Look at this terrible LD capture quality...just awful

[therick]

Alright, I have heard and seen on the web that LD captured stuff was supposed to be almost DVD quality...but I can't seem to get there...I am trying to get my Star Wars LDs transferred, but I keep hitting bumps in the road. I have gotten IVTC down, but this incoming quality is sooooo bad....here are 2 examples:

www.clemson.edu/~rlrobbi

Now here is my setup:

AMD Duron 950
512 MB RAM
60 Gig on an ATA-100 contoller
Pinnacle PCTV
Capturing at 640x480 with Huffy
with VDub

Can anyone let me in on why this looks like it does? Why doesn't it look like this?

http://deinterlace.sourceforge.net/screenshots/IQ_screenshots.htm

Is it my player? The PCTV? I capture from satellite with minimal noise...but I am gonna put the old WinTV GO in after work and see what I can get out of it...maybe post it side by side the PCTVs output...all laserdisc veterans please help me out!!!!

[neomaine]

therick,

I had similar difficulties coming from a vcr. I know its not laserdisc but it looked pretty bad. I happened to have some additional cables and actually found one that made a huge difference.

good luck...

[MITSUI_1]

therick,

I can't see those pictures. They're not loading. I get a red "x".

I was just going to suggest using avisynth with decomb 3.8 for IVTC, as I am having AMAZING results with it as I convert my Indiana Jones Trillogy from VHS to SVCD and VCD (wish I knew why the f@ck Lucas won't just put out the damn DVD's, which I'd buy in a heartbeat).

Some suggestions to deal with bad caputure quality:

1. Use a better/more shielded cable from the LD player to the capture card.

2. Keep the cable AWAY (at least a foot) from any alternating current power cords.

3. It realy could be your player. I once had a VCR that gave really horrible output on the RCA outs. I opened it up only to find that the unit had apparently originally been designed to output only through coax. When they updated the unit to add RCA out, they did not bother taking the signal from a clean source. INSTEAD... they had kludged on a coax to rca converter. That meant the signal was coming from the vcr, getting converted to coax, and then back to RCA outs. (An elec. eng. friend of mine showed me each step in the process). Very bad for signal quality, obviously. If your LD player is trying to do the same thing, you might actually get better quality by taking the signal from the coax cable. Just a thought.

4. Check for updated drivers for your capture card. I've heard of broken drivers having trouble properly capturing both fields.

5. Good idea on trying the Win TV card. I love mine.

[MITSUI_1]

Oh, one more suggestion:

Are you calibrating your Virtual Dub brightness and contrast settings before capturing?

Steps:

1. Got to "capture avi"

2. Start your LD playing.

3. Set the display to "preview with histogram"

4. Follow the process set out on Stan's page:

http://www.geocities.com/stanwebber/vhs/vhs.html

(scroll down to the histograms).

I'd also check the field order on your captures.

Setting the brightness and contrast correctly tends to minimize low level noise that gets captured. I wish I had figured out the process a lot earlier, as it has really helped with my VHS conversions.

[therick]

@MITSUI_1 -

I used decomb 3.8 on those captures....that is actually the .avs I opened up in VDub. I did not know about the cable thing...I think it is down right by my surge protector...so I guess that is a problem...the composite video is the same quality...but that cable is down by the surge protector too...and I'll try a different cable...



P.S. (MITSUI_1)- are you doing the letterboxed version or the fullscreen version of Indiana Jones...if so, might be interested in a little trade...if you don't have what I am doing that is...

[therick]

@MITSUI_1 - I also put bitmap versions of the jpgs that were on the page...I am not sure why they won't show up for you, but hopefully the bitmaps will.

[therick]

Ok, I tried 3 different cables (all to the same effect) and moving the cables away from my other cords. No dice. I think my next step is to reinstall my WinTV card and see if the quality remains low. If it doesn't, I will know to try different drivers for the Pinnacle card and/or throw it out the freaking window...any other ideas on what could be causing this would be much appreciated...

[MITSUI_1]

My GOD... that is awful quality capture. You're right. It is simply abysmal.

Four comments:


First: And most importantly:

[b]Read this web page: (http://www.cybertheater.com/Tech_Archive/YC_Comp_Format/yc_comp_format.html),

Pay particular attention to the information under the header "What Video Signal Format Should be Used to Interconnect Products?" I did not know that LD stored data in the composite format, which really impacts what cable you should be using to connect your device to the cap card. Seems key, fact and looks like S-Video may not be the best way to go. Try using an RCA cable from your LD player to the cap card. Your raw footage is exhibiting "Combing" artifacts, but this might not be just the interlacing. It could be a crappy combing filter in your capture card. If you use the RCA outs on the LD player, you probably will get a betters signal. I'm betting this will work.

Second: I'd also change your capture resolution to 560x480. That's all you need with LD and your capture software may have a crappy scaler.

Third: What "Format" are you capturing in? Is it YUY2? RGB? Huffy allows you to use both (although if you use RGB it does some converting which is slightly lossy). If your're capturing using RBG, you should switch to YUY2.

Fourth: Try the histogram calibration I detailed above and that Stan talks about on his site. It works.