choice of capturing codecs

[sh03z]

Hi,

I have unsuccessfuly tried a LOT of video codecs, and with each codec I find fault. I am capturing VHS from a Super-VHS VCR to my Radeon AIW pro 9000 with VirtualDub (newest release).

LEADtools MJPEG:
+good quality
-produces jerkiness

HUFFyuv
+no jerkiness
-lower quality

All the others that I have used (Canopus, Main Concept, PicVideo, VSS, Panasonic GigAVI, and more)
-bad quality (either that or I don't know how to use them)
-jerky playback
-pixely picture

Thank you

[E-Male]

Originally posted by sh03z

...
HUFFyuv
..
-lower quality
...


what you mean with quality?
can't be video-quality, sicne the codec is lossless

[sh03z]

now that you said that, I'm beginning to think that different capture codecs use different chroma shifts, or frequencies...

I'm going to buy a VCR/TV setup that has S-Video output, which should produce a clearer output without as much static.

If that is the only problem, with the signals crossing on my composite setup, that would be great.

I guess Huffyuv might work better then, without losing quality; to be honest when I watch the video stream via composite input on my computer, it is MUCH better than the *.avi file picture.

Thanks for the idea,
I'm going to try that and see what happens.

[sh03z]

woah...

I tired Huffyuv with S-Video from my cable box to test it out...

The picture is very clear, almost DVD quality.

Thanks for the input =D

[E-Male]

there are more lossless codecs, just do a search

if you have the space always cap to a lossless codec and then encode the result with the codec and filters you like

[sh03z]

all right, thanks =D

[eb]

Few years ago I was capturing tvsat signals using PII 400MHz.
The best results were with codec Divx4.12 , and setings :
fastest and max possible bitrate 4000 kb, audio always as LPCM.
In second stage there was encoding with target bitrate,croping,denoising and compresing audio to .mp3.
For today my proposal is to use 3ivx with maximal setings for capturing and later in 2 stage using target values.
I hope that this can help.

eb

[sh03z]

hey eb:

thanks for your input. very nice of you.

I use huffyuv now because of its simplicity.
I don't have to worry about values, I just capture and then convert to mpeg-2.

If I was going to encode to another format, it would be 3ivx, DivX, or XviD of course, but those aren't DVD compliant, therefore eliminating them for my uses.

@eb:
If you capture TV/VCR or any interlaced material to DivX wouldn't that impair the quality to a certain extent?
If you weren't using a TV, you might have to deinterlace, which in my opinion will always degrade quality.
I know some people say software DVD players deinterlace, but I can still see lines when I watch interlaced DVDs I buy on my computer. I used to encode DivX, and I noticed that the progressive DVDs that I had encoded with better quality and better compression than interlaced material.