Capturing Hi8 tapes

[TheDrifter363]

Ok, so I don't have a blank dvd to burn that file too, so I'm not able to test it. But I did notice that diagonal pattern on the blue screen when S-video is directly connected to the capture card. Do you think these noise problems could be caused by the camcorder instead of the cables? Like that's the one thing I haven't been able to test yet. I've exhausted all the s-video cables I have, and I can understand if a few are bad, but all of them? That just sucks.

[Brad]

It's possible. Try any other video source you have that has flat fields of color. You mentioned video game systems earlier.

[clashradio]

Do you have any issues with what looks like video noise (diagonal lines) with your EVAL adv 7842 board? I capture ntsc laserdiscs, so I need the 3D comb filter turned on, but seem to get a somewhat noisy imagine. I built an enclosure for the board line with copper tape as well.

[TheDrifter363]

Hey clashradio! Ok so without the eval board, I'm getting this diagonal pattern noticeable on solid colors, like the blue screen of camcorders and vhs players. It was thanks to Vaporeon, I noticed it. A lot of that can usually be attributed to bad cables or bad capacitors in the device. The latter would suuck! I'm returning the camcorder, since it's within the 30 day and I don't wanna take the chance dealing with a bad unit. I might have to get another, or get a refurbished one serviced by a good technician.

Btw, any opinions on this doctorsony guy? I saw him on ebay and he says he's an old Sony technician. He was selling the model I wanted, for a huge premium, but if he serviced it good, and replaced any bad capacitors, I don't mind taking the hit. Thought I'd ask here.

Now with the eval board, there's apparently a rolling noise bar on solid colors. I haven't seen that too yet, mainly because I'm having trouble getting this damn eval board to work with my capture card. How did you get it working? Did you have to do anything special with the scripts? My capture card can't capture HDCP signals, and I think this board is outputting a HDCP signal which baffles me. It shouldn't. Sometimes it doesn't, and the capture card detects it, other times it does, which sucks.

So with my video game consoles, as you saw in the clip, they have their proprietary AV port on them. This means I can't use the s video cables I have, unless I use a female to male adapter, but that would just extend the already s-video signal coming out of the console. They would be a good test though. I can easily tell noise from video games because they're usually very clean. Hehe, video games are my expertise.

I wouldn't mind trying to replace the capacitors on my own, I've done it on my SNES, but I'm skittish around mechanical parts. I don't wanna mess them up, and while I don't mind dealing with video game consoles, with their non moving parts, things like VCRs and camcorders, with their electronic and mechanical components make me nervous. I'm studying computer engineering, not mechanical engineering damn it! Lol.

So if anyone has any good camcorder recommendations, hit me up! This is gonna have to go on hold for now, especially with classes starting up.

[Brad]

The idea with the video game systems is to see if you can get a capture from any source without this noise, in the first place, not to test the S-Video cables you'd use with the cam.

[clashradio]

Now with the eval board, there's apparently a rolling noise bar on solid colors. I haven't seen that too yet, mainly because I'm having trouble getting this damn eval board to work with my capture card. How did you get it working? Did you have to do anything special with the scripts? My capture card can't capture HDCP signals, and I think this board is outputting a HDCP signal which baffles me. It shouldn't. Sometimes it doesn't, and the capture card detects it, other times it does, which sucks.

I bought my board Jan of last year off eBay, as I could not buy it from any retailer, even the non-HDCP model which says in the documentation; page 26 of the 28 page manual "Professional version for non-HDCP encrypted applications. Purchaser is not required to be an HDCP adopter".

I haven't used the board prob since March of last year, so I'm pretty rusty. I used the program AvesBlue. Had better luck with this than Tera Term. I was working with Analog Devices support and they had me try a few things for the diagonal noise lines. I couldn't get them to go away totally, but one trick I did do was lower the overall Brightness of the file in my NLE. This seemed to help, as I was capturing via HDMI from the board to my cap card. It's sort of a quick and easy fix.

There is a device called Domesday Duplicator, which I'm going to try to figure out. It can cap from the raw RF signal on the laserdisc. I know you're not working with LD's, but I think they are in the process of the same concept with vcr's.

[TheDrifter363]

Hmm, well I uploaded some video game clips using the SNES's s video cable. I'm not too confident about this s-video cable but the captures look ok. Final Fantasy VI is known for showing all sorts of noise inherent in the SNES. You might notice jailbars there. Otherwise, I couldn't find that diagonal pattern like from the camcorder, or the rolling noise wave.

Hey so clashradio when you did use the EVAL board, you were able to get an output from the hdmi port to your capture card? I don't know, it really doesn't wanna work for me. Whether I use the camcorder's s-video or composite video output, it just doesn't wanna output an image. The camcorder directly connected to the capture card works fine.

[clashradio]

Hey so clashradio when you did use the EVAL board, you were able to get an output from the hdmi port to your capture card? I don't know, it really doesn't wanna work for me. Whether I use the camcorder's s-video or composite video output, it just doesn't wanna output an image. The camcorder directly connected to the capture card works fine.

Yes, I am able to capture from the HDMI output. I have an Osprery 827e video card which has digital and analog video/digital and analog audio inputs. I just got a new Win 10 PC built and am still testing all functions. HDMI cap is one I still have to do; will report back.

[TheDrifter363]

Hmm let me know how that HDMI capture goes with your EVAL board. I need to figure out why mine isn't working. Thanks man.

So I got this new monoprice cable and I recorded a short clip of the blue screen.I couldn't find that diagonal pattern noise like I saw before. I saw wavy lines, but that appears to be typical analog noise. No rolling lines either. Idk, it looks ok? I need to figure out that script that was posted earlier. Btw, this is a direct capture to my capture card, no eval board yet. That thing's still on fritz.

[petet]

I know there's like one other person on these forums who's used it. Forget the name.

Handful of us out there.

To address a few of the issues mentioned:

Vertical Cropping

94 A0 00 ;
94 A1 00 ; 
94 A2 00 ;
94 A3 00 ;
94 D3 00 ;
94 A8 00 ;
94 A9 00 ;
94 AA 00 ;
94 AB 00 ;
94 AC 00 ;
94 AD 00 ;
94 AE 00 ;
94 AF 00 ;

This does leave a right justified image with occasional minor 1-2 pixel crop depending on source. While centered would be nice, I've found different tape sources have a variety of horizontal blanking and I just default to cropping 16 pixels after capture from the left to arrive at a 704x480 pixel image - which SHOULD be the active area.

Diagonal lines / noise.

4C 05 0F ; Enable Anti-Alias Filters on all ADCs ***

Went through multiple iterations of configs to arrive at this - the tuning here may change depending on what level of oversampling you've selected for your source. I use 8x oversampling for S-VIDEO input.

Using AJA Kona LHi for HDMI+audio capture. Hopefully your capture card is faithfully and losslessly capturing the HDMI feed.

I've made a cardinal sin doing all of my captures with automatic luma and chroma gain enabled... goes against Analog Devices recommendations - then again the docs recommend an incorrect pedestal config, so not sure if it was an error. I'd argue that home video and poor sources will have gain issues on their own and I'd like to at least clamp the signal and not get as much clipping - leave post processing for later. Does introduce another unpredictable error source though...

[TheDrifter363]

Hey!!! Petet! I was looking for you. It looked like you dropped off the face of the earth after November. Lol! It was your post that got me into taking a look at the EVAL board. Right now I'm having HDCP issues with it, no idea why. I bought it from Digikey. I'm trying to get all that sorted out. I used AVES3 and the provided scripts they had. Was using the S-Video 10 bit out.

Yeah, the Magewell Pro Capture can capture losslessly. I record using UTvideo at 422 to a second ssd. More than enough transfer speed.

So are you using their scripts at all, or doing everything manually? Do you mind posting your script if you're using your own personal one? Help a brother out. Lol.

Oversampling's always nice, it can get rid of a lot of noise. I remember for direct capture of SNES, if you don't do oversampling, you have to adjust the phase and stuff to get rid of a bunch of noise. This might be similar. With oversampling, you don't have to tinker with phase or hsync.

Man now I'm unsure if the camcorder is defective or if it was just missed settings. I had EDIT set to ON and TBC and DNR set to OFF. This way I could get the purest analog signal out of that camcorder as possible.

[petet]

Running through HDMI capture issues I've tried the following 'fixes' to get a capture running with the Kona:
1. Rerun script
2. Unplug/replug HDMI cables
3. Power cycle EVAL and/or capture system
4. Various orders of the above

I've since gotten rid of my Magewell and haven't used the latest firmware versions - does it not capture as well as you're expecting? I had some levels issues with it (appeared brighter than it should, gaps in histogram). I wish it would have done 24bit audio capture with no fiddly levels. Plug and play though, seemed solid.

Same, run my Hi8/VHS captures on edit with no TBC/DNR. Most of these operate at 8-bits or less in the digital domain (A->D->A) and I'm banking on 2011 chips are better than 199x chips.

Script below:

:2-1e S-Video NTSC_PAL-M  480i H_V_DE 36bit 444 out HDMI v2:
50 10 05 ; 36 output through AVO1,AV02,DACs
50 11 08 ; Bus Reversal
50 19 10 ; ADV7842 Mode
50 1B 02 ; ADV7511
40 FF 80 ; I2C reset
40 F1 90 ; SDP map
40 F2 94 ; SDPIO map
40 F3 84 ; AVLINK
40 F4 80 ; CEC
40 F5 7C ; INFOFRAME
40 F8 4C ; AFE
40 F9 64 ; KSV
40 FA 6C ; EDID
40 FB 68 ; HDMI
40 FD 44 ; CP
40 FE 48 ; VDP
50 20 00 ; De-assert HDP
40 00 0A ; Y/C 8x1 mode **
40 01 00 ; SD core
40 03 42 ; 36 bit 444 mode **
40 04 62 ; Output bus rotation (default)
40 0C 40 ; Power up Core
40 15 80 ; Power up pads
40 19 83 ; LLC DLL phase
40 33 40 ; LLC DLL enable
4C 0C 1F ; ADI recommended write
4C 12 63 ; ADI recommended write  
4C 00 0A ; ADC0 and ADC2 power Up
4C 02 86 ; Manual Mux enable
4C 03 A0 ; Manual Mux ADC0
4C 04 C0 ; Manual Mux ADC2
4C 05 0F ; Enable Anti-Alias Filters on all ADCs ***
94 7A A5 ; Timing Adjustment
94 7B 8F ; Timing Adjustment
94 75 0A ; Select 128mb DDR (added)
94 60 01 ; SDRAM reset
94 97 00 ; Hsync width Adjustment
94 B2 6C ; Enable AV codes ***
94 A0 00 ; Remove vertical cropping
94 A1 00 ; 
94 A2 00 ;
94 A3 00 ;
94 D3 00 ;
94 A8 00 ;
94 A9 00 ;
94 AA 00 ;
94 AB 00 ;
94 AC 00 ;
94 AD 00 ;
94 AE 00 ;
94 AF 00 ; Remove vertical cropping
90 00 7F ; Autodetect PAL NTSC SECAM
90 01 02 ; Pedestal On (ire 7.5)
90 03 C4 ; Automatic VCR Gain (was Manual VCR Gain Luma 0x40B)
90 04 0B ; Auto Luma setting
90 05 C3 ; Automatic Chroma setting ***
90 06 FE ; Manual Chroma setting
90 12 04 ; Frame TBC Enabled (comb disabled)
90 34 A0 ; Line TBC enabled (added)
90 A7 00 ; ADI Recommended Write
72 01 00 ; Set N Value(6144)
72 02 18 ; Set N Value(6144)
72 03 00 ; Set N Value(6144)
72 15 00 ; 36 bit 444 YCbCr input
72 16 61 ; 444 output
72 18 46 ; CSC disabled
72 40 80 ; General Control packet enable
72 41 10 ; Power down control
72 48 08 ; Data right justified
72 49 A8 ; Set Dither_mode - 12-to-10 bit (changed from truncate to dither)
72 4C 26 ; 12 bit Output (changed)
72 55 40 ; Set YCrCb 444 in AVinfo Frame
72 56 58 ; ITU601 and 4-3 ratio
72 59 10 ; Set Full Range
72 56 08 ; Set active format Aspect
72 96 20 ; HPD Interrupt clear
72 98 03 ; ADI Recommended Write
72 99 02 ; ADI Recommended Write
72 9C 30 ; PLL Filter R1 Value
72 9D 61 ; Set clock divide
72 A2 A4 ; ADI Recommended Write
72 A3 A4 ; ADI Recommended Write
72 A5 44 ; ADI Recommended Write
72 AB 40 ; ADI Recommended Write
72 AF 16 ; Set HDMI Mode
72 BA 60 ; No clock delay
72 D1 FF ; ADI Recommended Write
72 DE 9C ; ADI Recommended Write
72 E4 60 ; VCO_Swing_Reference_Voltage
72 FA 7D ; Nbr of times to search for good phase
End

Now if we could get acuozzo in here (my inspiration) to compare some scripts... maybe its time for a github repo.

[TheDrifter363]

Sweeeet! Thanks man. I'm gonna bum your script off you when I get the chance. Lol.

The Magewell's great, I have no issues with it. I mainly bought it for my video game captures from the OSSC. I needed a capture card that could handle a wide variety of non-standard signals.

Hmm...now I'm debating what I should do with that camcorder. I saw analog noise earlier, when connected directly to the capture card without the EVAL board. I don't know if it was the cables or the camcorder itself. I'm thinking capacitors if it was the camcorder. I've replaced capacitors in my SNES before, but I'm a little skeptical about opening up this camcorder and replacing its capacitors. Mainly because of its mechanical, moving parts. How did you get your camcorder? Which one did you get? Any issues? I got the CCD-TRV87 from Ebay. Seemed like a great deal, $87.00 I think.

Btw guys....anyone have any experience with this doctorsony person. He seems to fix sony camcorders and maybe has a good reputation? Idk. He's selling the same camcorder I got, but guarantees he fixed everything with it. Selling it for a pretty penny though, around $325.00. Ouch. Idk if I should return the one I got right now, and get that one or just deal with the one I got. I don't even know if it's defective or not. Decisions...decisions.

[petet]

As mentioned by others, test the capture with another stable source (dvd/blu-ray/game system/etc) with the same cables. You can also test to see what its like direct capture to PC with and without tape to see how much noise/loss is from tape write/read. You are also inside with low light, sensor is going to put off some noise - smart phones are miracles these days compared to shooting with old consumer analog systems.

Another option is to capture from another system to your Hi8, then capture that. That will eliminate sensor and show you quality of tape record and playback with your cables.

[Brad]

The captures in post #37 are into the EVAL, correct? You said you had Manual Gain Control as part of your EVAL S-Video script, but there is an AGC effect every time the screen changes. Particularly egregious when it switches to full-screen white.

Full-screen red & especially full-screen green show chroma noise, also visible in the screenshot below.

Weird effects going on with these two patterns, though I don't have anything to compare them to. Why is there chroma around the grey parts of the grid?


[Attachment 51760 - Click to enlarge]


[Attachment 51761 - Click to enlarge]

---

The post #39 direct-to-Magewell camcorder Blue Back capture: luma looks good. Chroma looks about the same as the frame I showed in post #30. It's possible the "V" channel diagonal noise is caused by something other than the camcorder. A 240p Test Suite direct-to-Magewell capture may be useful for comparison.


[Attachment 51759 - Click to enlarge]

[TheDrifter363]

Hey thanks Vaporeon for responding. Sooo...for the SNES, that was a direct capture to the magewell card without the EVAL board. Since that's on the fritz right now, I'm just testing direct captures at the moment. Now that SNES I was testing I had recently modded. It actually doesn't output s-video natively. I added 28 awg wires, connected directly to the encoder chip, and going to the AV pins for output. Now there is a point where the luma and chroma cross each other when going from the front side of the PCB to the bottom. Don't know if that could have an effect. So the only gain control for the SNES would be built into the capture card, or the SNES encoder chip, though that's ancient technology.

Hmm so that diagonal pattern was still present with the monoprice cables huh? Now, this is weird. Man I hope it's not a capacitor issue in the camcorder! I can fix it...I just don't want to. Lol. I have the tools. It's mainly the mechanical parts. I always get skittish around those.

So yeah 240p test suite was direct to magewell, no eval board in the way.

Now I wouldn't be surprised about those SNES s-video cables. They're not particularly high quality. Think I got them on ebay. They're about 6 feet. I'd have to scour the retro game forums for some high quality cables, but I use RGB for my old consoles, so I haven't really bothered.

So petet, do you mean test the camcorder, connected to the magewell, without a tape? You know if I try that I get no signal in VTR mode. I have to have a tape and press play to actually get signal. Camera mode gives me signal regardless, but I can't get a solid blue screen from that. It sucks. If you mean just use a dvd player, I gotta buy some blank DVDs. My local grocery store should have some for cheap.

I might just end up keeping the camcorder. It's in good cosmetic condition and I'm hoping it's not the capacitors that are faulty. I have no frame of reference for these camcorders though. Did they have failing capacitor issues? It's the CCD-TRV87. Made in 1999 I think. 21 years old. My SNES capacitors were in better condition, but I replaced those anyway, and that console was from 1995.

Hmm so even my SNES shows chroma noise. Maybe it's not a camcorder issue then. Something is causing chroma to bleed into places where it shouldn't. Capture card? That would suuuck! Though I do plan to use EVAL board for my final captures anyway. And vaporeon, I don't think you noticed chroma noise when connected to the eval board. Just luma rolling noise I think?

Edit: Btw guys, I just wanted to say thank you for all the help. I really appreciate it. I am such a video noob and I mainly record PC video games, and even that's rare. But petet, vaporeon, thanks.

[clashradio]

Hmm let me know how that HDMI capture goes with your EVAL board. I need to figure out why mine isn't working. Thanks man.

Will do. Now I can't capture at all from the card. I'm working with Osprery support.