best VHS capture solution

[sidar]

hello all,

i read a lot of documents. but my head is so confused. ý have some questions if you dont mind. sorry it is like a questionnaire.

the thing is, that I want to capture vhs from vcr, and convert it if possible high quality divx, or svcd.

1- think that my system is amd 1.8 ghz, 512 ddram, 40 gb ibm desktop. what should I buy:
a) a cheap tv tuner card (wintv or avermedia, range 30-60$)
b) a cheap graphic card with vivo (ati radeon 64ddr vivo or asus 6600 deluxe vivo or ati all in wonder 128, these are 60-80$ range)
c) a expensive graphic card with vivo (ati all in wonder radeon or ati aiw 7500 or geforce3 vivos, range 150-300)

2- think that my system is pIII 550, 256sd, 40 gb ibm desktop. what should i buy, a or b or c?

3- if possible, could you please give quality notes over 100 for 1a) and 1b) and 1c) and 2a) and 2b) and 2c)?

4- if possible, could you please give capturing and converting time notes over 100 1a) and 1b) and 1c) and 2a) and 2b) and 2c)?

5- what is your most efficient solution for this, and if possible please cheap. i give here some cards...

a) aver tv tuner: 60$, fly tv tuner: 35$

b)
ati radeon 64 mb ddr vivo: 80$
ati all in wonder
asus 6600 deluxe, 32sd geforce vivo: 65$
asus 6800 deluxe, 32ddr geforce vivo: 75$
asus 7100 deluxe, 32ddr geforce2 gts vivo: 110$

c)
ati all in wonder radeon: 150$
ati all in wonder 7500, 64 ddr: 200$
asus geforce3 vivo, 200$

[sidar]

note that i never play games. i will buy this only for capture.

[Scuba]

In all of this cases I will prefer a TV Tuner card.
I just don't like the integrated display cards. They make bad solutions for video editing and if you ever think to upgrade the video editing options in the computer you are trowing the mony you invested in it away.

You must make sure that the TV Tuner card can capture at full resolution and high quality. I understand that you can now use huffyuv codec, Do it and compress after.

But in any case, I will prefer a more professional solution if my main interest is video editing. and there are more solutions in the market.
For example:
I have a video capture/Edit card that work in Mjpeg codec. The card run on computers from 350Mhz and up.
It give much better quality then all of the display cards/TV Tuner cards all together.
It have a DV option where you can have DV out at all time or capture from DV directly to Mjpeg.

[anarco]

or use any openGL applications
I´d suggest a capture card - IF it is cheaper.


Otherwise the ASUS Cards do a pretty good capture job and they are not nailed down to a proprietary program like a lot of capture cards are (not all are...).

Okay, it took me a while to config my ASUS 8200 but now it does the same job a DC30 does.


Not to forget it is also a matter of the CPU you have...
with your 550 Mhz a good capture card will do a better job than a geforce with TV in/out.

[Neo Neko]

The video on a VHS tape is 320x240 at least for NTSC. Capture at a larger rez is not very usefull. If you want to go higher on the second processing you can use some sort of bicubic resize to enlarge. It would be best to cap straight from TV if possible. Because not only is VHS rez low it has lumanence problems. If you watch several consecutive frames you will notice large lumanence fluctuations in solid color patches. It is all over the source, but it is most noticable there.

[Scuba]

Originally posted by Neo Neko
The video on a VHS tape is 320x240 at least for NTSC. Capture at a larger rez is not very usefull. If you want to go higher on the second processing you can use some sort of bicubic resize to enlarge. It would be best to cap straight from TV if possible. Because not only is VHS rez low it has lumanence problems. If you watch several consecutive frames you will notice large lumanence fluctuations in solid color patches. It is all over the source, but it is most noticable there.

The Video on VHS is NOT 320X240. it's 720X480, as it's the current brodcast "DV NTSC" standard. Standars is also refered to as "D1".
If you capture at full resolution from the first place you don't need to strach and exrtra process.
If you will use for encoding a coded that support Interlace material such as Mpg2 you also don't need to De-Interlace your material as the coded know how to handle it.

Using a cheap TV Tuner card or display card integrated with TV in for capturing will not give you best resoults in any case. Only a Pro-Sumer or professional cards will. (and you will need some massive drives to handle them).

Edit -
The Pro-Sumer DC30+ card capture native in MJpeg format. The DC30+ do the compression to Mjpeg using hardware encoder (the Zoran chip on the card) and a high quality hardware encoder at is.
you Can't compair it to a basically software driven card as the G-Force+TV-in option cards.

[anarco]

VHS is not able to hold full NTSC or PAL

VHS does a horizontal resolution of 240 lines is in pixels ~320
S-VHS instead does 420 lines (which is comparable to 640x480 pixels).

Example:
A PAL Broadcast comes in with 520 lines and 576 rows, recording it to VHS instead of directly recording to HDD would be stupid. You get the full 576 rows but not more than 240-250 lines.

However back to the subject... for good captures you should at least be able to capture sVHS resolutions. But any cheap BT 878 does 768x576 anyway... its more a matter of your other hardware and not to forget the playing quality of your VCR.


Fact is VHS or sVHS tapes DO NOT hold full PAL or NTSC resolutions.

[Ookami]

Fact is that the noise reduction filters etc. work much better if you capture at full PAL (or NTSC).

Fact is that all the things that Scuba (in his second posting, I highly disagree with "I have a video capture/Edit card that work in Mjpeg codec. The card run on computers from 350Mhz and up.
It give much better quality then all of the display cards/TV Tuner cards all together") mentioned are a fact too .

Fact is that the picture quality CAN be improved.

Fact is that the Asus cards (Chrontel chip) are way superior to all TV tuner cards out there (and to 99% of the mid range cards like DC10,30 etc.).

Fact is that I'm tired to write the same old stuff every week or so...

Fact is that I preached the same (wrong) stuff "Why should I capture a inferior format like VHS at a high resolution?", for months, before the pro's at Ultimateboard PROVED me wrong.

Fact is that you should use a SVHS VR as the tuner for you capture card (the only TV card that has a similar quality is the Asus TV box).

Fact is that my PC is not working like it should . Scuba, check your PM's .

So, test for yourself and THEN post!

Cheers,

Ookami.

Originally posted by anarco
Fact is VHS or sVHS tapes DO NOT hold full PAL or NTSC resolutions.

[anarco]

hehehe well,

the question wasn´t if filters
do a better job on a high-res capture

assuming serdar got a pIII 550 with a 5400 RPM HDD
a capture in full PAL/NTSC is no option until
he buys a fast capture card (whatever device that is),
thats why I mentioned it should at least capture in
sVHS resolution (on this machine)

for the AMD I´d probably go for 720x576 too
even if downscaling to sVCD from 640 or 720 didn´t make
a visual difference to me (and I got a quite sharp TFT here)

I did 3 captures before I started capturing a whole tape,
one 768, one 720 and one 640. The only areas where you
could notice differences were areas with text but for the
rest the capture in 640 did not make any visual difference.

Squeezing all to a bitrate of 2200 for sVCD made all versions
-almost- equal.

On the other hand I tested two different VCR, both 6Head
but THEY really made a difference the panasonic provided a nice
smooth picture, the noname device instead lot of noise.

There could be added a lot of factors which are important for a capture. At the end it will always end up: Capture as high as you can as uncompressed as you can and with the best VCR you can afford.

If you don´t have much money or don´t want to spend it 640x480 mjpeg will do a good job too.

[Ookami]

I bow to the master. There is nothing to add to the below quote. If you can, do it like Scuba, capture uncompressed .

Cheers,

Ookie.

Originally posted by anarco
There could be added a lot of factors which are important for a capture. At the end it will always end up: Capture as high as you can as uncompressed as you can and with the best VCR you can afford.

If you don´t have much money or don´t want to spend it 640x480 mjpeg will do a good job too.

[anarco]

if you want the best quality... go buy the damn movie as DVD ;-)

[Scuba]

My DVD player have Component outputs,
I can route it into my T3K workstation and capture Uncompressd YUV 4:2:2 - No quality loss here
Then use the TMW to re encode the DVD at what ever data rate I want and in real time. Quality is the same as CinemaCraft
Author back, I can even recreate most of the menus If I really want to.

But on the end,
I like the original covers and having no life I have anogth funds to buy as many DVD's as I like. In most cases I can even drop it on company acount.

Call is the "Easy way" or any other way you want.
I prefer using my time for better things then this (Like helping of 10 forums across the net)
(Told you, no life)

[Neo Neko]

Capturing at a large rez filtering and resizing can be usefull. I have found that when capturing from my standard NTSC VHS VCR that capturing in lossless HuffYUV at 320x240 works quite well. It takes up much less space than full NTSC with the same codec. And if you wish to do corrective filtering Bicubic resise while taking longer will give better results at least for me rather than capturing the 320x240 picture stretched to 640x480 or above. So I would use bicubic resize and enlarge to 640x480. Filter as necessary. Then just do a regular or bicubic resize back to 320x240. Capturing at 640x480 off of VHS would be just a bit worse than capturing at 320x240 and just stretching the pixels with a normal resize function. The bicubic resize gives me a much smoother result and reduces stair stepping along straight object edges. I am not talking stair stepping due to interlacing, but stretching.

[takeru]

i capture through my asus 8200t2 deluxe. 720x480 huffyuv, cd quality pcm sound. source is from my panasonic svhs vcr. i dunno about you but i get great results. no dropped frames.

scaling from a low resolution and then resizing back down doesn't do that much of a difference. you have to capture at a high resolution to start with or you'd still have jagged lines everywhere.

=======================
athlon xp 1600+, 512megs pc2400,2x120gig 8meg cache hd's (wd1200jb)
80gig+46gig storage hd's, 18gig 10k rpm 8meg cache ultra scsi boot hd

[anarco]

right, scaling up and down and down an image will do nothing but bluring the image


thats why I think digital zoom is most pointless crap ever invented

on the other hand if a digital camera would have a satellite uplink the satellite could identify the object I´m pointing at, taking pictures and generating assumed 3d objects sending back the view I am looking at ;-)

okay, science fiction hehe

[Scuba]

in the labs they have a GPS with 1mm acurecy
maybe not today but you will have every thing tomorow.
science fiction probably not for long

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by takeru
scaling from a low resolution and then resizing back down doesn't do that much of a difference. you have to capture at a high resolution to start with or you'd still have jagged lines everywhere.

Originally posted by anarco
right, scaling up and down and down an image will do nothing but bluring the image


thats why I think digital zoom is most pointless crap ever invented

I will agree with you on the digital zoom part. But if my source is only ~320x240 and I capture it at 640x480 it gets the jaggies and looks like I just did a digital zoom. Capping at 320x240 and then using Bicubic resize to enlarge smooths out those jaggies for me better than if I was to capture at 640x480. Yes it might blur the frame, but only slightly. It is more acceptable to me than the large scale jaggies. I only wish I had an SVHS VCR. They are a rare item here in the US.

[takeru]

Originally posted by Neo Neko

I will agree with you on the digital zoom part. But if my source is only ~320x240 and I capture it at 640x480 it gets the jaggies and looks like I just did a digital zoom. Capping at 320x240 and then using Bicubic resize to enlarge smooths out those jaggies for me better than if I was to capture at 640x480. Yes it might blur the frame, but only slightly. It is more acceptable to me than the large scale jaggies. I only wish I had an SVHS VCR. They are a rare item here in the US.

tv source is a lot higher than 320x240. as to large scale jaggies i have no idea where you are getting that from. and svhs vcr's aren't THAT rare. maybe expensive, but not rare.

JVC SR-V10U S-VHS 4-Head Hi-Fi Stereo VCR
JVC HR-S7900 S-VHS VCR

[Neo Neko]

I was talking 320x240 as in VHS source. Yes TV can be much higher. And whenever possible I try to cap straight off TV.

SVHS can be found here in the US but they are not that common. But you are correct they can be found in a few isolated stores at about double the price of a standard VHS. But I do not know anyone who owns one. And I know alot of people who are home theater buffs and always have the latest greatest equipment. They have some pretty spiffy expensive VHS VCR. But not a single one of em owns an SVHS. I have thought about getting one to help better facilitate more video capture though. It would be nice.

[Scuba]

I have at least 5 S-VHS VCR's from diferant models and makers.