s-video artifacts?

[davideck]

lordsmurf, you're mistaken about the DVDR3575's TBC capabilities.

Nope. I've had one since 2007. Ran all sorts of tests on it multiple times.
Great ATSC recorder, terrible for working with VHS tapes. It doesn't correct jitter, chroma, frame sync -- nothing.

Then please post your results.

I posted mine years ago. They corroborate everything that Mini-Me claims in post #94. Sanlyn's captures demonstrate these claims, as did the captures that I posted long ago.

Sorry LS. You're mistaken on this.

[sanlyn]

As does the ES10 and ES20 -- along with RF noise from their poorly filtered power supplies.

Mine doesn't seem to have that problem. Not like your earlier sample. You can see lots of sample caps in the thread I linked to.

I dunno, jagabo, I went thru 4 Pannies: ES10, ES15, two ES20's. All had exactly the same noise. I even found a fix posted on some newsgroup way back in 2003/4, somewhere in there: fixed with two cheap capacitors, one somewhere in the power line and another on a connection to the cooling fan. That post noted (and I also noted) that the "rolling" speed varies at regular intervals. Maybe it's just the power in my building, but power conditioners that feed my TV's didn't help. Electricians installed a new, dedicated circuit strictly for the a/v components (I don't even have my PC on it). TV looked a bit cleaner and the cable box stopped occasionally spitting static, but the gray lines in the Pannies didn't change. I gave them all away except the ES20.

Maybe it's a local power line issue, so I kept the ES20 and hook it up now and then to see what happens. The blue-screen cap of ES20 noise I posted was captured yesterday. It looked exactly like that on my original ES10 and ES15 as well. The ES20 captures yesterday don't display it that I can see, but those scenes aren't especially dark nor do they large bright areas. But I'll keep trying different things with it. Wish I could find that old newsgroup with the capacitor details, and I had a copy of the article on a floppy disc but it disappeared years ago. . .

[jagabo]

Found this about capacitor leaks Panasonic:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1055111

My ES15 does add a little noise to the video but it's in the form of random snow. Not hum bars like your sample.

[sanlyn]

I know what you're saying, jagabo. Curious that all 4 units had the same problem, but other users (most users, anyway) don't mention it. I suspect the leaky cap business, but why should it plague only certain units? (like mine ). I also suspect, mm, maybe dirty AC power. On a solid background like RGB test patches even the Toshibas have a vague horizontal streaking (something like horizontal "rain"), but it looks a bit different with each VCR so I figured 15-year-old VCR's might do that. As a/v circuit boards and components age they get noisy.

I have an expensive and apparently effective AC power conditioner. It's a distance from my PC's and kinda crowded with other components now (two TV's, distribution amp, a/v receiver, etc.). Big hassle if I unplug everything and have to reset stuff. Later I'll try plugging some capture gear in there and see what happens. Or ask the high-end a/v shop near here if I can audition an extra unit. Cheap conditioners and BestBuy gear do very little (this one was not cheap!). Or...there are UPS backup units that might do the trick. Has to be an answer; the ES20 has other qualities I like, no sense just having it sit there on the shelf for so long.

[zerowalker]

Yeah Jagabo, it´s probably my device, as S-video removes it, though i get artifacts, and i don´t know if it´s the card or the device(Xbox,PS2)
But starting to think it´s the device..

And well the halos are really annoying now that i think of it, as thery are pretty intense too, but as you said, and S-VHS will probably solve it.
But that is the hard part with PAL, S-video output is rare.


But as my card seems good on everything except the Y/C Separation and handling, which is a must for me.
I must probably get a new card, but that itself isn´t easy at all, as some has macrovision problems and stuff;O

[sanlyn]

Some of the bad stuff in Normal.avi can be fixed up a bit.
This is an unprocessed Frame 13 of the original Normal.avi, as posted earlier:


Frame 13 after some levels correction and trial efforts with a few filters. With moire time to fiddle and experiment, results would probably get better:

[Attachment 10964 - Click to enlarge]

But the wiggling lines and the ripple along the bottom will most likely require a line tbc or pass-thru.

Yeah Jagabo, it´s probably my device, as S-video removes it, though i get artifacts, and i don´t know if it´s the card or the device(Xbox,PS2)
But starting to think it´s the device..

Wait a minute, s-video "removes it" (it?) though you "get artifacts" ? ? New artifacts? Same artifacts? You will always have artifacts of some kind, few or many, when you copy analog to digital. Did using s-video eliminate one artifact and give you new ones?

And well the halos are really annoying now that i think of it, as thery are pretty intense too, but as you said, and S-VHS will probably solve it.

That isn't exactly what jagabo said. Just because a player can play s-vhs does not necessarily make it a better player.

But as my card seems good on everything except the Y/C Separation and handling, which is a must for me.
I must probably get a new card, but that itself isn´t easy at all, as some has macrovision problems and stuff;O

zerowalker have you seen the last several posts that described what some pass-thru devices can do? That would be much cheaper than a tbc-equipped capture card with y/c comb filters, which are scarce to begin with. A decent used pass-thru from Toshiba (with a tbc and y/c filter) or old Panasonic would be cheaper than a first-class tbc-equipped VCR, not msny of which can still play a tape after 10 to 15 years of use.

I admit, finding a good used player and a decent pass-thru machine are easier said than done. I've been through the super-duper-digital-pure-tbc-turbo-magic-heads hype (all 3 of them broke down early and ruined several of my tapes forever. Don't believe every rave you hear about the highest-end stuff. Many of them had terrific problems.). I just spent 5 months scouring eBay every day for a VCR to replace one of my burned-out units, and finally found and got one at a decent price -- not ultra high-end, but upscale at least, with remote (Panasonic PV-4664. It was just delivered this morning! Not the highest priced but a long way rom the cheapest, tracks old beat-up tapes well, and nice audio to boot. No tbc inside, but I already have a 7-year-old pass-thru). You don't have to have "the best", and most members here just make do. I do, anyway.

[misermidas]

I have got JVC VCR and i am not using it now ,so I do not want to have the mess of plugging it again to verify what I will say:
I think you just have to set OUTPUT to Y/C in the menu of your VCR.
Any way some chroma artefacts may remain even if everything is all-right.

About TBC, some digitalizing devices have a good TBC effects.
So you may need no TBC which introduces an digital/analog cycle more.
Try with and without TBC and choose what gives better picture.

[sanlyn]

I had three JVC's (two 7600's and a 9900, both gone now). I don't recall them having a y/c option in their menus. Lordsmurf or someone who knows them better than I do would know if a y/c filter is part of their digital processing when their tbc's are turned on. Neither of those models would track aged or damaged tapes at all -- they just spit the tapes back out at me. Fussy little critters. They were unusable with 6-hour tapes. That's not to say that the higher-end and pro JVC's don't function better. Those were and still are are beyond my budget.

I'm somewhat disappointed with the capture/tbc samples I posted earlier. I was using beat-up tape that I thought would display crooked lines, loads of chroma bleed, jitter. etc., but the little PV-4662 VCR didn't display many of those disturbances. Odd, those tapes played on later machines with all kinds of unsteady playback problems. Still, there were other glitches that the pass-thru tbc's helped resolve.

[zerowalker]

When i said S-VHS i meant A "real" one with S-video output, as mine doesn´t have it.

And S-video removed the Lines on the carpet and in the mouth of the Turtle and above the door.
But, i do get the dot crawl all over the screen, but i don´t know if it´s the capture device or the console, as i have it on both PS2 and Xbox, and those are the only ones i have been able to try s-video on currently.

Or wait, i do have a VCR/DVD with S-video now that i think of it;O
Will try it and be back.

EDIT: Here it is, it doesn´t have the Green Red dots all over the place, but it does have other noise, but i don´t know if it´s normal or not.

It´s UT Video Codec, Lagarith didn´t work out for some reason, only black.

Can you telll me the script you used to produce the other frame?

[sanlyn]

When i said S-VHS i meant A "real" one with S-video output, as mine doesn´t have it.

Oh, I gotcha. Just keep in mind, S-VHS is a format, s-video is a type of data transmission.

And S-video removed the Lines on the carpet and in the mouth of the Turtle and above the door.
But, i do get the dot crawl all over the screen, but i don´t know if it´s the capture device or the console, as i have it on both PS2 and Xbox, and those are the only ones i have been able to try s-video on currently.

I don't see much dot crawl in Normal.avi or Test2.avi. Here's a sample of dot crawl:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot_crawl

Or wait, i do have a VCR/DVD with S-video now that i think of it;O
Will try it and be back.

EDIT: Here it is, it doesn´t have the Green Red dots all over the place, but it does have other noise, but i don´t know if it´s normal or not.

I don't see much noise. If you're talking about the dash-dot noise at the top of the image, that's sync pulse noise. It can be cropped out and replaced with black border.
Crop(0,4,0,0).AddBorders(0,4,0,0)

Can you telll me the script you used to produce the other frame?

Be back in a short while. Have to look that up.

[zerowalker]

The dot crawl i get are the Lines, Jagabo conlcuded it´s dot crawl, as well it goes away with S-video atleast.

I was more talking about the "Wave" going up all the time.
But there is not the Checkmate noise like i get with Xbox and PS2.

[sanlyn]

Can you telll me the script you used to produce the other frame?

There are hundreds of plugins and tricks you can use on any video. I used more than a script. I used Avisynth mostly for noise, VirtualDub for color and a little chroma shift, and TMPGenc Plus 2.5 for ghost reduction. You don't have to do it the way I did; there are hundreds of ways of cleaning video. I could have spent more time tweaking, trying other plugins, etc., but I had to repair a PC last nite for a customer.

I loaded the AVI into Avisynth using the script "Normal2.avs" -- attached at the bottom of this post.

That script solved a few problems, but there was more to do. Contrast and color correction actually helps, especially in taming some of the halo brightness and making the lines look a bit darker (the AVI is too bright). After running nthe script I loaded the AVI into VirtualDub and used these filters:

Flaxen moved color shift 2 pixels to the left. The green square below outlines the Flaxen settings, I didn't use the others in that filter. In the right-hand image is the ColorMill setting: I raised saturation for all three colors by 6 points. The ColorMill saturation control is at the bottom-left of the image.


Getting contrast was important, and lowering gamma (midtones) and brights helped a lot. For this I used two VirtualDub gradation curve filters, one for primary correction and the other for secondary tweaking.

Primary Correctiona:
Gradation curve, RGB (overall luma, gamma, lower midtones) and Red primary correction:


Primary corrections for Green and Blue:


Secondary Corrections:
Secondary (tweaking) for gamma, darks, brights, and bright Blue:


Then I loaded the AVI into TMPGenc Plus 2.5 for its Ghost Reduction filter in Advanced controls. Avisynth and VirtualDub have a couple of ghost filters. In my experience, none of them seem to do a damn thing. The ghost filter below shows the TMPGenc control panel for edge ghosting (1 for right-edge ghosting, #2 for the left):


The AVS script is attached below. These techniques are not the only way to do it.

[sanlyn]

zerowalker, take a look at this dandy website. Lots of filters, noise samples, images, etc.
http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/avtech31/post-qual.html

[Mini-Me]

lordsmurf, you're mistaken about the DVDR3575's TBC capabilities.

Nope. I've had one since 2007. Ran all sorts of tests on it multiple times.
Great ATSC recorder, terrible for working with VHS tapes. It doesn't correct jitter, chroma, frame sync -- nothing.

Then please post your results.

I posted mine years ago. They corroborate everything that Mini-Me claims in post #94. Sanlyn's captures demonstrate these claims, as did the captures that I posted long ago.

Sorry LS. You're mistaken on this.

Thanks, davideck. Since I'm the one making positive claims, maybe I should be the one to provide a bit of evidence though.

I've included two clips from a family home movie below. One was captured straight from my camcorder to my AIW 9600, and the other included my DVDR3475 between them in the chain. I set my AIW 9600's built-in proc amp differently for each, to compensate for different output levels. I then heavily denoised both clips to semi-plasticky levels to eliminate distractions and encoded them with x264.

I picked this particular section for two reasons:

1. It doesn't show any family members.
2. The camcorder was moving a lot while recording, which created a ton of time base errors. I wanted to get a nice still shot from a tripod to show the waviness of individual lines without the DVDR3475, but this may be even better: When the camcorder is moving, the tape needs time base correction to keep entire fields from shifting! It's not a 100% constant shift for each frame though; you can take a still image and look to the shifting black border on the sides of the frame to see a gradual difference in time-base error from top to bottom. The DVDR3475 corrects this completely, and it also corrects the waviness of individual lines in "tamer" shots.

Camcorder -> AIW 9600 -> Overly denoised -> Compressed:
www.mediafire.com/?55oi6q95jel61js

Camcorder -> Philips DVDR3475 -> AIW 9600 -> Overly denoised -> Compressed:
www.mediafire.com/?pmf5wsqnsgo28nw

You can look at the location of the timestamp in the corner to get a sense for the strength of the DVDR3475's corrections. Also note that the direct camcorder capture is brighter at the top of the image than elsewhere. It's subtle and hard to see in this section of tape without comparing stills, but for the record, the DVDR3475 corrects this.

[sanlyn]

Between your posts and mine, I think we've demonstrated the merits of pass-thru tbc's, even if they don't perform with the precision and tweaks in $2000-plus studio jobs. Glad you could find some "wiggly" and jittery lines, my PV-4662 was tracking so well I looked for bent verticals for an hour and never found one. I should use that little machine more often.

[lordsmurf]

I'll run some new tests if time allows. But it's not a priority, and may be 6 months from now. The biggest issue is dragging equipment between office and home.

I didn't make any mistakes in my tests. I wanted it to work, but it simply did not. There were no observed improvements made to multiple types of errors. It behaved no different than a JVC recorder, though without chroma NR as the JVC has due to the LSI chip.

The only unit I've not fully tested is an RCA. The Zoran chipset does not do chroma NR, I know that much. But not messed with frame sync or jitter removal tests. (Actually, I think I did test it for frame sync, and it failed -- but that was alt east 3-4 year ago, and I have no formal notes.)

For TBC corrections, none have outperformed a Panasonic ES10 as passthrough to date. Though I have seen some specific Toshiba models that look decent. I just don't have need/funds to buy up old Toshiba recorders.

Quick reversion of topic...

The "s-video problems" from the earliest posts in this thread are sometimes what happens when wires are bad, or a unit gets confused. I've had my AVT-8710 get confused quite often in the past. Just unplug it, and plug it back in again -- problem solved. It doesn't flicker on/off during recording. It's a startup issue.

I generally throw away a handful of wires each year, too. They don't last forever.

[zerowalker]

Can you telll me the script you used to produce the other frame?

There are hundreds of plugins and tricks you can use on any video. I used more than a script. I used Avisynth mostly for noise, VirtualDub for color and a little chroma shift, and TMPGenc Plus 2.5 for ghost reduction. You don't have to do it the way I did; there are hundreds of ways of cleaning video. I could have spent more time tweaking, trying other plugins, etc., but I had to repair a PC last nite for a customer.

I loaded the AVI into Avisynth using the script "Normal2.avs" -- attached at the bottom of this post.

That script solved a few problems, but there was more to do. Contrast and color correction actually helps, especially in taming some of the halo brightness and making the lines look a bit darker (the AVI is too bright). After running the script I loaded the AVI into VirtualDub and used these filters:

Flaxen moved color shift 2 pixels to the left. The green square below outlines the Flaxen settings, I didn't use the others in that filter. In the right-hand image is the ColorMill setting: I raised saturation for all three colors by 6 points. The ColorMill saturation control is at the bottom-left of the image.

[Attachment 10972 - Click to enlarge]

Getting contrast was important, and lowering gamma (midtones) and brights helped a lot. For this I used two VirtualDub gradation curve filters, one for primary correction and the other for secondary tweaking.

Primary Corrections:
Gradation curve, RGB (overall luma, gamma, lower midtones) and Red primary correction:

[Attachment 10973 - Click to enlarge]

Primary corrections for Green and Blue:

[Attachment 10974 - Click to enlarge]

Secondary Corrections:
A second gradation curves filter was added for Secondary (tweaking) for gamma, darks, brights, and bright Blue:

[Attachment 10975 - Click to enlarge]

Then I loaded the AVI into TMPGenc Plus 2.5 for its Ghost Reduction filter in Advanced controls. Avisynth and VirtualDub have a couple of ghost filters. In my experience, none of them seem to do a damn thing. The ghost filter below shows the TMPGenc control panel for edge ghosting (1 for right-edge ghosting, #2 for the left):

[Attachment 10976 - Click to enlarge]

The AVS script is attached below. These techniques are not the only way to do it.

Well that was advance, i got even more than alot to learn i guess;D
The hardest thing is the color and gamma tweaking, i find that very hard, but will try to grasp it from your information,sceenshots and script

[zerowalker]

Is there any motion compensation script with santiag?
As santiag pretty much solves all the lines

[poisondeathray]

Is there any motion compensation script with santiag?
As santiag pretty much solves all the lines

nope, santiag is all intraframe antialiasing

[zerowalker]

Okay, but does it create Ghosting?
As i thought i did get ghosting, but not that i try again, it seems that i don´t get it;S

EDIT: i do get som blur, but if i do this

# Motion compensation on frames -2...+2
super = MSuper ()
vf2 = super.MAnalyse (isb=false, delta=2, overlap=4)
vf1 = super.MAnalyse (isb=false, delta=1, overlap=4)
vb1 = super.MAnalyse (isb=true, delta=1, overlap=4)
vb2 = super.MAnalyse (isb=true, delta=2, overlap=4)
cf2 = MCompensate (super, vf2, thSAD=400)
cf1 = MCompensate (super, vf1, thSAD=400)
cb1 = MCompensate (super, vb1, thSAD=400)
cb2 = MCompensate (super, vb2, thSAD=400)

# dfttest on motion-compensated clip
Interleave (cf2, cf1, last, cb1, cb2)
santiag(3,3)
dfttest (sigma=12, sigma2=12, tbsize=3, lsb=true)
SelectEvery (5, 2)

# Gradient smoothing
presmooth = last
SmoothGrad (radius=20, thr=0.15)
SmoothGrad (radius=12, thr=0.25, ref=presmooth)

# Back to 8 bits, ordered dithering
Ditherpost()

It pretty much goes awat (check santiag)

Though i have no idea if there is any logic to this;S

[poisondeathray]

santiag does not cause ghosting

strong enough dfttest settings can cause ghosting, but it looks like you are using motion compensated dfttest (can still cause ghosting)

[zerowalker]

Well i don´t get ghosting, but Santiag seems to have nicer effect if i put it there, or atleast i think so;S
Well i compare without the filters and with the filters all the time to make sure.

But one thing i don´t understand.

The movie is interlaced at some points, maybe every other frame or 3rd etc.

and i used QTGMC and SelectEven, but i noticed now that it blured out a bit (it´s blended frames). and see now that Santiag "deinterlace" for some reason. is that normal?

Thanks

[poisondeathray]

Not sure what you're talking about

santiag is an antialiasing filter, not deinterlacer

[zerowalker]

Yeah i thought so;S
still it deinterlace the picture, not sure if it´s just blending the lines or whatevet, but it does do something;S

[poisondeathray]

It will make it more blurry, that's the side effect of using antialiasing

If you don't need it, remove it. Same with all the other filters. If you can get better results with fewer filters, not only will it be faster to process, better quality. "Filteritis" can be a bad thing

[zerowalker]

Well i do need santiag, as i solves all my line problems, so will have to try to solve it one way or another.

[Mini-Me]

When you have scripts that mess up your interlacing (e.g. anti-aliasing) or require each pixel to have coherent spatial/temporal neighbors (e.g. anti-aliasing, denoising, and tons of other stuff), I would suggest something like the following:

clip = Avisource("whatever.avi")
deint = clip.QTGMC(preset = "super fast", lossless = 1)
filtered = clip.santiag.whateverotherscriptsyouwant.blahblah()
return filtered.Reinterlace()

function Reinterlace(clip c)
{
    # If you have a BFF source, you will have to replace some or all
    # of the AssumeTFF calls with AssumeBFF.  I haven't really thought
    # the differences through though.  A well-formatted function
    # would take the field parity from the original interlaced clip,
    # but that may make usage more complicated.
    evens = c.SelectEven.AssumeTFF.SeparateFields.SelectEven()
    odds = c.SelectOdd.AssumeTFF.SeparateFields.SelectOdd()
    return Interleave(evens, odds).AssumeTFF.Weave()
}

As a proof of concept, you can just use clip.QTGMC(preset = "super fast", lossless = 1).Reinterlace(). You should end up with the original clip (zero differences whatsoever), unless something needs to be tweaked for BFF clips. If you use BFF clips, alter the Reinterlace function and test using this function chain first until it's correct.

Using this technique lets you easily use filters that require coherent frame-based (deinterlaced) input without permanently throwing away any fields or degrading the source image with the deinterlacing process. I do it all the time. If and when you really want to permanently deinterlace "for real," you can use better settings.

[zerowalker]

Hmm, problem is that i will have to use it at the buttom;O
but will try it, hopefully it will work out

EDIT: Okay i don´t even know how to use it as i got so many filters;S

EDIT 2: well here is a test of me using the rgb curve thing, along with haloing reduction and santiag.

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/108321

Thanks for helping out as always

[sanlyn]

EDIT 2: well here is a test of me using the rgb curve thing, along with haloing reduction and santiag.

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/108321

Nice work, zerowalker. Curves takes a while, but one day you're working with it and suddenly you say, "Ooh, so that's how it works!". Read up on the documentation on the filter's website, and visit some Adobe Photoshop websites (the VirtualDub version is similar to curves in Photoshop, After Effects, etc.).

Like many people I filter and denoise first, fix color later. A little color was done with ColorYUV in the script.

Man, most video work from analog can be difficult, but anime drives me crazy.

[zerowalker]

Ah well let´s hope it goes that well for me

Yeah fixing the color last seems to be the way to go, and yeah did coloryuv in the script as well.
But well , it´s hard to make the color good, without over brightening some of it to lose other colors (light pink for example).
But yeah, Analog videos are difficult in all aspects of restoring, PAL is even force it seems, so well, hopefully some day i will grasp more of it than i currently do