Anyone capturing interlaced video? Avivo?

[Rolf N]

The highest quality method to capture SD video at my disposal right now is to point my camera at my TV. And that's kinda sad. I have video capturing on my PC but it fails to satisfy.

It's a Radeon 9200 Vivo, with the Theater 303 companion chip and I use the Catalyst 6.11 drivers on Windows XP. I tried VirtualVCR and VirtualDub. I found out how to capture full-resolution video with both programs, but the interlacing just kills me.
When I let the software reroute the video input back to output ("Overlay" preview in VDub, just "Preview" in VVCR) all seems to be just dandy. Then when I start actually capturing I have interlacing in the captured stream in full glory. I'd need a de-interlacer of course. But I can't use the de-interlace filter in VDub, because VDub filters only function on RGB capture formats while my card's drivers only support "YUV2" and "UYVY". OTOH when I enable the corresponding filter in VirtualVCR, the program freezes up (reboot required).

On top of that everything's pretty blurry, much more so than the same source plugged into a TV, so I have suspicions that the card prefilters the composite input pretty hard. Obviously the hardware I use is kinda old and dinky. I'm ready to replace it, if there's a significant improvement.

I'd like to poll if there's anyone here who has achieved good results capturing an interlaced SD video source (composite or s-video), or even just still frames from such a source.

I'm especially interested in the quality of current Radeon (Avivo-branded) cards, because a Radeon x1300 AIW (with Theater 650) for 80€ has been staring at me for a few hours now. Or I might pony up for an x1600XT vivo (either the passive Gigabyte or a cheaper Powercolor).
(I realize that none of these could go into the same PC, but I do have another one with PCI Express)

Is it worth buying an AIW? I understand there's some software bundle thrown in.
Is it worth buying a standalone "TV card"? Or one of them external USB thingies?
I wouldn't mind if a proposed solution works with Linux. I like Linux. But I have Windows, too.

To summarize: I want some new hardware to capture interlaced composite and s-video with good quality. I might need a software recommendation as well. I don't care much for TV tuners.

 

[Anarchist4000]

While the interlacing might look annoying what exactly are you planning on doing with the video you capture? While interlaced video tends to look like shit on a computer it's still the best option for normal CRT based TVs.

Also what exactly are you capturing from? I'm guessing you're converting VHS or something along those lines. Lately i've been using a Theater650 and it seems to work really well for everything i've tried. Haven't exactly tried capturing VHS but I'd imagine it still works well. Assuming your system is a little weak on the processing side built in hardware MPEG2 compression that comes with a Theater650 or other device would probably be of great benefit to you. The built in comb filters that come with it seem to do their job nicely with analog signals.

Keep in mind there's still only so much that can be done if the signal is bad to start with. If you are using VHS most pictures tend to look really crappy to begin with. Some noise removal and postprocessing can go a really long way. I had to convert some home videos from the early 80's and the original results definitely left a lot to be desired, but they cleaned up fairly well and kept my apartment heated during the winter.

I've tried the VIVO on my 1900XT but I had some sync issues with the audio stream, the quality seemed really good though. VDub did a good job covering some of the audio issues but still left something to be desired. You'd still need a high quality method of capturing the audio. I'd highly suggest going with a standard capture card/device of some sort other than the VIVO if you want to avoid problems. Also this might take a little more work but capturing to AVI then compressing with VDUB/FFDSHOW seems like it would work really well. The noise removal and sharpening might be what you're looking for but it's not exactly for the faint of heart.

I've primarily been using the Theater650 for OTA HD and i'm still experimenting with the best methods for capturing and fixing up old VHS tapes but the 650 with VDub/FFDShow seems to be the best method i've found so far. A good quality VCR helps too.

 

[AlNom]

have you tried out tmpgenc for de-interlacing?

 

[Zaphod]

To solve interlacing problems (at the cost of quality), you could try encoding to DivX (or some other MPEG4 Simple) codec [Edit: my DivX version didn't like UYVY. FFDShow worked fine, though] that has a 'built in' deinterlace filter. Or, you could install an application that comes with a DirectShow deinterlace filter supporting the required colorspace (iuVCR has one, for example) and try to add that to the Virtual VCR filter chain. I do this (high bitrate, low complexity) for throwaway recordings with my old BT878-based card.

If you're capturuing something you'd want too keep for posterity, read up on AviSynth (or some other automation tool). You can transcode an interlaced UYVY losslessly to RGB with Huffyuv, then deinterlace + reencode into the desired end format at HQ settings (for those with time and temporary diskspace to spare).

 

[see colon]

when a firend of mine wanted to convert her old VHS home movies to DVD she bought a Pinnacle capture card (PCI with a breakout box). i own 3 TV cards and a few VIVO video cards, but this thing blew them all out of the water in terms of capture quality. maybe newer TV cards are better than what i've got, but i think i'd still get something along the lines of what she got if i was going for tunerless captrue. the thing was cheap, too, about $80US on newegg IIRC.

 

[Zaphod]

But I can't use the de-interlace filter in VDub, because VDub filters only function on RGB capture formats while my card's drivers only support "YUV2" and "UYVY".

BTW:

VirtualDub has been able to apply RGB filters to UYVY and YUY2 sources during capture for some time. In 1.6.2+ it uses the new pixmap library, so it will handle most other YUV formats as well. I just tried YUY2 and I420 and they worked, although YVU9 didn’t work for some reason.

Of course, it might still be buggy.

 

[Tahir2]

FYI: Just been watching some heavily interlaced material on an X1650XT and AVIVO worked as advertised removing all interlacing artefacts.
Hope that info was helpful.

 

[see colon]

FYI: Just been watching some heavily interlaced material on an X1650XT and AVIVO worked as advertised removing all interlacing artefacts.
Hope that info was helpful.

was it live TV? ati has really let me down in regards to my TV on PC habit. sometime last year they started doing something with the overlay (i'm assuming it's avivo related) and broke deinterlacing in dscaler, and caused my TV cards native app to produce quite a bit of combing. so i switched to K!TV, but the 7.1's give me nothing but a black screen in that now, and my card's native app gets a green or black screen 50% of the time, or the combing when it does work.

 

[Tahir2]

It wasn't live, it was a pre-recorded programme captured on a Philips chipset TV card (Compro T200 I believe).

 

[Rolf N]

I didn't notice this thread had gotten replies
Thanks for the input so far. I'm doing mostly screenshots of console games, but want to keep the door open on small videos and animated gifs, of console games. This isn't for me to watch on screen, so I don't really need deinterlacing playback, I want deinterlaced recordings. That's a huge difference, as I've described in the OP: routing the capture input to a video overlay looks great, because the graphics card automagically deinterlaces video playback. The captured images are still just as broken. So I'm not sure the playback experiences with the x1650 are really what I am looking for.

Resolution isn't so much the issue. I'm somewhat standardizing on 512*whatever as an image size here, and videos would be even smaller.

Here's what I can do with my current equipment (Canon Ixus 50 shooting an LG 32LC2R) under optimal conditions:

This isn't all bad, but it only works well for near-stills. When there's lots of motion, this is what happens:

Also the camera isn't fully reliable. Some of the automatic adjustments can't be fully deactivated, even though I manually selected an exposure and a white balance and everything, the camera still adapts somehow, and some images will be much brighter than others, some images will have much longer shutter times. Shutter times are a huge problem anyway, as that's the cause of all the motion blur.

I want to eliminate all those fluctuations, and to do so I must eliminate the TV and the camera from the processing chain.
The ideal would be to combine exactly two interlaced fields (or grab exactly one progressive frame if the game can output that) for a screenshot. I have nowhere near that level of control with the camera. Youtubing or producing animated gifs also works much better once the material is progressive.

It also is annoying that there is no remote control for my camera. I have to stand there to make shots, and for obvious reasons I can't at the same time use both hands to control a game. With a PC based capture solution I could do hotkeys, e.g. I could press the spacebar of a USB keyboard with my toe.
Also the constant hassle of transfer of images to the PC could be eliminated with a PC capture solution.

edit:
Thanks for the input, but the proposed software solutions don't work for me. I've triple-checked that inline fitering through a DirectShow deinterlacer can't be activated, I still think due to the YUV vs RGB issue, and post-deinterlacing somehow just doesn't work as reliably as the playback deinterlacing. It might be fun to play some more with the settings but I really think I need better/newer hardware to get full compatibility with current software, not to mention that I want to get rid of that blur on the 9200's capture input. So the question is still Avivo-enabled Radeon vs "TV card" vs whatever (external USB solutions very welcome) in the <200€ price range.

 

[Anarchist4000]

Sorry, a little late on this reply. One solution that might work for you is to capture interlaced and simply cut the resolution in half. If you're shrinking the resolution for video that should be fairly straightforward and gets rid of the lines.

 

[grandmaster]

The obvious solution is to use a smart deinterlacer as you capture. The tomsmocomp filter isn't bad at all. Check out this discussion about smart deinterlacing on the fly as you capture. A lot of good advice there.

If your input is not RGB and your filters are not working, do this in VirtualDub:

1. Enable RGB filtering
2. Enable Preview Acceleration
3. Select Preview Acceleration (both fields) or just one of the fields if your CPU is weak

On the fly capturing and processing requires quite a meaty CPU.

The best SD capture cards money can buy are the discontinued Holograph 3D (which I believe actually does 480p, but am not sure it's VirtualDub compatible) and the Sweetspot, which does 480i or 576i component capture. Here is a nice link to the Sweetspot. Perhaps there is a rebranded US version?

 

[Rolf N]

The obvious solution is to use a smart deinterlacer as you capture. The tomsmocomp filter isn't bad at all. Check out this discussion about smart deinterlacing on the fly as you capture. A lot of good advice there.

If your input is not RGB and your filters are not working, do this in VirtualDub:

1. Enable RGB filtering
2. Enable Preview Acceleration
3. Select Preview Acceleration (both fields) or just one of the fields if your CPU is weak

On the fly capturing and processing requires quite a meaty CPU.

The best SD capture cards money can buy are the discontinued Holograph 3D (which I believe actually does 480p, but am not sure it's VirtualDub compatible) and the Sweetspot, which does 480i or 576i component capture. Here is a nice link to the Sweetspot. Perhaps there is a rebranded US version?

I'm sitting in Germany. While cheap and crappy TV cards are everywhere, dedicated capture cards are somewhat hard to get. I see very few listings at (even large) computer hardware shops. Getting a card that captures component inputs, even in SD, seems to be impossible.
Like I wrote in that certain other thread, I have a Bt878 PCI card on the way. Very basic thing, no tuner, 60€. Amazon tells me I'll have to wait another week. Until then it's between the 9200 Vivo and my camera ...

But thanks! That was very useful. I'm going to try that Smart Deinterlacer plugin with the prescribed settings tonight. The 9200 Vivo might, again, not work, but then there's no harm in trying.

When I have results from the new interlacing trial run, I'll come back and post them.

edit: That Smart Deinterlacer works great! Now I still can't use that on the fly, because of the RGB format thing, but I tried post-processing a captured full-frame video and the results are very good.
It's completely impractical because the videos are enormously large (lossy compression before deinterlacing=shit), but it proves that deinterlacing can be done in software. Phew!
Now I'm just hanging in here until my new capture card arrives, trying to find some s-video cables for the consoles in question and maybe hacking a toe-driven, auto-incrementing "screenshot" function into VDub.
Another high point is that I can do the capturing on my "proper" PC, and don't have to rely on the old AGP testing rig.

Edited again: d'oh! I can use Smart Deinterlacer on the fly. What I saw there and mistook as interlacing artifacts is the result of crappy color stability between lines on that capture card in PAL60. Ie the colors shift so bad, you might think it's an interlacing artifact
On the software side of things I'm almost set now.