Too much noise in my captures?

[xdcdx]

Hello,

I'm trying to capture PAL-B (I live in Spain) video directly from the VCR air tuner (or from VHS, but this later). I connect my VCR to a Pinnacle PCTV Rave (connexant bt878 chip) through the S-Video connector and I capture at 704 x 576 (later I will letterbox to 720 x 576 for converting to DVD). I use VirtualDubVCR and the BTWinCap 5.3.8.

My problem is that I get a lot of nasty noise, like a black dots grid. When I connect the VCR to the TV, the channels look fine.

Here you can see some consecutive frames of two different channels, captured directly as I mentioned. My goal channel is the first one.

http://galeon.com/xdcdx/sv1.jpg http://galeon.com/xdcdx/sv2.jpg http://galeon.com/xdcdx/sv3.jpg http://galeon.com/xdcdx/sv4.jpg

http://galeon.com/xdcdx/svb1.jpg http://galeon.com/xdcdx/svb2.jpg http://galeon.com/xdcdx/svb3.jpg http://galeon.com/xdcdx/svb4.jpg

The noise is so bad that denoise filters don't seem to make a difference, I have tried the simple VirtualDub Dynamic Noise Remover filter (tried low and high thresholds) and AviSynth's PixieDust(5). I plan to try more filters, but I think I need help before that.

I even tried and old PCI capture card with the chip bt848 and got the same results. Is that much noise normal? What I am doing wrong? Should I capture at a different resolution?

Thanks in advance.

[rfmmars]

I see two things, one ia the RF beat pattern and the other is banding. The banding looks like the old broadcast VTRs at the station when tracking and AGC were off., but I am sure this is not what you are seeing. Can you connect your antenna directly to either one of your capture cards and tune those stations? That would be my first test or try a different VCR and see what happens.

richard
www.photorecall.net

[xdcdx]

Sorry for my ignorance, but what's a "VTR", and "tracking and AGC"?

On my problem, it seems you hit the nail, but more problems appeared.

It seems the BTWinCap driver does not work with the tuner on my card because I think it has some kind of a new MicroTuner model. Only the S-Video and Composite sources work.

I reverted back to Pinnacle drivers, but then VirtualDub gets really buggy (lots of crashes when I try to capture) because the Pinnacle drivers are not compatible with the Wrapper. On top of that, Pinnacle drivers seem somewhat capped and won't let me capture at resolutions higher than 320x2410. Anyway I made two more test captures with VirtualVCR + Pinnacle drivers at this resolution, and as you thought, the "black dot grid noise" is not present in the capture from the card tunner, but on the other hand, a lot more of normal noise is present (I think that this is due the lower quality of the TVCard's tuner).

Here you can see the new sets of low resolution consecutive captures

http://galeon.com/xdcdx/vcr1.jpg http://galeon.com/xdcdx/vcr2.jpg http://galeon.com/xdcdx/vcr3.jpg http://galeon.com/xdcdx/vcr4.jpg http://galeon.com/xdcdx/vcr5.jpg

http://galeon.com/xdcdx/card1.jpg http://galeon.com/xdcdx/card2.jpg http://galeon.com/xdcdx/card3.jpg http://galeon.com/xdcdx/card4.jpg http://galeon.com/xdcdx/card5.jpg

Right now I don't have any other VCR for testing, I will try to borrow one or something.

And now the torrent of questions:
What in my VCR is causing this?
Can my VCR be fixed?
Should I think about buying a new one?
May it be a problem with the S-Video jack? (I will get a composite cable and try that)
Is there any filter that will make this "black dot grid noise" better? I made one capture directly from broadcast, and recorded it in VHS at the same time, should I recapture again from VHS when I have fixed the problem, or should I try to make my current "bdg noisy" capture better?
Is there any way I can make my tuner to work with the BTWinCap drivers?

Sorry about all those questions, any suggestion is welcomed. :rolleyes:

[xdcdx]

I've been thinking about this...
May the problema be because the SCART to S-Video cable that I use to connect the VCR to the TVCard it is a bad quality one? (My video only has a SCART out and the regular antenna out)
Should I try to get a VCR with native S-Video output?

[rfmmars]

VTR = Video Tape Recorder

AGC = Automatic gain control

Yes try it with the other connector.

richard

[xdcdx]

I have just tried the composite plug and it works better than the S-Video one, but more regular noise is introduced. See the images here:

http://galeon.com/xdcdx2/comp1.jpg http://galeon.com/xdcdx2/comp2.jpg http://galeon.com/xdcdx2/comp3.jpg http://galeon.com/xdcdx2/comp4.jpg

http://galeon.com/xdcdx2/svideo1.jpg http://galeon.com/xdcdx2/svideo3.jpg http://galeon.com/xdcdx2/svideo3.jpg http://galeon.com/xdcdx2/svideo4.jpg
(the JPGs are compressed with the maxium quality setting, the PNGs were bigger than 1MB)

So it is just be the wacky SCART to S-Video conversor fault. What bugs me is that I have read that many SCART to S-Video conversors output black & white image, why mine works in color and does this strange noise? Mine is almost identical to this one: http://www.nexxia.co.uk/images/NX-SCT-009B.jpg

What should I do, stick to using the composite, or try finding a VCR with S-Video output or a better SCART to S-Video? (I don't want to expend much more than $100)

[rfmmars]

OK the thing you need to do is replace the .PNGs with high quality .JPGs The new ones won't load plus you will get a low responce rate from other forum members because of long loading time.

What I could see in just the very few lines at the top is grain (noise) and the beat pattern. You say that you do not see them in real time on your tv/monitor. You do see them when played back to the tv/monitor, is this correct?

Let me understand your hookup,

Antenna to VCR

VCR to capture device via SCART to S-Video adaptor. Video out from computer by same SCART to S-Video or is there another connection?

richard

[xdcdx]

I replaced all the links in my previous posts with JPGs.

The setups I tested are the following ones:

1) Antenna to VCR, channel tuned in the VCR, VCR's SCART to Pinnacle's PCTV S-Video. This yields the very ugly noise that I call "black dots grid noise". Results can be seen here:
http://galeon.com/xdcdx2/svideo1.jpg http://galeon.com/xdcdx2/svideo2.jpg http://galeon.com/xdcdx2/svideo3.jpg http://galeon.com/xdcdx2/svideo4.jpg

2) Antenna to VCR, channel tuned in the VCR, VCR's SCART to Pinnacle's PCTV composite. This yields the regular and expected noise, but some definition is lost due composite. Results can be seen here:
http://galeon.com/xdcdx2/comp1.jpg http://galeon.com/xdcdx2/comp2.jpg http://galeon.com/xdcdx2/comp3.jpg http://galeon.com/xdcdx2/comp4.jpg

I don't take the video out of the computer. And the noise is present whether I am just watching or capturing. I assume the noise is caused by the SCART to S-Video connector, I don't know why this cable causes this.

Sorry if I did not make myself clear in my previous posts, english is not my mother language.

[rfmmars]

Your first S-Video doesn't display.

Your english is just fine, I have forgoten most of my spanish. Keep this in mind, your computer monitor shows much more detail than most tv/monitors. The banding shows up worst in the composite capture but the hatch pattern is worst in the #2 s-video jpeg

Is there anyway you can output back to the tv from the computer for comparasion?

richard

[FlimsyFeet]

You can check whether the SCART -> S-video connector works correctly by capturing the output from a DVD player.

The output from a SCART connector can be in three forms:
- Composite (aka CVBS)
- S-video (aka Y/C)
- RGB

(RGB is only available on digital devices like DVD players or digital cable/satellite boxes.)

RGB and composite can be carried together, but s-video *must* be seperate. For this reason, you must make tell your VCR to output s-video through the SCART, either by selecting a setup option or sometimes with a switch next to the socket.

After you had sucessfully captured the composite signal, what changes did you make to the VCR setup before trying to capture s-video?

(It may help if you mentioned the make and model of your VCR; if it's not an SVHS model it probably won't have an option to output s-video at all!)

[xdcdx]

To rfmmars:
All pictures seem to work for me, can you try with another browser or something? I don't think I can output to the TV unless I burn a DVD, I will think what can I do.

To FlimsyFeet:
I looked in the setings and I found nothing to configure SCART output. Between the S-Video and Composite captures I did not touch the VCR, just selected the corresponding source in VirtualDub. Both cables, composite and S-Video, come from the SCART (my adaptor is a lot like this one: http://www.nexxia.co.uk/images/NX-SCT-009B.jpg).

My VCR is a regular VHS, a Panasonic NV-SD400.

Later I may try to connect my DVD to the TVCard, but it is a bit of a hassle.

Thanks for trying to help guys.

[FlimsyFeet]

I'm 99% certain that VCR will not output an s-video signal. You must use the composite input.

[xdcdx]

To FlimsyFeet: So, out of curiosity, why do with the S-Video cable I get this strange noise rather than a black & white image, like others do?

[FlimsyFeet]

Maybe the composite signal gets routed to both the luminance and chrominance pins of your s-video connector? Don't know how that would happen.