Hello All,
Some weeks ago, I started a project with the goal of digitizing and cataloguing all my personal videos. After a number of challenges, quite a bit of help from this group (Thank you!), and a lot of learning, I managed to accomplish the first step: ingesting the content on my computers with as little loss as possible. I transferred all my Mini DV tapes via Firewire using WinDV and all my VHS/VHS-C with VirtualDub using a lossless encoder and a USB capture device. The resulting .AVI files amount to 3-4 TB. I checked all files individually: the audio and video are in synch and there were no dropped frames (hooray!)
Table 1 and Table 2 below show a sample of MediaInfo reports for the context ingested from the MiniDV camera and VHS/VHS-C, respectively. I included this just to give you an idea of the type of content I am dealing with.
Before I continue this project, I would appreciate your advice on my next steps. My current goal is to improve the quality of the content as much as I can to create what I call master/archival copies. I will then use the masters to edit small projects to distribute to the family.
Each tape was captured in a single file (sometimes very large ~70GB). While deinterlacing can be applied across the whole file, other filters will only apply to certain scenes, e.g. brightness/contrast adjustment, noise reduction, HSV adjustment, sharpening, among others (I also found some other artifacts that I have no idea how to fix at the moment - probably the topic for another post when I get there).
Do I need to split each file in its individual scenes before I proceed applying the filters? I can easily use ScenalizerLive to split the .AVIs ingested from the miniDV camera into individual scenes (I have not tried it on the AVIs ingested from the VHS/VHS-C yet). Is this the best way to proceed?
What is the best tool for applying filters? I have been using VirtualDub and it seems to do the job fairly well (from my beginner's POV). Perusing the posts in this forum, I learned about AviSynth, which intrigued me and seems to be more powerful but also seems to have a much steeper learning curve.
After I create the masters, I would like to catalogue the content, e.g. add keywords, markers, and be able to search for them. Do you have any suggestion of a tool that I can use for that purpose?
Thank you
Crbd98
Table 1: Mini DV imports
General
Complete name : D:\Videos\2003 1of1.03-05-17_09-53.00.avi
Format : AVI
Format/Info : Audio Video Interleave
Commercial name : DVCPRO
Format profile : OpenDML
File size : 13.0 GiB
Duration : 1 h 2 min
Overall bit rate mode : Constant
Overall bit rate : 30.0 Mb/s
Recorded date : 2003-06-19 21:12:30.000
Video
ID : 0
Format : DV
Commercial name : DVCPRO
Codec ID : dvsd
Codec ID/Hint : Sony
Duration : 1 h 2 min
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 24.4 Mb/s
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 4:3
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 29.970 (30000/1001) FPS
Original 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
Time code of first frame : 00:30:43;21
Time code source : Subcode time code
Stream size : 12.5 GiB (96%)
Encoding settings : wb mode= / white balance= / fcm=auto focus
Audio
ID : 1
Format : PCM
Format settings : Little / Signed
Codec ID : 1
Duration : 1 h 2 min
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 1 024 kb/s
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 32.0 kHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Stream size : 457 MiB (3%)
Alignment : Aligned on interleaves
Interleave, duration : 33 ms (1.00 video frame)
Interleave, preload duration : 33 ms
Table 2: From VHS with Lossless encoder
General
Complete name : E:\Videos\Raw Capture\VHS-002\VHS-002.avi
Format : AVI
Format/Info : Audio Video Interleave
Format profile : OpenDML
File size : 57.4 GiB
Duration : 2 h 6 min
Overall bit rate : 65.1 Mb/s
Video
ID : 0
Format : YUV
Codec ID : ULY2
Codec ID/Info : Ut Video Lossless Codec
Codec ID/Hint : Ut Video
Duration : 2 h 6 min
Bit rate : 63.5 Mb/s
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 3:2
Frame rate : 29.970 (30000/1001) FPS
Standard : NTSC
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:2
Compression mode : Lossless
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 6.134
Stream size : 56.1 GiB (98%)
Audio
ID : 1
Format : PCM
Format settings : Little / Signed
Codec ID : 1
Duration : 2 h 6 min
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 1 536 kb/s
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Stream size : 1.36 GiB (2%)
Alignment : Aligned on interleaves
Interleave, duration : 10 ms (0.30 video frame)
Interleave, preload duration : 10 ms
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You can use the Blending... option on the Filters dialog to apply certain filters to only a range of frames.
Yes, it's harder to get set up (many filters must be downloaded/added manually, sometimes there are version issues since the filters are created and modified by different people with no coordination between them) and to use (everything is controlled by a text script) but it's very powerful. AviSynth doesn't do any encoding so you need to use an editor/encoder to encode the output of the script. Open the script as if it is a video file with VirtualDub2, ffmpeg, x264 CLI, etc. -
avisynth is about right and the cool thing is you can use virtualdub filters inside your scripts
best filters to use for basic corrections: ylevels, tweak, coloryuv, qtgmc, ccd (vdub filter)*** DIGITIZING VHS / ANALOG VIDEOS SINCE 2001**** GEAR: JVC HR-S7700MS, TOSHIBA V733EF AND MORE -
If you use Scenalyzer to split the video at scene boundaries, remember that it has two different ways to split scenes. For the DV, you should set it to split scenes when the timecode is interrupted. This will do a perfect job of splitting scenes. However, for the video you captures via your USB capture device, you will have to use the optical scene detection. Like all optical scene detection, it is far from perfect, and you will have to carefully examine the results.
You can go over to doom9.org and look for the AVISynth scene detection AVISynth DLL and script created by StainlessS. I also created some scene detection scripts. Both are better than what the Scenalyzer optical detection.
What I do when optically creating scene breaks is I have my AVISynth script spit out the frame numbers where the scene split should happen. I then put the big AVI file into my NLE (Vegas Pro) and then copy/paste the frame numbers into the markers dialog. This then puts markers on the timeline at each scene split. I can then quickly go to each point before making the split, and if the marker is at a point where no scene change happens, I remove the marker.
Then, once I've done that quick check (5-10 minutes for a two hour video), I run a script which cuts the video at the marker points and I remove the markers.
As for improving the video, for VHS and 8mm analog video I apply noise reduction and chroma correction to the entire file. I then have a couple of gamma and color correction presets that I can choose from and apply them to entire sections. The reason I am such a Vegas Pro fan is that it lets you automate repetitive operations via scripts and I have written over 100 scripts which let me add (and remove) "effects" from each scene (Vegas calls them "events"), using just the push of one button.
If the video is really important, and if the camera is shaky, I will apply motion stabilization. I wrote a series of interconnecting scripts that let me stabilize multiple selected scenes using Deshaker. Despite being a 20-year-old technology, it still holds up pretty well compared to the "best" stabilizer, Mercalli. If money is no object, use Mercalli.
With really old VHS, color correction can be an issue, because most of the cameras in the 1980s required manual color balance, using a white card, and if I didn't do that perfectly, there is a color cast that must be removed. Even with the more modern auto-white balance cameras, it was easy to set the balance to indoor rather than outdoor (or vice versa) and end up with a truly horrendous result. -
Hello All,
Thank you for your replies.
@johnmeier: I appreciate your advice on how to split the content and apply the filters. For the time being, I will stick with VirtualDub and maybe look into AviSynth later on.
I was intrigued by your statement that you "apply noise reduction and chroma correction to the entire file." I tried that approach using the filters in VirtualDub. I noticed that applying noise reduction (the smoother and temporal smoother filters in VirtualDUb) would blur the detail in some scenes. For instance, it smoothed the ocean waves and dampened the reflections of a sunset in the water. Maybe I am using them incorrectly? Too much smoothing? Here are the settings I used:
[Attachment 57751 - Click to enlarge]
[Attachment 57752 - Click to enlarge]
Regarding chroma correction, I am unsure which options to use. I simply selected the value that matched the one MediaInfo returned for the file. Here are my settings:
[Attachment 57753 - Click to enlarge]
Also, is there a specific order in which to apply the filters?
I noticed that you don't mention deinterlacing. In one of your posts from some years ago on thread (https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/388043-Perfect-deinterlacing), you mentioned "My recommendation has always been this: do NOT deinterlace unless you absolutely have to." I am afraid I will need to deinterlace because I want to resize and reformat my edits. In fact, I am having an strange problem which I described in this post https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/401054-Problem-deinterlacing-AVI-file-dubbed-from-...HS#post2613388
Your help is greatly appreciated.
Regards
Crbd98
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