Hi-8 (8mm) to Digital

[Anon45]

To give you a point of comparison, here is a DV-AVI sample from a Digital8 camera.
The mp4 is the cropped, lightly denoised and deinterlaced version.
You should get an at least equivalent result with your setup.

The MP4 is beautiful!

Was this recorded on a Digital8 camcorder, or converted from analog? I'm assuming analog. But I don't have a Digital8 camcorder. The best I have, which I just bought, is a MiniDV camcorder, which I think is the same.

I don't think I can get that kind of quality with the Dazzle. Maybe if I de-noised and deinterlaced it. Which I don't know how to do lol!

Than I can sell both my cameras when I'm done with it.

(I will try a conversion now)

[ackboo]

It is a 25 years old video8 tape converted by a Digital8 camcorder. It was then processed with megui / avisynth / QTGMC.
What model of MiniDV is it ?

[Anon45]

It is a 25 years old video8 tape converted by a Digital8 camcorder. It was then processed with megui / avisynth / QTGMC.
What model of MiniDV is it ?

Canon ZR40.

[ackboo]

Apparently it can be used as a passthrough analog/digital converter. See the manual page 81 82. Connect the hi8 camcorder to it. Try S-video. And you'll need a firewire 400 card on your pc.
http://gdlp01.c-wss.com/gds/5/0900000695/01/ZR40IM-EN.pdf

[Anon45]

Yep. I looked into it. I've been looking at a lot of camcorders. Yours was very expensive on eBay. But it turns out I won't need it...

[Anon45]

MediaInfo:

General
Complete name : D:\Videos\Capture_002.avi
Format : AVI
Format/Info : Audio Video Interleave
Commercial name : DV
File size : 118 MiB
Duration : 32s 340ms
Overall bit rate mode : Constant
Overall bit rate : 30.5 Mbps

Video
ID : 0
Format : DV
Codec ID : dv25
Codec ID/Hint : DVCPro
Duration : 32s 299ms
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 24.4 Mbps
Encoded bit rate : 28.8 Mbps
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 4:3
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 29.970 (29970/1000) fps
Standard : NTSC
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:1:1
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Interlaced
Scan order : Bottom Field First
Compression mode : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 2.357
Stream size : 111 MiB (94%)

Audio
ID : 1
Format : PCM
Format settings, Endianness : Little
Format settings, Sign : Signed
Codec ID : 1
Duration : 32s 340ms
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 1 536 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Stream size : 5.92 MiB (5%)
Alignment : Aligned on interleaves
Interleave, duration : 10 ms (0.30 video frame)
Interleave, preload duration : 150 ms

[ackboo]

The mediainfo text is not necessary if you post a sample ^^. Looks like the capture part is done. Now you can edit losslessly with virtualdub in direct stream copy mode and you need to figure out the crop denoise deinterlace. For a youtube upload it is best to deinterlace first, for a dvd keep the files as is, take a look at avstodvd.
You should also archive the DV-AVI as they are for a future conversion or edit.

[Anon45]

lol! ^_^

Ok, Thanks!
I was just in the process of installing all the AviSynth things. lol! I will use VirtualDub...

[Anon45]

How do I get rid of that little ..."thing" that went down the video at the beginning? Do I need to clean the video heads of my camcorder? Or is that just part of the tape? I didn't see it when I first capture the video...

[Anon45]

Sorry, but how do I apply the MSU Denoise Filter in VirtualDub? I'm lost.

Also, when I tried to apply cropping to the deinterlace filter, I ended up with a majorly scrambled video that wouldn't play. So I used "null transform."

[Anon45]

VirtualDub stretches the video when I open it. I don't understand this 720x480 4:3 aspect ratio thing. I give up. Goodnight!

[Anon45]

VirtualDub stretches the video when I open it. I don't understand this 720x480 4:3 aspect ratio thing. I give up. Goodnight!

[Anon45]

You should also archive the DV-AVI as they are for a future conversion or edit.

Why would I keep the original AVI? That's 26GB a tape! I have 20 tapes. Maybe not all 2 hours, but still. The final product is all I'm looking at. Even if it's just an MP4 file.

Also, I'm really not into all this script writing. Isn't there a program that can do without it? Like Adobe Premiere or something?

[Skiller]

Why would I keep the original AVI? That's 26GB a tape! I have 20 tapes.

The final product is all I'm looking at.

Sooner or later you might regret deleting your original AVIs. That is when in a few years you realize some things could be improved or you need another format to watch it. Do not make assumptions about the future just yet. I have made that very same mistake as well in the past, thinking the final product I just made is all I will ever need.

26 GiB for 2 hours is not much. That's only 520 GiB maximum for your entire collection stored for eternity.

I store my lossless captures for eternity – that's about 30 GiB per hour. Hard drives do not cost a fortune.

[smrpix]

Why would I keep the original AVI? That's 26GB a tape! I have 20 tapes. Maybe not all 2 hours, but still. The final product is all I'm looking at. Even if it's just an MP4 file.

Also, I'm really not into all this script writing. Isn't there a program that can do without it? Like Adobe Premiere or something?

How many people threw away their Super-8 movies after transferring them to VHS thinking that's all they'd ever need?

Scripting is still the best for fixing technical issues -- using anything other than a decent NLE for creative editing is just an exercise in frustration. Every half-decent NLE can handle DV losslessly. Sony Movie Studio is one of the cheapest and best. Premier, Vegas Pro, Edius, Avid all kick it up a notch in power and price.

[Anon45]

Hard drives do not cost a fortune.

True. A 500GB WD My Passport External Drive is only $69.99...

[Anon45]

This is what I get when I try to open an AVS file in VirtualDub:



:S

[smrpix]

Hard drives do not cost a fortune.

True. A 500GB WD My Passport External Drive is only $69.99...

For twice that price you can get 8x the capacity!

[SameSelf]

This is what I get when I try to open an AVS file in VirtualDub:


[Attachment 36088 - Click to enlarge]

:S

Did you install Cedocida like I mentioned? Loading a DV AVI in Avisynth using AviSource() is easy if you have a suitable VfW decoder installed on your system.

[Skiller]

True. A 500GB WD My Passport External Drive is only $69.99...

You can buy a 2 TB 3.5 hard drive for about the same price and put it in an external case if you don't have a desktop. No need to buy overpriced stuff like that. 500 GB is quite small if you're working with video.

[Anon45]

Did you install Cedocida like I mentioned?

I did, and I get this error:

You can buy a 2 TB 3.5 hard drive for about the same price and put it in an external case if you don't have a desktop. No need to buy overpriced stuff like that. 500 GB is quite small if you're working with video.

True. But I still have 610GB on my 1TB HD. And I have room for an extra drive... so I'm not too worried. I just wondered what I was going to do once my [1TB] HD filled up. lol!

[Anon45]

Also, I'm not prepared to edit all these files...

I tried the NeatVideo plugin for VirtualDub, and it cleared up the noise, but that's about it. I noticed there were dark shadows around the subject. Ahh...

[Anon45]

You can buy a 2 TB 3.5 hard drive for about the same price...

These are the ones I found:

$112 WD: http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-ca/product/western-digital-wd-blue-2tb-3-5-5400rpm-sata-deskt...92868826feen02

$99 Seagate: http://www.staples.ca/en/Seagate-Desktop-HDD-2TB-3-5-SATA-6-0Gb-s-7200-RPM-Internal-Ha...0_2-CA_1_20001

$79.99 Hitachi: http://www.factorydirect.ca/Canada-Ontario-/Computer_Add-Ons/HARD_DRIVE/Computer_Add-O...__SATA__RB__/0

The last one only has a 90 day warranty. You can upgrade to 1 year for $8.

[Skiller]

Sorry, I just realized you're in Canada. I was assuming US Dollars. Yeah, there are no 2 TB drives for 70 CAD.

Anyway, I really would not buy hard drives smaller than 2 TB nowadays.

[SameSelf]

Did you install Cedocida like I mentioned?

I did, and I get this error:


[Attachment 36089 - Click to enlarge]

Sounds like a Windows 8 problem. What OS are you using? Search the web as there are workarounds.

[Skiller]

Played a little bit with your sample Capture_002.avi.

Deinterlaced with QTGMC using custom settings, cropped (keeping the picture center centered, no blind cropping), chroma noise reduction with spatial only DFTtest and temporally with SMDegrain (both in 16 Bits) (no further luma denoising in addition to the denoising side effects of QTGMC because to me it would easily look artificial otherwise) and deshaked with Deshaker 3.1. Encoded using x264 with settings that preserve grain and CRF 16.

I noticed there is no audio on the right speaker.

[Anon45]

Sounds like a Windows 8 problem. What OS are you using? Search the web as there are workarounds.

Windows 10.

[Anon45]

Played a little bit with your sample Capture_002.avi.

Deinterlaced with QTGMC using custom settings, cropped (keeping the picture center centered, no blind cropping), chroma noise reduction with spatial only DFTtest and temporally with SMDegrain (both in 16 Bits) (no further luma denoising in addition to the denoising side effects of QTGMC because to me it would easily look artificial otherwise) and deshaked with Deshaker 3.1. Encoded using x264 with settings that preserve grain and CRF 16.

I noticed there is no audio on the right speaker.

Well that sucks! I never noticed that. Unless my setup is wrong, it's only coming out the right speaker. Edit: You're right, it's the left speaker!

I doesn't look like you did anything to denoise it.

[Skiller]

I doesn't look like you did anything to denoise it.

I denoised the chroma (there's hardly any chroma noise left) but I did not denoise the luma, apart from the light denoising side effects of QTGMC.

The thing is, and this is probably a rather subjective thing, if I removed every single bit of luma noise the video would look very processed and "plastic" like because there is not much detail left to please the eye. The noise is sort of "an illusion of detail" as I like to put it. You should also keep in mind that this particular scene is quite noisy to begin with because it was shot in suboptimal lighting conditions. The vast majority of the noise was caused by the camera (high gain to brighten the scene), not Video8 in itself. Bright outdoor shots should have a minimal noise floor with the same script that I used.

Of course, if you feel like it, you could denoise more strongly while still keeping a bit of noise to make it look not too processed. It's really a matter of taste. I don't mind luma noise much, but I hate the typical analog tape chroma noise.

[SameSelf]

Sounds like a Windows 8 problem. What OS are you using? Search the web as there are workarounds.

Windows 10.

Uh oh. I have avoided the nagging Windows 10 upgrade message for this very reason. Hopefully, someone on this forum has resolved this issue on Windows 10. But if you have the ability to roll back to Windows 7, you'll find that you will be able to get much better answers to your questions, as that is what most of us still use for the very reason you cite above.

Alternatively, try avspmod instead of Virtualdub. I find avspmod tends to work when vdub fails.