suggestions needed for capturing analog

linybob wrote on 1/10/2004, 11:47 AM

I am capturing video from an 8mm camcorder and putting it on DVD. The whole process works pretty well. I capture using the default NTSC capture settings, and render into an AVI file. I take the AVI file into Ulead Video Studio 7 and burn the DVD there. The DVD plays no problem, but the quality is just OK. I am *very* new to all this and am learning as much as I can. While things are happening, I go to various Web sites and run Google searches to try to get more info as to what I'm doing. And of course I am trying to read as many posts on this forum as I can.

Are there any pointers or pieces of advice that I should be doing to get the best quality DVD? I realize I'm doing a lossy operation going from tape, doing an A->D conversion and then writing a DVD. Is there anything I should try to do? Any best practices? Thanks in advance and a special thanks to Mr. K.D. Chien!! (Mr. Money!!)

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 1/10/2004, 2:19 PM

WOW!!!!! Someone who knows not only that Chien is a Chinese name, but even what it means! I'm impressed. :) (most folks ask me if i know what my name means in French, oblivious to the somewhat obvious fact that i've been asked this several thousand times before ...)

One factor that determines the quality of the finished DVD more than most anything else is the bitrate used. Does Video Studio 7 allow you to change this? Commercial DVDs often use around 6mbps, but this will only let you put about an hour on a disc. That software may be defaulting to a much lower bitrate setting that allows two hours on a disc, but at much lower quality.

Analog captures usually end up with a lot of noise and junk around the edge of the frame. While this isn't a problem most of the time because the edges aren't visible on a television screen, when encoding to MPEG these ugly edges usually steal a lot of bits that could have been used to make the rest of the image much better. Cropping a few pixels around the ouside of the frame can help a lot.

MPEG also has a very hard time encoding dark colors. In order to do it well, it has to waste a lot of bits distinguinshing between black and dark dark areas which probably aren't visible on the television anyway. Using Color Curves to change everything that is very dark to just plain solid black eliminates this problem without seriously degrading the image. The bits saved can then be used to make the rest of the image clearer.

Those are just a few suggestions. I'm sure there's hundreds more scattered through this forum.

Guy Bruner wrote on 1/10/2004, 4:47 PM

I presume that when you say the video is "ok" that it looks the same as when you view the analog tape directly. If so, it won't get better than that. If the captured video is degraded after capture, then you should look at alternate capture methods that retain more of the original picture quality, keeping in mind that you probably only have a resolution of 320x200 to begin with. Alternate methods include using VirtualDub and the HUFYUV codec. This will require a very fast CPU and a RAID 0 array (or very fast separate hard disk) to get the uncompressed video onto hard disk. Another way is to use a miniDV camcorder with DV passthrough. This will convert the analog signal into DV and save it onto the hard drive so you can edit it. If you don't have a suitable camera, see if one of your friends has one and borrow it for the conversion.

VirtualDub and HUFYUV are freeware. Do an internet search and you'll find them.

JohnnyRoy wrote on 1/10/2004, 5:06 PM

Another thing that comes into play is the quality of the MPEG encoder itself. I don’t know what Ulead Video Studio 7 uses, but Ulead MovieFactory 1 used the Ligos encoder and it was the worst MPEG video I ever saw. Just a pixilated mess. That’s why I always render to MPEG2 in VideoFactory/Vegas using the Main Concept encoder and then make a DVD from that in whatever DVD authoring program I’m using. Try using the MainConcept encoder if you can.

Chien-san, I didn’t realize the name of your site was “MoneyWorks” ;-)

~jr

djcc wrote on 1/11/2004, 9:04 AM

OK, I'll bite..... how do you go about adjusting color curves in MS??

discdude wrote on 1/11/2004, 9:14 AM

There really isn't a direct way to adjust color curves in MS although there is in Vegas (and that is probably what Cheinworks is referring to).

However, the "Black Restore" video FX will do what Chienworks described (clamping near black values to black). Black restore can't do the other tricks you can do with the full color curves functionality included with Vegas.

Chienworks wrote on 1/11/2004, 9:40 AM

*sigh*

Sorry about that. I finally bit and bought my own license to Movie Studio so i'll be up on the differences between VF2/MS3/Vegas. But yes, black restore should be the proper tool and in fact better for this purpose than color curves. I made the uneducated guess that MS3 would only have one of those tools and guessed the wrong way. Oops.

discdude wrote on 1/11/2004, 11:52 AM

No apologies are necessary :)

I also forgot to mention that smoothing the image a bit also helps the MPEG encoder immensely. I usually use VirtualDub for these sorts of things although I suppose either Quick Blur or Guassian Blur (used in moderation of course) should do equally well.

So I guess the guide perfect MPEG encoding is:
1) Crop out noise (tracking noise, etc) on the edges of video
2) Blur
3) Black Restore

Anyone else have suggestions?

djcc wrote on 1/11/2004, 12:03 PM

Thanks all for the tip on black restore.