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Capture Programs and Codecs (Laser to PC Project)

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 (Edited)

 

I am so over my head right now, and I am pulling out the little hair I have left.

I think I have the right equipment to do my preservation justice, but I am afraid I am not using this equipment to it's full potential. 

This is what is avalible to me right now.

LP player is a Pioneer CLD-D504 and has (S-video out, 2 RCA Composite out, 2 RCA stereo out, 1 AC3 RCA coax out, and 3 plugs for VHF adapter)

 

Capture Card is

hauppauge WinTV HVR-1600 NTSC/ATSC

Two tuners on board: a 125 channel cable ready TV tuner and an ATSC digital TV tuner. Connect both cable TV and ATSC digital TV to the WinTV-HVR-1600 at the same time. (With dbx-TV stereo decoder & Supports clear QAM channels with the new WinTV v6 application)
New Hauppauge remote control and IR blaster included to control satellite and cable TV set top boxes
Composite/S-Video and audio inputs, for cable or satellite set top boxes or VCRs
Watch and record all ATSC formats, including the highest definition 1080i format,using the built-in high quality hardware MPEG-2 encoder.

 

I have just downloaded a shareware program called iuVCR 4.170 and it looks good so far.  Any other capture program suggestions?

 

“First feel fear, then get angry. Then go with your life into the fight.” - Bill Mollison

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FanFiltration said:

[...]

Any other capture program suggestions?

VirtualDub

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Moth3r said:

FanFiltration said:

[...]

Any other capture program suggestions?

VirtualDub

Thank you for your reply and advice as always Moth3r. VirtualDub is an amazing free program, but for some reason it is not doing a great job capturing from my card. Just to be sure, I spent the last two days running a number of tests with  VirtualDub, and comparing the results with to this IuVcr capture program.   IuVcr is clearly  the winner with my hardware, and I am going to pay for the license as soon as the demo period ends.

FF

 

 

“First feel fear, then get angry. Then go with your life into the fight.” - Bill Mollison

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What do you mean by "results"? Amount of dropped frames, quality of image, or something else?

Normally, analogue capture relies on the hardware device and its WDM drivers, the actual software choice should not really have much of a bearing on the final results.

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 (Edited)

Moth3r said:

What do you mean by "results"? Amount of dropped frames, quality of image, or something else?

Normally, analogue capture relies on the hardware device and its WDM drivers, the actual software choice should not really have much of a bearing on the final results.

The best thing for me to do is run the tests again and do a screen capture of the info panels and post them side by side here for you to see.  But yes, I see frames dropped and audio sync problems. I'm a bit confused by the way some tings are working and other are not the way they should. I'm determind to learn this, and to know what is at work here. With some things I have taken more of a whatever works attitude, but not this time.

I'm doing a straight capture of my LD into the capture T.V. card via S-video. I did a visual comparison, and to tell the truth, I could not see any difference between the compost and S-video inputs. I've seen that S-video is considered a better signal, so that is what I went with. I capture in 720X480 uncompressed UYVY 29.970 fps. I capture audio PCM 16 Bit 48.000 kHz. 

After I capture to the PC, I crop out the black bars on the letterbox image, do any picture adjustments like color correction, and then re-encode to a Lagarith lossless AVI file. Then I use that file for my master to encode with PCM and or DTS to MPG2 via C.C.E. SP3 at high bitrate to a DL DVD-9 for my LD preservation. 

I do not de-interlace captured films from LD, as I have seen you guys suggest on these forums not to do so. I try not to use any filters I don't understand.

FF 

 

 

“First feel fear, then get angry. Then go with your life into the fight.” - Bill Mollison

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What I've noticed with VirtualDub from my first use is this......

I cannot capture to my external USB HD without dropping frames.  Capturing to my internal worked great.

Now I just have to start learning all the conversion stuff so I get nice clean files for DVD burning....

:)

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I'd always recommend against capturing to an external HD unless you're using FireWire or better.  USB just doesn't cut it.

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I think that USB 2.0 is far too slow of a I/O port for live capture. You have a bottleneck with USB.

“First feel fear, then get angry. Then go with your life into the fight.” - Bill Mollison

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Here is my other dilemma....there isn't really a definitive guide for VirtualDub when it comes to all it's settings and such....two of the first ones I've been searching for is answers regarding Direct Stream Copy and Full Processing Mode for video/audio usage.

Which is best for quality captures and what does each actually do to the audio/video when used?

I know there is an eBook floating around but I've been at a loss in my search for it.

 

 

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The Direct Stream Copy/Full Processing Mode setting does not have a bearing on capturing.

A quick explanation:

 - for simple operations with AVI files - for example splitting a large file into smaller chunks - where the audio and video are not altered, use Direct Stream Copy

- if you want to apply any filters to the video, e.g. noise reduction or colour correction, then you would need to use Full Processing Mode

Guidelines for post content and general behaviour: read announcement here

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Moth3r said:

The Direct Stream Copy/Full Processing Mode setting does not have a bearing on capturing.

A quick explanation:

 - for simple operations with AVI files - for example splitting a large file into smaller chunks - where the audio and video are not altered, use Direct Stream Copy

- if you want to apply any filters to the video, e.g. noise reduction or colour correction, then you would need to use Full Processing Mode

Thanks Moth3r, that sorts that out.

:)