Doesn't ANYONE here own a high-end MPEG2 hardware encoder ?

[FulciLives]

Also if I go this route, does the device have a way of sending it to my PC or do I have to burn it to DVD using the recorder, then put that DVD in my PC to edit it?

You will have to do it via a DVD that is burned on the stand alone. There is no way to transfer the MPEG-2 recording to a computer otherthan on a DVD disc.

Even the models that use a built-in HDD use a format that is incompatable with computers.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[gshelley61]

Well, here's a MPEG2 frame from an 8mm home video camera tape capture, which is basically equivalent to VHS in quality. This was played back on a Sony Digital8 camcorder, s-video out, run through a Sima SCC Color Corrector and recorded to -RW in DVD-Video format, XP (1 hour) setting with my JVC DR-M10. This was before I had SignVideo hardware processors to use, and I can actually get better results than this now.

[rkgibbons]

And here's my VHS capture from a VERY old, VERY watched tape of Star Wars.



I used a crappy consumer brand VCR for playback, with crappy RCA cables (but with the output going through a DataVideo TBC-1000 before heading into my DC1000 capture card).

Format: MPEG2 captured at VBR 6Mbit/s.

The quality isn't great, but certainly matches what I see from the source VHS on my 27" television. No macroblocks or any visual distortion that I can pick up...and again: captured in real-time, and fully editable.

When I play back the MPEG footage from the timeline, I'm unable to distinguish between it and the original VHS source.

[junkmalle]

Hellbore, I think it's ok for you to post interlaced frames here -- especially BMP files. The people know anything here can either see around the interlace or they can download the images and deinterlace them.

If you want to post deinterlaced frames you can try this:

Open the MPEG file in VirtualDubMPEG2 or VirtualDubMod.

Go to Video -> Filters and select Deinterlace.

From the Deinterlace dialog try selecting Duplicate Field 1, or Duplicate Field 2. These will throw away one field and replace it with a copy of the other.

Or you can select Discard Field 1 or Discard Field 2. This will simply remove one field and leave you with a half high image (720x240). You can resize that to the full height (720x480) using a Resize filter. Resizing with Near "Nearest Neighbor" will do the same as Duplicate Field above. Resize with Bilinear or Lanczos3 will give smoother results.

Here's one of your images with Discard Field 1 and Resize with Lanczos3:

[Hellbore]

I see the macroblocks in both caps, from gshelley and rkgibbons. I guess I am doomed to never be satisfied with MPEG2 captures

I still need to try the software encoding and see how it looks. If it's not much better, I will just have to be satisfied for now and capture out movies to DVD just for convenience sake, but re-capture them in the future when better technology becomes available... By that I mean something that can conveniently store the video the way it is, without having to compress it.

BTW I'm surprised nobody has questioned what we were doing in that last capture I posted :P

[vhelp]

About the worse you'll see on a big screen tv (VHS as the source) is
what I refere to as 'masking'. If you've seen DS9, and looked at
Odo's face, that is what I refere to as 'masking'. The better the
quality VHS source, the less the so called masking you'll see. But,
if you capture (hardware mpeg-2'wise) your chances are greater, that
you'll have this problem, (in addition to macro blocks) once viewed
on your big screen tv.
.
I think that a lot of users are expecting that a hardware device of
whatever given, will result in exactness. And, that not always
going to be the case. Specially for VHS source, when pure interlace.
MEPG-2 has a harder time with it, give or take the Encoder in question.
.
I too, would recommned Procoder (under a skillful user, of course) to
obtain the best results. But, in the hands of a casual user, you'll be
disapointed in the results. Skill is not earned in a suggestion or
pointer here or there. But, it is mastered, through many trial and
error scenarios. Anyways.

I think, that should you go the AVI route (as I would) in your given
source criteria, you'll get the best results, and if you are skillful
in the encoding processes, you'll agree. However, that remains.
Also, I would suggest *NOT* to use any filtering. That will no doubt,
add to the 'masking' I was talking about above.

It would be fun, if you were to post an short AVI file for playing with,
and seeing how others would work out a resonable 'best method' approach
for you. Wouldn't hurt.

-vhelp 3237

[Hellbore]

That would be great, I would love to see what you guys can do with it. I will make an AVI and host it on my web site if you want.

[proxyx99]

OK, some captures from cable into MainConcept Enc. 1.4 MPEG2 6k VBR with DAC-100 Datavideo









below same setup from VHS LP mode - 10 year old Sanyo VHS (obviously not as sharp)





SP mode





artifacting from MC is pretty uniform without pronounced grid pattern, needless to say VHS looks sharper on a TV (32' CRT) then on my laptop (...?) all frames interlaced, no filter saved as BMP -> 39% JPEG


What do you guys think about standalone DVD recorder as an alternative to MPEG2 capture via HD card or software. How does that compare?

[gshelley61]

I see the macroblocks in both caps, from gshelley and rkgibbons. I guess I am doomed to never be satisfied with MPEG2 captures

I still need to try the software encoding and see how it looks. If it's not much better, I will just have to be satisfied for now and capture out movies to DVD just for convenience sake, but re-capture them in the future when better technology becomes available... By that I mean something that can conveniently store the video the way it is, without having to compress it.

BTW I'm surprised nobody has questioned what we were doing in that last capture I posted :P

If you zoom way in on practically any MPEG2 frame, there is often some amount of macroblocking because of it's highly compressed nature, even at the higher bitrates or with multiple pass encoding. Have a close look at some commercial DVD's... even with the sophisticated and expensive methods the studios use to transfer their movies to MPEG2, you will still find compression artifacts like macroblocking. The dark opening scene of Monsters Inc. comes to mind... it is full of macroblocks in the shadowy areas.

BTW, where did you get the giant wheel?

[rkgibbons]

I'm beginning to think that your expectations for MPEG are FAR beyond what the format can deliver, especially where VHS capture is concerned.

By definition, MPEG is a heavily compressed format, allowing large amounts of video to be stored in relatively small spaces.

It is not meant to be zoomed to 500% and viewed in Photoshop. It's meant to be viewed on a television, in motion, at 100%, and from a reasonable viewing distance.

When viewed on a television, I can assure you that the Star Wars capture is visually identical to the VHS source. I'm not sure what Macroblocking you're seeing in the Star Wars image. When zoomed, yes, there is pixelation, but it's very even -- and you'll get that with ANY bitmap image (regardless of the quality or resolution). I certainly can't see any repeating grid patterns though. Care to point them out?

As stated numerous times, VHS is a crappy format -- one of the worst imaginable for producing high quality MPEG recordings.

It's the old adage: garbage in, garbage out.

[junkmalle]

Rkgibbons, I saw virtually no macroblocking in your Star Wars image. But it's a scene with very little motion. I'd love to see a more difficult scene with a lot of detail and motion.

All of Proxyx99's latest batch of MCE images were full of macrobocks -- even the talking head still scenes. Though I doubt you'd notice them at 30 frames per second on SD TV.

[SHS]

Hellbore the compression algorithms is good depend on quality you start with, but nothing not 100% perfect.
Yes I'm sure better technology will becomes available.

[proxyx99]

I've posted some and admit there is macroblocking but I'll be damned if it is visible. Whatever image you look at there is some kind of pattern and as pointed out none of them was meant to be watched under a microscope. I have to admit that due to my laptop's CPU lack of power I captured at less then 20 fps. Don't ask me about the frame rate...
Possibly that has affected quality of encoding (or not) that, I cannot comment on (I'd have to recapture on the desktop PC and compare... too much work, sorry). Other images contain the same "grid" but it is smoothed out, unlike mine (btw. dc-1000 grid seems to diagonal... with a distinct pattern).
Anyway, this was to give the idea what can be expected from DAC-100 setup feeding into soft encoder. VHS is definitely not a good source as you can see above but with proper care I doubt if anyone would notice any artifacts on most of the images.
So, how about those standalone's DVDRW's?

[Hellbore]

I admit the star wars cap looks good. So do some of the others posted. Some of them look quite nice without the pronounced grid look.

I guess all of them have macroblocks but in some they are not visible. I don't understand why the blocks are so noticeable with the Hauppauge card. It's like with the hauppauge card, the edges between one block and another are very pronounced, whereas in some of the nicer encodes, the blocks sort of blend into each other more.

[rkgibbons]

There are just way to many variables to give you a concise answer to your question.

Different products encode video into MPEG in different ways. Some have high-quality encoding chips, others don't. Some use the same chips but employ different encoding algorithms.

Of course, each product also has its own unique settings and quality controls which also factor into the resulting video.

On top of that, every video will encode differently, depending on the amount of motion, range of colours, quality of source material, quality of playback machine, quality of input cables, etc.

[Delerious]

You need some generic WDM drivers for the card.
I too, have heard it can be done, but nobody seems to have any specifics, and I'm beginning to think they're all full of bull, none of them actually OWN a Hauppauge PVR card, and nobody's ever actually documented doing it.

Start iuVCR, select Hauppauge WinTV PVR PCI II Capture card, for
compression I chose [VFW] PICVideo M-JPEG 3 VfW Codec, clicked Enable
Preview - nothing, start WinTV2000 then close it, Enable Preview now shows the picture - close it, Start Record.

Loaded the AVI in Gspot (and VideoInspector). They both say it's MJPEG. I checked but there was no audio. I have the VCR hooked up via coax. The audio is set to mute every time I hit start record. There may be another way of getting sound or some setting I missed, but I don't want to start playing around with cables. I was just interested in seeing if I could get video.

J

[proxyx99]

Out of curiosity I compared one of pictures from cable (MC Enc) to miniDV (Procoder mastering quality) - 1st page of this thread. Both have identical pattern although coming from different sources and encoded with different encoders.
I guess that probably the way I saved these frames has something to do with visibility of the grid. Especially conversion to jpeg.
Below is a fragment of one of capture BMP's at 1000% (!) zoom (screen capture). Visibility of grid is barely noticable with uneven/random pattern. A lot better then previous jpegs. As I said noise is not visible when watching on a TV screen (looks 100% original). I have to say that MC Enc looks now pretty damn good!

[junkmalle]

Start iuVCR, select Hauppauge WinTV PVR PCI II Capture card, for
compression I chose [VFW] PICVideo M-JPEG 3 VfW Codec, clicked Enable
Preview - nothing, start WinTV2000 then close it, Enable Preview now shows the picture - close it, Start Record.

Interesting. I was able to get it to work once following your procedure. On subsequent attempts it would start recording, and then stop right away. It created a very small file that wasn't viewable. I'll try again later when I can reboot the system.

The one time it worked I used HuffYUV as the output codec. It scaled my NTSC frame to PAL size -- very badly (nearest neighbor). Fortunately it was a movie so some frames were progressive. From these I could see that the program captured MPEG from the PVR-250 (macroblocks) and converted to HuffYUV on the fly. CPU usage was very high too -- about 70 percent. WinTV2000 usually runs about 35 percent. This is also consistent with the program decoding MPEG from the card and saving as HuffYUV.

[Delerious]

Interesting. I was able to get it to work once following your procedure. On subsequent attempts it would start recording, and then stop right away. It created a very small file that wasn't viewable. I'll try again later when I can reboot the system.

The one time it worked I used HuffYUV as the output codec. It scaled my NTSC frame to PAL size -- very badly (nearest neighbor). Fortunately it was a movie so some frames were progressive. From these I could see that the program captured MPEG from the PVR-250 (macroblocks) and converted to HuffYUV on the fly. CPU usage was very high too -- about 70 percent. WinTV2000 usually runs about 35 percent. This is also consistent with the program decoding MPEG from the card and saving as HuffYUV.

I have a PVR-150 (non MCE). I tried Huffyuv once, but the preview screen was slow and jerky. I just did another MJPEG, and ran Process Explorer. I let it capture 2 minutes before I stopped. I was only using about 10 to 12 percent on my CPU during capture. I turn the preview off before I start recording.

J

[Delerious]

I was wondering if it captured as MPEG and converted. Here's a photo from my capture. it's an 8-Hour VHS that looks grainy on my TV, so I can't really tell from looking at the picture if it was converted from MPEG or not.

[junkmalle]

I was wondering if it captured as MPEG and converted. Here's a photo from my capture.

Here's an enlargement where you can easily see the macroblocks:



I can't rule out that the macroblocks weren't from the jpeg compression. But your file size was large enough that I don't think jpeg would have introduced that much macroblocking.

[proxyx99]

I'd say that these days having a fast processor and analog to DV FW or USB2 thing is all you need. You can capture to DV or MPEG2 as you please, the other option is a standalone DVD recorder which is a viable and convenient solution. I wouldn't buy ATI capture card, too many issues with software and drivers. I'm for simplicity. For 500 bucks you can have excellent recoder and forget all software issues (like Sony).