Please help with VHS capture project.

[jrodefeld]

Hello everyone.

I am in the process of trying to transfer some VHS home movies to DVD to give to my grandparents. I know a little bit about video editing but I haven't done much video capturing before. You may recall I asked a few questions here before and everyone was very helpful. I have gathered all the hardware that I will need to do a pretty good job.

What I have is:

Panasonic AG-1970P S-VHS Deck
Cypress CTB-100 Time Base Corrector (aka AVToolbox AVT-8710)
ATI Theater 650 Pro PCIe Capture Card


My goal is to capture with Huffyuv. Then edit and process video. Then encode with 3 pass VBR with CCE for DVD.

Then I will author the dvds with menus, etc.

If it makes a difference, I am running Windows 7 x64 and I have a fairly fast computer. I have an Intel Core i7 920 Quad Core, 6gb ram, and a 1TB hard drive.

My problem is that I cannot get my computer to capture at all. Here are my questions for you all:

1. Can you explain how to set up an ATI 650 card for capturing Huffyuv lossless? I am trying to use virtualdub, but every time I try to capture it says, "Unable to start video capture". I haven't gotten any other programs to work either.

I have connected my Panasonic AG01970p to the capture card directly through S-Video. And I have connected it through the external Time Base Corrector. Either way I get the same error. Any thoughts?

2. For those of you who have used similar hardware, do you have any tips for using the TBC for optimum results? I know the device has settings for "Sharpness, Tint, Color, Bright, and Contrast". I would love to hear any tips for using this device to get the maximum quality capture.

3. If I am using both the internal Panasonic TBC and the external TBC, will I need to do much software processing to get good results? Obviously, this will have to do with the specific video, but for the average twenty year old home movies, would you advise I use tons of virtualdub filters? Which ones?

4. If I should use software processing, should I do it with virtualdub filters as I am capturing, or in the encoding stage after I have edited the video?

5. Some of the buttons on the Panasonic S-VHS player do not appear to be working. I bought this player on Ebay and I haven't been able to use it much yet so this may be premature. If I put a video in, it will start playing immediately. But I cannot rewind the tape. I CAN eject the tape. The play, fast forward, stop and pause buttons don't seem to respond either. Its pretty frustrating. I would hate to have to hunt down another deck because this one is faulty. Of course, I only bought this one to capture these tapes, so I could just play the tapes start to finish and capture the video that way. Do any of you who have owned this deck have any suggestions on what might be wrong? I could probably deal with this issue if the capture card was working properly.

As you can see, I am having some trouble already. I am really just trying to get the capture card to work at all. I can edit video, author dvds and do pretty much everything else once I am able to capture the video at a high quality. Capturing VHS tapes is pretty new to me.

If anyone can help me, I would appreciate it.

[sanlyn]

1. Can you explain how to set up an ATI 650 card for capturing Huffyuv lossless? I am trying to use virtualdub, but every time I try to capture it says, "Unable to start video capture". I haven't gotten any other programs to work either.

I have connected my Panasonic AG01970p to the capture card directly through S-Video. And I have connected it through the external Time Base Corrector. Either way I get the same error. Any thoughts?

Unable to answer all those questions, sorry, but so far your connections seem correct. VirtualDub should be able to recognize your card. Doom9 and other sites have many articles on the proper VDub settings. According to Microsoft, your card is compatible with Vista, but you might check AMD's site for the latest drivers.

It's also true that VirtualDub can't work with some capture cards, though I've never used one that didn't work.

2. For those of you who have used similar hardware, do you have any tips for using the TBC for optimum results? I know the device has settings for "Sharpness, Tint, Color, Bright, and Contrast". I would love to hear any tips for using this device to get the maximum quality capture.

You set those controls for the results you think are necessary for the cleanest image in your preview screen. They aren't as extensive as similar controls in a full-fledged proc amp like the SignVideo PA-1, but I've used them and they're very clean in operation. Normally, though, I don't need them.

Avoid sharpeners when capturing VHS. You'll sharpen the noise. Capture, then denoise, then sharpen.

3. If I am using both the internal Panasonic TBC and the external TBC, will I need to do much software processing to get good results? Obviously, this will have to do with the specific video, but for the average twenty year old home movies, would you advise I use tons of virtualdub filters? Which ones?

4. If I should use software processing, should I do it with virtualdub filters as I am capturing, or in the encoding stage after I have edited the video?

3 & 4: Never use VirtualDub filters when capturing. Period. That includes audio filters. Filter later.

These are essential filters I use all the time for VHS. Except for one shown here, they are free:

- VirtualDub's builtin-in temporal smoother. Avoid values higher than 4 or you'll get ghosts and softening. Cleans most of the "simmering" fine grain noise you see with VHS, with good power and speed but few side effects at lower values.

- NeatVideo is essential for old VHS. It costs $50. It's worth it. Spend about a week learning it. Read the manual (don't use it without reading the manual. Free PDF and trial at their website.). Never use its default filter settings, they're too aggressive. Lighten up on the NV sharpener, it creates contrast problems used higher than 60 or 70%. This is a very slow-running filter (about 4 to 5 fps, usually). Cleans grain, clumps, many compression artifacts and other bad stuff. Several filters in one. Ignore people who say it's destructive (all denoisers are destructive; critics always admit they haven't read the manual or learned to fine-tune this creature). If it's good enough for pros who use Premiere and Vegas, it's good enough for us. http://www.neatvideo.com/.

- Color Tools histogram and vectorscope control from Trevlac http://www.infognition.com/cgi/getfilter?id=226 . An article on its vectorscope component here: http://greek.doom9.org/capture/digital_video_color.html

- Photoshop-style color gradation filter for VirtualDub. Indispensible. http://members.chello.at/nagiller/vdub/index.html

- ColorMill http://fdump.narod.ru/rgb.htm

- Handy tool: Color Sample 2.1 reads pixel RGB values with the mouse cursor. Don't trust your eyeballs. ColorSampler 2.1 is a free and simple pixel reader. No install required. Just copy the .exe to your desktop, from the ZIP file. The ZIP has a small text file, all the instructions you'll need. ftp://ftp.sac.sk/pub/sac/graph/csamp21.zip

Here's several dozen more for VirtualDub. Enjoy. http://www.infognition.com/VirtualDubFilters/

I've never had hands on your VCR, but I know it to be excellent. You might query the forum Search tool, I've seen many articles on that unit.

Many people in this forum started here: http://www.digitalfaq.com/

[DB83]

From the Vdub capture documentation:

VirtualDub says I don't have a capture device, but I know I have one. VirtualDub needs a Video for Windows capture driver to capture. Most Firewire (DV) devices do not provide a VFW driver, and thus cannot be used by VirtualDub at all. Also, ATI appears to be shipping their current devices with a WDM (Windows Driver Model) driver only; this can be used indirectly by VirtualDub through a Microsoft wrapper, but it is crippled in functionality and it also appears that the wrapper is buggy.
The wrapper will show up as "Microsoft WDM Image Capture (Win32)." If it works for you, great.

With that in mind, as long as you have functioning Win7 drivers for your card, you may be limited to using ATI's own capture program and not what you want to use.

[jagabo]

I have an ATI 650 USB 2 and Win 7 64 bit. If I remember correctly, the only driver that I could get to work with VirtualDub was the one that Windows automatically installed when it first detected the device. The one on the CD that came with the device and the latest drivers from AMD/ATI didn't work.

[sanlyn]

The capture card problems with Vista/aka"Win7" I see posted are the major reason I built my own XP machine for video. And just in case, I gathered some old leftover hardware and built a spare XP PC for next to nothing. In my PC repair business I see all kinds, old and new. There's no way I could live with today's Windows.

[jrodefeld]

Thanks for all the responses. I have heard of other people having problems with capture cards in Windows 7 but most have been able to overcome those problems.

I have a few more questions for you all.

The S-VHS player is working perfectly now. But I still can't capture video no matter what. I bought this card on ebay so it didn't come with a manual or a cd with drivers. I want to capture video with virtualdub. But the real concern is that I haven't been able to capture video with ANY software that I have used. I have no idea if the card is even functioning.

What software does ATI provide for capturing? I downloaded the drivers on ATI's website, but I didn't see any capture software. I tried iuVCR and Virtual VCR and they don't seem to be functioning. I can't figure it out. It might be a driver issue. I originally plugged the card into a PCIE x16 slot on the motherboard thinking that I didn't have a PCIE x1 slot. But I found out that I did and I plugged the card into that slot instead. I have read that some motherboards won't function with a PCIEx1 card in a PCIEx8 or x16 slot. So that can't be the issue now that it is plugged into a x1 slot. There is no reason this should not work.

Could any of you please go into a little more detail about how you were able to get capture cards like this one functioning under Windows 7 x64 (or similar)? Is there any other advice you could give me on how to make this work?

Thanks a lot.

[DB83]

The ati software is called ATI MMC (Multi Media Centre). It comes in all sorts of versions so youy will have to ensure that you get the one is specifically for your card/OS etc. But really, that software IIRC is part of the driver package. If you have the right driver then you already have the software.

[orsetto]

3. If I am using both the internal Panasonic TBC and the external TBC, will I need to do much software processing to get good results?

The internal TBC functionality of various VCR models do not all work the same way or have the same effect. The particular TBC in the AG1970 should NOT be used except under specific circumstances, you would normally leave it turned off and use your external TBC to optimize the line signals from VCR to capture card. The AG1970 TBC is an early, crude version which will interfere with your external TBC nine times out of ten. Over the years I've experienced only two tape issues the AG1970 TBC is good at fixing:

1. Distortion from blown-out overexposed camcorder material, or similar blown highlight distortion in multi-generation dubs like bootleg concert tapes. Symptoms will be huge areas of yellowy-white in the image which nearly blot out whatever darker objects exist- turning on the AG1970 TBC will noticeably shrink those blown-out white areas and reveal much more usable image detail. Wavy jitters caused by this type of blowout will also be notably reduced.

2. Some instances of bent, flagging or squiggly vertical objects (doorframes, etc) can be straightened and cleaned up a bit.

Otherwise the AG1970 TBC doesn't do much aside from shifting the frame slightly to the right and adding a "processed" look thats not desirable unless absolutely necessary. You'll know after some trial and error which tapes would most benefit by turning the TBC on: if the tape looks funky, try the TBC and see if it improves things. If the video looks more or less the same, turn the TBC off because it will just add potential conflicts with your external TBC for no good reason.

Your external Cypress TBC is more important than the AG1970 internal TBC when capturing to a PC, its effects are not readily visible to your eye but vitally important to the sensitive capture card. The picture adjustments on the Cypress are best left in their neutral positions: they're fiddly to operate and can cause problems if you don't spend time testing for unexpected image changes. Be very wary of the Sharpness setting: its better to adjust detail using the Picture slider on the AG1970 front panel in combination with the Noise Filter>Off>Edit switch below.

5. Some of the buttons on the Panasonic S-VHS player do not appear to be working. I bought this player on Ebay and I haven't been able to use it much yet so this may be premature. If I put a video in, it will start playing immediately. But I cannot rewind the tape. I CAN eject the tape. The play, fast forward, stop and pause buttons don't seem to respond either. Its pretty frustrating.

You seem to have solved this according to your most recent post, but just FYI the AG1970 can use any random Panasonic VCR remote made in the last 25 years (you can find these anywhere practically for free). The original remote that came with the 1970 had nothing but basic transport controls, all other functions are limited to the drop-down front panel. The only function exclusive to the original AG1970 remote is a counter reset button: without the original remote the only way to reset the tape counter to zero is remove-reload a tape. Anyway my point was you can run a 1970 (or 1950, 1960, 1980) with a dodgy control panel by using a remote leftover from any consumer Panasonic (no need to spend big bucks for a panel repair). The AG1970 today is not worth putting serious repair money into: its a nice sturdy versatile VCR, but for what it would cost to repair one you're better off trashing it and buying an AG1980 instead (better TBC, better color, better long-term resale value). If you got a good working AG1970 inepensively, enjoy it. Its a nice source deck for playing "normal" tapes that don't have major color or distortion issues. If you have a lot of tapes that are really ugly, an AG1980 would be more effective at taming them for PC capture.

[sanlyn]

The ati software is called ATI MMC (Multi Media Centre). It comes in all sorts of versions so youy will have to ensure that you get the one is specifically for your card/OS etc. But really, that software IIRC is part of the driver package. If you have the right driver then you already have the software.

The Ati MMC package is not needed for capture with Ati/VirtualDub. You'll find that MMC is more trouble than it's worth. You can install the required drivers (graphics driver, WDM capture, and Control Panel) but skip MMC and Ati's file player. The TV Tuner/Svideo connection is installed with the WDM capture segment. MMC has many shortcomings -- the major one of which is replacing some standard AVI codecs with its own, making AVI's made with MMC unplayable on any machine except yours, even machines with Video For Windows (VFW) or ffmpg installed for legacy vfw interface. Installing MMC also muffles your capture volume, which you can't restore without removing MMC.

Over the years I made many recordings off cable TV with my MMC, but I had to tolerate losing about 15% of the frame, because MMC discards what it considers to be the old overscan area. Today's videos don't cut the original image. If you want any cropping in your capture, it's easy enough to do in VirtualDub or countless other utilities. MMC's DVD encoder was OK for its time, but that was 10 years ago.

[smartel]

looks like a get less drop frames from ati mmc (9.03) than virtualdub ; same settings (huffyuv)
unless those softwares don't tell me the truth !?

[sanlyn]

looks like a get less drop frames from ati mmc (9.03) than virtualdub ; same settings (huffyuv)
unless those softwares don't tell me the truth !?

I never had a problem dropping frames with either product.