A few Q's on capturing..

[K@SERYN]

Hi all. Until recently i was all set to grab to DV with an ACEDVIO.. however i'm more aware of the artefacting in that and would like to make cleaner caps. I've seen everyone talking about huffywhatsisname and mjpeg.. so briefly...

whats a good card for capping to those formats?

how much storage would you need for say.. 2 hours of footage? would it have to be a raptor or would a large samsung sata do the job?


will sony vegas / cce accept these formats?


thanks

[ZippyP.]

Are you 'capturing' from a DV camcorder?

[K@SERYN]

Nope m8 from vhs over svideo..

[ZippyP.]

Huffy is 50 GB for 2 hrs.

[K@SERYN]

Thanks for the response Zippy. 50Gb for 2 hours..wow.. that's perfectly acceptable for my needs.. especially for the quality increase. I've found the answers to some of my questions already with a little reading around.. but i could still use a recommendation as regards a capturing card. It'd need to be via svideo, and i'd be concerned about not picking up interference... so i guess external is better.. other than that i don't need any bells and whistles.. don't even need tv.. just gonna use it as an input. Any recomendations?

[fossil]

what software and capture card will you use?

[K@SERYN]

I'm asking for a recommendation on the card.. softwarewise, i use Vegas for the editing and frameserve to CCE for mpeg2. Would also help if any cap card has some colour,saturation,brightness etc control and a preview.. but i guess any card will do that..

[K@SERYN]

Actually one other serious consideration would be the option to capture both PAL and NTSC sources.. wouldn't want to give up that option!

[FulciLives]

I am going to tell you something right now that you may not like but here it is ...

When you capture with HuffyUV or PICVideo MJPEG you have to do that using a capture card that only does video ... such capture cards to not process the audio ... this is done by the audio card in your system (which can be built-in on the motherboard or be an actual PCI card).

The big issue here is that such a process introduces A/V sync issues. Sometimes this can be dealt with using various "tricks" which basically come down to the capture program used. For instance VirtualVCR has an option to "dynamically resample" the audio so as to keep it in sync with the video.

The problem is that sometimes no matter what you do ... some computers ... due to some unexplainable magical MOJO JIVE BS ... will not keep A/V sync.

VirtualVCR and the dynamic resample method of A/V sync is probably your best bet if it works as you will get a rock solid FPS but other programs require you to clock in to the audio for sync and not the video thus in the end you usually end up with something that is not the exact FPS you want but if you are lucky it will be in sync. My old system would capture with PICVideo MJPEG and keep sync but I never got 29.970fps with a NTSC capture. Instead I would get 29.968 or 29.967 and once in a while I would get 29.971 etc.

It can drive you absolutly INSANE and I can understand why so many people have gone with the Canopus ADVC-100 (now replaced by the ADVC-110) as that device, although DV AVI, will keep rock solid sync with a rock solid FPS.

However there is the rub ... when dealing with DV AVI you have to worry about the NTSC 4:1:1 issue of color sampling. There are "filters" to help "deal" with this flaw or at least "minimize" it but it is still there although I will say that a couple of VIDEOHELP users (mostly edDV and vhelp) have made me rethink that perhaps the 4:1:1 issue is a bit "overblown". In other words it might not be such a big deal afterall. I haven't worked enough with DV AVI to tell for myself.

Is there another option? Well yes there is!

Another possible option to capture with perfect sync but without using DV AVI is to use a capture device that does hardware MPEG-2 capture. The two most popular would be the Hauppauge WinTV PVR units (specifically the 250/350 and USB2 models) and the ADS Instant DVD 2.0

All of those devices can capture Full D1 (720x480 NTSC or 720x576 PAL) using a CBR of 15,000kbps and the ADS Instant DVD 2.0 can even do "I" frame only captures which some argue is even better than I, B, P captures when it comes to MPEG-2 as a "source".

What I mean by "source" is that 15,000kbps is the MAX bitrate most consumer devices (like those mentioned above) can capture when using MPEG-2 so although MPEG-2 is still a very compressed format ... you will find that using a CBR of 15,000kbps creates a very nice high quality source that can be edited and then re-encoded to standard MPEG-2 DVD spec using a software encoder such as TMPGEnc Plus or CCE or Mainconcept MPEG encoder etc.

The nice thing about the MPEG capture option is no 4:1:1 issues. The "bad" is that all those devices only keep sync when using MP2 audio although my solution is to use the highest bitrate MP2 can manage (which is 384kbps) then convert to WAV for editing and cleanup (audio noise reduction and normalize) then convert to 256kbps AC-3 for the final DVD.

Anyways that's my "take" on computer based capturing. Go DV AVI with a device like the Canopus ADVC-110 or use the Hauppauge or ADS units I mentioned above and do a 15,000kbps CBR MPEG-2 capture.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[thecoalman]

Anyways that's my "take" on computer based capturing. Go DV AVI with a device like the Canopus ADVC-110 or use the Hauppauge or ADS units I mentioned above and do a 15,000kbps CBR MPEG-2 capture.

Just to add to the above there's other options for DV-AVI capture. A lot of digital cams support this feature, if you have one you may already be able to do this. There's also a few competitors for the ADVC like the ADS Pyro at a substanial amount less that the ADVC. Personally I have a ADVC 110 myself and couldn't be happier.

Another option for MPEG capture is simply getting a DVD recorder.

[swiego]

I have found that the playback device output quality is, by far, the most important variable. All other factors are of relatively low consequence, including capture card and capture format.

I've been doing a mix of dv-avi and huffyuv capture from the same source. What I've found is that I prefer huffyuv when I know I'm going to postprocess the source a fair amount, or if I don't trust my source's ability to process internally. For example, with a VCR with poor DNR, I might turn off the DNR and capture with huffyuv so that I can use avisynth or virtualdub filters to do the DNR on my PC. Whereas with a VCR with great DNR, I might turn it on in the VCR then simply capture to either DV-AVI or 15,000Mb CBR MPEG2. I have a Theater 550 board for the former (not terribly impressed with it, software quality is terrible) and a ADS DVD Xpress external box for the MPEG2 conversion which actually is pretty darn impressive, considering....

[K@SERYN]

Right, thanks for that lads. I'm in PAL land so the NTSC colour thing isn't so much of a problem for me as such. My current card is the ACEDVio and whats bothering me is i'm seeing it add too much artefaction before i've done anything to the video. So just how good are the results using these cards at the max mpeg setting.. have you got a few screenshots? I don't mind at all the mp2 audio and the recoding asi'd be doing a lot of editing/conversion anyway.. it's just quality i'm after. Could i still use Vegas.. and would they take PAL and NTSC? Lastly, on the offchance that my system handles synch ok, do these cards let you cap to huffyUV or would you have to try a different card for that?

much thanks


ps. thecoalman, i had a dvd recorder a while back but the quality wasnt so good.. are they much improved now?

[K@SERYN]

Hi swiego. I agree completely about source quality.. i read quite a bit here a couple of years go before eventually getting a nice jvc 9600 for playback. That stage is pretty good.. whats annoying me now is i can see the artefacts of dv-conversion on the acedvio.. i'll check out that card you use for mpeg2. What do you use for capturing to huffyuv and any synch probs?

[FulciLives]

Before I mentioned the ADS Instant DVD 2.0 which is an external USB 2.0 capture device made by ADS TECH that has a hardware based MPEG-2 encoder. This is what you want in a MPEG-2 capture device (hardware based). Please note that such devices can only capture to MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 and not to AVI formats using HuffyUV or PICVideo MJPEG etc.

Anyways here is a link where I posted a bunch of pictures from captures I made with the ADS Instant DVD 2.0 ---> CLICK HERE

The ADS Instant DVD 2.0 can do NTSC and PAL ... it comes with composite and S-video input and output along with RCA stereo input and output. The output is nice as you can see what your MPEG will look like on a TV so if you are going to adjust anything like color saturation or brightness/contrast you can run a small sample then output it to the TV. It does not have a TV tuner.

The other option would be the WinTV PVR line from Hauppauge

The Hauppauge WinTV PVR USB2 is very similiar in that it is an external USB 2.0 capture device with hardware MPEG-2 capture. It has composite and S-video inputs with RCA stereo inputs as well as a TV tuner input. No outputs.

Hauppauge also makes the WinTV PVR 250 and the WinTV PVR 350 which are both internal PCI cards that function the same as the USB2 model except the 350 model adds outputs as well as inputs (the 250 model like the USB2 model only has inputs).

Please note that the tuner on the Hauppauge models are country specific. The USA model only accepts NTSC via the tuner input whereas a U.K. model only accepts PAL via the tuner. All models will accept NTSC and PAL via the composite and/or S-Video inputs.

When it comes to hardware MPEG capture these are pretty much your choices i.e., these are the cream of the crop and are known to work and work well.

As for stand alone DVD recorders ... things have improved over the last couple of years.

The 3 top brands seem to be JVC, Pioneer and Toshiba. Panasonic was popular for a while mostly because they were the first to have a mature product but I was never very impressed with the quality of the Panasonics and the 3 brands I noted above do totally blow the Panasonics away so it's worth checking out just be sure that you get a model that allows some control of the bitrate. I think pretty much all of the JVC models do but at least in the USA only some models of Pioneer and Toshiba have bitrate control. The most basic models by Pioneer and Toshiba only have fixed modes like 1 hour, 2 hour, etc. whereas the more expensive models have selectable "times" to control the bitrate. For instance on my Pioneer I can select the time in 5 - 10 minute increments. So if I am recording something I know is 90 minutes long I can pick 90 minute mode or to be safe I can pick 95 minute mode. This gives a higher bitrate than just using the standard 2 hour or 120 minute mode. Some Toshibas have a similiar option.

To see some pics of recordings I did on my Pioneer stand alone DVD recorder check out the following link ---> CLICK HERE

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[thecoalman]

ps. thecoalman, i had a dvd recorder a while back but the quality wasnt so good.. are they much improved now?

What FulciLives said. I don't have any experience witht them.

[K@SERYN]

Once again, thanks for a, dare i say it, fulsome response (fulci, fulsome.. i'll get my coat!) I'm starting now to not see the wood for the tree's having been poring over some of these encodes/captures so many times but i'll whack a few reference samples up in a mo. Must say those captures are really quite impressive for both the ADS and the Pioneer standalone.. most especially the standalone but of course you had a higher def source for them. I would like to ask you though if that same level of quality holds in action scenes? Also, if you tried it on the same source, would you say the ADS was as good? The region/signal specificity pretty much rules out the Hippauges for me. At the moment i use Vegas for editing and serve to CCE.. are there any settings i should know abt in cce for use with DV? Like that zigzag thing.. Also.. what are the aps like for editing mpeg atm.. is it easy enough to serve from a good app to cce again? I'd probably be glad of a few filter options like sharpen and such.. Avisynth scares me

[K@SERYN]

Right then.. here are a few caps from the acedvio.. hopefully you can see the macroblocking/pixellation that's offending. Saying that now though.. i must say of lot of it does look good.. but the eye is darwn to these area's.. i'd be interested to know how they compare with your ads/pioneer output Fulci..












cheers

[thecoalman]

i'd be interested to know how they compare with your ads/pioneer output Fulci..

Trouble with that is he doesn't have the same tape, VCR etc as you. I'm sure I could hook my Canon GL2 up to my ADVC and it would great. They don't look bad for VHS, have you tried comparing them omce burned to DVD how they look on the TV compared to the originals? How about from another source like cable where the source is going to be really clean?

The other thing is I don't see any interlacing, the deinterlace filters on players will cause what looks like noise. you won't see that on the TV.

[FulciLives]

i'd be interested to know how they compare with your ads/pioneer output Fulci..

Trouble with that is he doesn't have the same tape, VCR etc as you. I'm sure I could hook my Canon GL2 up to my ADVC and it would great. They don't look bad for VHS, have you tried comparing them omce burned to DVD how they look on the TV compared to the originals? How about from another source like cable where the source is going to be really clean?

The other thing is I don't see any interlacing, the deinterlace filters on players will cause what looks like noise. you won't see that on the TV.

Yes I definately see some sort of "blend" deinterlacing taking effect here ... that could be why K@SERYN thinks they don't look good.

Like thecoalman asked ... have you burned to a DVD and watched it on a TV? You want to make sure that you DO NOT deinterlace at any point along the way.

I'll try to comment more on the last set of questions you asked me when I have more time later tonight ...

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[K@SERYN]

Thanks guys, good points all. I had tried comparing to a cleaner source.. a good quality dvd and i didn't see the blocking that's bothering me although i could see a bit of pixel noise in large areas of colour.. i need to try it on something with more movement or more complex really.. as far as i know i'm not deintelacing in my processes.. burning a dvd now to see what its like on the tv.. thus far i've been checking output on the tv out from pc..

[K@SERYN]

The TV is a bit kinder to it i think.. looks pretty lush really although i can still see the business in detail in places.. regarding the blending, it might just be the age of the tape.. its pretty old and quite blurred anyway. That's one of the things that made me start thinking about a cleaner transfer.. i wanted to sharpen to offset that, but doing that only made the artefacts all the more visible.

[K@SERYN]

Those caps don't show it up really but on flesh tones especially i'm often seeing macroblocks.. if you're not getting these with the ADS i'd be tempted to go for that.. are the mpeg editors as fully featured as Vegas and the like? Can you put fades in/out? Look forward to ur comments when u have time.. don;t mind me spamming

[FulciLives]

Once again, thanks for a, dare i say it, fulsome response (fulci, fulsome.. i'll get my coat!) I'm starting now to not see the wood for the tree's having been poring over some of these encodes/captures so many times but i'll whack a few reference samples up in a mo. Must say those captures are really quite impressive for both the ADS and the Pioneer standalone.. most especially the standalone but of course you had a higher def source for them. I would like to ask you though if that same level of quality holds in action scenes? Also, if you tried it on the same source, would you say the ADS was as good?

I actually returned the ADS Instant DVD 2.0 after using it for 1 or 2 weeks. Now don't panic ... the reason I returned it was not lack of quality, which I was more-than-happy with but rather because it could only do a single scheduled unattended recording at a time. No good for recording from my cable box. So I returned it to get the Pioneer stand alone DVD recorder. It was simply more flexible when using it to record from TV plus my model has a built-in HDD so it's almost like a 2nd computer with a capture card LOL

I'm happy with my Pioneer but I also liked the ADS Instant DVD 2.0 and I might still buy one again for using it with some special projects (mostly VHS videos that need a lot of filter work).

I don't have a "copy protection removal" device and the ARMAGEDDON VHS is copy protected so I can't copy it on the Pioneer to show the difference. But hey that brings up another good point ... the ADS unit (and the Hauppauge units) will ignore copy protection and will copy anything.

Now I do think that somewhere on my external HDD that I still have a small sample recording made from a cable TV show that was later broadcast and which I caught again with my Pioneer so that would be the only thing I have that was recorded on both devices ... except that this was a VERY early ADS recording and I had "pumped" up the saturation due to another channel being rather pale and the channel I recorded was OK saturation wise. So the Pioneer looks normal whereas the ADS looks candy colored from the Saturation being too high LOL

I have to connect the external HDD and see if I can find that MPEG file ... I think I still have it.

I'll try to post pics from both ... maybe even a short video (like 10 seconds or so) of each. Just remember that one is going to be overly saturated due to my screw-up ... although how that would have affected the MPEG encoder I'm not sure. In other words I don't know if the pumped up saturation would have made it harder to encode or not.

My memory though was that the ADS looked as good if not better than the Pioneer although I dare say the Pioneer has more detail. I guess if I can find it and post the pics that will settle that.

The region/signal specificity pretty much rules out the Hippauges for me.

The Hauppauge WinTV PVR series of capture devices will capture NTSC and/or PAL from the composite and/or S-Video inputs. They can ALL do this. It is only the TV tuner input that is restricted to one format or another ... depending on what version you have. The USA version will have a NTSC only tuner whereas a U.K. version will have a PAL only tuner.

At the moment i use Vegas for editing and serve to CCE.. are there any settings i should know abt in cce for use with DV? Like that zigzag thing.. Also.. what are the aps like for editing mpeg atm.. is it easy enough to serve from a good app to cce again? I'd probably be glad of a few filter options like sharpen and such.. Avisynth scares me

The CCE "Zigzag" setting is for a PROGRESSIVE source. If you have an INTERLACED SOURCE then you use the "Alternate" setting.

VideoRedo and MPEG-VCR are both considered excellent MPEG editors ... the "best" if you will ... but the editing is rather "simple". However the company that makes MPEG-VCR also makes MPEG VIDEO WIZARD which does allow for more creative editing such as transitions. I have never used it though. I actually don't have much knowledge above "basic" editing.

I do know that all 3 of the MPEG editors I mentioned will ONLY re-encode a few frames around the edit point ... not the entire file. So when you are done editing you can save the file and not worry about loss due to re-encoding as that doesn't happen ... except for a few frames at the edit points ... which ain't no thang. So frameserving is not an issue there.

You can also do simple editing with VirtualDubMod and frameserve from that direct to CCE or better yet learn to use AviSynth *evil laugh*

Really AviSynth ain't bad at all and you can do editing in the script ... apply filters ... and then just load the script into CCE. Here is a guide that explains how to do it ---> CLICK HERE

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[K@SERYN]

Thanks again for all the info m8. I've encoded a shot clip of material with the blocking i mentioned.. it shows up more of course if you send it to tv out.. look out mainly for the area around her nose.. center of face. Sources aside.. let me know if you get anything like that with Instant DVD2. Do you get no artefacting at max setting at all? Whats it like for the fast moving scenes? It'd be worth the effort of getting to grips with avisynth [shudder] if you tell me all your capping with it is like the screengrabs you linked. I did however read a lot of negative reviews about that card or the software freezing up.. is it known to be particularly buggy.. driverwise and or s/w? As for mpeg editors.. i already use womble quite a bit for certain tasks and it is a nice app... but i guess if i sort myself out with avisynth i could serve it up to vegas for editing? maybe serve it on again from there to cce? maybe it'd take a month to code?
Scratch that, as you say the fancy stuuff can be done in avisynth.. most of what i've been using Vegas for is colour/levels adjustment and trimming/fading the ends.. a lot of that wont be neccessary with the ADS card as i'd be able to callibrate to tv output.. ok so here's the clip, lmk what you think.


http://www.kaseryn.myby.co.uk/Big%20Sky.mpv


cheers again for your time

[FulciLives]

K@SERYN and I have been talking via PM but you can't post an image in a PM so we are moving the discussion back to this thread.

K@SERYN asked about HuffyUV and here is my answer:

You need to set up HuffyUV correctly and it should look like this image

Field Threshold is 240 for NTSC ... for PAL use 288

Also K@SERYN asked about how to apply a "video noise" filter thinking that he had to de-interlace to do so.

This is incorrect.

You do need to separate the fields ... then apply the video noise filter ... then recombine the fields.

If you refer to my guide on using Convolution3D you will see where the AviSynth script separates the fields and then recombines them (this is called "weave" in AviSynth). This is not the same as de-interlacing.

My Convolution3D guide ---> CLICK HERE

I hope this helps!

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[K@SERYN]

Hmnn.. my setup for Huffy was the same except of course i have 288 for PAL.. the only diff was i don't have that checkbox about crashing ticked off.. so i'll see if that makes a difference. I have read your guide through and am probably being extremely dumb but was of the impression seperating fields was what deinterlacing was.. and that interlacing was the recombining of those fields.. i'll give it another read through and see if it sticks a bit better.. this is all such a steep learning curve when you're new to video editing, but i'm quite enjoying it.. any idea why caps in rgb24 crashed IE?

cheers

[FulciLives]

Hmnn.. my setup for Huffy was the same except of course i have 288 for PAL.. the only diff was i don't have that checkbox about crashing ticked off.. so i'll see if that makes a difference. I have read your guide through and am probably being extremely dumb but was of the impression seperating fields was what deinterlacing was.. and that interlacing was the recombining of those fields.. i'll give it another read through and see if it sticks a bit better.. this is all such a steep learning curve when you're new to video editing, but i'm quite enjoying it.. any idea why caps in rgb24 crashed IE?

cheers

Another thought I had was that somewhere in your capture software (you are using VirtualVCR right?) you have to select your capture colorspace. For instance there should be a place where you can pick YUY2 instead of YV12 or RGB etc.

I've never captured totally uncompressed RGB video ... that was what was causing your problems before, right? You said IE crashed on your but ummm what is IE? I consider IE to mean Microsoft Internet Explorer since many refer to it as simply IE but I'm guessing you mean something else?

Just to be clear the current problem is that HuffyUV seems to be capturing in RGB whereas you want it to be YUY2, right?

As for a defination for deinterlacing ... it is one you take the two fields that make up a single frame and "convert" the fields into a single frame so that there are no fields anymore but just one "whole" frame.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

P.S.
There are two versions of Convolution3D ... one is for YUY2 video and the other is for YV12 video ... make sure you got the correct version.

[K@SERYN]

Yep mate i am using VirtualVCR.. i tried checking that box and it didn't make any difference. Sorry when i said IE i simply meant windows explorer interface.. i guess when it tries showing the preview in the left panel it crashes. I'm definitely capping in the YUY2 as it shows you in the bar at the bottom of preview the res and colourspace you're using. The RGB thing was just an afterthought, as i had experimented with capturing to RGB24 to see if my system would keep up, but YUY2 is plenty good enough not to mention big enough! So.. to be clear, the problem is that although as far as i can see i am capturing in YUY2 Huffyuv i'm having to force avisynth to recognise that. Unless i put the convert to yuv2 cmnd in a script it crashes when i invoke the peachsmooth filter. Once that lines in it opens up fine.. crashing symptom is just that WMP opens up a sort of rectangle sized window and hangs..

thanks for clearing that deinterlacing thing up.. i see what you mean now!

[swiego]

I've been using Lagarith instead of huffyuv lately and at this point I prefer it by a wide margin. It simply works, compressing better than huffyuv with better color space support and fewer confusing options to potentially mess up. I've also had huffyuv crashes in virtualdub and avisynth; no such issue whatsoever with lagarith. I definitely recommend it.

[K@SERYN]

You know what, i'd never heard of that.. in looking around i seee there's a whole bunch of other lossless video codecs some of which outperform HuffYUV [including the one you mentioned] .. tks for tip am definitely gonna try some of these.. heck out this comparison :

http://www.compression.ru/video/codec_comparison/pdf/lossless_codecs_test_en.pdf