Skip to main content
Known Participant
December 15, 2021
Question

capturing analog video

  • December 15, 2021
  • 6 replies
  • 8489 views
 

hello, after years of procrastination I am finally and currently digitizing old 8mm video tapes and old vcr tapes using an elgato "video video capture" device. (by the way, not interested in sending the tapes to a transfer house) If i want to divide the finsihed product into different parts what is the best way of doing that without losing the already mediocre standard definition quality. Is it better to edit it  through PP and then export or is there any software recomendations that will cut the clip in parts without reencdoing which i assume would degrade the quality even more? Thanks for any suggestions

This topic has been closed for replies.

6 replies

Inspiring
January 3, 2022

Can you post your results? Perhaps your method will be better then mine. I do like the fact that Premiere Pro can make use of the Firewire DV converts. I find that helpful but others may not. 

Jeff Bellune
Legend
January 3, 2022

I used Topaz's Dione Interlaced TV Model to take raw 720x480 DV footage of a rec league soccer game and turn it into 1920x1080 HD 60 fps footage. The 60 fps footage has the soap opera effect, but that is what I want from sports/activity video. Here are two screenshots. The original is scaled up in Quicktime Player to match the frame size of the HD converted video.

The upconversion process (including doubling the frame rate) ran between 0.13 sec/frame and 0.21 sec/frame on my MacBook Pro.

Stan Jones
Community Expert
Community Expert
January 3, 2022

Jeff, that is an option in the Video Enhance AI product? (About $150 currently?)

 

Impressive.

 

Stan

 

Christian.Z
Community Expert
Community Expert
December 30, 2021

Check the bitrate of the digitized files, try to be a tad higher on the export settings

chrisw44157881
Inspiring
December 29, 2021

Unless the elgato hardware explicitly says it supports 10 bit, you would have to assume its only h.264 8 bit. Exporting to a 10 bit codec would be a waste of space.

For ease of use, if premiere could natively import the h.264 files, you'd have to export out a lossless codec at full 4:4:4 RGB at 8 bit which would make large file sizes or try a high datarate 4:2:2 codec at slight quality loss. If you can edit and then export directly to dvd, that's another option as well. I'm a stickler for 0% loss of quality, even if I can't see it, my computer does, expecially when its trying to compress down to DVD-mpeg2, I want every last gigawatt of quality I can get. If you need offline clips stored losslessly, two codecs I like are quicktime png video and huffyuv video both full 4:4:4 RGB at 8 bit. or Png/Tiff image sequences with lzw lossless compression enabled.

 

As for the capturing at interlaced, that doesn't really make any sense for film. Hopefully, the capturing device is storing the fields in NTSC encoding as progressive fields, which means you don't need to deinterlace as both fields are captured at the same moment in time and thus frame independment and can simply be treated as a whole frame in time. (since deinterlacing would throw away half your resolution) If you had to deinterlace, use topaz as adobe just blends the fields. or compare with qtgmc deinterlacing but that works at YUY2(which may still be better)

 

If you could work the files entirely inside shutter encoder, you might be able to clip them without re-encoding. This would depend on if they were natively supported for lossless clipping.

 

As a final note, I would never capture anything analog into an interframe codec. interframe codecs cannot handle rapid motion and may create tearing artifacts. I'd only capture with intraframe 'I' frames.

Inspiring
December 29, 2021

Could anyone please post a sample of their method in action? I would like to see a sample of VHS upscaled by 80%. 

Warren Heaton
Community Expert
Community Expert
December 29, 2021

The Elgato Video Capture device yields 640-by-480 progressive H264 at 29.97 fps.  Video Enhance AI will likely improve the picture quality a little bit.

 

There's a free trail of Topaz Labs Video Enhance AI.

 

The host system must meet the system requirements and it's very important to know that high-quality upconversion, even with H264 source, is very, very slow.

Warren Heaton
Community Expert
Community Expert
December 28, 2021

The Elgato USB2 Video Capture device is pretty good, but it's really just meant for capturing the tape, trimming the head and the tail, and then exporting to MP4 (as I'm sure you've noticed).  It would be really great if Elgato added an Extract option for removing segments within the capture before exporting it to a stand alone MP4 file.  It's also important to note that the Elgato software de-interlaces the footage and crops for overscan resulting in a 480p29.97 clip.

 

You can import the captures that you've exported from Elgato directly into a Premiere Pro project.  Select one of the MP4s in the Project tab and then right-click to choose New Sequence from Clip.  Rename the resulting Sequence with a descriptive name and edit the clips as you'd like.  Repeat as needed for as many Sequences as needed.

 

When you're ready to export the Sequence, choose File > Export > Media.  In the Premiere Pro Export dialog box, you have a few options.  Setting the Format to H264 and the Preset to Match Source - High Bit Rate is probably the easiest, but you could use the Match Source - Adaptive High Bit Rate preset for a smaller file or any of the presets with "SD 480" in the name (but not "SD 480 Wide").  If you really want to keep the file size small, you could use HEVC H265 for a more efficient but less compatible file (that is, the file will be smaller but it'll only play on devices that support H265).

 

As far as quality goes, you are taking a H264 compression generation hit.  That is what it is unless you reacapture your Regular 8 tapes and VHS tapes with a higher end video capture device.  If you decide to take that route, look into a capture device that allows you to capture SD via S-Video/RCA to Apple ProRes422 LT.  I really like Blackmagic Design's products (https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/intensitypro4k) - just be sure to use their included Media Express software for the SD ProRes captures.  If you happen to have access to a Digital8 camcorder with DV pass-through, that's probably your best bet for recapturing the tapes via Premiere Pro's DV capture; however you'll need to have FireWire or Thunderbolt with the right adapters to FireWire.  If you go the route of recapturing your tapes to a higher end format, the Premiere Pro part is more or less the same:  Import the captured clips, right-click and choose New Sequence from Clip, etc., etc.

 

 

Inspiring
December 29, 2021

The Blackmagic Design products require a TBC.  My video demonstrates this and that is why I cannot recommend any of the Intensity Products from Blackmagic Design. Some VCRs will have a built in TBC but most will not. 

Warren Heaton
Community Expert
Community Expert
December 29, 2021

Andy, that's not true.  Your video showing problems with Blackmagic Intensity capture does a great job of showing how to incorrctly use the Intensity product line with Premiere Pro.

Peru Bob
Community Expert
Community Expert
December 16, 2021
Jeff Bellune
Legend
December 16, 2021

Also look at Lossless Cut

Inspiring
December 16, 2021

From what I see online the Elgato devices capture H.264 at 1.4 Mbits 640x480 or 640x360 resolution ...

so you are starting with a fairly low datarate and a resolution below standard SD - which is 720x486 (or 720x576 PAL).

So, yes I would suggest you edit your clips to what you want in Premiere Pro but make sure you use a higher datarate when exporting. You could export to (for example) 'Prores' to maintain the initially encoded quality. But this will create much larger file sizes and has limitations that may be an issue for you.

I think in your case you probably should export using H.264 at high quality. 

Encoding to H.264 will give you MP4 video clips that everyone can easily view, share, upload to YouTube etc.

(whereas Prores is not going to be a file you can easily share).

 

One of the reasons to go with higher datarates for you exports is; Stanadard Definition analogue formats like 8mm/VHS have a lot of video noise. And the cameras of that era were also noisy. Video noise compressed to lower datrates will look worse.

 

All that said - experiment!. Digitise your footage and test various export settings from Premiere Pro.

If you want to spend some money, there are some video noise reduction plugins for Premiere Pro that may improve the look of your footage.

 

Another option is the excellent Topaz Video Enhance AI application. It's a standalone app that can upres footage, denoise video and remove interlacing. It can also do 'in' & 'out' simple edits.

Known Participant
December 16, 2021

thx for your helpful answer. when u suggest exporting using h264 at high quality I assume that is h264 match source-high bit rate. Or did you mean high quality 480 sd as a preset?

I experimented with several formats and presets with a 10 minuute clip captured on the elgato. I tried h264 with both 'high bitrate' and 'high quality sd' presets, I also tried mpeg2 blu ray, mpeg2 dvd and prores 422.

Theblue ray and pro res as you stated had much higher file sizes than the others. For some reeason ive always been stuck on this notion that the hgiher the bit rate and size the better the quality.

I watched and compared all clips with an untrained eye and just when I thought one clip looked better than another, I would change my mind when watching again. Because its captured from 20+ year old analog tape it all looked pretty crappy but acceptable for family reminscing. SO I will continue my project slowly but surely.

 

Two other members recommended shutterencoder and lossless cut (which I thank them for). One question I have is if I experiment deleting parts of a clip using those 2 software how do you think it would compare to deleting parts of a clip using Premier Pro? The fact that PP woul have to be exported (reencoded?) would that give me the same result as using something like the 2 sotware recommended. Theoretically speaking, is there a difference or is it a wash because the original quality is standard def? Just curious as to peoples opinions. thanks much. 

Inspiring
December 17, 2021

the only difference between the H.264 'match source-high bit rate' preset and the '480SD' preset is the datarate - 10Mbits for the first and 3Mbits for 480SD. I think 3Mbits is a bit low for noisey analogue SD but perhaps 10Mbits is too high. IF final size is an issue for you (i.e. 10Mbit is creating file sizes larger than you want) try around 5-7MBits. There's a 'video' tab in the export window and if you scroll down you can change the 'Target Bitrate' slider to any amount you want. Once you find a happy medium - save that setting as your own preset.

 

Since you are starting with fairly low quality, going with a higher bit rate on export does only one thing:

it prevents any further loss of quality introduced from compression artifacts from re-encoding.

BUT there's a limit. Once you pass a certain threshold - increasing datarate even more will have no impact on visual quality. That's probably why you are having a hard time seeing the difference between different presets.*

 

And when you compare (say) Prores to H.264 you see (as you note) massive file size differences. But keep in mind - just because the Prores is bigger does not always mean it's automatically better than the H.264 (in your case).

H.264 is a very efficient codec. It's designed to be a small, (and often) high quality delivery format. Prores is designed for maximum quality, editing efficiency and minimum compression artifacts.

 

Regarding Shutter encoder and Lossless Cut. Have not used either but suspect they would be more than fine. 

Data rate noted above would apply to these programs as well. 

 

An advantage in Premiere Pro are the built in tools (Like Lumetri) that would allow you to do a quick colour grade on your footage. Indoor analogue footage might benefit from some colour correction and exposure on darker shots etc.

 

Good luck. There's a lot of stuff I've not included in this post as you've actually asked some questions that have very deep answers (we've not even mentioned 'interlacing' yet 🙂 but come back with more queries if you need info.

 

* a great trick to 'see' what difference a re-encode has over the original is; import the new encoded file back into Premiere Pro, drop that clip exactly over the top of the original clip(s) in your sequence (it has to line up perfectly). With the imported re-coded file selected now go to 'effects controls' and change the 'opacity' 'blend mode' to 'difference'.

Your Premiere pro program monitor should now be mostly black. Where ever you see a hint of an image indicates a difference between the two clips.