Sharpness and color quality issues.

[Eric Willoughby]

My first post on any forum.
I have an AIW 8500DV, bought in Jan. I have had all the typical problems I.E. installed to see a black screen until I disabled firewire, still lose the left audio chanel daily because IRQ 11 is shared between the capture card, SB live, and modem. I have spent many hours trying to separate them to no avail. I don't care about that anymore.

Question. It doesn't matter what I capture I lose a considerable amount of the original video's sharpness and the colors, for the lack of a proper term, appear very muddied.

If my source is TIVO or PVR the loss, although disturbing, is acceptable. But I have yet to capture a single minute of home video that is not completely disapointing. I have spent aprox 12 hours trying to adjust the color, contrast, and brightness while capturing. I give up only to try again in a few weeks. I have come to the conclusion that I will have a MUCH better copy of my home movies if I just dub to another VHS.

Is this normal? The best to be expected?

[trevlac]

Is the home video DV, Hi-8, or what??

[Eric Willoughby]

It is full size vhs. It is not, of course, the greatest quality. The TIVO and PVR on the other hand are.

I am happy with the original tapes, I just want copies for my parents, but want to know if my $200 capture card is supposed to be this crappy!

Thanks for answering.

[trevlac]

I'm sorry, but I don't have experience with VHS, and I don't have an ATI card.

Here are a few things:

- Use an S-VHS deck. The color is stored seperate on the tape. It has to be combined to go out thru an yellow rca jack. An s-vhs deck uses an s-video connector. This keeps the color seperate.

- When you capture I assume it is directly to mpeg. The ATI may be softening the picture.

- Invest in a test DVD like the AVIA or Joe Kane one. This will let you not only adjust your tv but also you monitor/capture card by playing the dvd thru the card with a dvd player. You can use this to adjust your colors/sharpness/contrast of the preview of the card.

[Eric Willoughby]

Thats for the info about the test DVD. I have wished for a simple color bar like the ones the stations broudcast when they go off the air. I guess with cable and sat. that doesn't get transmitted any more.

You may have found the word to describe what I am getting out of the capture. "Soft" Is that a flaw in the card or MPEG.

As I said. I have tried for many hours 12+ to adjust the color, brightness, and contrast but nothing helps.

Does anyone out there with a 8500DV have the same problem with "soft" color and sharpness?

[Numbat]

Hello Eric,
I have experienced similar problems with lose of sharpness and colour bleed with my captures also. I am in pal land - Australia.

I have been using a digital analogue converter (Datavideo DAC-100 and TBC-1000). I haven't had much time lately to try all the many settings but I have tried quite a bit of software to date. My setup
Panasonic VCR > TBC-1000 > DAC-100 > Audigy firewire > sonic foundry Videofactory2.0

I have converted to CVD, SVCD and DVD but still the same issue. The footage is not bad, just "soft". Any filters I have used tend to smooth too much also.

I initially thought the problem might lie with VideoFactory capture utility. I tried the help forum on VideoFactory but got no help at all.

I tried capturing with SceneAnalyser Live but get interlace artefacts and noise. My next step is to swap the VCR and try capturing a few different tapes. I have also tried VirtualDub and frameserving straight into TMPGEnc but no improvement.

I am interested in any answers you get also.

Cheers and good luck!

[Eric Willoughby]

Thanks. Glad to know that it isn't a bad card. The next capture I try is going to be between 2 VCR's. haha. I'm tired of wasting time on this futile attempt.

[lordsmurf]

Without knowing your capture settings, it's hard to give advice.

[Eric Willoughby]

Quality is not bad at all capturing from TIVO or PVR but it doesn't matter what settings I use from VHS. It all sucks. Not resolution mind you, just color brightness and sharpness. I suppose it is due to the input signal but I would have expected fair in fair out, but I am putting fair in and getting total crap out. Is this to be expected??

Thanks

[lordsmurf]

Without knowing your capture settings, it's hard to give advice.

I repeat myself.

[Eric Willoughby]

MPEG 2
720x480, NTSC (525)
8.00 M bit/sec
48.000 Khz, 16 bit, stereo

MPEG 1
352x240
2.4 M bit/sec

AVI
640x480
UYVY

Changing the settings doesn't help! Not even changing the color, brightness, and contrast.

[BrainStorm69]

If you are using the ATI presets, they are crap. Go to Lordsmurf's site and read up.

http://digitalfaq.com/