What is good enough when capturing video?

[BearRebel]

Hey, relative video digitiser noob here,

I'm getting up to speed with digitising some home videos and am finding it hard to know what is 'good enough', I'm getting lost down rabbit holes around capture software, filters, lossless capture etc and can't guage how much extra that will give to my project.

Sorry in advance if i'm missing a post that goes into what the following provide for the extra effort:

- Lossless capture
From what understand this will allow you to perform better postprocessing on the video data which you can't do otherwise, to me this seems like alot of addtional hard drive space, time & effort to do and I'm unsure how much better the video will look after that vs mpeg2 capture.

- Capture software
I've skimmed alot of posts that mention amrecTV & VirtualDub, from what i understand the benefit of using these are de-interlacing and lossless captutre?
I'm likely to just use the included hauppage capture, I understand the .ts file is mpeg2 which is not lossless.

- Bitrate
maybe this is talked about less as it seems lossless is the goal but are are there reccomendations around bitrate? constant vs variable etc.
the video resolution is 720x567, I've been testing with 10mbs constant and understandably have been making large video files which seems like overkill.

- Interlacing
from testing my captured video is interlaced, I assume the general guidance would be to de-interlace when converting to mp4?
I've seen a few apps mentioned but havn't looked htat far into it yet.


Ultimately my goal is a digital version of the tapes in good quality that can be played on the tv at christmas and the rest of the family can access online.

If there is a video capture iceberg chart or effort / result table somewhere that would be great

For context my usecase is capturing video8 tapes:

original camcorder => composite (no s-video out unfortunatly) => Panasonic DMR-ES10 => s-video - composite audio => Hauppauge WinTV USB-Live2 => Windows 10

Thanks for reading my rambling post and any replies in advance!

[Swedaniel]

Maybe you can capture as high quality as possible and compress the files into Zip or Rar packages (PeaZip is free and can create zip, rar and 7z packages) to save some storage and then use the main source with some video converters to get different results and compare from this! Maybe the work get easier to decide/customize frame rates/bit rates etc from an real nice source video! Maybe you change your mind an other day and want better quality or feel it is not worth to have this huge file for an other occasion, gives maybe more options with an good source file to use! If an family member cannot play an 60fps mp4 with 1400 bitrate, it can sometimes help with 25 fps and 768 bitrate! But if you want to shine off you might want an with higher fps and bitrate allso!

Edit: You might notice some the bit rate affect videos a lil bit different depending on the source format and many other things! I have an video with 88 bitrate that is functioning well while an other video need over 1000 bitrate to not give bad image! Solution: Get going to get an source video and test some to get an result to see how it goes!

Concerning the interlace, i dont use it so often myself! but if you see things as this, if you add an setting/feature/enhancement to an video, this setting is there now, can this setting be removed without affecting the original source video, or would the video be less good to use for an video conversion or any other scenario where it would not function well? is it possible to add this setting later to get same effect? if you do not put the setting, there is no worries to remove it an have bad effect or get stuck with an video with this default setting and then allso put an other setting on it which maybe will cause lags/pixels/stutters or such things when converting the video or possibly even on an specific tv/portable device might not be compitable with one specific setting or if you have many it cannot handle all of them! If the device would require an setting, maybe life get easier if it work out to add this setting later to the source video.

If the video converter can add an specific setting it does not have to mean it can handle and convert an video that allready have this setting, which could limit your choice of converters/programs for editing to get an successful task done as easy as possible!

If the path you decide to take from phase one to the deivce that shall play the video requires de-interlace for things to function, then offcourse you should use it but if your family will use many different devices, maybe it can be off allso to then add this later to their video if it is required? Ellse if you do things as i do i guess i would have one with de-interlace and one without just to stay in shape an be ready to servie the family with epic videos!

Solution: Get an hold of an source/test video with de-interlace and one without it and check how they work out when converting to the formats you want! As for myself i disable it whenever i find it and things seem to run allright over here atleast! I guess any rival on the internet could say to use the setting allso? Probably best to test things out to know yourself for sure rather then to trust some type of internet pirates roaming around!

Variable bit rate/constant bit rate i dont know much about it, but i think the launch of the video require quite a bit of performance with constant bitrate, which could be annoying (allso it can be more file size for the same quality), and the variable bit rate seem to run easier to launch and easier to keep playing but the spikes of increase bit rates maybe make it difficult if is an real high sudden increase.. try look for maximum bit rate when using variable bit rate which would limit the bitrate in the highest peaks which can help prevent any issues! But from the lil bit i tested im defenitely more interested in VBR then CBR for some videos for use with broadcasting. (I think i seen someone here on the forum say that uploading videos to youtube requires vbr and the videos converted from cbr to vbr was not so good).

So if the transfer device would be some type of USB thing to play from the computer to an tv i think it would perform better with VBR and have higher fail rate to launch CBR videos with a lil bit higher bit rate (to give same quality) since for some of those devices it is the launch that is the critical part and they can come with limitations to not start an fire, once it is set going it can produce a lil bit better!

[lollo]

- Lossless capture
From what understand this will allow you to perform better postprocessing on the video data which you can't do otherwise, to me this seems like alot of addtional hard drive space, time & effort to do and I'm unsure how much better the video will look after that vs mpeg2 capture.

Analog SD video should be captured as YUV 4:2:2 lossless, to be as much as closer to the data written on tape, and to allow further restoration on pristine material rather than video going through lossy decoding/coding operations.

- Capture software
I've skimmed alot of posts that mention amrecTV & VirtualDub, from what i understand the benefit of using these are de-interlacing and lossless captutre?
I'm likely to just use the included hauppage capture, I understand the .ts file is mpeg2 which is not lossless.

For your hardware and OS AmarecTV is recommended.

"Hauppauge Capture" software encodes to MPEG2 in real time. I posted a comparison between a lossless capture and a MPEG2 capture at 10 mbits long time ago. I do not find that old thread so here a small video compare_huffyuv_mpeg2.avi and an image comparison: https://imgsli.com/MjI0MTYx

The tape I captured was is good conditions, so no restoration is needed and the differences between lossless and mpeg2 capture at 10 mbps are there, but small. If you need a restoration because the condition of the material a lossy capture is not appropriate.

- Bitrate
maybe this is talked about less as it seems lossless is the goal but are are there reccomendations around bitrate? constant vs variable etc.
the video resolution is 720x567, I've been testing with 10mbs constant and understandably have been making large video files which seems like overkill.

10Mbps is not overkill. MPEG2 does not perform well at low bitrate compared to more recent codecs. I would never capture an analog tape with the Hauppauge Software at a bitrate lower than the max allowed.

- Interlacing
from testing my captured video is interlaced, I assume the general guidance would be to de-interlace when converting to mp4?
I've seen a few apps mentioned but havn't looked htat far into it yet.

The video must be capture interlaced, and deinterlaced or inverse telecined in post processing if needed.

Ultimately my goal is a digital version of the tapes in good quality that can be played on the tv at christmas and the rest of the family can access online.

After capture and eventually post-processing, encode to h264 at CRF 17 with a slow preset using ffmpeg

[lordsmurf]

- Bitrate
maybe this is talked about less as it seems lossless is the goal but are are there reccomendations around bitrate? constant vs variable etc.
the video resolution is 720x567, I've been testing with 10mbs constant and understandably have been making large video files which seems like overkill.

10Mbps is not overkill. MPEG2 does not perform well at low bitrate compared to more recent codecs. I would never capture an analog tape with the Hauppauge Software at a bitrate lower than the max allowed.

10 mbit is actually heavily compressed, right at max for DVD-Video (9.8 to 10.08)
15 is minimum to be "semi-transparent" when 4:2:0
20-25 is essentially transparent, or the minimum for 4:2:2
SD specs go to 50 mbit, though I've seen 100 mbit on paper (who uses that?).

Hauppauge MPEG compression sucks, blurry and soft now, passable only when we had CRTs. I think it defaulted to 2.5 mbit at the time, essentially SVCD or DVB VCR specs.

I still do a lot of MPEG work, but either with ATI AIW (Ligos hybrid encoding), or MainConcept from lossless.

[lollo]

10 mbit is actually heavily compressed, right at max for DVD-Video (9.8 to 10.08)
15 is minimum to be "semi-transparent" when 4:2:0
20-25 is essentially transparent, or the minimum for 4:2:2
SD specs go to 50 mbit, though I've seen 100 mbit on paper (who uses that?).

Correct, but out of contest. With "Hauppauge Capture" software you can't go any higher than 10mbps.

Hauppauge MPEG compression sucks, blurry and soft now, passable only when we had CRTs. I think it defaulted to 2.5 mbit at the time, essentially SVCD or DVB VCR specs.

You probably refer to Hauppauge hardware encoders. For the object in the topic, the real-time software MPEG2 encoding is not that bad, as showed in the sample.

I still do a lot of MPEG work, but either with ATI AIW (Ligos hybrid encoding), or MainConcept from lossless.

Once more, except for DVD Authoring there is not a single reason today to produce MPEG2 encodings, either from a lossless capture or through a MPEG2 hardware capture.

[Alwyn]

There are basically two paths you can take.

Hauppauge MPEG Capture
Given your relatively short time constraint (Xmas 3 weeks away) and given these things inevitably blow out, timewise, this path will be the safest. Do your capture at the best quality you can set and then export your videos in MP4 format. I'm not familiar with Hauppauge software but you should have an option to export your video into MP4.

That said, for your TV, the MPEG capture files should play fine on your TV. They are just bigger that MP4 to share online, which will have to be via a file sharing site such as Google Drive, or Youtube. You won't be able to email them.

Lossless Capture with AmarecTV
This is the best quality option because it gives you the best chance of restoring/improving your video without degrading it, as would happen if you were working on MPEG files. The possibilities for editing and restoration are endless but for your timeframe, I'd keep it simple to start.

A basic workflow for this option is to capture using AmarecTV with your current gear (Camcorder>ES10 (if needed)>Live2>PC (using S-Video if you can)).

Then, edit in Virtual Dub 2 (eg chop out the bad bits, deinterlace) and export to MP4.

I have made some guides:
Capture with AmarecTV
Virtual Dub editing and export

There are other video editing programs out there, both paid and unpaid, but for basic purposes, VDub works well.

Be ready for some minor brain-twisting, especially with the second option.

[lordsmurf]

Once more, except for DVD Authoring there is not a single reason today to produce MPEG2 encodings, either from a lossless capture or through a MPEG2 hardware capture.

Quick hobby capturing, balance quality with size. It's something I'd only do with certain ATI AIW, nothing else. Otherwise, yes, mostly just optical formats, but also some broadcasting specs still.

[lollo]

Once more, except for DVD Authoring there is not a single reason today to produce MPEG2 encodings, either from a lossless capture or through a MPEG2 hardware capture.

Quick hobby capturing, balance quality with size. It's something I'd only do with certain ATI AIW, nothing else. Otherwise, yes, mostly just optical formats, but also some broadcasting specs still.

Clear, I know your workflows. OTHH, there is no "balance quality" in capturing MPEG2 for "quick hobby" and leaving the head switching noise for display. To hide/remove them you need postprocessing anyhow.