logo Sign In

Easy part done - Now 29.997 > 23.976, the hard part

Author
Date
Author
Time
Post link
Hi,

I've finally got a capture of Star Wars from the Faces LaserDisc (50gigs compressed with Huff codec) using a Pioneer CLD 925 into a PDI Sweetspot Deluxe capture card.
The quality is decidedly average but is the best I've achieved so far (having gone through about 6 capture cards!) and I've decided to go with it for now.

The problem I have now is converting the 29.97 fps AVI to 23.976 fps.
I've tried using both TMPGend and VirtualDub to do the inverse telecine process but both seem to give a jerky result.

Has anyone else succesfully managed to perfrom this step? How please?
Cheers!
Author
Time
Post link
You can't just throw it into VirtualDub. You may have to tweak it a little. Set the IVTC to manual, and then play with the offset. If you still see ghosting, then change the offset to 2, and so on (This will only go up to 4, and don't forget to try zero.). The automatic setting tends to lose the cadence every once in a while.

Also, this assumes you did not drop any frames during your capture. If you did, you either need to recapture, or find the spot where the cadence changes and change the offset again. Save each section separately and then merge the segments in VirtualDub.

Let me know how it turns out.

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

Author
Time
Post link
hey folks,

what do you know, im in the same spot. ive been playing with faces captures for the last week, been a long time coming. right now i am trying to determine why i am dropping frames and what steps i need to take to create a 24fps master. i have an osprey 230 capture card, a p4 3.0 with 512 ram, and an ata 80 gig 7200rpm hard drive. my capture card seems to allow me a lot of control over my capture. i have captured side a of the faces star wars several times at different resolutions (720X480 and 720x366, both of them cropped) i am wondering if what im guessing is pretty much the maximum resolution for a capture is yielding dropped frames, am i short memory or is my hard drive to slow? what is the proper resolution to capture at?

if my vertical capture resolution is stretched to 480 cropped, will i have problems deinterlacing?

here are some caps from my first capture (this one is 640x480): http://www.beggarscanyon.net/4q2transfer

ok, back to avisynth and virtualdub

Author
Time
Post link
Your hardware should be more than adequate. I tried various capture programs, and the one that gave me the most consistent results was the Mainconcept capture (it comes with the encoder program.) You should try capturing at 720x480 whenever possible. You might want to turn off cropping and see if that helps (it could be taking up extra processing cycles, and you can always crop later.) Also, what format are you saving to? MPEG? (bad) RGB? (eats up disk space) Have you tried HuffyUV?

You might also want to look for the latest drivers for your card. The official drivers for my card wouldn't capture at 720x480, but I found third-party drivers that would. I still don't understand this, since they are for the same videocard, but go figure.

Lastly, as to hard drives...how much space do you have left over, and when is the last time you fragmented the drive? A Huffy capture of ANH is 35-40 GBs, and an RGB capture can top 200GBs. You might want to consider getting a second drive and dedicating it to captures. Your 'puter will run faster if it's not capturing to the same drive your OS is on.

I hope something in all of this helps.

[EDIT] Just saw your site. You are using Huffy (good), and your pics look very nice. Good Job so far.

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

Author
Time
Post link
Originally posted by: fwibbler
I've finally got a capture of Star Wars from the Faces LaserDisc (50gigs compressed with Huff codec) using a Pioneer CLD 925 into a PDI Sweetspot Deluxe capture card.
The quality is decidedly average... I would expect that combination of hardware to yield better-than-average quality - perhaps it just needs some post-processing to bring out the best in it?
Originally posted by: fwibbler
The problem I have now is converting the 29.97 fps AVI to 23.976 fps.
I've tried using both TMPGend and VirtualDub to do the inverse telecine process but both seem to give a jerky result. Although I didn't have to do this step, I'd recommend you look at AviSynth. If IVTC'ing manually using DoubleWeave and Pulldown doesn't work, then you can use something like Telecide that attempts to match the fields automatically.
Originally posted by: grnpte
what do you know, im in the same spot.
Yeah, but we don't mind if you want to start your own thread, rather than hijack someone else's!
Originally posted by: grnpte
i have captured side a of the faces star wars several times at different resolutions (720X480 and 720x366, both of them cropped)
Do not scale vertically, or you will have problems de-interlacing. That means you must capture 480 lines (uncropped), as that's the NTSC standard.

Guidelines for post content and general behaviour: read announcement here

Max. allowable image sizes in signatures: reminder here

Author
Time
Post link
He's hardly hijacking the thread. It would be better to keep related questions and answers together, so that they may both profit from each other's experience. IVTC can be tricky if you've never done it before.

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

Author
Time
Post link
Originally posted by: Moth3r
Originally posted by: fwibbler
I've finally got a capture of Star Wars from the Faces LaserDisc (50gigs compressed with Huff codec) using a Pioneer CLD 925 into a PDI Sweetspot Deluxe capture card.
The quality is decidedly average...
I would expect that combination of hardware to yield better-than-average quality - perhaps it just needs some post-processing to bring out the best in it?


Perhaps, I've not done any yet, but I was hoping it would be better than it is. We'll see.

Anyway, I know for a fact that my captures dropped two frames during the actual movie which I should be able to avoid if I do the capture again. Since the dropped frames can make the IVTC procedure difficult I shall recapture.

Laserman is right about needing a turdload of storage space. The 200gig drive I fitted this week is too small!
300gig drive on order.

Thanks for all your help guys.
Cheers!
Author
Time
Post link
"Since the dropped frames can make the IVTC procedure difficult I shall recapture."

If you know where the dropped frames are, you can capture before and after them, and splice in the video. I did something similar when I got a dropped frame in the last five minutes of side one of ANH.

"Laserman is right about needing a turdload of storage space. The 200gig drive I fitted this week is too small! 300gig drive on order."

Try capturing in Huffy. It averages a 4:1 compression ratio. It's cheaper than a bigger hard drive, and you could fit all three films on your 200GB drive.

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

Author
Time
Post link
hey folks,

no intention to hijack the thread, just trying to group subjects

i did another capture, this time on to a second added hard drive, and got 14 dropped frames off of side a of faces, last time i had 12 so i dunno

im wondering if it could be my laser disc player?

ive noticed that when i set the fps at 29.97, the file has come out at 29.97 twice, and once at both 29.9703 and 29.9736, thought this might have something to do with the dropped frames?

is there a tool for locating dropped frames and replacing them?

Author
Time
Post link
I wasn't flaming you for hijacking the thread, just saying that dropped frames is a different subject to IVTC. However, the original poster didn't seem to mind so I'll shut up now.

What program are you using for capture? It may help to use something that has the option to dynamically resample the audio, so the framerate is fixed to 29.97 and audio sync can be maintained without dropping frames. Check out VirtualVCR.

It's inevitable that you will get dropped frames from a poor source like an old VHS or 8mm tape, but laserdisc should not be problematic. You can check by capturing from a DVD player, and see if you still get dropped frames.

Guidelines for post content and general behaviour: read announcement here

Max. allowable image sizes in signatures: reminder here

Author
Time
Post link
"im wondering if it could be my laser disc player?"

No. The player is doing exactly what it's supposed to do.

"ive noticed that when i set the fps at 29.97, the file has come out at 29.97 twice, and once at both 29.9703 and 29.9736, thought this might have something to do with the dropped frames?"

It won't always be exactly 29.976.

"is there a tool for locating dropped frames and replacing them?"

It's a tedious process, as I explained earlier. Let's try some other changes first, like what Moth3r suggested.

"What program are you using for capture? It may help to use something that has the option to dynamically resample the audio, so the framerate is fixed to 29.97 and audio sync can be maintained without dropping frames. Check out VirtualVCR."

Agreed. I've not tried VirtualVCR, but I used 3-4 different capture programs before finding one that worked the best. If you are using a video editor like Vegas or Premiere, you might also want to try capturing the audio and video separately, and then aligning them in the editor.

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

Author
Time
Post link
hey folks,

still working on things, heres an update:

still dropping about a dozen frames per 40minutes of capture, ive tried virtualdub and virtualvcr, both about the same, i tried capturing a dvd with virtualdub and only lost 7 frames in the same time span, premiere for some reason wont recognize my capture card yet.

im not sure im concerned about audio yet, seems like i can worry about that after im done with the video?

that being said, looks like i may have a lot of splicing to do, i captured about the first five minutes of faces side a and tried manually ivtc-ing it using offset 0-5. the screenshots all look very similar except for offsets 3 and 4 which had obvious scan lines and seemed to be introducing parts of the surrounding frames, im not sure if im imagining differences or if they are really there. not sure how this will play out with a longer sample, maybe 5 minutes and one frame worth isnt enough of a sample?

nother thing i was wondering, virtualdub has a "next drop frame" command, which appears to locate the position where the dropped frame is, but when i use it i would expect the spot to be blank or black or something, instead theres a normal frame there. not sure what this means but it does seem to help me in knowing when my ivtc will lose cadence

so here are my latest screenshots:

http://beggarscanyon.net/4q2transfer/ivtc/index.html

any advice much appreciated, thanks folks
Author
Time
Post link
"the screenshots all look very similar except for offsets 3 and 4 which had obvious scan lines and seemed to be introducing parts of the surrounding frames"

That is what you should not be seeing. If you see that, then you have the wrong setting. Don't use 3 or 4 for that segment.

As to your capture and the settings. The reason you are having a problem is because the raw capture frame itself doesn't need IVTC. If the raw frame looks like 3 or 4, then it needs IVTCing. That's the kind of frame you should be referring back to to check your IVTC setting.

Also, you are losing enough frames to start creating an audio sync problem, and that's a bad thing. PM me your e-mail, and I'll send you the program I use. We'll lick this thing yet.

"the screenshots all look very similar except for offsets 3 and 4 which had obvious scan lines and seemed to be introducing parts of the surrounding frames"

That is what you should not be seeing. If you see that, then you have the wrong setting. Don't use 3 or 4 for that segment.

As to your capture and the settings. The reason you are having a problem is because the raw capture frame itself doesn't need IVTC. If the raw frame looks like 3 or 4, then it needs IVTCing. That's the kind of frame you should be referring back to to check your IVTC setting.

Also, you are losing enough frames to start creating an audio sync problem, and that's a bad thing. PM me your e-mail, and I'll send you the program I use. We'll lick this thing yet.

BTW, I found this forum and this faq (since I don't personally know your hardware.) You might want to peruse through them.

http://www.pixelmagicforum.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=7&page=2&sort=lastpost&order=&pp=25&daysprune=-1

http://www.pluggedin.tv/sweetspot/support/faq.html#5d

BTW, just out of curiosity, are you in NTSC-land or PAL-land?

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>