Capture NOW the NittyGritty

[Rajnah]

Well, after two weeks, and reading the last
60 days of Posts. I have managed with my RR-G
to capture 704x480 @29.97fps with AVI IO, using Hufy,and YUY2 patch. My next step was to open the file in Virtual Dub. There are so many possiblities in Vurtual Dub. Would
someone tell me what processes need to occur
in Virtual Dub to prepare the file for encoding in TMPGEnc for an SVCD burn.

Rajnah

[This message has been edited by Rajnah (edited 07 February 2001).]

[Dr Mordrid]

For a straight encoding, none. Just load the HuffYUV file directly into TMPGEnc.

You should also be aware that there are a lot of manipulation tools in TMPGEnc's Configure/Advanced menu. Just doubleclick on them and those with dialogs will present them.

The most I usually do is add 15-20 points to both brightness and contrast in the basic color color correction filter.

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 07 February 2001).]

[Rajnah]

Do I need to delace my captures, or smooth edges, ect. in Virtual Dub?

[Biker]

Doc, I find it interesting that you increase the brightness in TMPGenc, or is this needed because of the contrast increase?
I ask because it seems 'brighter' standard than many other encoders.

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[Rajnah]

Maybe I can rephase my question. Do I need to
DELACE my 704x480 image?


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[Dr Mordrid]

I don't. If you got some artifacting it might be a good idea but otherwise I'd leave it alone.

As for the brightness/contrast thing I prefer a slightly more contrasty image than this usually provides. It's a small change but it drives my trained eye nutsy.

Dr. Mordrid

[Rajnah]

Well, the compressed Hufy file still is very large. Do I not want to recomress the file,
so I can editing a number of clips togeather;
for my 60 min. SVCD movie?


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[Dr Mordrid]

HuffYUV files aren't compressed in the sense that MJPeg, MPEG-1/2/4 and DV are compressed. They use discrete cosine transform (DCT) algorithms. These DCT compressors are "lossy", meaning they throw away some data in order to compress the video more. This, of course, can cause reduced quality and artifacting when recompressed into another format or resized.

HuffYUV's compression is more an "encoding" of the full information in the video stream. This "Huffman" encoding (hence the name) is lossless and can be compressed with another codec without degradation of the image quality. This is its major advantage when capturing for MPEG creation and why so many of us go to the trouble of using it.

When encoding HuffYUV files in MSPro6 I usually edit HuffYUV in 2 or 4 gig segments, adding effects (again losslessly) and end each segment on a straight cut transition. I then encode and join these segments into a single file using TMPGEnc and its MPEG Tools. This is necessary, of course, because the Ligos encoder in MSP6 is buggy.

Using Premiere it's easier. There is an AVISynth plugin for Premiere so one can frameserve the whole project from the timeline directly into TMPGEnc in one big gulp. This requires the Premiere AVISynth plugin, AVISynth itself and TMPGEnc, all freeware.

I documented the AVISynth procedure about a week ago. You can also do this with CinemaCraft with minor changes.

Dr. Mordrid

[Rajnah]

Hey Doc, thanks for the feedback, but I
just captured 1 minite 704x480@29.976fps,
and my file size is 489meg, the file won't
even playback properly on a timeline. 30 minites would be 15Gigs. Am I missing something? Should I not compress this with
one of the microsoft's codec's or something?


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[Rajnah]

Doc, I was to understand that it was best to do editing is in AVI format, rather than MPEG.
Are you saying that I should capture, then
encode with TMPEGec, then edit it all togeather? I am using Sonic Foundry's
Vagas Video.

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[Dr Mordrid]

NO. MPEG is best used for playback, not editing. Without special hardware (such as the RT-2000) MPEG editing has too many limitations. The reasons why are a whole other thread by itself.

HuffYUV's main utility is to provide a high quality CAPTURE and EDITING format. Capture, edit in it, but DON'T use it for playback.

When you go to play it back out encode it to a better suited format for that purpose. MPEG is what I most often use along with PICVideo MJPeg.

I use HuffYUV for editing ONLY so as to produce the highest quality source material for producing MPEG and MJPeg files POST EDIT.

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 08 February 2001).]

[Rajnah]

Well, these EDIT files (Huffy AVI's), must be
huge! As I said earlier my 704x480@29.97 capture was 489MEG's for 30sec.'s ....are
your files this large?

ALSO, should I be using 29.976 DROP FRAME, or
29.976 NON-DROP FRAME?????

[Dr Mordrid]

As I mentioned before HuffYUV files are NOT for playback but for high quality encoding into something else. MPEG is the obvious and nearly universally playable option.

For long captures use a program like AVI_IO that splits it into contiguous setments. Batch encode these into MPEG's using TMPGEnc using the Configure/Advanced/"Do not change frame rate" setting (this helps keep the audio and video in synch). Now you can Join the resulting files into one MPEG file using TMPGEnc's MPEG Tools.

Alternatively you could install the AVISynth frameserver (freeware) and create an *.avs script that would stream all of the segments into TMPGEnc for simultaneous encoding into one file. To do this you use the "SegmentedAVISource" command in a text file saved with an *.avs extension thusly;

SegmentedAVISource("base-filename"[,...])

and load the script into TMPGEnc (the VFAPI plugin has to be installed as well. This is on the TMPGEnc site).

If "d:\filename.ext" is used as an argument the files d:\filename.00.ext, d:\filename.01.ext etc. will be passed to TMPGEnc in sequence.

Dr. Mordrid.


[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 08 February 2001).]

[Dr Mordrid]

704x480 captures with HuffYUV run about 10 megs/second, or about 600 megs/minute. Half frame 352x480, which is just fine for anything but effects laden video, runs about half that.

This isn't too bad when you consider high quality MJPeg as captured by the Pinnacle cards runs 7 mb/s and isn't near the quality.

40 gigs would just allow the capture of an hours worth of clips at full frame or two hours at half frame. Of course you then need somewhere to put the rendered clips.

And people wonder why I have a 240 gig RAID array.....

Dr. Mordrid

[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 09 February 2001).]

[Rajnah]

Alright we're cook'n with gas NOW! Really
appreciate the feedback!

I have raid array also: FastTrek 66 with two
20GIG Seagate 7200rpm....my system was setup
for audio production.

Meanwhile: I noticed that my Huffy capture
has a 24bit depth...is there somewhere to
set to 32bit? And also should I capture
29.97 DROP FRAME or NON-DROP FRAME.

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