Lossy 704x480 vs LossLess 352x480 for capture

[vmesquita]

Hello everyone,

I have searched around and found no post about it, so here we go. I have to possible capture scenarios:

1) Capture satellite to filter lightly with convolution3D and undot, and encode at 352x480 for DVD.

2) Capture from VHS to filter lightly (PeachSmoother and GrapeSmoother) and encode to 720x480 for DVD.

3) Capture from VHS to filter heavily (GoldDust and GrapeSmoother) and encode to 720x480 for DVD.

I don't have a lot of space to capture (I have about 20 Gb free for this task, and have been using Picvideo MJPEG. But I just tested this new lossless YV12 codec FV1 and I relized that I can capture FV1@352x480 taking about the same space Picvideo@704x480 would take. I would like to ask your oppinion, what is more advisable for each one of the three scenarios?

[]'s
VMesquita

[Owen]

Have you ever thought about capturing 720x480 to DIVX 5.1 1 pass at 4000kbs or higher?
Force a key frame every 30 frames (1 second) if required for editing.
If you have the CPU power, it works very well.

Regards,

Owen

[Joe Fenton]

Originally posted by Owen
Have you ever thought about capturing 720x480 to DIVX 5.1 1 pass at 4000kbs or higher?
Force a key frame every 30 frames (1 second) if required for editing.
If you have the CPU power, it works very well.

Regards,

Owen

Yep. That's what I do. It doesn't take a whole lot of power, I just have an Athlon XP 1600+. A fast harddrive is actually more important for video capture. A slow drive can result in dropped frames more often than a slow CPU. I could capture at 480x360 at 30FPS using DivX 5.0.3 at 4000 kbps on my old PII 400MHz system. I would average maybe 5 dropped frames per hour unless some other program in Windows (or Windows itself) went to access the harddrive; I'd get a brief flurry of dropped frames. On that system, when I was capturing I would do NOTHING else to avoid that particular problem. I even went so far as to pull up the task manager and force-quit every non-essential process.

[vhelp]

hi vmesquita :)

I think that you really need to pay more attention to the frame drops
issues first. Really. If you can avoid it in one scenario, then, that
is the prefered method. That is, if capping higher res. results in
frame drops, then you wanna bump down a notch till drops stop, cause
if you are dropping any frames, you'll notice it when you author your
encodes to CD/DVD. You will. But, to each his/her own, as to the
acceptable level (comprimise) one makes :D

You didn't say what your source type was ie,

* Film
* Widescreen
* Pure Interlace
* Progressive
* NTSC vs. PAL
* etc.

I hate seeing how people will encode an widescreen w/ AR 4:3 instead
of an AR 16:9 and take advantage of the 16:9 output.., but that's
to each their own, i guess. And, I'm sure there are benefits to
going this route.. Anyways.. But, widecreen (WS) will probably give
you the best quality for the buck, if these are some of your sources :)

Well, below are my opinions.. based on my experience w/ this process.
Taste w/ a grain of salt, if you wish :p

I go w/ Scenario 1...
Yeah, if you are going to encode to 352 x 480, and you have no issues
w/ this during capturing, and you have no plans for 16:9 projects, I
would deffinately go this route, and cap at 352 x 480 of which is good
quality encodes. This is the res. I have ben cappint for the last
two years.. so it's a deffinate winner here.. though I've moved on to
720 x 480 now. You'll definatley get good results from your Satellite.

Scenario 2...
is good too, but 720 x 480 might be pushing it if you sys can't handle
the load, or worse yet, drops too many frames. If you do experience
these, I might bump down to 352 x 480. I have plenty of VHS projects
done w/ 352 res. I don't know what your source is on VHS. ie, is it
based on pre-recorded TV programs you recorded to and in SP mode, or
is it store bought movies, etc. If store bought movies, check to see
if the tape says (in very tiny print mostly) "Ditally Mastered" or
"Digitall Recorded" or anything "Digitally.." as you'll get great results
from these at 352 x 480. Everything else (imo) and you're on your own. For example, I did Bug's Life and imo, was one of my best
encode projects, w/out any trailing ghosts or pixels left over from
those temporals. I use flaXen's VHS filter on many of my VHS
projects. Lots of fun exploring the best quality gain from this filter
alone.. which, by the way, was the only filter I ever used in majority
of my VHS projects. My guess is that people gave up on this filter
and went for the easier ones ie, Peach... Note, with flaXens VHS (FVHS) filter,
the temporal is not the same for every movie, whereas most the other
temporals, I've found to always "splat" in the same grid (so to speak)
But w/ FVHS, it's more "tuned" to your source. This might have ben
part of the confusion w/ other using this filter in the fast.. it wasn't
the same for every VHS source.

-vhelp

[vmesquita]

@Owen and Joe Fenton
I guess capturing from DivX would not be a good idea as I want to encode to mpeg2 later... I just want to loose as little detail from the source as possible...

@vhelp.
Thanks man, you really gave me a great response! :)
I have no problems with framedrops so far, only drop frames using FV1 at 704x480, so I don't use it at this resolution.
I generally encode 16:9 at 4:3 when converting DivX movies to MPEG2 DVD, since there's no point in enlarging vertically. But everything I get on satellite is 4:3 AR, and I capture mostly musicals.

Scenario1:I did a little test capturing at 352x480 with a lossless codec instead of capturing at 704x480 with a lossy one and resizing to 352x480. i found the image a little blurry, but maybe it's the effect of Convolution3d(0, 10, 17, 10, 13, 2.8, 0). I'll try with no filtering later. Unfortunatelly I can't capture from satellite twice the same image using the two options. Any recomendations for satellite captures? Why moving to 720x480?

Scenario2:Most stuff I convert from VHS is Weddings, Birthdays and things like that people pay me to convert to DVD. I have been capturing with picvideo MJPEG Q18 or Q19 for while, but I noticed some artifacts with noisy tapes. So maybe lossless at 352x480 would be a better way. Those I always encode at 720x480 to assure maximmum compatibility, since there are some stupid players that can't handle the standard 352x480. I tried flaxen a while ago, but it took too long to run, so it wasn't usable to me. I mainly go the peachsmoother/grapesmoother for most stuff, and golddust for really bad cases.

Another interesting fact: I have a BT878 card and I use the BTWinCap drivers. When I go from 704x480 to 720x480, processing goes from 10% CPU to 50%, suggesting that the drivers in enlarging to 720x480. That's why I never go beyond 704, since resizing must be better done using avisynth than with internal drivers...

[]'s
VMesquita

[vhelp]

hi vmesquita,

As too the flaXens VHS (FVHS) and all, I forgot to mention that I too
have experienced it operating a bit slow. FVHS though, has proven to
be a worthy contender to the other more up to date de-noisers around.
However, I've become a bit rusty, as I've moved on to other time-consuming
projects (and their issues) that continues to cause me much drain in
my processes :(
To get back to snup, I will usually re-capture my best projects and
re-learn what I've done, in hopes I remember those settings I used in
FVHS. But, again, to me, the slowness was worth it in those VHS projects
that I've done in the past. Some of them were done w/ my DC10+ card,
which is (imo) great for VHS projects because of the lack of Noise :)
in the source AVI file.. and if memory serves me, I use FVHS on the
Bug's Life project I mentioned earlier. ie, I remember having
problems w/ the scene where the BUGS (grasshoppers) dig down through
the ANT's chambers, and how the head BUG was bossing the ANT's around,
and how a Light was shining over him in one scene, and as he moved
closer to one of the ANT's, you could see the light bleed through the
other scenes. This gave me such trouble w/ FVHS, till I figured it out
(for that clip) anyways.. me ranting on a past project :)

Now, I have my own set of problems going on w/ something I'm working
on in DV :(

FWIW, I have found that for VHS (imo) it's best to use filters in a
minimal capacity. Because you need as much detail as possible w/ such
a low source of resolution (aka, VCR spec) That's why I choose FVHS
for my VHS projects, and skipped the others. Well, like i said, FWIW
and all :) And, also I learned that CQ can really help (another imo)
in this VHS processes. I think that w/ multi-pass, there is a limit
to the bitrate in some scenes. But, I can't be 100% sure, however.
I use CQ in any case for these (and all my other encoding projects)

Whatever you decide to use (all or one sigle scenario) I'm sure you'll
make the best use of it/them in your VHS endeavors :)
Yeah, I've got some 8mm tapes laying around that needs to be done,
but I need to first get my old 8mm cam fixed (all my tapes give me the
BLUE SCREEN of death :mad: and I can't get
one shred of video to view on my tv (or camcorder for that matter)
Anyways..

Good luck w/ your projects,
-vhelp

[acrespo]

I need a final video with 512x384. All my capture are anime VCR.
My video card have a bad driver (Pixelview Play TV PVR) then I need to capture with 480 vertical resolution.

I think in two capture scenarios:

1-) Capture with MJPEG 512x480 at Q19, then resize with lanczos filter to 512x384

2-) Capture with VBLE or Huff 352(320)x480, then resize with lanczos to 512x384

The second method result the biggest file size but it's still in my hard disk capabilities.

Which scenario give me best quality of final video? Remember that my source is VHS ANIME!
I hear that anime is not good to MJPEG because the edges.

[ronnylov]

I would make some tests with the different options and compare the results before making a final desition. You can make some short sample clips or your source and compare the final results. I think the results will be different with different video sources.

But the best advice is to buy a larger hard disc so you can avoid the disc space issue and allow yourself to use lossless capturing at higher resolution.

[ppera2]

I agree with last advice.
Some principle should be: for lower quality, noisy source (VHS) use lower resolution. For better qual. higher. res. Noise causes much bigger CPU load by compression, and much worse compressiom too.

And don't trust too much to CPU load meter by capture programs - they are often very inaccurate, in V Dub I have often total irreal values.

[acrespo]

I did some tests yesterday and my conclusion is:

The test:
1-) Lossless 320X480 with lanczosresize 512x384
2-) Morgan MJPEG 98% quality 512x480 with lanczosresize 512x384

Method 1 gives more blur image.
Method 2 gives worst PSNR (1db less).
Method 1 gives best visual quality
Method 1 gives average quantizer 3.8 and method 2 4.5
Method 1 is 220Mbytes/minute and Method 2 is 165Mbytes/min

As as suspect, MJPEG is very bad to compress anime and I think this is the reason for this results.

I am not sure which is best and I will try more videos.