Recommend NTSC VHS mp4 Project/Encode Settings?

Pea-Hicks wrote on 6/21/2024, 9:43 AM

Hi all, looking for opinions on project properties and encode settings for a file digitized from NTSC VHS (see media info and my project properties below). I'm running Vegas Pro 20 on Windows 10. Basically I'm looking for the best mp4 encode settings (I usually start with presets in the "MAGIX AVC/AAC MP4" folder and customize from there) that maximize quality while minimizing file size and not adding any pointless upscaling or other "upgrades" to the file that do nothing but increase the file size without increasing the quality of the final result. I've captured at "overkill" settings for VHS to give the most flexibility at the encode stage. This isn't for archival purposes, it's for easy sharing online in excellent quality, either via cloud or uploading to YouTube. In this particular case, the original VHS tape was in EP mode, so quality is already going to be limited, but I still want to get the best out of it that I can, while still maintaining a practical file size that's no larger than it needs to be. Thanks in advance for your advice, and let me know if I've left out any crucial details.

General
Complete name                            : J:\vhs01.avi
Format                                   : AVI
Format/Info                              : Audio Video Interleave
Format profile                           : OpenDML
Format settings                          : BitmapInfoHeader / WaveFormatExtensible
File size                                : 589 GiB
Duration                                 : 6 h 11 min
Overall bit rate                         : 227 Mb/s
Frame rate                               : 29.970 FPS

Video
ID                                       : 0
Format                                   : YUV
Codec ID                                 : v210
Codec ID/Hint                            : AJA Video Systems Xena
Duration                                 : 6 h 11 min
Bit rate                                 : 224 Mb/s
Width                                    : 720 pixels
Height                                   : 486 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 3:2
Frame rate                               : 29.970 (30000/1001) FPS
Standard                                 : NTSC
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:2
Bit depth                                : 10 bits
Compression mode                         : Lossless
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 21.333
Time code of first frame                 : 00:00:00:00 / 00:00:00:00
Time code source                         : Adobe tc_A / Adobe tc_O
Stream size                              : 580 GiB (98%)

Audio
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : PCM
Format settings                          : Little / Signed
Codec ID                                 : 00000001-0000-0010-8000-00AA00389B71
Duration                                 : 6 h 11 min
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 2 304 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Bit depth                                : 24 bits
Stream size                              : 5.97 GiB (1%)
Alignment                                : Aligned on interleaves
Interleave, duration                     : 1034 ms (31.00 video frames)

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Comments

Todd-AO wrote on 6/30/2024, 3:17 AM

@Wolfgang S. It is the same with Resolve it's highest quality deinterlace mode also uses optical flow. It must use it to create 60 full frames out of 60 fields rebuilding 50% of the image with every frame, but I don't think Vegas is working like that, looks like a mix of blended fields and creating new interframes the traditional way from frame before and after. I swear I've seen proof that Vegas can create 60 unique frames based on 60 unique fields.

Wolfgang S. wrote on 6/30/2024, 3:29 AM

We do not know much about the internal signal flow. Neither in Vegas, nor in Resolve.

Tests have shown me, that you can also deinterlace and scale up pal 50i SD footage to 1080 25p. To convert it to 1080 50p seems to generate smoother movements in my suggested workflow. So up to the user - but both works

Resolve 18 showed results in deinterlacing/upscaling that were weaker compared to Vegas. I have tested that too.

I also have a Decklink 4K Extreme 12G here. Capturing can be done either by the BM App with a limited number of codecs - or even with Edius X that I have here too. The disadvantage of the Decklink seems to be, that it has no TBC and no noise reduction as the NX has. So you need an external TBC. A potential advantage us the hardware upscaling from SD to HD in the Decklink, but in my direct capture tests with the Decklink and hatdware upscaling the results (without TBC and signal improvements) were even weaker compared to the suggested workflow. This is why I use my old NX card.

Todd-AO wrote on 6/30/2024, 4:23 AM

Tests have shown me, that you can also deinterlace and scale up pal 50i SD footage to 1080 25p. To convert it to 1080 50p seems to generate smoother movements in my suggested workflow. So up to the user - but both works

@Wolfgang S. My experience with Vegas optical flow is that it can go buggy during a scene, sometimes recovers sometimes not. I think that's the problem here. I tried again, this time I set clip properties to optical flow, and in project settings deinterlace mode is set to interpolate fields with resample mode set to disabled

(60fps slowed down to 30fps due to limit for forum encoder)

You can see everything is perfect until around 6 seconds, after then Optical flow never 'syncs' correctly again.

When optical flow gets fixed this gets fixed.

Wolfgang S. wrote on 6/30/2024, 4:47 AM

How was this testchart captured? From an SVHS recorder?

What I see here is that it seems to be much more important then the AI upscaler, is to set a captured clip to UFF.

Todd-AO wrote on 6/30/2024, 11:18 PM

@Wolfgang S. Shared by someone on this forum, don't know the origin, but this is perfect for checking deinterlacing. When Top dot displays next to frame counter and box goes up then that is top field, no top dot and box goes to left/right that is lower field. If only bottom dot is displayed, or both dots constantly displayed, or bottom dot plus interlaced top dot something is wrong.

Vegas de-interlacing appears to not work correctly, I can get completely different results with the same settings.

If someone has a settings/technique to make this work in Vegas that would be very helpful.

Wolfgang S. wrote on 7/1/2024, 1:36 AM

Nice test, do you have a download link?

In addition I wonder, if it can substitute really a capture process from s-video? Where we include in testing also the capture workflow? Especially that seems to be here an issue, since the footage from the Decklink as presented here, seems to have "burned in" interlaced artefacts, and as far as I understood nobody was able to deinterlace that. So maybe the capture process is the issue here.

Todd-AO wrote on 7/1/2024, 3:47 AM

@Wolfgang S. QTGMC deinterlaces interlaced progressive fine, and actually it can extract 60 unique frames from his sample video, unluckily I was concentrating on the washing powder ad at the end which has only 30 frames all duplicated, but the electronic store ad does contain 60 unique frames, so his encoding is fine in that regard. The quality is the problem, AI upscalers don't like it,

https://we.tl/t-i5AyLIedyK

Wolfgang S. wrote on 7/1/2024, 3:52 AM

Thank you for the color bars.

What is QTGM?

Todd-AO wrote on 7/1/2024, 4:04 AM

It's a deinterlacer, the easiest way to use it is via staxrip

https://github.com/staxrip/staxrip

Wolfgang S. wrote on 7/1/2024, 7:03 AM

Ok. I tend to use the tools that are available in Vegas only, for different reasons (also the thread-opener seems to expect something that he can do with Vegas).

Using external tools, that are similar or even more expensive then Vegas - well, for slowmotion, Twixtor has a plugin for Vegas, but that is not cheap really too.

I think we can achieve with Vegas good results too. And I do not agree that the workload suggested by me delivers poos results. You should not ignore what is the quality of the original SVHS footage, that is more the quality bottleneck to my opinion.

But I am not so sure what the issue of the TO is really. That should be the focus here.

mark-y wrote on 7/1/2024, 4:53 PM

QTGMC, originally an AviSynth (AVS) plugin, is a software deinterlacer. People like it because it is reasonably accurate, and considerably faster than the workhorse EEID2.

QTGMC can be used directly within Vegas, as it is included in Happy Otter Scripts, a free extension. It was mentioned in an earlier reply:

Edge combing tests of various software deinterlacers:

My only issue with QTGMC is that it puts a dark stroke around the edge, probably to mask stairstepping.