counts in my book.

[jimmalenko]

What should be the goal of the video hobbyist... to produce excellent "frame by frame" results, or to produce a moving image in which motion artifacts left behind by the filters are below the threshold of our vision's ability to detect them?

As far as I am concerned, you can freeze-frame analyse until the cows come home and you still won't convince me that "DVD2One is better than DVDShrink...take a look at these stills at 6X magnification...", for example.

As mentioned, It is how the motion strings together that counts for me. After all, you do watch the movie in its entirety and not 1 frame at a time.

[lordsmurf]

keeping the artifacts below the visual threshold is what counts in my book.

Could not have said it better myself.

The whole goal of analog->DVD conversion for me is "make it better".

.... NOT to ANALyze the heck out of it, frame by frame at 100x magnification as shown on the 200-inch super plasma screen with $1000 zillion speakers with 69.1 sound. Totally ridiculous. Just make it better.

Be sure to use good software, hardware and media to accomplish this in the end. Easy as that.

And in a time-efficient manner. Not to spend 3 days extra to make the one pixel better.

Some of these people are as bad as you-know-who trying to define the word "is".

[gshelley61]

I would have to agree. The goal of DVD conversion for me is to transfer the video source efficiently while minimizing video noise and artifacting as much as possible... and perhaps enhancing the appearance of the source video, as well. The posting of static images on this forum is merely a convenient way to compare relative capture quality using different methods and devices - to learn from each other.

[SatStorm]

My goal is to eliminate all the noise issues that I know that it can be eliminate and compress 4 hours of video per DVD-R.

If I can correct something, I gonna do it, whatever the time cost. Maybe that is what defines the hobbyist who love what he is doing and the semi pro or the proffesional who need fair results, with the least effort, the fastest possible.

I mean, who would encode a 5 min video at 12 hours as I did last week for a specific video capture ? Not a proffecional for sure! A hobbiest? Sure, why not!

[Capmaster]

When I started my VHS>DVD archiving project 2 years ago my primary goal was to transfer the movies to a medium that wouldn't deteriorate with time and whenever the vacuum cleaner was fired up in the same room. I was willing to accept equal quality.

Then I quickly discovered that the process was actually improving the perceived quality of the movies. It wasn't really adding resolution because you can't improve on a source that way, but because of the clever filtering, it looked better when it was on DVD.

I think the level of effort I would put in on tweaking and futzing around with registry settings would be directly proportional to the time I had to devote to it. Nothing better to do, sure - I'll play around with it.

My problem in doing this was the sheer volume of transfers I had to make - well over 2,000 movies. It took me 2 years to finish it up.

I would typically capture and burn 5 or 6 on a weekend day (two PCs sharing the same USB capture box and a LAN mapped drive to allow sharing the same burner on firewire), 1 on a workday. Then I added a standalone and that helped put a dent in it, when macrovision wasn't present - those would need the TBC treatment upstairs. With both going I captured and burned 15 movies in one day and my 3-day weekend record was 44 movies

I have a nice library of movies now, and an upstairs closet filled with the original VHS tapes. If I had had only 100 or 150 movies to transfer, I could have played around and customized my tweaks for each and every movie, correcting color, sharpness, mosquito noise, bandpass and bandstop filtering, etc. But I didn't have that luxury.

[yoda313]

Hello,
I agree with the people who are looking for "acceptable" quality. Especially since I don't have the fastest computer on the block. I'm happy with good quality video on captures. I just don't want blockiness to interfere. I want to preserve those 10 year old and beyond videotapes. It's good to have it perfect but if you drive yourself crazy to obtain it the fun of preserving it is lost from my perspective. But to use a worn out phrase "to each his own". Happy dubbing!!!

Kevin

[yoda313]

Hello,
It's me again. I'll add one thing. I can understand "perfection" for treasures like the ORIGINAL Star Wars Trilogy. That is a project I'm still trying to perfect. But as for old tv shows I want to make sure it's above vcd quality (and doing the old battle between quality and disc space). Have a nice day.
Kevin