Recommended settings for ATI filters

[distendad]

I back up my old VHS tapes and laser disks direct to Mpeg2 with an ATI Radeon 8500DV. The tapes are mostly commercial movies varying between 10 and 25 years old. I plan to retire my VCRs and laser disk player and media. The older tapes have lost video quality.

My questions relate to the three filtering schemes included with MMC 8.9. What changes do Video soap, combined filter 1, and combined filter 2 provide? How best to set the filters for VHS tapes for fair to poor video quality?

The VCR is a professional, JVC SR-V10U, deck and I am currently capturing D1/2 using light soap, and soft setting at 10%. The other settings are as per Lordsmurf's guides. The resulting DVDs show reduced color saturation, are less sharp, and have reduced margin between white and black set points. In short, the DVDs are not nearly as good as the VHS tapes all played on the same TV.

At this time capturing VHS tapes as AVI files and coding to Mpeg2 with filtering is not an option.

[rfmmars]

I have a 8500dv also but I would not do any filtering while capturing.

For old vhs tapes try EOD's "Autolevels" Many adjustments there.

If there is some video grain, try Dancing Blocks used as a coring filter, shadow smoother,VHS (slow but good for color refit) Chroma Noise Reduction, and you may want to plug in some numbers in the 3D General Convoluion Filter.

I have a JVC BR-S 611u prodeck. Make sure the tracking is right on. I also use a analog procamp for some noise reduction between the JVC and the 8500dv. Capture MPEG2 at 8000 fps or higher 720x480 I frames only. I can e-mail you the VDF to WDM wrapper so you can capture in VDMOD in .AVI formats. E-mail me at rfmmars@cox.net

I highly recogmend the new LeadTools' MJPEG codec which is simply super. Just $9.95 US. Get it at www.leadtools.com

richard
photorecall.net

richard
photorecall.net

[distendad]

I have Vitual dub, TMPGEnc plus, and a pile of filters. When the phases of the moon are right, I sometimes can process one VHS tape via the AVI route every few days. The ATI AIW direct captures to MPEG2 permits 2 or 3 tapes > DVD every day, regardless of the moon or microsoft. I would like to maximize capture with the ATI system. If the ATI system is already optimum, are other direct capture mpeg 2 systems significantly better?

I should add my hardware stream is VCR to SIMA SCC to FacetVideo Clarifier to Radeon 8500DV all S Video. Audio is direct to the Radeon input.

[Sulik]

I found that combo filter 1 at 20-50% with MMC 9.0 gives pretty good results, but I did notice an improvement in the combo filter 1 quality going from MMC 8.9 to 9.0, so they must have improved something (combo filter 1 with high values used to produce ghosting very easily with MMC 8.9 and below).

[distendad]

The owners manual accompanying my ATI AIW 8500DV records next to nothing on the filter set within the multimedia center. The best AIW guides suggest one or two settings for one or two of the several filters.

It may follow the ATI filter group are either not too useful or largely untried. I would like to maximize the utility of my ATI system without "reinventing the ATI wheel". Any information on what the conbined filters were designed to do, whether on color or B&W video, would be appreciated. Video soap is another filter unknown.

[Sulik]

Combo1 and Combo2 appear to be temporal filters, the others are spatial-only filters.