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dex Otaku
1st October 2005, 01:11
Hi all.

I am using a rather dismal nvidia FX5200 [MV34] card for video capture. This came along at the right time and right price for me to do some simple capturing with, not expecting anything near broadcast quality, and having the analogue equipment background to tweak some of my equipment to suit.

What I'm looking for right now are some calibration/Dx images to use to see exactly how the card's input is working. I just read the rather excellent threads about VHS resolution and whatnot - not much in there that's actually new to me, but it did spark an interest in finding out exactly how poor the quality, or rather, how good the quality of my VIVO is with both composite and Y/C connections.

As I do not have a component DVD player, I am using my miniDV cam and the "print to tape" function from a NLE to make the source I will be capturing from. From hereon in, the miniDV cam will be my reference source [for both composite and Y/C].

To start with, I downloaded the "area4 NTSC DVD" disc image and will be checking out the actual capture area of the card's input.

What I'm really wondering is if anyone has any ready-made test images that I can use rather than having to go through the effort of making a bunch for myself in photoshop. I noted links in some of the threads I was reading earlier to such images of test patterns, but all the links I found were broken.

These would be a useful addition to the downloads area of Doom9, which appears to completely lack any such items.

Thanks for your assistance,
d.

Arachnotron
16th October 2005, 21:04
I use Joe kane's digital video essentials DVD for testing. It contains most of the basic testcards you need. There is a similar DVD from Avia.

Apart from that I create some one-off test images but I don't keep those :)

If your card uses a SAA7108 codec chip there should be some info on the Phillips site about it. They tend to be not too bad. AFAIKR it lacks a scaler, but that does not influence capture quality as such. The combfilter is decent, adaptive 2D, better than the venerable BT878 but not up to the standards of the latest 3D models. How much you notice that depends heavily on the subject matter.

Some people have problems with the macrovision kicking in when capping noisy tapes. There are also some TV testcards floating around on the web.

Keep in mind when using a DVD players as a reference that the black level varies from model to model, especially with NTSC models.

You can find some info on TV testcards here:

http://www.oodletuz.fsnet.co.uk/tcd/index.htm
http://www.rugratonline.com/testpatt/