Rate my Setup - Capturing Digital8 and Analog

[Sharc]

Looks ~ok. Go ahead. I am away from home for a couple of days now with no access to my desktop PC.
And don't focus too much on a single scene or screenshots only. Include daylight scenes with darks and brights in your tests to find the settings compromise. Avisynth's (or ffmpeg's) histogram and waveform monitor are the tools for more detailed analysis.
Next step would probably be post-processing.

[Bermuda1]

Set your brightness and contrast correctly using the VDub histogram, as per my guide here.

Hey Alwyn,
so I used the method as per your guide. Changing contrast has the exact effect that you specified - however, changing brightness never really changes anything on the left hand side "no go zone" (see screenshots). The video itself obviously changes in brightness massively. Thanks.

[Sharc]

@Bermuda1: FWIW here the waveform monitor of your capture 1.2....avi of post#30. You can see that the wavy signal below the picture fluctuates nicely between 16 (darks) and 235 (brights), so the contrast setting reduction from 128 to 120 was nearly perfect. No need to change anything.
(Perhaps set the contrast to 119, just nitpicking )

Added: Also, the RGB clipping at 255 is very moderate only. You are good to go.

[Alwyn]

@Bermuda, your first histogram is better, Brightness-wise. But because the Brightness moves the whole histogram to the right, you need to then lower the contrast to bring the right end back, out of the red.

So, set the left edge first with brightness, then adjust the right edge with the contrast.

I do find that bumping up against the left end is OK, whereas the right edge must be kept inside the red. As Sharc mentioned, you can fine-adjust the "levels" in post-processing, so if your captures need a little more contrast, that can be adjusted.

[Sharc]

While "Brightness" usually shifts the entire histogram towards left (darks) or right (brights), the reaction on "Contrast" depends on the capture device/driver. Some fix the dark level and shrink/expand the brights from there, others fix the center level and shrink/expand darks and brights relative to the center.
Also, when fiddling with contrast one may have to readjust the saturation as well in order to prevent excessive out-of-gamut values (e.g. clipped RGB upon conversion).

[Bermuda1]

Thanks. This has been incredible helpful and I am very happy with the video settings.
After recapturing, I now face the issue that audio and video are not in sync. I attached my "Timing" settings and "Disk I/O" settings. What am I doing wrong?

[Bermuda1]

Thanks. This has been incredible helpful and I am very happy with the video settings.
After recapturing, I now face the issue that audio and video are not in sync. I attached my "Timing" settings and "Disk I/O" settings. What am I doing wrong?

So I now tried using AmarecTV instead of VirtualDub. Followed the instructions as per www.aaproductions.net/amarectv.htm. Used Graphstudionext to ensure I keep the same settings for contrast etc. as above. No issues with audio or video sync in AmarecTV !

[Alwyn]

Excellent!

[aramkolt]

@Bermuda1: FWIW here the waveform monitor of your capture 1.2....avi of post#30. You can see that the wavy signal below the picture fluctuates nicely between 16 (darks) and 235 (brights), so the contrast setting reduction from 128 to 120 was nearly perfect. No need to change anything.
(Perhaps set the contrast to 119, just nitpicking )

Added: Also, the RGB clipping at 255 is very moderate only. You are good to go.

Gotta ask, how did you generate those waveforms for the video clips? Looks handy!

[Sharc]

Ffplay/ffmpeg
Or similar (easier) with avisynth or perhaps vdub2 ....

[lordsmurf]

Thanks. This has been incredible helpful and I am very happy with the video settings.
After recapturing, I now face the issue that audio and video are not in sync. I attached my "Timing" settings and "Disk I/O" settings. What am I doing wrong?

You need to:
- auto disable resync when integrated
- disable timestamps for preview

[Bermuda1]

Thanks. This has been incredible helpful and I am very happy with the video settings.
After recapturing, I now face the issue that audio and video are not in sync. I attached my "Timing" settings and "Disk I/O" settings. What am I doing wrong?

You need to:
- auto disable resync when integrated
- disable timestamps for preview

Thanks for the suggestions. Unfortunately, it did not have any noticeable impact. There is still a massive lag between video and audio when I use VirtualDub.

[Alwyn]

@Aramkolt, re waveforms, here are some in AVISynth codes (remove the # for the one you want to use; the crop is to remove the black bits so they don't interfere):

LSMASHVideoSource("yourfile.mp4") #that's for an MP4, use AVISource for analogue AVIs.

ConvertToYV16()

#Crop (clip, int left, int top, int -right, int -bottom, bool "align")
#Crop (10, 0, -16, 0)


#Waveform across the top of the video:
#TurnRight().Histogram().TurnLeft()

# waveform on side:
#Histogram()

#Coloured Histogram on right:
#Histogram("levels")

[Bermuda1]

So I've got my video files in the HuffYuv format now. Can someone redirect me to a thread in this forum (Search not that helpful) or help me out in figuring out which software to use to post process the files? My standard software, DaVinci Resolve (free version) does not support .avi in huffyuv. Thanks!

[Sharc]

Avisynth+, for example.
For davinci and other NLEs which cannot open .avi convert (export) it to ffv1 (lossless) using ffmpeg for example.