Moth3r

Try looking on eBay for a 2nd hand deck instead of Amazon.

My VCR has a built-in TBC, it's probably not as effective as an external box such as the DataVideo TBC-1000, but cheaper.

Start with your deck.

Best results can be obtained from a decent S-VHS player. JVC and Panasonic are the most reputable, with the Panasonic AG-1980P being a particular favourite.

More info here:
http://www.digitalfaq.com/guides/video/capture-playback-hardware.htm

What's your budget?

Added some example screenshots (right-click - open/view image in new tab to see full size).

If you want the original fields - 720 x 288 @ 50fps - just use SeparateFields() in AviSynth.

darth_ender said:

LOL.  Well, I had every intention of admitting I was #3, but I guess the gig was up faster than I expected.  I had no malintent for the original, which should have been obvious to all who read my post, which was identical to pat man's own.  It was intended to be a test of the theory, but my apologies if I offended. :)

Not offended, just irritated. I can do without having to clear this shit up. So someone found a vulnerability in the forum software, whoopie doo, now please stop fucking around with it or I'll start fucking around (i.e. banning) your real accounts.

pat man said:

You guys are off-topic.

And I'm shocked at you Moth3r for being off-topic, Because if people off-topic you say "stay on-topic, STAY on-topic, STAY ON-TOPIC", and we are not in the Off topic section of OT.com, now are we?  

Look again.

AntcuFaalb said:

You got the signature wrong, pat man 3 darth_ender.

And now it looks like everyone else is banned, too.

Edit: Deleting the post fixed the issue. 

_,,,^..^,,,_ said:

... Infact, if I capture PAL video, the resulting file is everytime 720x576 at 25fps; so VirtualDub make a deinterlace (seems blending to me, don't know for sure).

...

This is correct, your capture should always be 720x576 25fps. If you don't see any combing, then it's because your source is progressive.

Spreadsheet updated to v1.2 - fixes a problem where Solver would sometimes fail due to a #NUM! error.

_,,,^..^,,,_ said:

If you can send me the AVS script, I'll do tests with it and post results here.

Which AVS script? Are you looking for the crop values I used on my capture of the BBC Test Card G? If so, I found this on my hard drive:

MPEG2Source("D:\Video projects\comb filter test\dr198 s-vid2.d2v", cpu=0, upConv=1, iCC=false)
temporalsoften(2,255,255)
#Crop(114, 146, -580, -398) # 50% grey
#Crop(252, 436, -250, -108) # video black
#Crop(338, 142, -364, -398) # 75% grey
#Crop(268, 100, -250, -442) # video white
#Crop(208, 186, -442, -314) # cyan (75%)
#Crop(444, 184, -212, -316) # red (75%)
pointresize(720,576)
coloryuv(analyze=true)

You will need to remove the leading "#" for each line and note down the stats for each colour in turn, and you  may need to adjust the crop values if your capture is positioned differently to mine.

Excellent find!

According to the thread here, there was something called "The 2001 Version".

Rikter said:

The edit is almost the same as the original 1.1 Edit but this version has the original crawl and has added the deleted scenes from the DVD release 

_,,,^..^,,,_ said:

Besides "Jason and the Argonauts" PAL UK LD, are there any other PAL laserdiscs which contain some test image or color bars?

Good question. None that I know of.

I found a CD-Video test that has few calibration clips:

1. A Philips Test Card (same as BBC test card G)
2. multi burst - with highest frequencies at 5.8MHz barely showing
3. Grey Bars
4. alternating black and white bars
5. color bars (three upper quarters) + grey bars (lower quarter) with white credits over it - but with enough space up and down

Interesting disc. I don't know much about the CD Video format, but I think you should be able to use this disc to calibrate your LD captures. Is it NTSC or PAL? Do you have any further information about this disc?

Did you make an AVS script like the one you posted, but for use with the BBC testcard G?

Yes I did.

No, I only came up with this idea relatively recently.

From info here it looks like an industrial composite-only model, but not much info on whether it's any good or not.

Useful places to try and find details & specs are the forum on lddb.com, the Google Groups archive of alt.video.laserdisc, and old posts on here by Aleksbmw or Laserman.

AntcuFaalb said:

What's the state of comb filters in capture cards today?

Normally difficult to get the relevant specs. Analogue capture is becoming a dying art. ;-)

Are they much better than the comb filters present in the laserdisc players of yesteryear?

Probably. But are they better than the high-end comb filters of yesteryear, for example Faroudja VS-50 or VP-100, or Crystal Vision VPS-1?

If so, would it be wise to get a laserdisc player that doesn't have its own comb filter (assuming that it's an otherwise excellent player) and rely on the comb filter in my capture card?

Well, that's the real trick, isn't it?

I used to think that was the way to go, but I was reliably informed that most good players (i.e. those that have an s-video out) pass the signal through their internal comb filter regardless. The composite output is then just the s-video's luma and chroma recombined.

There are a few good players that do apparently output an untouched composite signal: the X0, for example, and some industrial models such as the LD-V8000.

But you also need to consider what difference the comb filter makes in the final result. As an example, I've shown that dot crawl caused by a poor comb filter is non-existent in a multi-capture average.

Uploaded spreadsheet v1.1 which corrects an error where I had accidentally overtyped some of the formulas.

Guide now finished. Please give it a try and let me know if you come across any problems.

TServo2049 said:

I found the deluxe laserdisc box set of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs for 10 bucks at a Half Price Books. I'm not sure if it has any extras missing from the DVD/BD releases, but I do know that it has a lossless version of the original mono mix, which is only at 192kbps on the current DVD/BD. It's only in CX analog (with the stereo remix on the digital track), but it is the only uncompressed version of the original sound mix ever released.

I'm confused:

Lossless = digital data compressed with a lossless codec, e.g FLAC, WavPack, etc.

Uncompressed = digital data that is not compressed, e.g. PCM

Analog = analogue :-)

AntcuFaalb said:

We need to figure out if we can replicate it...

That bit's easy, just buy this:

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=Digital+Vision+DVNR+1000+Noise+Reducer

"[We used] a noise reduction and dirt concealment device made by Digital Vision, a company in Sweden. Their DVNR-1000 is a very powerful noise reducer for reducing film grain. Especially on the two earlier movies the film grain was very high."

 - from the 1993 Dave Schnuelle interview.

AntcuFaalb said:

msycamore: Is the chroma shift consistent? That is, is it always displaced by the same number of pixels?

From the way it was described as a chroma smear rather than a chroma shift, I'd guess that the displacement depends on how fast the object is moving.

http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/ShowFrameNumber

From DVD to DVD it depends on whether your source confirms to the ITU standard, and whether you want your output to conform also. Assuming yes and yes, or no and no, then it doesn't matter whether you tick the box or not.

From HD source to DVD, tick the box if you want your DVD to conform to the standard.

There's no real way to be sure. For example, if you are upscaling a DVD to 1080p, then the standards say you should first crop the sides to leave you with a res of 704* x 480, then upscale to 1920 x 1080.

But this is assuming the DVD was mastered correctly to standards in the first place.

I can't explain the detail of the standard off the top of my head - something to do with the how digital video is displayed in the analogue realm.

But what it basically means is that 4:3 and 16:9 DVDs are actually 1.368:1 and 1.823:1 (not 1.333:1 and 1.778:1 as you'd expect).