[edit]The above quote is from Alwyn, not Sharc. Sorry!!
100% agree. What's more, if any of your tapes are DV or Digital8, then capturing them as analog rather than transferring them as DV will actually degrade the video because DV and Digital8 are already digitized using the DV codec, and the "capture" via 1394/Firewire is actually a copy operation, not a transfer.
Also, when you start with VHS or analog 8mm, the video is so lousy that the DV artifacts are not your biggest problem. What IS the big problem for most people is getting the analog capture working correctly, without screwing up the levels (which most newbies seem to do). The DV digitizing in camcorders does a great job getting that right.
I just helped a woman going through a year-long battle with breast cancer who wanted to digitize all of her videos, just in case, well, you know. They were 1/3 VHS, 1/3 8mm, and 1/3 DV. I set her up with a passthrough from her 8mm camcorder, using her DV camcorder as the encoder, into one of my old 1394 laptops. She proceeded to digitize 50+ tapes of 2-6 hours each. Do the math on that; it was a LONG project.
The key thing: she got though ALL of the tapes without a hitch, with zero capture learning curve. The videos look just fine.
DV capture just works, even for newbies. The same cannot be said of analog capture.
Will analog capture produce a better result? In most cases, yes. Will anyone be able to see the difference? Probably not, especially when starting with 1980s or 1990s consumer video.
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Last edited by johnmeyer; 22nd Sep 2024 at 10:07. Reason: fixed mistakes in last two paragraphs
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I'm not sure whether @Sharc would agree with MY quote there, John (from post #3)!
In fact, I suspect he's probably having an apoplexy about it! -
I agreed with your conclusion, please re-read my posts#4, #6 and #7.
However, the incident which almost caused an apoplexy was when viewing your "own experiment" comparison example which you linked to in your post #3. I put a question in post#4 which you apparently didn't have the answer for. I then took a second look and provided the answer myself in post#7. Your comparison is perhaps well meant but it is pretty useless IMO as it really doesn't prove anything, especially not the subtle differences which might exist between the 2 methods. That's my criticism. I hope having clarified this now.Last edited by Sharc; 22nd Sep 2024 at 11:35. Reason: spelling
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@johnmeyer: thankfully, I am in no rush to digitze. Thanks to this forum I start seeing the difference between DV and S-Video (analog) capture, so while it would agree that a lot of people won't notice a huge difference unless directly addressed, I want to get the best possible result for myself using the hardware and methods that I have .
@Alwyn just making sure I understand correctly:
What's not clear to me from your post is whether you deinterlace and crop using one avisynth script (as I did in post #57) or whether these steps are separated.
Also, would I not be able to crop to the pixel using my above mentioned script, even if the base file was an original, interlaced, video, given that it would FIRST deinterlace (lines 1-5) and then only crop (lines 6-8)?
@Sharc: same question here:
But all of this in separate steps, yes? 1. Deinterlace using avisynth. 2. Crop using another script WITHOUT resizing though, and 3. saving video in VirtualDub to x264 using SAR 12:11. Again, same question as above, this is not possible by just using my script from post #57 (excluding the resizing)? -
What's not clear to me from your post is whether you deinterlace and crop using one avisynth script (as I did in post #57) or whether these steps are separated.
Then I crop it, resize it, do other stuff such as colour adjustments, maybe apply stabilisation with the Deshaker filter, or noise reduction with Neta Video (paid), edit it (chop out the bits I don't want) and then export it either as an AVI for use in my video editing programs or to H264/MP4.
It is, of course, possible to do most of that in one go as you have in your script, except that you still have to export it. -
Yes; 1. Read the file in avisynth, deinterlace, crop using one single avisynth script, then 2. open this script in Vdub2 and encode using x264 SAR 12/11 and select .mp4 as container.
So you could say 2 steps in your terminology.
Edit:
You can also do everything in one single Vdub2 call (no need for avisynth) if you accept the inferior (means not as good as QTGMC) deinterlacer(s) available for Vdub2.
Edit2:
If you want a 1 step solution try this using ffmpeg and your crop values of post#57:
Code:ffmpeg -i "your_source" -c:a aac -c:v libx264 -preset slow -crf 17 -vf "bwdif=mode=1, crop=696:570:12:0, setsar=12/11, format=yuv420p" "out.mp4"
Personal note:
Usually I don't even deinterlace but encode inerlaced video as interlaced and let the player/TV do the deinterlacing on the fly. Most users seem to
follow the deinterlacing route though, as it makes life for cropping and filtering easier and independent from the (inferior, compared to QTGMC) deinterlacers of players/TVs. That's a personal decision though rather than a general recommendation.Last edited by Sharc; 22nd Sep 2024 at 10:48. Reason: Edit 2 and Personal note added
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All, we're talking about semantics. All the options presented here have only one "encoding" or "processing" step.
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My apologies to both Alwyn and Sharc for mislabeling the quote!! When I clicked on "reply" there were three cascaded quotes, with three names in brackets, one after the other. I didn't need or want the other quotes, so I deleted them, but I left the wrong quote header. To not screw up the thread, I left my mistake intact (so these subsequent replies make sense), but just added an edit which explains my mistake.
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No need to apologize. I think Alwyn and myself both understood what happened with the labeling
(And the OP has already experienced some of the pitfalls with analog video capturing).Last edited by Sharc; 22nd Sep 2024 at 11:41.
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Hey Sharc,
thanks for the different methods suggested! Out of curiosity for FFMPEG, I tried your suggestion under "Edit2" first. I used FFMPEG with the following code:
Code:ffmpeg -i Beethoven_Klaviersonate.avi -c:a aac -c:v libx264 -preset slow -crf 17 -vf "bwdif=mode=1, crop=696:570:12:0, setsar=12/11, format=yuv420p" "out.mp4"
Also, I see that the FFMPEG output has an aspect ratio of only 3,99:3 - is this because of the not perfect crop (i.e. 6*1.33333=7.99998 and not 8) ?
Next, I will try deinterlacing and cropping to the pixel via avisynth as .avi and then only encode using x264 SAR 12/11 and selecting .mp4 as container. Curious as to what the results will be there tooLast edited by Bermuda1; 24th Sep 2024 at 15:20.
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12:0 are the coordiates of the top left corner (12 from left, 0 from top) of the cropped window of 696x570 as defined by you (720-2x12=696; 576-6=570).
You will see the beauty of the SAR concept: You crop as you like and the objects in the encoded picture remain undistorted (neither squashed nor stretched, and you don't need to do "calculations".
...compared to my AviSynth+ VirtualDub conversion with the exception that I used YUV422p and used the resize with a SAR of 1:1. Attached a comparison on the results (please ignore the mouse pointer...focus on e.g. the hands). The Avisynth+ VirtualDub conversion is cleaner / less noisy in my opinion + the file size is smaller (1.4 GB compared to 1.8 GB).
(You could also use an .avs script with QTGMC as input for ffmpeg btw., or include a denoiser in the ffmpeg commandline.)
Also, I see that the FFMPEG output has an aspect ratio of only 3,99:3 - is this because of the not perfect crop (i.e. 6*1.33333=7.99998 and not 8) ?Last edited by Sharc; 22nd Sep 2024 at 14:47. Reason: cosmetics
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That is indeed awesome! Tried and works great.
Big thank you to everyone that posted / for all the help in getting me this far. Special thanks to @Sharc @Alwyn for always following up and answering my questions/giving feedback!!
I am really happy with the outcome now and will play around a little more with different settings. I feel as well equipped as I can be (for a newbie) thanks to you
Best regards,
Bermuda1
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