Why aren't my Captures Sharp?

[Numbat]

Hi All,

I was after some advice on why my captures are ending up soft and the differences between capturing via ScenalyzerLIVE and VideoFactory2.0. I am new to the capture world but have been backing up dvd’s for a while now, so I am pretty familiar with TMPGEnc etc. I am in Australia so Pal and vhs video for me.

I have been capturing and converting 3 min tests to SVCD and CVD using Scenalyzerlive and VideoFactory.

My capture rig is New Panasonic Stereo VCR > TBC-1000 > DAC-100 > firewire into SoundBlaster Audigy Card > 120Gb Western Digital JB HDD. I am operating under windows XP SP1.

I first captured through the Videofactory Capture utility. I started off using one of my best tapes before starting on the really old stuff. In a short time I was capturing editing out the ads, rendered to Pal DV file (all throu’ VideoFactory) and encoding (TMPGEnc Plus) a 2 pass VBR SVCD and using nero to burn a test CD-RW.

The problem is the SVCD looks a bit “soft”. When compared to the original source tape there is a lack of sharpness. The captures look good in terms of no blockiness, colour good etc, just the lack of sharpness.

I have tried various settings in the render from VideoFactory, capturing from the trial version of Scenalyzerlive, using various filter in Virtual Dub, etc. Still no luck! The other thing I noticed was that the Scenalyzerlive captures look interlaced, and the VideoFactory captures don’t look interlaced. My last effort I encoded a VideoFactory Pal DV rendering of a Scenalyzerlive capture using the De-interlace (double) function in TMPGEnc. This didn’t look too bad but was a bit grainy. I tried the noise filters in TMPGEnc but I was getting a strange read error at different points in the encode (another matter).

Any advice on what I should try to sharpen up my captures

I have also used AVIcodec to look at my captured DV files and none of them get more than 90% on the quality rating. Some of the long ones, 1 hour drop, to 70%.

I have no DVD burner yet, so I can’t comment on higher res DVD encodes. I have tried CVD’s as well but they look similar to SVCDs. Is the rendering through VideoFactory part of the problem (I have contacted Sonic Foundry support, they are pretty fast to get back but the advice is lacking, couldn’t tell me what pixel ratio etc to use in my renders for best quality).

Sorry for the long post, but thanks in advance for your help

[mgh]

In MF, there is a quality setting-aside from the bit rate setting for mpeg .
For capturing thehighest quality setting is 15-for encoding it is 50. With MF capture at 8000kbps vbr and PCM audio. Do not capture at VCD or SVCD resolutions. Re encoding is fine.

[Numbat]

Hi mgh, thanks fr the speedy reply.
I am using Sonic Foundry VideoFactory 2.0. Is MF movie factory? Different software?

I cannot see any change in resolution in the capture section of Videofactory, the DAC-100 outputs standard DV I assume in 720x576? I have no settings that you mention in Videofactory. Sceneanalyser from memory does have settings for input format/codec (I am at work now so cannot check). I always use full resolution to capture.

The capture does have large black borders both vertically and horizontally around the image. Could the large vertical borders be reducing the effective pixels captured? Any way to stop this?

From Videofactory you have to render. I have rendered to Pal DV 720x576. I have tried a free frameserver for Videofactory called PluginPac FrameServer, but I couldn't get it to work. It also corrupted VideoFactory Capture utility so I couldn't use it! Once I uninstalled it all was ok.
Cheers.