Micomsoft SC-500N1 RGB Capture Card

[BuckoA51]

This video shows up the typical brightness problem well:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oD8xJFlmuYE

See how the black background on the "Checking Network Now" screen shows as being like dark grey. If there's any hint of noise in your RGB signal it'll show up more when you have over bright blacks like that.

[lettuce]

Noticed that the file that Video Keep captures is ALOT smaller that what AmarecTV does. I had a video of roughly 30min with VK it came out at just under 1GB and AmarecTV for roughly the same capture time was.....25GB odd big!!! Not sure what AmarecTv does differently to justify the 25 times larger output file?

Im guessing that if your re-encoding the video with the likes of x264 along with MeGUI or Handbrake before posting it on YT, it doesnt matter about the slight difference in quality for the capture between AmarecTV and Video Keeper, thats if there is any quality difference

[blizzz]

Not sure what AmarecTv does differently to justify the 25 times larger output file?

That totally depends on what codec you chose in Amarec. If you record lossless with Lagarith or HuffYUV it will be big, if you record with x264vfw it will be smaller, depending on your encoding settings. With Video Keeper you have no options at all and are forced to use lossy x264 recordings.

[lettuce]

Not sure what AmarecTv does differently to justify the 25 times larger output file?

That totally depends on what codec you chose in Amarec. If you record lossless with Lagarith or HuffYUV it will be big, if you record with x264vfw it will be smaller, depending on your encoding settings. With Video Keeper you have no options at all and are forced to use lossy x264 recordings.

Well im new to this whole capturing and decoding lark, so i dont know crap all atm. But looking back at the raw output file from VK and AmarecTV, i cant see massive difference between the 2, fair enough the AmarecTV capture looks better but not 25 times better

And looking at the final product from Fagin's YT vid when using VK, i would say the quality is outstanding.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqbbbncN2eY

[fagin]

Not sure what AmarecTv does differently to justify the 25 times larger output file?

That totally depends on what codec you chose in Amarec. If you record lossless with Lagarith or HuffYUV it will be big, if you record with x264vfw it will be smaller, depending on your encoding settings. With Video Keeper you have no options at all and are forced to use lossy x264 recordings.

Well im new to this whole capturing and decoding lark, so i dont know crap all atm. But looking back at the raw output file from VK and AmarecTV, i cant see massive difference between the 2, fair enough the AmarecTV capture looks better but not 25 times better

And looking at the final product from Fagin's YT vid when using VK, i would say the quality is outstanding.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqbbbncN2eY

Mate... that video is using (as it states) AmarecTV.

This is the one using VK http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrZGShTLljY

[lettuce]

Mate... that video is using (as it states) AmarecTV.

This is the one using VK http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrZGShTLljY

Doh!, my bad

What have you used for the recoding of that file, as the quality looks bang on!, handbrake?

Nothing beats x264, but for ease of use I use Handbrake, it's a 3 click solution. Open file, choose Youtube preset and click encode.

What are the presets for the best quality TY video then please?

[lettuce]

Sorry Double Post

[fagin]

Mate... that video is using (as it states) AmarecTV.

This is the one using VK http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrZGShTLljY

Doh!, my bad

What have you used for the recoding of that file, as the quality looks bang on!, handbrake?

Nothing beats x264, but for ease of use I use Handbrake, it's a 3 click solution. Open file, choose Youtube preset and click encode.

What are the presets for the best quality TY video then please?

Based on "nerding it up" info available it's about 10Mbps encoding rate.

[lettuce]

Based on "nerding it up" info available it's about 10Mbps encoding rate.

Haha,

These are the settings ive used in Handbrake so far are based on some YT guides ive watched:





and everything else is default, anything that needs changing?

[fagin]

Mate... that video is using (as it states) AmarecTV.

This is the one using VK http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrZGShTLljY

Doh!, my bad

What have you used for the recoding of that file, as the quality looks bang on!, handbrake?

Nothing beats x264, but for ease of use I use Handbrake, it's a 3 click solution. Open file, choose Youtube preset and click encode.

What are the presets for the best quality TY video then please?

I don't piss around with handbrake!

Straight into Windows freebie LIVE Movie Maker (to edit for normal YT vids) and use my own custom encoding settings in Movie Maker to re-encode for YT at a very high quality level. If I'm doing some funky editing I'll use Sony Vegas Pro instead - which with my skills, isn't very often! lol

I don't care about file size as my Internet Connection has 20Mb upload capacity.... and my YT files can be gigabytes, so not practical for most.

[lettuce]

I don't piss around with handbrake!

Straight into Windows freebie LIVE Movie Maker (to edit for normal YT vids) and use my own custom encoding settings in Movie Maker to re-encode for YT at a very high quality level. If I'm doing some funky editing I'll use Sony Vegas Pro instead - which with my skills, isn't very often! lol

I don't care about file size as my Internet Connection has 20Mb upload capacity.... and my YT files can be gigabytes, so not practical for most.

I only have Virgin media's crappy 3meg upload rate atm and im on 60meg download.

Are these custom encoding settings for Movie Maker for TY upload top secret??

[fagin]

Not at all..... but don't forget, that unless you have original footage at these quality levels at least, it will be a waste of time using them.... so I have several bit rates I use, depending on source bitrate.

I'm just getting ready to go out on the lash, so this will have to be quick:

This is an example of my highest YT encode settings.

[lettuce]

Not at all..... but don't forget, that unless you have original footage at these quality levels at least, it will be a waste of time using them.... so I have several bit rates I use, depending on source bitrate.

I'm just getting ready to go out on the lash, so this will have to be quick:

This is an example of my highest YT encode settings.

Well ill be using AmarecTV with the settings you suggested this morning, so do i need the bit rate at 10000 if capturing at 720x240??

[blizzz]

Nothing beats x264, but for ease of use I use Handbrake, it's a 3 click solution. Open file, choose Youtube preset and click encode.

What are the presets for the best quality TY video then please?

I made my own preset. Made some shoots of it here. (Preset export doesn't work in my svn version of Handbrake)

Just a hint regarding x264. It's mostly better to use quality quantizer than vbr encoding. Constant quality does not mean that all scenes get the same amount of bits, but the amount of bits that is needed to get the quality you want. VBR will waste excess bits to improve certain scenes. If Youtube is your goal and your bandwidth is limited constant quality will do the better job. You can tweak the slider to what's an acceptable quality / filesize trade-off for you (0 = "lossless", high = worse looking).

I really like Handbrake, but for more complex material you have to use MeGUI with Avisynth scripts.

[GregI]

I personally like Freemake Video Converter, especially for HTML5 encoding. Makes such a huge difference to the quality on YouTube if you have the correct browser.

[lettuce]

Nothing beats x264, but for ease of use I use Handbrake, it's a 3 click solution. Open file, choose Youtube preset and click encode.

What are the presets for the best quality TY video then please?

I made my own preset. Made some shoots of it here. (Preset export doesn't work in my svn version of Handbrake)

Just a hint regarding x264. It's mostly better to use quality quantizer than vbr encoding. Constant quality does not mean that all scenes get the same amount of bits, but the amount of bits that is needed to get the quality you want. VBR will waste excess bits to improve certain scenes. If Youtube is your goal and your bandwidth is limited constant quality will do the better job. You can tweak the slider to what's an acceptable quality / filesize trade-off for you (0 = "lossless", high = worse looking).

I really like Handbrake, but for more complex material you have to use MeGUI with Avisynth scripts.

Thanks for the info, noticed your video siurce is 1080x720, is this what you capture at in AmarecTV?, as i thought it was best to keep it at 240p??

[lettuce]

I personally like Freemake Video Converter, especially for HTML5 encoding. Makes such a huge difference to the quality on YouTube if you have the correct browser.

yeah guess everything will be moving over to HTML5 soon, if enabled in YT are video playbacks now 60fps?? or still 30fps?

[GregI]

Even HTML5 is 29.97 but the video quality improvement is a plus. They have some horrible implementation where you can double the speed of the video which would make 60fps but it's still not true 60.

[blizzz]

Youtube is still 29.97 / 25 fps only. Not sure what you mean with HTML5 encoding. H.264 and WebM are both HTML5 compatible codecs that are widely supported. 29.97 fps isn't a limitation that's written down in the HTML5 standard.

Thanks for the info, noticed your video siurce is 1080x720, is this what you capture at in AmarecTV?, as i thought it was best to keep it at 240p??

I line-doubled the image to 720x480 and then scaled it to 720p, that's why it's 1080x720. You could ofc just upload the 480p version.

[lettuce]

Youtube is still 29.97 / 25 fps only. Not sure what you mean with HTML5 encoding. H.264 and WebM are both HTML5 compatible codecs that are widely supported. 29.97 fps isn't a limitation that's written down in the HTML5 standard.

Thanks for the info, noticed your video siurce is 1080x720, is this what you capture at in AmarecTV?, as i thought it was best to keep it at 240p??

I line-doubled the image to 720x480 and then scaled it to 720p, that's why it's 1080x720. You could ofc just upload the 480p version.

Ok cool, whats recommended to scale it to 720?

EDIT: Doesnt HandBrake support the Lagarith codec? As i have just tired to load the video file into handbrake and im getting a error message saying that the file maybe copy protected, badly mastered or in an unsupported format?

[lettuce]

Ok I have uploaded the attract sequence of UN Squadron as test.....

http://youtu.be/U4qFLpRPOGE

I used Micomsoft driver and AmarecTV, filter on, linedoubled @ 720x240 30fps. Then re-encoded with Windows Movie Maker @ 1920x1080, Bit Rate 10,000 kpbs.

Have noticed that its not filling the whole screen, any ideas why, do i need to use such a high bit rate for retro games?

[Fudoh]

What's the point in upscaling a signal like this to 1920x1080 ?

It's not fullscreen because of the SNES's underscan (224 active lines instead of 240), when if you apply scaling anyway, why not just crop the signal and upscale it then ?

[lettuce]

What's the point in upscaling a signal like this to 1920x1080 ?

It's not fullscreen because of the SNES's underscan (224 active lines instead of 240), when if you apply scaling anyway, why not just crop the signal and upscale it then ?

I did that so you can select 1080p in YT, otherwise you wouldnr be able to select a HD option in YT would you?

How would i go about cropping the signal and upscale then?, excuses my ignorance as i said this stuff is relatively new to me

[fagin]

Lettuce,
Think about what you're saying.

Remember the settings I gave were an example and my normal encoding for a native 1080p source. The captures are not native 1080p source, so you don't need that resolution. 480p would suffice.

You need to do some boning up on encoding and scaling.

You previously asked what the best quality bitrate was for YT encodes... I told you what I knew. Whether you want to encode at that bitrate for retro feeds is entirely down to you. I've already given you my reasons why I encode with such a rate.

I don't even know yet what the raw capture bitrates are. All I did was use my default rates. For all I know my raw capture rates are lower than me re-encoding rate. That would prove to be a waste of time.

Let me check out what's what.

Also remember that nearly all my YT vids have my ugly mug on them. My camera captures at 1080p, do this is another reason why I'll use 1080p to re-encode.... Regardless of what edited video ends up being included.

[lettuce]

Lettuce,

You need to do some boning up on encoding and scaling.

Your telling me lol, i have VirtualDub, Handbrake, MeGUI, Windows Movie Maker, Lagarith, x264 amv etc all flying round my head and havent a clue what best suited.

Yeah i was trying to see where info was for AmarecTV and what bit rate the raw file was being recorded at but could find anything, also tried VirtualDub and that was terrible, kept dropping frames, has a scratching effect on the audio when playing the capture back, and the output file was massive when compared to AmarecTV. So dnt think VirtualDub will be my preferense for capturing

[lettuce]

Ok done some re-encoding test all using the same 50 second capture from AmarecTV.

Re-encoded with ......

Windows Movie Maker @ 1920x1080, BR 10,000kpbs, 30fps....
http://youtu.be/U4qFLpRPOGE

Windows Movie Maker @ 720x480, BR 10,000kbps, 30fps....
http://youtu.be/zcOSIhN312Q

Windows Movie Maker @ 720x480, BR 5,000, 30fps....
http://youtu.be/fEJPTAxDduk

MeGUI & x264 @ 720x480 30fps....
http://youtu.be/ImPIjSKp6R8

Personally i think the Windows Movie Maker 1920x1080 upload when set to 1080p in YT looks much more satisfying as its sharper around the edges. When comparing the other 3 480p uploads the MeGUI one looks the best as it vertical fills the screen in YT when watching fullscreen (i guess i must have an option ticked?), and there doesnt appear to be any difference between the 5000kbps and 10000kbps Windows Movie Maker upload!. So maybe 10000kbps is over kill for this type of capture.

I would try handbrake but it appears not to like the raw capture file that AmarecTV outputed, i guess handbrake doesnt like Lagarith codec?

Im guessing if i will be re-encoding these videos before upload do i really need the filter option enabled within AmarecTV, as i can just linedouble in the re-encoding stage?

[Fudoh]

I would try handbrake but it appears not to like the raw capture file that AmarecTV outputed, i guess handbrake doesnt like Lagarith codec?

learn about frameserving using AVisynth, then you can feed anything into any app.

The reason why your lower resolutions don't look as crisp as the other uploads is because you're using crappy upscaling algorithms.

[lettuce]

The reason why your lower resolutions don't look as crisp as the other uploads is because you're using crappy upscaling algorithms.

Whats good to use then?

[Fudoh]

I would linedouble to 480p with nearest neighbour, then crop, then upscale with Laczos3.

[lettuce]

I would linedouble to 480p with nearest neighbour, then crop, then upscale with Laczos3.

Ok ill give that a go, I capture at *w= 720, h= 240, fps=59.94, fcc=YUY2, bit=16 with filter processing and linedouble enabled , what am i need to crop then as this will give me a 480p display would it not?

Im going to try Huffyuv instead of Lagarith aswell. Is Laczos3 better than Laczos4 then?