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Beginners Guide to Capturing and Recording Melee Footage.

Tee ay eye

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ive had problems with virtualdub in the past but i'll try it again sometime in the near future
 

Tee ay eye

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it would crash when i stopped video capture. i was using xvid codec, but i forgot what bitrate and audio settings i was using.
 

Zankoku

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I've never encountered that problem before... Did you end video capture with Esc and then exit the program, or did you just try to end video capture by closing the program?
 

Tee ay eye

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i didn't just close the program. i think i used my mouse to navigate through the menus to end video capture.

i'll try again sometime soon, though.
 

Tee ay eye

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btw, aisight

http://neuron2.net/smart/smart.html

i find this deinterlacing filter (filter 2.8 beta 1) to be much better than the built-in deinterlacing filter that comes with virtualdub.

you just have to apply the filter and press okay. the default settings on the filter get the job done, and i think it looks better than when i try vdub's in-built one.
 

Zankoku

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That's interesting, I might consider that one, though it seems a little old (2.8 beta 1 is timestamped 2005). Do you have any examples uploaded to Youtube?
 
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I've heard about the smart deinterlace filter too, I've used it in everything I've done. Linear or cubic interpolation definitely bring excellent results, I prefer them over blend. I think edge-directed is the best though. I used them in order and didn't start noticing the effects until after I had experimented with them awhile.

Cubic feels slightly 'blockier' (like polygon edges are a bit/too crisp) to me in animation in some renders I did, but it's a very subtle difference. It's because it renders the colors slightly darker/'richer' (like one or two chroma values), thus giving some objects a slightly sharper and more 3-dimensional look, e.g. Samus' shoulder pads. However, this also causes things to look a bit grainier (like the background). (I actually thought it gave the video kind of a cool look, like 'different' than normal, and I used it for my Olimar vid.)

Edge-directed interpolation seems to fix the problems that cubic interpolation has while still giving the smoothest look. I think it takes the longest, and gives the largest filesize (size for a 12-second video went from 166 to 181 MB), but no one really worries about that, plus it looks great. I don't know how this all affects encoding and rendering down the road, but I don't think it would do anything negative.

Code:
Images encoded from uncompressed S-video to Huffyuv 2.1.1
with smart deinterlace 2.8 beta 1, frame-only differencing.
Uncompressed


Blend


Linear


Cubic


Edge-directed



Another comparison: uncompressed; blend; linear; cubic; edge-directed.





 

Tee ay eye

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heh, i guess i was wrong about the settings
i just did a quick visual inspection, but i can't argue with a side-by-side comparison

thanks for that. i'll use cubic/linear from now on.
 

Zankoku

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I'll be doing some testing of my own, too. And yeah, blend looks "smoother" because it captures every frame, but it looks like **** if you ever pause the video.
 
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Sweet. And I've used all of them from time to time... hm.

Ah, I just re-thought that as I read your post... I guess that is weird, now that I think about it. I suppose 'hiding' a frame could pose some interesting visual situations in smash... I'll do more testing too...
 

Zankoku

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I think in the end I preferred VDub's de-interlace using Yadif algorithm the most (and 60fps is freaking beautiful, but unfortunately impossible to record directly to on poverty hardware, and not worth doing post-record encoding from lossless due to size issues). It's using Brawl footage, but you can see the final results of my experimentation here:
http://allisbrawl.com/blogpost.aspx?id=129304
 

Varist

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Go to 1:48 in that Megavideo link and watch Sheik.

what the ****? he does it TWICE.
 

Varist

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he snaps to the edge instantly. not even like how Mario or Jiggs get sucked up towards the edge when they pass into its hitbox in Brawl, he's like two times as far, and he gets teleported there.
 

Zankoku

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Oh, you're referring to Sheik being able to recover with her Chain in Brawl, and tether recoveries auto-aiming at the ledge in Brawl.
 

LLDL

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Got something interesting for you all that want to start recording. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apylSkNaRIQ

Reaaaally convenient and the quality is great as long as you don't split the signal in half (Otherwise shows grain). I picked it up for $45 at collinswood flea market. I looked on ebay they're more expensive but if you can find one for cheap I highly recommend this.
 
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I think in the end I preferred VDub's de-interlace using Yadif algorithm the most (and 60fps is freaking beautiful, but unfortunately impossible to record directly to on poverty hardware, and not worth doing post-record encoding from lossless due to size issues). It's using Brawl footage, but you can see the final results of my experimentation here:
http://allisbrawl.com/blogpost.aspx?id=129304
Iiii... basically came to that same conclusion myself last night, I rendered double frames with Yadif and was like "hooooly smokes how did i not know this before." (all my original files have been deleted save for ten.) I did a bunch of other renders as well. But first a comment about 60fps.

You're right, standard deinterlacing drops a frame, and keeps the data for another. However, we normally see the game at 30fps, though we're seeing 60 different fields ('half-frames'). This looks messy when captured though, because we're seeing both fields interlaced together at 30fps, instead of one half of a frame every 60, which is what a tv is displaying. So, deinterlacing by separating the field data and producing/interpolating a frame for each field will preserve that original '60fps' fluidity while solving the messy interlaced effect we see. If I understand all this correctly.

However, this also means... that we don't actually see a 'full' frame in Smash when we play, we see two fields from two different frames every 1/30 of a second's time. So, deinterlaced and 'double'd' footage is actually giving us more detail than what we normally see (created from interpolation). Just an interesting point. And considering, as you pointed out, that Youtube doesn't support 60fps... it might be better overall to go with 30fps.

But with which filter?

I actually can't figure it out. :/ Sometimes the smart deinterlace edge-directed looks slightly better, sometimes it doesn't look as smooth and has more grain. So, because the differences are so, so minute... I think I'm just going to stick with this Yadif algorithm. Yessss.

Results

Honestly, you can't really see any differences unless you zoom in and compare section by section, save for the very first image, which has jaggy edges due to no real field interpolation being applied.

Code:
Source: Huffyuv 2.1.1 S-video
For these first few, I rendered double frames via field duplication, then applied the smart deinterlace filter with edge-direct interpolation, then rendered h.264.

Code:
Output: ffmpeg x264 jan '11 build, high profile, animation tune
normal speed, single pass, default CRF setting
59.94fps

Double frames, duplicate fields


Double frames, duplicate fields, edge-direct


Code:
Output: ffmpeg x264 jan '11 build, high profile, animation tune
normal speed, multi pass, 4500 avg bitrate
59.94fps
Double frames, duplicate fields, edge-direct, 2pass render



Then, I used the Yadif algorithm. First, just Huffyuv, then a slow-speed 2pass h.264 render, same settings as before.

Double frames, duplicate fields, Yadif, Huffyuv (lossless)


Double frames, duplicate fields, Yadif, 2pass render



I also did a same-setting 2pass render only using the smart deinterlace filter, edge-direct setting (so, 30fps).

Smart deinterlace, edge-direct//motion threshold=11, 2pass render




Same order of pictures, alternate frame: x2-duplicate; x2-edge; x2-edge-2pass; x2-yadif-lossless; x2-yadif-2pass; x1-edge-2pass. Click to view.

http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/602/fcdf2.png
http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/9896/fcdfedge2.png
http://img848.imageshack.us/img848/1653/dfedge2pass2.png

http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/6046/yadifuncompressed2.png
http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/3631/yd2p2.png
http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/2627/fcsfedge2pass2.png


Conclusion

The Yadif double frame deinterlace method looks great and works fast. Yadif itself does very well, and though it was a bit smoother and slightly less noisy than the smart deinterlace edge-direct interpolation, it's not as customizable... and really, no one's going to care the difference is so small. Yadif looks great. Plus, you can switch between 30 and 60 fps right there, and it's actually been updated within the last 5 years.

New winner = yadif. But I'm still going to stick with 30fps for now

/done with VirtualDubX
 

ranmaru

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Why isn't this stickied... I had trouble llooking for it. So I'm bumping it. D: < Good guide here.
 

WIDL

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Huge bump, I guess, but I have some questions. I'm thinking of buying the Hauppauge HD PVR (http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hdpvr.html) because it's affordable for me atm at a Norwegian internet store, but I'm not sure if it has everything I need. Here's what I already have:

A CRT TV with the usual red, white, yellow and scart on the back and a wii/gamecube. Someone told me that you can use a splitter. Connect the rgb from the wii to the splitter, with to cables on the back of the splitter. One goes to the TV and one to the device and the USB to the computer. But I'm not even sure what he meant.

Do I need a splitter of some sort? It's the RGB cables that confuse me.
 

Kimimaru

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Great guide; I think this should be stickied as well. I usually stayed away from a Dazzle because I heard a lot of people complaining about it, but since reading this guide I think it looks like a good deal.

Also, you stated that EazyCap's quality was below average yet ranked it S tier. It doesn't even work well on Windows 7, which most people have right now, so it shouldn't be A tier in functionality either. I have personal experience with that product and was not satisfied.
 

♡ⓛⓞⓥⓔ♡

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I disagree with the statement that Easycap has low quality, as AJP stated in the thread the actual device matters very litte, what matters is how you capture/compress the video. For example this match has been recorded with Easycap & VirtualDub and the quality is better than the Hauppage examples in the OP.

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

On the other hand EasyCap is in the ass tier when it comes to usability, there is always a lot of hassle before you get all the settings, drivers and other nonsense working. Despite this I highly recommend EasyCap, it's so cheap and you can get great quality with Virtual Dub
 

WIDL

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So I got my dazzle. I'm pretty sure I got the right cables and such, but I can't get a signal when I open Pinnacle Studio HD. I only get No Input Signal... Using a CRT TV.

Anyone else had this problem?
 

Bones0

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While this topic is bumped, what is a good, free program for basic capturing and editing? I am trying to record with an "HP Dual TV Tuner/DVR" (it can be used to record TV shows so I would assume it can record video games). I think I have everything setup properly (the device lights indicate it is ready to capture), but I can't actually get my laptop to start capturing.
 

Kadano

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While this topic is bumped, what is a good, free program for basic capturing and editing? I am trying to record with an "HP Dual TV Tuner/DVR" (it can be used to record TV shows so I would assume it can record video games). I think I have everything setup properly (the device lights indicate it is ready to capture), but I can't actually get my laptop to start capturing.
You don’t mention your OS, so I’ll assume it’s Windows 7.
VirtualDub is old but it works fairly well, so I recommend you try that first. It also features direct editing if your PC can handle it (my Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz i3 is just a bit too slow to do Yadif60 and resize as well as encode to h264, so I guess all quad-cores above 3 ghz or so should be sufficient).
With my card, the audio went out of sync after approximately 10 minutes. Since I switched to DScaler’s capturing, the sync always has been fine.
 

Bones0

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You don’t mention your OS, so I’ll assume it’s Windows 7.
VirtualDub is old but it works fairly well, so I recommend you try that first. It also features direct editing if your PC can handle it (my Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz i3 is just a bit too slow to do Yadif60 and resize as well as encode to h264, so I guess all quad-cores above 3 ghz or so should be sufficient).
With my card, the audio went out of sync after approximately 10 minutes. Since I switched to DScaler’s capturing, the sync always has been fine.
I'm on Windows 8, but I'll look into Virtual Dub, thanks. I was trying to download something called Media Portal, but the dl didn't complete properly so it's turned into a cluster****. lol
 

LLDL

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...Made this topic when I didn't know anything about anything, so you guys can disregard the OP

XD
 
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