digitalising-video-revisited

In making-videos, I described how I digitalised Hi8 tapes, optimising the quality by using a lossless capturing process and a carefully selected toolchain for encoding. This is a clean rewrite of the process, as of 2010-11-29, taking advantage of the new encoding format MPEG-4 AVC, which replaces MPEG-4 ASP (see Explanation of video formats).

Hardware
Capture software
Digital video processing software
The Process

Hardware

Source

Super VHS, camera, Hi8 tapes

Capture device

nvidia Geforce2 GTS

Capture software

Virtualdub running under Windows98 (why window98?), with lossless encoder huffyuv.

Digital video processing software

Virtualdub running under wine, using huffyuv and avisynth. And the following plugins to avisynth:

For installation instructions of these programs see Installing Virtualdub, huffyuv, avisynth, LeakKernelDeint, and PeachSmooth under wine.

avidemux encoding to container mp4 (mpeg-4) with the following formats:

video with x264 to MPEG-4 AVC
audio with faac to aac
Settings
- Frames per second: 50
- Average video bitrate: 3000 kBit/s (~375 Kbyte/s)
- Average audio bitrate: 192 kBit/s
- Two-pass, average bitrate

The Process

The process involves three steps:

Lossless capturing at 25 fps
Smoothing and deinterlacing to 50 fps
Encoding into MP4

The result is a 50 fps (smooth movements) MP4 movie with approx 0.39 Mbyte/s.

Smoothing and deinterlacing to 50 fps Here is the short avisynth script I use:

SegmentedAviSource("Z:\mnt\capture.avi")

# Crop
#Crop(0,8,688,558)
#AddBorders(8,9,8,9)

# Deinterlace
LoadPlugin("C:\Program Files\Avisynth 2.5\plugins\LeakKernelDeint.dll")
LeakKernelBob(order=0,threshold=10,sharp=true,twoway=false,linked=false,map=false)

# Smooth
# Peachsmoother
LoadPlugin("C:\Program Files\Avisynth 2.5\plugins\PeachSmoother.dll")
peachsmoother(NoiseReduction=35)

Installing Virtualdub, huffyuv, avisynth, LeakKernelDeint, and PeachSmooth under wine

wget -nd http://mesh.dl.sourceforge.net/project/virtualdub/virtualdub-win/1.9.10.32839/VirtualDub-1.9.10.zip
mkdir -p .wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/VirtualDub/
unzip -d .wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/VirtualDub/ VirtualDub-1.9.10.zip
rm VirtualDub-1.9.10.zip
wget -nd http://neuron2.net/www.math.berkeley.edu/benrg/huffyuv-2.1.1.zip
mkdir -p .wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/huffyuv
unzip -d .wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/huffyuv huffyuv-2.1.1.zip
cd .wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/huffyuv/
rundll32 setupapi.dll,InstallHinfSection DefaultInstall 128 ./huffyuv.inf
cd ~/

# avisynth, if you prefer that before avsyuv
wget -nd http://sourceforge.net/projects/avisynth2/files/AviSynth%202.5/AviSynth%202.5.8/Avisynth_258.exe/download
wine Avisynth_258.exe
rm Avisynth_258.exe
mkdir -p leakkernel
cd leakkernel
wget -nd http://neuron2.net/kerneldeint/leakkerneldeint154.zip
unzip leakkerneldeint154.zip
cp LeakKernelDeint.dll ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/AviSynth 2.5/plugins
cd ..
rm -rf leakkernel


# avsyuv, if you prefer that before virtualdub + avisynth
mkdir ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/avsyuv
cd ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/avsyuv
wget -nd http://akuvian.org/src/avisynth/avs2yuv/avs2yuv.exe
cd ~/
wget -nd http://akuvian.org/src/avisynth/avs2yuv/avisynth_dlls.zip
mkdir -p avisynth-tmp
cd avisynth-tmp
unzip ../avisynth_dlls.zip
cp avisynth.dll devil.dll ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32/
cd ..
rm -rf avisynth-tmp