All In Wonder 9800se, laserdisc and comb filter

[dark.soft]

Hi, I'm planning to buy some laserdiscs and a laserdisc player to do a DVD conversion, and I searched a lot on the web (and this wonderful forum) to find a good laserdisc player, a good comb filter etc., but I never found anything.

1\ I live in Italy (a PAL country as you know), and I have a 3d prophet all in wonder 9800se. Questions are: It is a good quality capture card? Has it got a comb filter on s video and/or composite in? If yes, what kind of that? Has it good quality? What's the card's native capture resolution (more specifically, when I capture at 720x576 with virtualdub, are these pixels REAL?)? If I capture at 720x480 (NTSC resolution at wich I want to capture from laserdiscs), will I obtain good quality?

2\I searched for a good laserdisc player (I know Pioneer is one of the best laserdisc makers), and I found the LD-S9 (but it costs way too much), the CLD-97 (but it hasn't got an AC3-RF out), and the CLD-99 (wich I can't find on ebay). So, I'm looking for a laserdisc player not too much expensive (about 300/400 $), with great quality audio outputs (AC3-RF for dd, digital out for dts and a good analog out), with a sharp and detailed composite output and a good general quality.

3\This question is strictly related to the previous one. What's the best solution to obtain a good quality from a laserdisc signal (consider that I don't care about noise, I rather like it, but I want a sharp and detailed image with the less possible amount of dot crawl, color bleeding and rainbow effects)? I think there are 3 solutions:

-Capturing the composite out of a ld player with the 9800 composite in (but I don't know if it has a comb filter on the composite input) and then use a software comb filter (possibly 3d adaptive, wich uses a 3d comb filter in static scenes and a 2d one on movement scenes).

-capturing the s video out from a ld player that has a great 3d comb filter with the 9800 s video in

-capturing the composite output from a ld player with a composite in of a capture card that has a great 3d comb filter

What's the best one for my purpose?

Well, sorry for the post's lenght and I hope that I haven't broke any of the forum rules. And I apologize for my not-so-good english :p .

[rfmmars]

Yes the card is fine.......there is no comb filter on a s-videi in, that's the whole point, full video bandwith without chroma artifacts.

As I understand it, the signal is already mixed on the LD, so it is the player that must have the good comb filter. If it's a PAL LD, you must capture in PAL and the samething if it's NTSC.

The program that I use is from Magix MEP2004 which then I can mix any TV standard clips and produce any type DVD. User input NOT REQUIRED for standards conversion, it's all automatic.

Search AMAZON.COM for MOVIE EDIT PRO 2004 Close out price for this version is $26.00 US, works with all standards.......Has DVD intergrated burning.

richard
photorecall.net

[dark.soft]

Thank you rfmmars. So has the composite got a comb filter? If yes, I wonder if there is a way to disable it, so I can capture a LD with it's native format (the composite) and then use a comb filter.

[rfmmars]

Yes all composites have some type of separation device, either a trap or comb filter.

Here's what to do. Take you composite out of the LD player and with an adaptor combine the video & chroma inputs of the s-video jack of the video card together.

You will have more detail this way but also dot crawl. Use VD or Avisynth to remove the dot crawl.

richard

[dark.soft]

Uhm so with your solution, I'll end up with a composite signal transported with s video, that will not be affected by my 9800's internal comb filter. Are you sure that this method isn't lossy? And where can I find such an adapter? Thank you!

P.S. I haven't got a LD player yet, but I'm searching for a good one, as you can read from my first post :p . If you have any advices...

[Arachnotron]

Here's what to do. Take you composite out of the LD player and with an adaptor combine the video & chroma inputs of the s-video jack of the video card together.Won't doing that mess up the impedance? And what would be the advantage of doing that instead of simply capping the composite signal?

[rfmmars]

The composite input may not have a wide video bandwidth for luma information.

Your going from a low impedance composite out to an equal or high impedence in. This is OK, not the other way around.

Make your own adaptor. 2 cables one S-Video two hot two ground. One RCA one hot, one ground. Connect all hots together, connect all grounds together.

Go buy an s-video to composite

richard
photorecall.net

[Arachnotron]

The composite input may not have a wide video bandwidth for luma information.Since capture chips in general use the same type of ADC for both the luma and chroma path that should not be an issue. LD is about 5-5.5 MHz bandwidth, and most capcards can go up to 6.75 MHz for luma, either composite or svid, so bandwidth is not limiting here.

If I understand you correctly, by feeding the composite signal from the LD to both the luma and chroma pin of the capcard and capping s-vid, you are essentially bypassing any form of combfiltering. So you avoid any loss of information around the chroma subcarrier frequency (4.43 MHz for PAL) at the price of maximum dot-crawl, rainbows etc.

I'll have a go at it sometimes to see how that works out. I always assumed dot-crawl was the worst of the two evils, but I never actually tested it. I suppose it depends heavily on the subject matter.

[FredThompson]

Uh...laserdiscs are analog recordings of composite source, aren't they? Yes, source makes a huge difference. There are discs with huge moire problems. I'll bounce this off Jazzhunter.

[rfmmars]

No, composite input doesn't always have the full video band width, they low band pass / trap at the color sub-carrier 3.58 NTSC / 4.43 PAL, so there is video always lost with composite input. This will vary from manufacture. Combing has the drawback of color line drop and loss of chroma y in resolution, low pass with trap has no loss of y resoultion, but does have dot crawl.

Take your pick.

The big problem is Laser Rot.

richard
photorecall.net

[dark.soft]

So, with this adapter I would capture the full composite signal. Problem is: I don't know a really good 3d comb filter for pal!

One more question: since the signal on the laserdisc is already composite, outputting a composite signal will double the dot crawl and rainbow effect, am I right? So the best solution would be to buy a LD player with an internal comb filter, but I can't find a good one for a good price :( .

[jcbiv]

For the $300-400 price range, I believe the CLD-D704 is quite popular but doesnt have as good a comb filter as the CLD-99. The LD Players with the best comb filters are the later japanese ones which are way out of your price range with the exception of the CLD-R7G... which is still a bit out of your price range (mine costed around $650US on yahoo japan auctions after auction agent fees and overseas shipping)

Best suggestion for LD player info is to load up a usenet reader and visit alt.video.laserdisc

You might also find some specs at http://www.laserdiscarchive.co.uk/pioneer1.htm

[rfmmars]

The dot crawl should remain the same, you may be going to extremes for I don't remember many LD that were that good or many surving disks without laser rot.

richard

[dark.soft]

The dot crawl should remain the same

Are you sure? If there are artifacts on the ld transfer, the composite output should add other of them... Or not? Also if it's not, I still don't know a software 3d comb filter (for either ntsc or pal). If only I could find a CLD-99 at a good price...

[rfmmars]

You never can be certain of anything but the chroma & luma are already mixed together on the disk so the beat(Dot Crawl) has already happen.

richard

[dark.soft]

So, this is what you're saying: chroma and luma are already mixed, so with the composite output there isn't any additional dot crawl, right? The problem still is that I can't find any software 3d comb filter... If you know a good one, software or hardware ,tell me. I also need a good LD player that plays both PAL and NTSC.

[Arachnotron]

You never can be certain of anything but the chroma & luma are already mixed together on the disk so the beat(Dot Crawl) has already happen. Dot crawl and rainbows are not so much the result of the mixing but more an artefact caused by imperfect separation through comb-filtering. With an ideal combfilter there would be none, but in real life that is not the case, and the actual dot crawl and rainbows will depend on the strategy used by the combfilter in question and the scene you are looking at. Modern combfilters are adaptive and can even be 3D (the third demension being time) so different devices will give different results.

There are a few links about luma and chroma crosstalk in chapter 12.3 (http://www.doom9.org/capture/chroma_artefacts.html) of the capture guide.

[dark.soft]

Yes but I can't still find a software comb filter that does 3d and 2d with adaptive method.

[dark.soft]

I found on the web a new ati theater chip, the theater 550 pro, wich features a 3D Y/C comb filter, but I have some doubts: there are other pci cards with a better filter? Can the card's noise reduction be disabled (I read in the reviews that the image is a bit soft)?

If someone can post a link to a recent comparison...

[Sergei_Esenin]

As someone who has a lot of experience capturing laserdiscs, I can tell you that the best results I've acheived were by using the composite output of my laserdisc player (Pioneer LDV-8000, chosen because unlike newer models it relies on high signal-to-noise ratio instead of cheating with a low SNR enhanced with a Digital Video Noise Reduction circuit) connected to a newer external 3D combfilter. Originally I used analogue passthrough (which performs Y/C seperation of composite inputs for the S-Video and Component outputs) on a D-VHS (http://www.jvc.com/product.jsp?productId=PRD4603000&pathId=50) deck to combfilter the composite and output to the S-Video input of my capture card, on the recommendation of some folks at AVS Forums (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/) who were doing so. I get similarly good results using the 3D comb filter on this card (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814160021)--one of several fairly new cards with 3D Y/C filter capabilities--when the LD player is connected directly to the card's composite input.

I've tried bypassing the hardware comb filters using a composite->S-Video adapter and using GuavaComb with various de-rainbowing and artifact reduction scripts, but this hasn't yielded results equal to using a hardware 3D comb filter.

That's just my experience, though.

[dark.soft]

So, when buying a LD player, wich models should I consider? For pal I read that the cld 2950 is the best, can someone confirm this?For NTSC I haven't found yet a good player, so any advice would be appreciated. Consider that for both I need a sharp composite out of the pure composite signal on the laserdisc, a good ac3-rf, digital and analog out, and then the high signal to noise ratio (if sergei_esenin is right about this).

[Arachnotron]

Just a small remark: the 3D combfilter of the compro card sergei hinted at is only used when capping NTSC, so for PAL you may have to look for another device.

What about ATI theather 550 based cards? They are supposed to have a 3D combfilter too, but I have no idea if they support PAL 3D combfiltering (and if they can do raw capping next to hardware MPEG2)

[dark.soft]

lol Arachnotron read carefully before posting:

I found on the web a new ati theater chip, the theater 550 pro, wich features a 3D Y/C comb filter

yes, they support both pal and ntsc comb filtering, but what do you mean for "and if they can do raw capping next to hardware MPEG2"? Anyway, I'm not willing to capture directly to mpeg2, but in huffyuv first.

[Arachnotron]

lol Arachnotron read carefully before posting :o Yes, I see that you already considered it. :)

yes, they support both pal and ntsc comb filtering, but what do you mean for "and if they can do raw capping next to hardware MPEG2"? Anyway, I'm not willing to capture directly to mpeg2, but in huffyuv first.I heard you can bypass the hardware mpeg2 encoder for the Conexant CX23416 chips used on the PVR 150, so I wondered if that was also possible for the Theater 550. It would leave you with the advantages of raw capping (huffyhuf) combined with a good 3D combfilter. And the thing has 12 bits ADC's. Yummy!

I have been trying to get my hands on one, but over here (the Netherlands) Hauppauge + a few nvidia NVT's is all you can get. It seems all the really cool stuff like 3D comb, TBC and high quality ADC's is somehow always linked to hardware DV or MPEG compression :(

[dark.soft]

Yes, 12 bits adc is pretty good. I still don't understand what do you want to do by bypassing the mpeg2 encoder: if I capture with virtualdub directly to huffyuv, there aren't any problems.

[Arachnotron]

I still don't understand what do you want to do by bypassing the mpeg2 encoder: if I capture with virtualdub directly to huffyuv, there aren't any problems.Capturing lossless. What happens when you cap with vdub to huffy? Are you indeed capping the raw video stream or are you re-compressing mpeg to huffy?

[dark.soft]

Well, I mean capturing live from tv\s-video with virtualdub, choosing huffyuv as compression codec.

[Sergei_Esenin]

Well, I mean capturing live from tv\s-video with virtualdub, choosing huffyuv as compression codec.

We know what you mean, but without finding documentation that the raw output of the card isn't derived from the already-compressed stream, or comparing frames from MPEG-2 to frames from huffyuv, there's no way to be sure you aren't getting a stream that's simply been derived from the MPEG-2 stream. Essentially, the raw stream could be coming either from the Theater 550 chip *before* MPEG-2 encoding, or *after* MPEG-2 encoding.

I would guess before, but can't be sure.

[Arachnotron]

We know what you mean, but without finding documentation that the raw output of the card isn't derived from the already-compressed stream, or comparing frames from MPEG-2 to frames from huffyuv, there's no way to be sure you aren't getting a stream that's simply been derived from the MPEG-2 stream. Essentially, the raw stream could be coming either from the Theater 550 chip *before* MPEG-2 encoding, or *after* MPEG-2 encoding.

I would guess before, but can't be sure.Actually, there might be. I just tried to answer the same question for my PVR 150 and found out that you can using graphedit. Start your capture to regular mpeg2 and next start graphedit and attach to the capture process while it is running. Graphedit whill show you the full filterchain in use. Next to the same when you are capping to huffy. Look at the properties of the capture device and wether or not there is an mpeg decoding step in the filter chain.

In the case of the PVR, there was no such mpeg2 decoding step. The only thing needed was a format converter filter since the PVR outputs a propriatary raw format, HWC2 which needs to be converted to YUY2 before huffy understands it.

[Karyudo]

I get similarly good results using the 3D comb filter on this card (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814160021)--one of several fairly new cards with 3D Y/C filter capabilities--when the LD player is connected directly to the card's composite input.

Which card is that, then? That Newegg link has long since expired.

[This is why I think posts shouldn't rely on outside sales links for simple information like the name of a product...]

[Arachnotron]

That's an old thread. :)
I don't remember exactly, but it probably was a compro card with one of the NEC 3D combfilters on it. Up untill a short while ago those nec chips only did NTSC but NEC has just released a NTSC/PAL version and that one is slowly beginning to get used on cards.

[Karyudo]

Yeah, I think I saw Compro mentioned a few posts later. And I've subsequently found their products. Looks good! Thanks for the quick reply to this old thread...

But I am interested in PAL comb filtering, so I'd be interested to hear a 25-word-or-less summation of what new cards feature the new NEC PAL/NTSC comb filtering chip, and which of those cards is becoming the new must-have. Any suggestions?

[Arachnotron]

This is the chip
http://www.necel.com/digital_av/english/3dyc/d64015a.html

And this is a card (no hardware mpeg2) that uses it:

http://www.comprousa.com/New/en/product/X800-hardware.html

(with thanks to i4004 for pointing it out to me :) )

No idea how good the silicon tuner part is or the general quality of the thing. It's just the first card I have seen mentioned that uses a NEC 3D Y/C filter that is not limited to NTSC only.

[Karyudo]

I saw that card yesterday, but I didn't know it had that new NEC chip! I did notice that in Compro's PDF product comparison that the only card that has the Y/C filter adjustment dialogue is the Ultra (M800?). If this X800 has a similar chip, I'm sorta surprised it doesn't have that cool adjustment feature.

Or maybe it just doesn't have it yet.

[Arachnotron]

I don't have absolute proof that it has, but they really emphasize it does both PAL and NTSC 3D Y/C filtering, and that it uses the CX23883 as the basis. And that chip does not have a 3D combfilter at all. Since it is a compro, I kinda assume they used the new NEC to fix that.

Under the software description they mention the tweakY/C utility, so.... :D

[Karyudo]

Yeah, I agree with you: it sure looks like the Compro X800 does have the Y/C Tweak utility. I may have been looking at the world site last night, or I may just be an idiot.

I'm surprised that these companies (Compro is not the only culprit) continue to do a pretty poor job of getting the technical information on the cool, cutting-edge tech stuff they're trying to sell us, into the hands of the people who appreciate it (and therefore might buy it).

If I wanted to buy one of these cards, anybody got any idea where I'd get one? A search for 'compro x800' only turns up Russian, Chinese, Taiwanese, and South African sites!

(I guess this should no longer be in this thread -- it's sorta taking on a life of its own.)