Proper way to capture in Huffyuv?

[CCEncoder]

I been using Pinnacle card with a Phillips chipset to do all my capturing as it has better video quality then my ADVC110, however when I tried playing the video to my TV the video will play with interlacing artifacts, I used VLC as the player and Interlaced Mode Disabled, BOB lags too much on the TV and my PC. I thought I guess I need to burn it to a DVD so I won't see it... I did that but after I inserted the DVD the picture looked like BOB interlace mode on VLC on the PC which still isn't like the VHS to TV mode. I got MAD

I later tried the ADVC110 for the capture and at least while I played its captured video on the PC with VLC interlace disabled... it appeared to play better then the huffyuv avi file so I have faith it will burn to DVD well. So my question is... ¿WTF am I doing wrong with the Pinnacle card?

I read a few things about interlacing filters during capture using VirtualDub but then isn't using filters a fake quality of the video? Perhaps I need to swap fields? I'm a noob into this... Please advice me what to do so when I encode the huffyuv file to DVD I'll see it on the TV as good as the original VHS thanks.

PS. Maybe this note will help... I use a Panasonic AG-1980 VCR whose captured videos unlike the SLV-R1000 allows me to effectively use BOB and other interlacing modes on VLC.

[ronnylov]

What resolution did you use when capturing? To keep the interlacing you will need to capture full vertical resolution (480 pixels height of NTSC or 576 pixels height of PAL).

Playing via TV-out from the video card on the PC is problematic with interlaced video. First your screen resolution must match the video vertical resolution, like if you have captured NTSC then you can use 640x480 resolution and if you have captured PAL you need something like 768x576 on your windows desktop. Second the TV-out have no idea of which field order the video is played and the framerate of the video clip may not exactly match the TV-out of the PC so you may get field order problems that comes and goes.

So it is very difficult watching interlaced video from TV-out on a PC so in that case you are better off deinterlacing at playback on the PC.

Another thing is that playing huffyuv files is quite demanding for the PC. It is a codec optimized for capturing and editing but real time playback may be choppy if the PC is too weak to play it without frame drops.

But if you burn it to DVD it should play correctly on the TV if it is played in a standalone DVD player (not played in the PC and viewed over TV-out) and if it has been properly encoded. You should encode it as interlaced and probably top field first (if that does not work try bottom field first).

[CCEncoder]

@ronnylov

Before I read your post I was able to solve the huffyuv to DVD issue using the top field first as one of the settings so you were on that.
It seems my capture card labels the first field to use"A" although most pc players start at the B field first even if it's second ¿Am I Wrong? and I don't like post processing as that slows playback.
So because of that... is there a way I can make my capture card label the first field B and capture from there?...
One of the filters "field swap" appeared to have solve it but the video looks choppy and stretched not good. Still need help.

[ronnylov]

The field order is normally fixed by the capture card. However if you want to there is ways to change field order after capturing.

Try this:
http://home.earthlink.net/~tacosalad/video/fldorder.htm

[jagabo]

The swap fields option in HuffYUV is not for reversing temporal field order (although it has that side effect). It is a fix for some old capture cards that created files with the upper field below the lower field rather than above it. Instead of saving scan lines as:

0 (top)
1 (bottom)
2 (top)
3 (bottom)
4 (top)
5 (bottom)

they would save the lines as:

1 (bottom)
0 (top)
3 (bottom)
2 (top)
5 (bottom)
4 (top)

Using HuffYUV's swap fields on video that doesn't have this probem will swap the temporal field order but it also messes up the video. The only cards I know of that had this problem were the Matrox G450 eTV and the Matrox Marvel series.