Why I dropped AVI_IO and use VirtualDub VCR now - Page 2

BaronVlad · 22nd August 2002, 20:07

Fixed the problem with the drops, it was driver related. I tried 20 minutes Full Pal with two drops, seems to be ok for my hardware

Now a really stupid question:
- If i capture Huffy I get a perfect picture, of course.
- But i can only capture about 1 hour and 30 minutes. after this my 60 Gigabyte Harddisk is at its limit, also of course.
- If I capture MJPEG @19 filesize is much less, but also quality, also of course.

Is there another good codec out there, something like huffy @19 and a half ? Think not, should have read this. But maybe someone knows a solution for my horrible problem.

(No, I dont have the money to buy myself a 120 GB, 8 MB Cache "Video-Capture-HD"

)

Thanks

bb · 23rd August 2002, 06:20

What's wrong with PicVideo MJPEG @q19? Combined with the noise filtering during capture (i.e. before being encoded through MJPEG) you'll get great results.

Do you capture anime? In that case you may be sick of the ringing artefacts. You could try Donald Graft's msmooth AviSynth filter.

bb

theReal · 23rd August 2002, 14:32

Quote:

I dont have the money to buy myself a 120 GB, 8 MB Cache "Video-Capture-HD"

I guess you mean the Maxtor 8GB drive?
Then how about a 120GB, 2MB Cache IBM Deskstar, 7200 rpm, for about half the price (and basically the same speed)?

sillKotscha · 23rd August 2002, 14:35

nope, I assume this one...

120 GB WD 1200JB - 8MB Cache

it rocks!!...

theReal · 23rd August 2002, 14:57

You're right - wasn't Maxtor, it was WD's "Special Edition".

However, two IBM GXP120 as RAID 0 also rock, but the price is much better than two of the WD's (I just hope they won't break as quickly as the 60 and 80GB models...)

BaronVlad · 23rd August 2002, 15:42

@theReal: in not more than two years I crashed two maxtor Harddisks, but only one WD, maybe IBM is better

Maybe I should think about a raid controller solution, but it would be better to find a solution without spending money for hardware...

This moment I try some testruns with noise reduction resizing to 512 * 384 with diffrent settings (060, 075, 1 and diffrent codec settings like pre processing...) Thanks bb

Looks ok but not as good as huffy

theReal · 23rd August 2002, 16:58

Quote:

maybe IBM is better

The IBM Deskstar GXP's 60GB and 80GB were extremely bad (I didn't experience it myself, but heard a lot about it). I guess that's why some IBM drives became much cheaper than their competitor's drives...

Personally, I've only had one Maxtor and one WD fail, so...

Ookami · 24th August 2002, 09:57

@IBM HDs

Don't buy them unless you want to heat your PC tower a bit (extremly hot!)... I have three of them in my tower (from the 5400 generation -> last year generation

). Because of them I had to open one side of my tower and leave it open, they're so hot, that you can't even touch it without burning your fingers

.

I've heard that the Fujitsu-Siemens HDs are reliable.

@Huffy and a half

Grin. You could try the other MJPEG codecs (leadtools etc.), AFAIK, Leadtools has the best quality, but the CPU usage is much higher than the other MJPEG codecs (read on the Ultimateboard).

IMO, Huffyuv is only needed when you aim for perfect quality (filtering etc.). If you don't use filters and use a very good end format then it is, IMO, overkill. I've read somewhere that MJPEG is not so good when using MPEG1 as the end format, but I never noticed anything that is abnormal for the VCD etc. format...

So, Picvideo MJPEG @ 19 should be enough for the most things. If you want to convert you favorite movie/series that will never have a good DVD tranfer, then it's another story.

As, bb, wrote, pre-filtering can be very good (but higher CPU usage).

Cheers,

Mijo.

theReal · 24th August 2002, 14:48

Quote:

Don't buy them unless you want to heat your PC tower a bit (extremly hot!)

I have mine (two of the 7200rpm Deskstars) right behind a 45cfm intake fan --> they don't even get hand-warm

Also, the case temp hasn't risen since I put them in the tower, but that's probably because there are tornado-like conditions inside

Owen · 25th August 2002, 11:18

Greetings to all.
I’ve just read through this topic and thought that I would contribute some of my experience.
I’ve been capturing video with TV cards for some years now with every codec there is.
I live in Australia and therefore capture in PAL.
My main priority is quality of capture at 720-576 as I use my PC as a VCR for playback to my 43” Toshiba TV using SVIDEO TV out. Hard disk space is not a problem, as I have 3 80Gig drives and will upgrade as required.
I have found that Brooktree / Conexant chip TV cards work best at 720-576
768-576 only increases noise pickup, not quality.
Make shore that the Contrast adjustment is not set to high as loss of detail in bright / near white areas of the picture will result . (a limitation of the 8 bit ADC on the cards)
The picture will be slightly dimmer/ less contrast than the original.

The PIC Video codec. Is now obsolete, and only good for slow computers.
At quality setting of 19 results are ordinary and files large.
At quality setting of 20 results are good, but files are getting out of control.

The Morgan Mjpeg Codec Version 3 (Version 2 was crap)
It uses much more CPU than PIC Video but at a data rate of around 2.5 to 3 Meg per second, the quality is as good as HUFYUV but at less than half the data rate.
So HUFYUV is only for the die hards, or those with slower computers.

Lastly we come to what I am using now and that is Xvid Codec.
You will need a FAST machine around 2Gig P4 or Athlon.
Set codec to 1 pass Quant mode. (Quantiser set to 2).
Set motion search to as high as you can without dropping to many frames.
If you need to edit accurately, set Max Keyframe interval to 25 (e.g. 1 keyframe per second).
This will give you as good a quality as HUFYUV or Morgan but at a data rate of only around 800kb per second or 1 third of the Morgan codec and about 1 ninth the data rate of HUFYUV. This makes your hard disk go a long long way.
You could also use the Divx 5 codec for this but quality is not as good and and CPU requirements are higher.

So, give Xvid a go for video that dose not need to be frame accurately edited.
For frame accurate editing use Morgan 3

I hope that this info is helpful.

Have fun.

BaronVlad · 25th August 2002, 13:38

Hi Owen, welcome to this board and thanks for your great answer !

I tried the Morgan Codec, cause frame accurate cutting is very important for me (commercials). With my machine I can cap with about 90 % Quality without too much drops (noise reduction enabled because of the bad antenna source

) looks quite good I think. Which other settings did you use for the codec ? Which deinterlacer afterwards ? I am running map deinterlacer, dont think it is THE ONE for this operation.

Thanks in advance

BTW: I fixed MJPEG@19 with noise reduction during capture and afterwards bicubic resize (0,60), pre processing source normal, psychovisual enhancements light and map deinterlacer @ a bitrate of 950 to fit about 90 minutes on one CD. Here is a picture, please tell me what you think (background is the same on TV!)

No Flame please

Owen · 28th August 2002, 11:25

BaronVlad,

When using Morgan 3 try and use Float. (Floating Point) Mode for
Encoding and decoding for best quality. Needs a fast CPU.
Don’t know what Fancy Up sampling does.
Set quality % as required for your source.

The link to your sample is down.

As for deinterlacing, I now have no need to do it.
I used to deinterlace when I was using a Geforce MX card with Conexant CH700x TV out chip because the TV chip could not reconstruct the original interlace on playback to TV and I would get interlacing artifacts on some programs.
I purchased a Geforce 3 Ti500 with the new Conexant CX25871 series TV out chip, and have not looked back.
I can now playback interlaced source in its original form to TV with outstanding DVD quality. The new chip also has 10bit DAC (Digital to Analog Converter) in place of the old 8bit DAC.
This gives much better color graduations with no banding, and looks
as good, or better than a stand alone DVD player.
I NEVER play games, but a Geforce 3 is the cheapest way to get the new CX TV out chip.

I use a PC permanently connected to my HiFi and Big TV as a high (DVD) quality VCR.
VHS tape looks bad on a big screen.
For capture I use FlyDS
http://asvzzz.narod.ru/

or Virtual VCR
http://www.digtv.ws/

Both give good audio sync for many hours of continuous capture on a Pentium 4 2.1Gig using Windows XP.
Playback is with Zoom Player and TVTool set to PAL 768-576
I record mainly from digital satellite (a very clean source).
using Xvid codec (THE BEST BY FAR) and can edit out ads etc because Xvid and DIVX both auto insert Key frames at scene changes, (I force one ever second to make playback more flexible) so there is almost always no problem editing in VirtualDub.
I do not normally resize, filter or re-enecode as I want original video and sound quality.
I don’t and will never make VCDs or copy my video to CDs –DVDs. Hard disks are much to cheap to bother.
I have evaluated re-encoding and find that video data rates can be reduced to about 700kb per second average without noticeable quality loss. Add audio to that and you get about 2.6Gig per hour. No CDs here.
For me, if I were to resize to half PAL res. and / or over compress, down to 1hour per CD I may as well use VHS tape and save a lot of trouble.
Or better yet. Super VHS, 400 lines res. with HiFi stereo sound.

Anyway have fun and give Xvid a try.
If you have the CPU power, you may be pleasantly surprised.
Could be a problem if you want to filter during capture.

P.S. I always thought that deinterlacing on playback would be best.
So fare I have not found a way to do that.
If you find a way let me know.

Thanks.

I think I may have wandered of topic a bit. Sorry moderators.
If you want to move this post to a more appropriate place feel free.

BaronVlad · 29th August 2002, 23:14

Thanks Owen for your great input again

The one that started wandering off topic was me, i think

May the mods forgive me.

i made some more testruns with Morgan, seems to be good, but I have to do some fine tuning.

And i promise, i give XVid a try, avih told about that in another forum already.

But I will be on holiday at least the next two weeks (

), so i dont have the time to capture now

But i will do, when I am back, and tell you about my results.

EDIT:
The link to my sample maybe was only temporarily down, or your browser blocked that crappy lycos account, i will upload it to another place and put the new link here.

Ookami · 29th August 2002, 23:16

Also, would like to thank Owen for his great posting.

If you have any recommandation, critism for the new capture FAQ let us now (PM me or BaronVlad).

BTW,

Will try Morgan v3, didn't tried it since about a year and your praise is a motivation for me

.

Thanks,

Mijo.

22nd August 2002, 20:07	#21 \| Link
BaronVlad Jetzt nochmal auf Deutsch Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Berlin, Germany Posts: 411	Fixed the problem with the drops, it was driver related. I tried 20 minutes Full Pal with two drops, seems to be ok for my hardware Now a really stupid question: - If i capture Huffy I get a perfect picture, of course. - But i can only capture about 1 hour and 30 minutes. after this my 60 Gigabyte Harddisk is at its limit, also of course. - If I capture MJPEG @19 filesize is much less, but also quality, also of course. Is there another good codec out there, something like huffy @19 and a half ? Think not, should have read this. But maybe someone knows a solution for my horrible problem. (No, I dont have the money to buy myself a 120 GB, 8 MB Cache "Video-Capture-HD" ) Thanks __________________ Hochachtungsvoll BaronVlad Deutsch >> Capture FAQ - Capture Guide Englisch >> Capture FAQ - Capture Guide

23rd August 2002, 14:35	#24 \| Link
sillKotscha what's this for? Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Berlin, Germany Posts: 993	nope, I assume this one... 120 GB WD 1200JB - 8MB Cache it rocks!!... __________________ latest mix sets: http://soundcloud.com/sill

23rd August 2002, 14:57	#25 \| Link
theReal Piper at theGates of Dawn Join Date: Nov 2001 Posts: 2,136	You're right - wasn't Maxtor, it was WD's "Special Edition". However, two IBM GXP120 as RAID 0 also rock, but the price is much better than two of the WD's (I just hope they won't break as quickly as the 60 and 80GB models...) __________________ "Under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison" Henry David Thoreau, On the duty of civil disobedience, 1849

23rd August 2002, 15:42	#26 \| Link
BaronVlad Jetzt nochmal auf Deutsch Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Berlin, Germany Posts: 411	@theReal: in not more than two years I crashed two maxtor Harddisks, but only one WD, maybe IBM is better Maybe I should think about a raid controller solution, but it would be better to find a solution without spending money for hardware... This moment I try some testruns with noise reduction resizing to 512 * 384 with diffrent settings (060, 075, 1 and diffrent codec settings like pre processing...) Thanks bb Looks ok but not as good as huffy __________________ Hochachtungsvoll BaronVlad Deutsch >> Capture FAQ - Capture Guide Englisch >> Capture FAQ - Capture Guide

24th August 2002, 09:57	#28 \| Link
Ookami Xe-Rotaredom Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Croatia Posts: 1,029	@IBM HDs Don't buy them unless you want to heat your PC tower a bit (extremly hot!)... I have three of them in my tower (from the 5400 generation -> last year generation ). Because of them I had to open one side of my tower and leave it open, they're so hot, that you can't even touch it without burning your fingers . I've heard that the Fujitsu-Siemens HDs are reliable. @Huffy and a half Grin. You could try the other MJPEG codecs (leadtools etc.), AFAIK, Leadtools has the best quality, but the CPU usage is much higher than the other MJPEG codecs (read on the Ultimateboard). IMO, Huffyuv is only needed when you aim for perfect quality (filtering etc.). If you don't use filters and use a very good end format then it is, IMO, overkill. I've read somewhere that MJPEG is not so good when using MPEG1 as the end format, but I never noticed anything that is abnormal for the VCD etc. format... So, Picvideo MJPEG @ 19 should be enough for the most things. If you want to convert you favorite movie/series that will never have a good DVD tranfer, then it's another story. As, bb, wrote, pre-filtering can be very good (but higher CPU usage). Cheers, Mijo. __________________ "Only those who attempt the absurd achieve the impossible."

23rd August 2002, 06:20	#22 \| Link
bb Moderator Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Germany Posts: 2,665	What's wrong with PicVideo MJPEG @q19? Combined with the noise filtering during capture (i.e. before being encoded through MJPEG) you'll get great results. Do you capture anime? In that case you may be sick of the ringing artefacts. You could try Donald Graft's msmooth AviSynth filter. bb

25th August 2002, 11:18	#30 \| Link
Owen Registered User Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: Sydney Australia Posts: 121	Greetings to all. I’ve just read through this topic and thought that I would contribute some of my experience. I’ve been capturing video with TV cards for some years now with every codec there is. I live in Australia and therefore capture in PAL. My main priority is quality of capture at 720-576 as I use my PC as a VCR for playback to my 43” Toshiba TV using SVIDEO TV out. Hard disk space is not a problem, as I have 3 80Gig drives and will upgrade as required. I have found that Brooktree / Conexant chip TV cards work best at 720-576 768-576 only increases noise pickup, not quality. Make shore that the Contrast adjustment is not set to high as loss of detail in bright / near white areas of the picture will result . (a limitation of the 8 bit ADC on the cards) The picture will be slightly dimmer/ less contrast than the original. The PIC Video codec. Is now obsolete, and only good for slow computers. At quality setting of 19 results are ordinary and files large. At quality setting of 20 results are good, but files are getting out of control. The Morgan Mjpeg Codec Version 3 (Version 2 was crap) It uses much more CPU than PIC Video but at a data rate of around 2.5 to 3 Meg per second, the quality is as good as HUFYUV but at less than half the data rate. So HUFYUV is only for the die hards, or those with slower computers. Lastly we come to what I am using now and that is Xvid Codec. You will need a FAST machine around 2Gig P4 or Athlon. Set codec to 1 pass Quant mode. (Quantiser set to 2). Set motion search to as high as you can without dropping to many frames. If you need to edit accurately, set Max Keyframe interval to 25 (e.g. 1 keyframe per second). This will give you as good a quality as HUFYUV or Morgan but at a data rate of only around 800kb per second or 1 third of the Morgan codec and about 1 ninth the data rate of HUFYUV. This makes your hard disk go a long long way. You could also use the Divx 5 codec for this but quality is not as good and and CPU requirements are higher. So, give Xvid a go for video that dose not need to be frame accurately edited. For frame accurate editing use Morgan 3 I hope that this info is helpful. Have fun.

25th August 2002, 13:38	#31 \| Link
BaronVlad Jetzt nochmal auf Deutsch Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Berlin, Germany Posts: 411	Hi Owen, welcome to this board and thanks for your great answer ! I tried the Morgan Codec, cause frame accurate cutting is very important for me (commercials). With my machine I can cap with about 90 % Quality without too much drops (noise reduction enabled because of the bad antenna source ) looks quite good I think. Which other settings did you use for the codec ? Which deinterlacer afterwards ? I am running map deinterlacer, dont think it is THE ONE for this operation. Thanks in advance BTW: I fixed MJPEG@19 with noise reduction during capture and afterwards bicubic resize (0,60), pre processing source normal, psychovisual enhancements light and map deinterlacer @ a bitrate of 950 to fit about 90 minutes on one CD. Here is a picture, please tell me what you think (background is the same on TV!) No Flame please __________________ Hochachtungsvoll BaronVlad Deutsch >> Capture FAQ - Capture Guide Englisch >> Capture FAQ - Capture Guide

28th August 2002, 11:25	#32 \| Link
Owen Registered User Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: Sydney Australia Posts: 121	BaronVlad, When using Morgan 3 try and use Float. (Floating Point) Mode for Encoding and decoding for best quality. Needs a fast CPU. Don’t know what Fancy Up sampling does. Set quality % as required for your source. The link to your sample is down. As for deinterlacing, I now have no need to do it. I used to deinterlace when I was using a Geforce MX card with Conexant CH700x TV out chip because the TV chip could not reconstruct the original interlace on playback to TV and I would get interlacing artifacts on some programs. I purchased a Geforce 3 Ti500 with the new Conexant CX25871 series TV out chip, and have not looked back. I can now playback interlaced source in its original form to TV with outstanding DVD quality. The new chip also has 10bit DAC (Digital to Analog Converter) in place of the old 8bit DAC. This gives much better color graduations with no banding, and looks as good, or better than a stand alone DVD player. I NEVER play games, but a Geforce 3 is the cheapest way to get the new CX TV out chip. I use a PC permanently connected to my HiFi and Big TV as a high (DVD) quality VCR. VHS tape looks bad on a big screen. For capture I use FlyDS http://asvzzz.narod.ru/ or Virtual VCR http://www.digtv.ws/ Both give good audio sync for many hours of continuous capture on a Pentium 4 2.1Gig using Windows XP. Playback is with Zoom Player and TVTool set to PAL 768-576 I record mainly from digital satellite (a very clean source). using Xvid codec (THE BEST BY FAR) and can edit out ads etc because Xvid and DIVX both auto insert Key frames at scene changes, (I force one ever second to make playback more flexible) so there is almost always no problem editing in VirtualDub. I do not normally resize, filter or re-enecode as I want original video and sound quality. I don’t and will never make VCDs or copy my video to CDs –DVDs. Hard disks are much to cheap to bother. I have evaluated re-encoding and find that video data rates can be reduced to about 700kb per second average without noticeable quality loss. Add audio to that and you get about 2.6Gig per hour. No CDs here. For me, if I were to resize to half PAL res. and / or over compress, down to 1hour per CD I may as well use VHS tape and save a lot of trouble. Or better yet. Super VHS, 400 lines res. with HiFi stereo sound. Anyway have fun and give Xvid a try. If you have the CPU power, you may be pleasantly surprised. Could be a problem if you want to filter during capture. P.S. I always thought that deinterlacing on playback would be best. So fare I have not found a way to do that. If you find a way let me know. Thanks. I think I may have wandered of topic a bit. Sorry moderators. If you want to move this post to a more appropriate place feel free.

29th August 2002, 23:14	#33 \| Link
BaronVlad Jetzt nochmal auf Deutsch Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Berlin, Germany Posts: 411	Thanks Owen for your great input again The one that started wandering off topic was me, i think May the mods forgive me. i made some more testruns with Morgan, seems to be good, but I have to do some fine tuning. And i promise, i give XVid a try, avih told about that in another forum already. But I will be on holiday at least the next two weeks ( ), so i dont have the time to capture now But i will do, when I am back, and tell you about my results. EDIT: The link to my sample maybe was only temporarily down, or your browser blocked that crappy lycos account, i will upload it to another place and put the new link here. __________________ Hochachtungsvoll BaronVlad Deutsch >> Capture FAQ - Capture Guide Englisch >> Capture FAQ - Capture Guide Last edited by BaronVlad; 29th August 2002 at 23:35.

29th August 2002, 23:16	#34 \| Link
Ookami Xe-Rotaredom Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Croatia Posts: 1,029	Also, would like to thank Owen for his great posting. If you have any recommandation, critism for the new capture FAQ let us now (PM me or BaronVlad). BTW, Will try Morgan v3, didn't tried it since about a year and your praise is a motivation for me . Thanks, Mijo. __________________ "Only those who attempt the absurd achieve the impossible."

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