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  1. Member
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    Hi, complete newbie here.

    Reading the forum posts here have convinced me to at least make an attempt to capture my 40-odd video8 XR tapes losslessly (huffyuv) instead of going the easy route and using the firewire (lossy DV) method.

    Unfortunately, while making some initial test analog captures with my VC500 into virtualdub I'm getting a vertically squished image/frame compared to the firewire DV capture which looks perfectly proportional.

    Notice that both captures have a "Display Resolution" of 720x480, but the correctly proportioned DV "Resolution" is a weird (nonstandard?) 736x480.

    Both captures below are from the same Sony CCD-TRV730 Digital8 camera - First one using digital Firewire DV output and the second one using analog S-video > VC500:








    I can't seem to find a way to force captures of 736x480 in virtualdub, but I'm not sure I should even try since it seems like such an odd resolution.

    Any ideas why this is happening or what might remedy it?

    Grasping at straws, I suspected that it might have something to do with the tapes being recorded in video8 "XR", so have since bought another video8 "XR" camera with S-video (the original camera had only composite) but it also results in a squished image/short frame.

    There doesn't seem to be very much written about video8 XR tapes since the format was only around for a few years.

    Maybe I should just drop back and punt and capture them all via lossy DV?

    I hate to do that knowing that I would be losing so much color information because of the way the DV codec works with NTSC, especially since there is a slight added advantage of analog capturing XR tapes with an actual XR camera.

    I'm kind of overwhelmed yet still hopeful that I can put together a decent analog capture system and workflow.

    Thanks!

    ------------
    Cameras:

    Original Video8 XR Camera:
    Sony CCD-TRV16 Video8 XR (composite only outputs though)

    Digital8 Camera (ebay):
    Sony CCD-TRV730 with DV firewire & S-video outputs

    New Video8 XR Camera (ebay):
    Sony CCD-TRV87 with S-video output

    ------------
    Computers:

    Analog Capture Setup:
    Diamond VC500
    Lenovo E570, Windows 10 64, i7-7500u, 16GB Ram
    Virtualdub

    DV Firewire Setup:
    Startech ExpressCard Firewire Adaptor
    Acer 6530, Windows 10 32, QL-62, 3GB Ram
    Virtualdub
    Last edited by seren444; 12th Oct 2017 at 20:59.
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  2. Member
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    I wouldn't put too much faith in what Windows tells you. Even MediaInfo makes bad guesses about the metadata sometimes. DV resolution uses rectangular (10:11) pixels to achieve nearly a 4:3 image — which is standard for legacy video. VLC is not finding this ratio in the AVI file so it thinks the image is 720×480 square pixels, yielding a stretched image. All of your data is there. You can just right-click on the picture and choose Video/Aspect Ratio/4:3 to make it look right.

    If I'm not heading to DVD or some other format that expects DV resolution, I capture 640×480 square pixels, which keeps everything in happy computer graphics land.
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  3. Member
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    Originally Posted by JVRaines View Post
    I wouldn't put too much faith in what Windows tells you. Even MediaInfo makes bad guesses about the metadata sometimes. DV resolution uses rectangular (10:11) pixels to achieve nearly a 4:3 image — which is standard for legacy video. VLC is not finding this ratio in the AVI file so it thinks the image is 720×480 square pixels, yielding a stretched image. All of your data is there. You can just right-click on the picture and choose Video/Aspect Ratio/4:3 to make it look right.
    Hey that worked!...and I swear I tried adjusting the aspect ratio in VLC a bunch of times with this very video (the analog capture - always starting with 4:3) and it always made it look worse...until now. Of course we've probably all adjusted that setting for videos we've downloaded that displayed all wonky for whatever reason. Thanks!



    Originally Posted by JVRaines View Post
    If I'm not heading to DVD or some other format that expects DV resolution, I capture 640×480 square pixels, which keeps everything in happy computer graphics land.
    This is probably a stupid question but since 640x480 is a lower resolution, doesn't that somehow decrease the quality of video that is 720×480 ??

    Thanks again for the help!

    ...now I just need to work on the crushed blacks and audio track that starts way too slow and gradually works it's way up to proper speed.
    Last edited by seren444; 12th Oct 2017 at 21:51.
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  4. Member
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    Originally Posted by seren444 View Post
    This is probably a stupid question but since 640x480 is a lower resolution, doesn't that somehow decrease the quality of video that is 720×480 ??
    Potentially, if you're going to watch it scaled to dimensions greater then 640×480. But Video8-XR is not going to give you even 300 lines of luminance detail across.
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