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Old 7th March 2002, 21:42   #1  |  Link
Blizzer
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Best way to capture from analogue tv?

I have resently bought a Pinnacle PCTV Pro tv-card.....And i red BaronVlad and I use it every time for capturing, but i wonder if teher is a way to get even better result? I'm using huffyuv 2.11 for realtime compression and 384x288 and 25 fps....the result is nice but could it get even better? I'm also using 2-pass encoding...

I'm using divx5pro and I also wonder if there is an option in the codec settings that would result in an better result?

amd 1400ghz, 512 ddr ram, pinnacle pctv pro, 80gigg

plz answer me!

/blizzer
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Old 7th March 2002, 22:21   #2  |  Link
Blizzer
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Capturing tv..

I forgot to mention that i'm using virtualdub for capturing encoding and cutting out the commercial...version 1.4.7 vcr++ (special edition with time recording feature)

i'm also using windows me....

thx!!
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Old 8th March 2002, 20:36   #3  |  Link
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as first step i would recommend that you increase the resolution to full frame (768x576 pixels), your pc should be fast enough for that. even if you downsize to a lower resolution afterwards the quality would be better.
other things depend on the source (is it noisy ,is it clear) and your target (1cd,2cd movie,tv-shows)
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Old 8th March 2002, 20:44   #4  |  Link
Koepi
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heh

-h showed me a sample of what he did to clean up his sources and I adopted it since it works like charme, way better than the "usual" filter chain:

I grab 720x576, using some MJPEG codec (depending on codec either 37% or qual 15, 4/1/1 subsampling)
decreasing contrast and brightness (just a little, results in a cleaner immage [strange enough])

After that, I use avisynth to process the avi:

LoadPlugin("D:\Video_TS\sbc-ripping\avisynth\Decomb.dll")
SegmentedAVISource("D:\capture.avi")
complementparity()
#SwapFields()
SeparateFields()
#Trim(1,0)
TemporalSmoother(4,2)
Weave()
#SwapFields()
complementparity()
FieldDeinterlace(blend=false)
Crop(8,4,712,572)
BilinearResize(576,384)
#BicubicResize(512,384,0,-0.75)

that's my actual avisynth script.
with the "#" you can comment out lines that you don't need (..for that particualr capture).

This denoising works very, very well for me, it doesn't suffer as much ghosting as other methods.

Regards,
Koepi

P.S.: Ookami, what do you think?
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Old 11th March 2002, 10:38   #5  |  Link
Neo Neko
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I capture alot of cartoons. Space Ghost, Sealab 2021, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Freakazoid! and the like. For material like these I have come up with a very simple filter chain for Vdub that works wonders on removing noise and stabilising the picture while not introducing new noise of its own.

Begin toon.vcf ------------------------
VirtualDub.video.filters.Clear();
VirtualDub.video.filters.Add("deinterlace");
VirtualDub.video.filters.instance[0].Config(0);
VirtualDub.video.filters.Add("temporal smoother");
VirtualDub.video.filters.instance[1].Config(3);
VirtualDub.video.filters.Add("2d cleaner optimized (0.9)");
VirtualDub.video.filters.instance[2].Config(0, 10, 2, 2);
------------------------ End toon.vcf

This uses the built in deinterlace filter and the temporal smoother and 2d cleaner filters. When it comes to live material though. I have not found a single combo that works right every time. Oh BTW this combo does not work well on alot of anime. They are in general usually much more complex that standard american or other animations. Hey it is big budget over there!
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Old 11th March 2002, 12:42   #6  |  Link
Ookami
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Smiley overkill

Don't have the time to check it... And I'm a AVIsynth newbie too, so it could take a while until I test this. Thanks.

I will, of course, crosspost this one to the Ultimateboard (it's my favorite hobby ). They hate that .

BTW, we should BUMP the favorite capture settings thread .

BTW II, "built in deinterlace filter", brrrrr .

Thank you very much for posting, and keep us updated when you find some nice new setting.

Cheers,

Ookie.

Quote:
Originally posted by Koepi
P.S.: Ookami, what do you think?
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Old 11th March 2002, 22:21   #7  |  Link
Neo Neko
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Re: Smiley overkill

Quote:
Originally posted by Ookami

BTW II, "built in deinterlace filter", brrrrr .
If it were a cleaner source I would not use the built in one. One thing I have found with the smart deinterlace filter is that while it will deinterlace frames much better and do a good job at reconstructing the fileds is actually makes my picture more noisy. With the built in deinterlace filter it simply blends the fields togeather sometimes leading to image ghosting, but the over all result becomes much smoother and easily compressable. With the smart deinterlace filter noise becomes introduced which I am almost never able to eliminate. With the built in deinterlace filter I am able to get rid of almost all noise on the sources I am doing and the ghosting is not noticable unless you step through frame by frame.
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Old 12th March 2002, 01:23   #8  |  Link
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I still fail to see why you will want to deinterlace your video.
TV material in interlaced
Codecs are designed to handle interlaced material
and if you burn to VCD/DVD and play back interlace will look better on a TV.
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Old 12th March 2002, 06:22   #9  |  Link
Neo Neko
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I don't output to TV much. But when I do it looks just fine. On the PC you almost have to deinterlace. Even if you capture at 640x480 and have your monitor set at 640x480 you will still have alot of anoying stair stepping due to the interlace. Plus most codecs are frame based and not field based as I understand. So you can compress better when the fields are combined to a single frame. I have done some MPEG4 encodes without combining the fields, but the size increase cancels out almost any benefit gained from leaving it interlaced. It may be a matter of preference or taste but I almost always deinterlace.

Last edited by Neo Neko; 12th March 2002 at 06:24.
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Old 13th March 2002, 14:43   #10  |  Link
Koepi
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Hm, well there's definatly no "this is best" or anything.

My last capture looked always ugly when using that abovementioned script. I had to use Vdub filters, but that resulted in a very nice encdoing:

1. Null transform (Cropping the video)
2. dynamic noise remover (treshold 20(!))
3. Smoother (no prefilter, treshold 7)
4. bilinear resize 512x288
5. brightness/contrast (+0%, 75%)

To my surprise there were many details left after this filter chain, except those which had much noise in them.

This was a movie from the 70s btw., so the source material wasn't just noisy through the TV but very much from the celluloid.

If you don't see any deinterlace here it's due to the fact that the movie was progressive! Still unbelievable for me somehow, but sometimes you're really lucky when capturing movies

In my oppinion even my video2000 tape of the same movie (back from my childhood) looked worse than this encode.
Amazing.

Regards,
Koepi
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Old 13th March 2002, 14:58   #11  |  Link
Ookami
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You could "misuse" the Deflicker filter for such old movies. It (sometimes) does miracles. I had encoded very bad movies to a DVD like quality.

EDIT: Why brightness contrast? Why don't you use the histogram feature of VD if you want to adjust it properly (altough I'm always too lazy to use it )?

Did you read Hawk's filter setting guide on my iwebland site? It's only a sneak preview but already very good.

Cheers,

Ookie.

Quote:
Originally posted by Koepi
This was a movie from the 70s btw., so the source material wasn't just noisy through the TV but very much from the celluloid.
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Last edited by Ookami; 13th March 2002 at 15:00.
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Old 13th March 2002, 16:21   #12  |  Link
Koepi
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I didn't succeed setting it up with the histogram, so I'm trying some more "intuitive" setups... lowering the contrast afterwoods isn't too bad since it helps compressability big time

Of course I'd like to find the propper setting - i guess my next rip will look way better again (this one looks awful, really)...

Regards,
Koepi
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Old 13th March 2002, 18:49   #13  |  Link
Neo Neko
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So far I have found that video capture is more an art than a science. You can have the best equipment in the world and still produce crap. And there is never any one setting that is right for all materials. The temporal smoother plugin in Vdub keeps popping up in most of my filter chains. And if it is an old VHS source the chroma noise reduction plugin used sparringly can work wonders. But even the settings on those varry from capture to capture and source to source. I have started to collect Vdub VCF files with regularly used settings and categorised them by recommended sources. Cartoons are easy, but live motion can be a real trick some times.
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Old 13th March 2002, 21:37   #14  |  Link
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capturing my way

My source is almost always my sat receiver going throug composite to my bt848 card ( no even svhs) all PAL. To avoid interlacing problems (never found a general way for all kinds of capture) I capture @ 288x568 and to spare some hd space I use divx @ 100% CBR Q (I find MJPEG too noisy).

The I use vd with the following filters
- crop
- temperal smooth (4)
- resize to something normal
- 2 pass divx encoding

Advantages:
- more detals then 352x288
- no interlacing problems

Disadvantages
- you miss one field out of 2, so lost of details, but personally I prefer this then all the artifacts of deinterlacing
- you compress your video twice with divx, if you really want to you use some lossless codec the first time then divx.

Please don't start saying twice divx is no good, it works for me, try it to see if it works for you, if someone need some samples, I can put some online.

just my 2 euro cents

xming
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Old 14th March 2002, 20:43   #15  |  Link
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@ Koepi Why you don't use XVID with quant 1-1 instead of mjpeg for capture ?
If you are interested in quality and not much in speed you should try smart smoother HQ(new version based on smart smoother, hosted in Donald Graft's site) which i think gives the best quality of all filters i've tried.
Then the fastest is 2d cleaner which is also gives good results.
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Old 15th March 2002, 03:40   #16  |  Link
Neo Neko
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On my Anthlon XP 1600+ it can't keep up well with constant quantizer encoding for some reason. It does not matter if I do one pass constant quantizer or do CBR with min and max q set equal. If I do cap in Xvid I do constant quality = 90% or so and it works fine.
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Old 16th April 2002, 18:55   #17  |  Link
sillKotscha
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It is nice

to hear that someone works the way we do - that means the way BaronVlad and me wrote the capture "guide".
Because it is a "loooooong" time and many DivX versions ago, we also made some approvements, but it is very similar to the guide.

We also tried full pal, the result was very good, but the problem is encoding time with the filters - (you need many hours for every pass, but with our guide it is faster than real time). For example you dont need to deinterlace in 384x288 !!!
We think, the relation of encoding with many filters and the final result is not worth the time U spend on it, because itīs just capture... and U also need for full pal a huge HD.
If we need perfect quality, then we go to the videostore and have a look for the DVD!

but nevertheless thanx at all

PS: we suppose that most people want to capture to see the result on TV... and then U will hardly see any differences.

Greets
Sill and BaronVlad
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Old 17th April 2002, 06:36   #18  |  Link
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Sorry, but that's what you think - and ONLY you!

It's unacceptable for me to watch a third-class stamp-sized video.

That's what was appropiate 3 years ago, but our possibilities advanced.

Why sticking with BAD habbits from the past?
It's ok if you want to have such videos, but I don't want them.
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Old 17th April 2002, 06:53   #19  |  Link
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Of course, you're right, Koepi, but I'd rather separate two very different approaches:

1. Record, watch once, then throw away (low quality accepted, but at least better than VCR)

2. Quality capture for archiving purposes


For 1. I'd use DivX or XviD direct capture, no audio compression, 352x288 or 340x240, respectively.

For 2. I capture 640x576 (PAL) to PicVideo MJPEG quality 19, then filter like hell (to MJPEG again), and finally 2-pass encode in DivX5 or XviD. For audio I (still) use MP3, BeSweet encoded.

BTW: Huffyuv is best as an intermediate format, but files get too big, and the processing time is longer. I didn't experience a visual difference using MJPEG at high qual (19, not 20), so I prefer MJPEG.

To confirm that I reencoded an anime clip five (!) times using PicVideo MJPEG q19, and I didn't see much of a difference in the last generation clip. Of course there was a visible difference, but not as much as I expected, and anime is critical because of the sharp edges. So my conclusion is capture to MJPEG, then filter to MJPEG, then encode to either DivX5 or XviD is my way to go.

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Old 17th April 2002, 12:07   #20  |  Link
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???

Whats going on ?
I dont want YOU ALL to capture in this way, I wrote my opinion (together with sill) thats all. We think the quality is enough. If you like another way and have the time for it, feel free to do so, I dont care.

Greets
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