Looking for the best video from my FPV gear to youtube.

[cfischer]

After a bit of research this forum seems to be the best source of information for my current ignorence.
My current project consists of me trying to produce the best possible video from my fpv setup. I am using a small surveillance camera onboard an rc aircraft and transmitting the signal back to a groundstation reciever.
The video I'm trying to capture is fast motion and pretty noisy.

My current understanding for the best looking video with an end goal of youtube is this:
Capture with lossless codec(huffyuv), clean up video(color, denoise, anything else?), then re-encode to something I can use in blender(graphics overlay stuff) then output to youtube(h.264?).


I have a few questions on the topic but I'll start with this: hardware.

I am currently experimenting with a Diamond VC500 usb capture devise with virtualdub and no compression. I am using a laptop in the field and its ok. The bitrate is huge(which I love) at like 160mbps.
Question: Is there a capture devise I can use that is standalone that can capture lossless video like my cheap vc500 (bitrate)? That means no computer that I can run off batteries? Budget: I could go up to a grand i suppose but it has to be pretty sweet.

If not I am assuming the capture devise I am using now could be better. Is there something I could connect to a laptop(usb) that would give me better quality? My budget is something like 200 unless thats not past the knee of dimishing returns.

Thanks for the knowledge!!!
-Chris

[pandy]

RPi (perhaps new version 2) + MIPI camera + fast memory card - You should be able to fit inside your budget.

Anything more than this can be very difficult to fit within planned budget.

btw
high speed (lossless/lossy encoding) means nothing when source is noisy... noise have high entropy and can't be compressed - focus on improving capture quality (sensor + optics).

[cfischer]

Interesting direction with the mipi cam and the pi. I am assuming you mean this should go onboard. I am racing micro quads around with an all up weight of <50 grams. Every gram counts so I'm looking for a way to use the existing video feed rather than add to the aircraft. I really don't know of any way to improve the signal that's being transmitted other than camera choice and unfortunately weight comes before video in the need list.

btw
high speed (lossless/lossy encoding) means nothing when source is noisy... noise have high entropy and can't be compressed - focus on improving capture quality (sensor + optics).

Lets talk about this for a second. I was under the impression that I could use some sophisticated noise filters to get things looking better in post. This would allow me to compress after the filters. This is the reason I wanted to capture at huge bitrates.

I do wonder if some of the noise is coming from the cheap usb capture device.

[pandy]

Interesting direction with the mipi cam and the pi. I am assuming you mean this should go onboard. I am racing micro quads around with an all up weight of <50 grams. Every gram counts so I'm looking for a way to use the existing video feed rather than add to the aircraft. I really don't know of any way to improve the signal that's being transmitted other than camera choice and unfortunately weight comes before video in the need list.

Then improve current setup - not sure what currently is used but for sure noise is not a good data.

Lets talk about this for a second. I was under the impression that I could use some sophisticated noise filters to get things looking better in post. This would allow me to compress after the filters. This is the reason I wanted to capture at huge bitrates.

I do wonder if some of the noise is coming from the cheap usb capture device.

There is no such things as sophisticated noise filters - noise is unwanted signal in most of cases.
Verify quality of your USB capture by connecting DVD or similar stable/predictable video signal source.
Huge bitrate is not synonymy for high quality. Same principle for RF signal reception - even most sophisticated low noise amplifier with very fancy signal processing means nothing when compared with antenna gain. Antenna is most important factor and in Your case this is optics+camera+link to capture device.
Additionally - some cameras offer some signal preprocessing (like demosaic, denoise etc) using RPi (or similar) may be better approach to your problem (at least gives you some control over signal processing aspects).