Friday, February 13, 2004

VirtualVCR Settings

Using my Hauppauge WinTV-dbx card with VirtualVCR, I think I have everything locked down at the moment. Things I didn't mention last time were the detailed settings that I use:

File
- insert time stamp into filename
- save the capture stats

Video
- 720x480, YUV2 colour format, 29.970 frame rate
- PICVideo MJPEG Compressor, using default settings of Q19 (luminance quality 5, chromicance quality 6, 2 fields if more then 240 lines, 4/2/2 sub-sampling, MJPEG data rates)

Video, Device Settings
- NTSC_M standard
- Video Proc Amp: Brightness 5373, Contrast 5572, Hue 5038, Saturation 5038 (my video card / VCR seems to make the images a touch dark)

Filters
- none

Audio
- 16 bit resolution, 48kHz, Stereo, no compression (48kHz is standard for DVD)

Audio, Input Settings
- Balance 0, Volume 70, Line In (gives me a signal that peaks around -1 or -2 dB when analyzed in Cool Edit 2000)

AV Sync
- no sync settings used, the audio off of the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz card is stable enough not to cause sync issues (longest cap segment that I've done so far is only around 20 min though)

Everything else is standard Virtual VCR settings. The "Video Proc Amp" and the audio level settings are about the only thing that I've had to muck with so far.

posted by Wuphon's Reach at 7:53 PM

Sunday, February 08, 2004

Virtual Dub Filtering

A lot of the stuff I'm currently working on came off of over-the-air broadcast TV, which means that it's not always the cleanest signal, especially if it was recorded onto a well-used video tape. So I'm experimenting a bit with VirtualDub filters to see how much the images can be cleaned up.

The "fill" filter is one that I definitely use if there is noise at the top/bottom of the frame (usually tracking errors). Basically, it covers up the junk with a flat black rectangle. This makes the encoder's job easier later on because it won't have to waste bits trying to encode a noisy margin. Setting up the filter properly is a bit backwards, if you want to get rid of noise at the bottom of a 720x480 frame, set the top Y box to 472 or 476. It helps if you initially set the color to a bright color and then check the output preview until you lock it in, especially if you're trying to do fills on all 4 sides of the screen.

The "smoother" filter seems to be another useful one. Even a setting of 5 or 10 along with the noise reduction pre-filter is enough to make the image look better, getting rid of some of the static or interference patterns in the signal. It should also make the compression codec more efficient when you go to encode later on. Downside is increase encoding time.



posted by Wuphon's Reach at 10:25 PM