Ok i have spent a bit of time searching for a capture card thread and did not really see one so I decided to make one. If there is already a thread for this please post a link and delete this one.

Anywho I have had bad luck with Capture cards so far. I have purchased 3 in the past few years.

1. Haupage Wintv crops off sides and has a crappy comb filter

2. Kworld ATSC-110 only 2D comb filter

3. Kworld DVD MAKER PCI only 2D comb filter and crops off sides

I was curious what kind of cards you guys would suggest for Laserdisk Composite Capture with a fairly high end 3D Adaptive Comb filter and are there any cards that possibly have a BNC connection for composite input?

Thx

Edit* oh and can somone explain to me what the 75 ohms option does on a laserdisk player?

I have hooked up my old dvd recorder to use it as a 3D comb filter for the LD-V4400 it got rid of almost all the dot crawl in the opening crawl. It looks really amazing. But after hooking it up and making 5 captures i have run into something strange.... When i line up all the captures to merge them the frames are different.. Like I match up the begining frame and end frame for all 5 videos but when i do ShowFiveVersions(a,b,c,d,e) after like a scene change or a subtitle the frames arent matched in the merge and the video is messed up.

I have to say all of you who have worked with capturing analog sources for preservation deserve a lot of credit for all the hard work you have had to go through of fixing and cleaning up your caps!

Here a picture of what im talking about

they are all on the same frame but something got out of whack

I cant wait to see your version finished Arnie.d its lookin great!

Moth3r said:

The DVL-700 via S-Video is clearly superior. The rainbowing on the V4400 indicate a low-quality comb filter in the capture card.

As for the first image, can't see what you mean on the left hand side of the video (would help not to obscure it with a huge red line!).

The horizontal lines you see are not interlacing artefacts (trying to be careful with definitions so as not to confuse). Nor do I think they are caused by imperfect y/c separation in a low quality comb filter. I'm not sure what causes this effect, but I have seen it before. In that particular case it was related to the sharpness setting.

Yeah i think the dvl has somewhat of an upper hand to the ld-v4400 but it stinks that it applies DNR. I wish there was a way to just have the 3d adaptive comb filter and the time base correction active and the dnr deactivated.

Hey guys i was curious what this line is on the side of the video and are the lines all around the video combing artifacts?

Also i wanted to show you guys the difference between my DVL-700 via S-Video  and my LD-V4400 via Composite

DVL

V4400

Arnie.d did you notice that during scene changes there is like garbage at the bottom of the frames?

Just so ya know i went through my closet and found my older kworld card which has yeilded much better results and has negative sharpness settings ! Also it doesn't crop off the image like my other card so im gonna do a couple of captures of side 1 and see how the video turns out.  :D

Heres a comparison of my old capture and my new capture

old one

new one

i realized though that i need to go back and fix the capture cards colors :/

Capture card did that and i meant that i think my capture card has a comb filter cause of all the rainbowing lol. I guess i get what i pay for with a 17 dollar capture card lol.

hmm thats about what my dvd recorder and tv had and my capture is worse then that.

I'm curious what capture card are you using and how much does it cost approximately?

Btw heres my raw capture of the same image

Im starting to think that my capture card has a comb filter in it...

I didn't call for dehalo in the script its just a function that i was thinkin about using. And surprisingly after watching the LD through my TV and then recording the LDs through my dvd recorder i see some halos LOL. So now im really curious to see what your source has.

Mielr said:

There's a lot of ghosting/haloing in those caps- is that from the LDs themselves or is something in the script causing it?

I think it has to do with my capture card

Is there anything I can do to get around the sharpness problem or should i look for a new capture card lol?

I wasn't sure if this thread should be in the technical section either lol.

And the card i am using is this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815100120 the drivers for the card say Conexant 2388x and I am capturing using a program called Christv cause those retarded WMD drivers or whatever didn't let me capture above 320x240 lol.

My Sharpness setting is at 0 and i cannot set to negative numbers so i am unsure what to do and i have not tried derainbow before ivtc yet but i did learn that doing derainbow after upsizing to 856x364 has a lot less effect.

Also i was wondering if you meant VirtualdubMod or Virtualdub and where would these manual settings be.

Thx

Hi there all I’ve been messing around with the 1986 ROTJ Laserdisk and just recently did a capture of side 1 through my LD-V4400 and i was messing around and created this script

loadplugin(“DGDecode.dll”)
loadplugin(“SangNom.dll”)
loadplugin(“FDecimate.dll”)
loadplugin(“ColorMatrix.dll”)
import(“deblockqed.avis”)
loadplugin(“MaskTools.dll”)
loadplugin(“UnDot.dll”)
loadplugin(“mt_masktools.dll”)
loadplugin(“deen.dll”)
loadplugin(“hqdn3d.dll”)
loadplugin(“GrainOpt.dll”)
loadplugin(“GuavaComb.dll”)
loadplugin(“Decomb.dll”)
loadplugin(“cnr2.dll”)
loadplugin(“TDeint.dll”)
loadplugin(“mvtools.dll”)
import(“SeeSaw.avs”)
loadplugin(“RemoveGrainSSE3.dll”)
loadplugin(“RepairSSE3.dll”)
loadplugin(“RSharpenSSE3.dll”)
import(“mvbob.avs”)
import(“MCBob_v03u.avs”)
loadplugin(“EEDI2.dll”)
loadplugin(“nnedi.dll”)
loadplugin(“GuavaComb.dll”)
loadplugin(“BruteIVTC.dll”)

BlindDeHalo - v0.1

This script removes the light & dark halos from too strong “Edge Enhancement”

Adaption of the parameters has to be done manually for each source, the function is not adaptive.

Needed Plugins: MaskTools.dll >= 1.4.15

#                 undot.dll

function BlindDeHalo( clip clp, int “strength”, int “radius_x”, int “radius_y”, float “darkamount”, string “mode”, float “maskblur”, bool

“fullframe” )
       {
         strength =   default( strength,  80)
         radius_x =   default( radius_x,   2)
         radius_y =   default( radius_y,   2)
         darkamount = default( darkamount,1.0)
         mode =       default( mode,  “soft”)
         maskblur =   default( maskblur, 1.0)
         fullframe =  default( fullframe, false)
         modus = mode==“hard” ? “hardlight” : “softlight”

ox = clp.width
         oy = clp.height
         rx = sqrt(radius_x)
         ry = sqrt(radius_y)

clp
         edge=Dedgemask(0,255,0,255,“6 10 6 10 -64 10 6 10 6”,setdivisor=true,divisor=64).levels(2,0.5,6,0,255,false).undot#.coloryuv

(analyze=true)#

blur1 = bicubicresize(int((ox/rx)/4 +.5)*4,int((oy/ry)/4 +.5 )*4,-1.0,1.0).lanczosresize(ox,oy)
         blur2 = bicubicresize(int((ox/rx)/4 +.5)*4,int((oy/ry)/4 +.5 )*4, 1.0,0.0).lanczosresize(ox,oy)

diff = YV12subtract(blur1,blur2)

overlay(diff,diff,mode=“hardlight”).levels(0,1.0,255,88,168,false)

darkamount == 1.0 ? NOP : overlay(last,last.levels(0,1.0,128,int(128-128*darkamount),128,false),mode=“lighten”)
         overlay(last,last.levels(0,1.0,255,128+strength,128-strength,false)) # levels reversed: no more “invert” in below overlay()

overlay(clp,last.greyscale.blur(maskblur),mode=modus)
         fullframe ? NOP : MaskedMerge(clp,last,edge.deflate.expand.blur(1.58).inflate)

return(last)
       }

#Load Sources and trim frames to match
a=avisource(“i:\Composite 2_20050702_204306.avi”).trim(96,50228).guavacomb(“NTSC”)
b=avisource(“i:\Composite 2_20050702_183413.avi”).trim(207,50339).guavacomb(“NTSC”)
c=avisource(“i:\Composite 2_20050703_001628.avi”).trim(378,50510).guavacomb(“NTSC”)
d=avisource(“i:\Composite 2_20050702_180458.avi”).trim(202,50334).guavacomb(“NTSC”)
e=avisource(“i:\Composite 2_20050702_234755.avi”).trim(200,50332).guavacomb(“NTSC”)

#Merging sources
f=merge(merge(merge(a,b),merge(c,d)),e,0.2)

#IVTC/Decimation
g=f.converttoyv12(interlaced=true).bruteivtc().tdecimate(hybrid=1).crop(0,52,0,-140).NNEDI(dh=true,field=1)

h=g.lanczos4resize(720,288)

#Degrain

backward_vec2 = h.MVAnalyse(blksize=16,isb = true, delta = 2, pel = 2, overlap=8, sharp=2, idx = 1)
forward_vec2 = h.MVAnalyse(blksize=16,isb = false, delta = 2, pel = 2, overlap=8, sharp=2, idx = 1)

i=h.MVDegrain1(backward_vec2,forward_vec2,thSAD=400,idx=1)#.limitedsharpenfaster(smode=4,dest_x=1280,dest_y=544,wide=true,strength=250

#Derainbow

j=i.fft3dfilter(sigma=3,sigma2=3,sigma3=12,sigma4=3,bt=3,plane=1).fft3dfilter(sigma=3,sigma2=3,sigma3=12,sigma4=3,bt=3,plane=2)

#Upscale to 856x364

k=j.limitedsharpenfaster(smode=4,dest_x=856,dest_y=364,wide=true,strength=250)

return k

And here were my results so far

And i was curious what else i can do to this.  And on the last 2 frames i was wondering what the weird lines and blocks were and i was also curious about what you guys use for IVTCing and how to fix the strange halos?

Dunedain said:

Actually, The Phantom Menace has far more resolution than Episodes II and III. The Phantom Menace was shot on real film, which has enough detail to easily support a 4k scan, even tough they only scanned it in at 2k at the time. The other two prequels were shot on a HD camera with it's fixed resolution of only 1920x1080 (you can think of this as sort of the rough equivalent of what we might call a 1k scan), so they are stuck with that. You can try to upsample that, of course, but you can't add in resolution that wasn't filmed.

On the other hand, Lucas can go back any time and scan in The Phantom Menace master prints at 4k and double the res and detail of their scanned copy, which then is down-sampled for use on VHS, laserdisk, DVD, HD, etc. for home video. But Episodes II and III will always be stuck with the fact that they only have 1920x1080 worth of resolution in their source picture. This was a really dumb thing to do, but that's what Lucas decided to try. So, ironically, it's the first Star Wars prequel that will always look better than the latest two prequels. :)

Didn't he also render the cg shots in 2k only? I know episodes 2 and 3 were shot in 1920x1080p but wasn't the cg done in 4k?

docholiday said:

I just have a question about the WG release.

 

Is the Phantom Menace still very grainy. I have downloaded another mkv Phantom Menace and the quality is definitly lacking compared to the AOTC and ROTS releases. So, is this Phantom Menace more clear or is it still subpar to the other two?'

 

Thanks for the help!

The Phantom Menace was only rendered in 2k resolution supposedly and episodes 2 and 3 were rendered in 4k.

this print appears to have too much blue to it i'm guessing its the monitors throwing you off like you said before

they both look pretty good but whatever the previous threads prints were they looked better

Funcha said:

Hey everyone! I'm thinking of tackling a bit of an ambitious project here. What I would like to do is get ahold of the German Broadcasts and the Sky Broadcasts of the prequel trilogy, edit them together so the English subtitles all appear where they belong and edit in the original DVD AC3 audio. Wookiegroomer and Adywan are already in the process of doing this, but what I want to do is make full BDROM versions without any compression of the video whatsoever. I think that would require 18 - 20 gigs, which fits on a 25 gig BDROM just fine. Of course, I would need to change the framerate to 24 fps from 25 (PAL). Anyone know what I would need to do to accomplish this or where I can find these original files? I'm not going to tackle the original trilogy since the color correction is way beyond my capabilities at this point. Anyone interested in getting full uncompressed Blu Rays of the prequel trilogy? I would love to try doing this.

you do know that Blu Ray is compressed right?

HOLY !@#$ THIS IS EPIC! KEEP GOING NEGATIVE 1 !!!! You are doing an awesome job!!

It looks !@#$ing beautiful! I can't wait to see what it looks like if you get that gate upgrade.