Full Frame Output via S-Video with Zoran Chipset Player (DVD-5000)

[Meierhans]

First: Hi all! This is my first post, but not my first visit.
Keep up the good work, doom9 is a really good recource to find information on AV.
:rolleyes:

I got an unfamiliar problem, some of you may think: What does this guy want with full frame output via SVideo if there is YUV Progressive Scan on the back of his player.
To explain this: I feed back DIVX encoded footage from Hardware player back into my PC (via Hauppauge WinTV).
Sadly my capture cards only have S-Video Connectors, no YUV.

Now you may think:
What the hell? Feeding back via analog capture, what is this good for?
Rubbish!
The answer is simple: Realtime! I mix and key the streams via a special software (Visualjockey)to show it live.

Now I come to my problem:

I encoded a sample clip with DIVX 5.2, 25 FPS, very good quality (size doesn`t matter in my case, later to this point) and burned it to CD. Runs fine, BUT in theory the player should now output one full (not interlaced!) frame every two fields, allowing me to capture these fullframes without distortion.
(Perhabs you know this from you capturing telecined film from TV -happilly seeing that there just is no interlacing you got to fight against.)

In my case there should be no interlacing at all (just full frames in file) but there is if I recapture it.

Does anybody knows how to fix this? Encoding settings? Hidden menu?
Alternate Firmware?
YUV->Y/C converter?? (does Haupauge WINTV eats Progressive scan signal??)

My second question in this context: On the package of my player is written "DIVX Playback up to 10 Mbit/s"
In a "normal" case it would make no sense at all to compress anything with such a high data rate, but in my special case (as said before) size doesn`t matter. :D

I experimented a bit to get the max out of it.(did you ever fed the DIVX codec with pure noise :devil:)
I barely reached the 5 Mbit/s border. Any advice whats the best setting to Zordan 7 based players? to get the best quality possible (without looking at file sizes, only on read speed of DVD-ROM and GPU speed....)

Thank you for any help!

[SeeMoreDigital]

Hi Meierhans,

Why are you capturing from the players analogue "audio and video" outputs?

Why don't you spin your source DVD in your PC's DVD drive and back it up to Mpeg4 .avi and burn the resulting encode onto CD/DVD~R/RW?


Cheers

[Meierhans]

Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
Hi Meierhans,

Why are you capturing from the players analogue "audio and video" outputs?

Why don't you spin your source DVD in your PC's DVD drive and back it up to Mpeg4 .avi and burn the resulting encode onto CD/DVD~R/RW?


Cheers

Originally posted by Meierhans

Now you may think:
What the hell? Feeding back via analog capture, what is this good for?
Rubbish!
The answer is simple: Realtime! I mix and key the streams via a special software (Visualjockey)to show it live.


I produce the content myself on PC, its no problem for me to encode it into any codec I want it.

My point is that decoding clips in high quality eats up so much CPU that I can hardly play two clips with full PAL resolution, mix them and apply effect.
DVD is for this kind of footage unsuitable since MPEG2 codec at DVD conform bitrate tends to creep when you feed it with very fast cuts, color strobes or just CGI.
MPEG2 was optimized for filmslike content - as you shure know.
The type of my content if very different to that. For example:
I work a lot with over satureted "film look" colors and strong grain and distortions in my clips. Very ofter they are fast cutted, some of them use flashes.
This forces to codec to set many many keyframes as far as I understand. This looks bad.


So I was very happy when I found DIVX captable DVD players that seemed to have some serious horsepowers.

I tested 9 Mbit/s DIVX with very fast strobed content on my PC before I bought 2 of these players. The results where VERY good (close to PRO equipment), but then I ran into the recapture-interlacing problem and the fact that I can`t find the right settings to feed my Zordan baby with fast food that he decompresses without hicks and hangs. :scared:

[Meierhans]

Sorry if I was a bit harsh, I just tried to explain my problem as good as possible to prevent the "Why don`t you rip directly from DVD" answer. Didn`t help. ;)
I really need some help with this, I did a lot of testing and could not get it working propper.

I guess the interlacing problem while capturing via S-Video in comes from from the fact that my DVD-Player does change the frame exactly after printing first field to screen. Can I prevent this in any way?

[Zhnujm]

A progressive output via s-video is not possible, its always interlaced. But that should be no problem if your source is not interlaced as the full frame can be recreated out of the two fields with no interlacing artefact

If you still see artifacts then its most likely because of shifted fields (the capture card take two non-matching fields an create a full frame out of it).
Thats can be corrected with Virtualdub telecide filter, but i dont know if that works in realtime.

[Meierhans]

the capture card take two non-matching fields an create a full frame out of it

Yeah, that seems to be the only reason I can imagine. So in theory it should be enough to tell the capture cards: "Hey... wait a field!
The two fields you mix together where not ment to be mixed up"

I use BTwincap drivers and since capturing propper telecined film from TV works without any interlacing artefacts I guess its not my capture driver thats broken. So it seems that only the DVD-5000 stays as source of the problem.
Is there any way to to tell it always show to correspondending fields in one frame? Perhabs this can be controlled by encoding setting? Or via a internal switch of the DVD player?

[Zhnujm]

First i would capture a small part, load the part with VirtualDub and check if thats really the reason.
With my card this happens just randomly, somtimes its right, sometimes its wrong.

[Meierhans]

Thx for the info, I will check that.
But shouldn`t the capture driver know the difference between field 1 and field 2? Or does it just starts capturing, no matter what field it takes at 1?

[Meierhans]

Ok, I did a bit of investigation. :rolleyes:

When I playback a normal DVD the player outputs proper and clean 25 FPS fullframe video via S-Video.
Only when it is in DIVX-mode it starts switching frame exactly between the 2 fields - reproducable.

I guess this is to make non-25 FPS (or 30 for NTSC countries) content look smoother on a normal TVs? I can`t imagine any other reasen. :confused:

However, I´m searching for a way to avoid this. May it be a hidden setting in player, another file name for clips, a flag in codec or even Hexediting the files or firmware, if anybody knows a way to force this sucker NOT to break frames in pieces... please help.

[Meierhans]

I just found out that the problem occurs after the first or second repeat of one DIVX file. This is a clear sign that its a fault of the player itself, not the capture card. The strange thing: When I restart captureing its ok again.
Perhabs the card recognizes the "real" first field like it should, but then get confused by the player skippin only one field when reaching repeat point.