SD vs HD Comparison

[Fred Hess]

I do appreciate your detailed responses. You always give me good answers and advice. It appears that our workflows are quite different, but now I have a new method to experiment with.

and to be frank, the difference between the SD 720x576 from the GS300 and the 1440x1080 from the HS9 is almost indistinguishable.

In my limited experience I am sometimes amazed that what should be (on paper at least) isn't always true. That's what makes the whole process so interesting (or did I mean frustrating?) to me. Always looking for better results, but sometimes you get great results with the simplest, low-tech methods.

I still can't get the Startech to work, but haven't messed with it too much yet. Hopefully I'll get it up and running. In the meantime I can keep capturing in OBS and importing into Resolve/Hybrid. It's not lossless but the results aren't bad. I'll have to make some more comparisons.

[Fred Hess]

Alwyn, I posted a question about capturing HDMI in VDub over on VideoHelp, which you replied to. I think it's relevant to this thread so I'll post here.

I tried using AmarecTV with the Startech Box again and am now getting some excellent results. They do work very nicely together and the video is so much better than using OBS. I'm still playing with finding the "best" results, but I'm liking this method!

Now my problem is that Davinci Resolve won't open the AVI files. Since you mentioned the Magix Movie Studio, I will download that and try it out. But first, 1)Will it open the AVI files from AmarecTV? and 2)After the editing, can you export to another lossless AVI file or will it only do MP4? I'll use Hybrid for the final MP4 and would like to give it a lossless file to work with.

I'm also looking at KDenLive. If you're familiar with that, would you recommend one over the other?

[Alwyn Adkins]

Resolve seems to be a problem child WRT AVIs.

Yes, Magix will export to all the AVIs you have installed on your system eg HUFF, LAGS, MagicYUV, UTVideo. It seems though that Resolve won't open any of those.

I believe Resolve will open FFV1. Since you're using Hybrid, my suggestion would be:

-Capture in whatever lossless AVI codec you desire.

-Bring the capture into Hybrid for deinterlacing (if you want).

-Export out of Hybrid as FFV1 for import into Resolve.

Resolve may be able to handle some of the other lossless outputs from Hybrid; I think ProRes is lossless and Resolve can handle that.

Can't help with KDenLive, although it does get favourable comments here and there and does look like it would be a good basic editor and exporter.

As far as MP4 output goes, I just use Magix. Whether the H264 encoder in Hybrid is better than others, to justify that extra edit>AVI step, I don't know.

If I didn't want to deinterlace, I'd just import my captures straight into Magix and do everything there. KDenLive may be able to do the same.

[Stan Jelavic]

I had this same issue exporting the avi files into Resolve. This solved the issue for me:
https://www.easefab.com/avi-tips/imp...i-resolve.html
Later on I just exported the VirtualDub video into a sequence of images then just import the images into Resolve.
It does take longer and you need a large external drive but that did not bother me much...

[Alwyn Adkins]

Fred, here's a ProRes export from VDub2 (encoded at ~200fps on my i7-13700/RTX-3060):

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Xdj...ew?usp=sharing

Can Resolve open that?

[Alwyn Adkins]

It's early days, and I hate to say it, but it appears to me there's something majorly wrong with the way the HS9 outputs video, Composite or HDMI (for the purposes of capturing).

I am having all sorts of trouble with framing (HDMI and Composite won't fill the screen) and it is impossible to deinterlace the video properly. When I do a Composite capture with the Panny GS300 and my IOData GV-USB2 it frames well and the deinterlacing (both QTGMC and Magix) is perfect.

I haven't sussed the problem out totally and will keep testing.

[Fred Hess]

I tried a couple video converters and they both work, but at a cost. The 1st was Shutter Encoder converting to ProRes. The 2nd was Hybrid converting to ProRes. While DaVinci loaded them both nicely, the time to convert was costly (around 25 minutes per 3 minute clip). Since I have a job with 38 3" reels, it would take a chunk of time just for the conversion. Plus, in Resolve I have to change the speed to around 53%, 1 clip at a time, to get the clips to play normally (why is that?) and then make adjustments in the timeline. A huge hassle!

I made a comparison video of 1 reel using the AmarcTV/Hybrid conversion and 1 reel using an OBS capture (ProRes). The 1st clip was a bit sharper with a little better detail and color was very close. About what I expected. And I don't have to change the speed with the OBS capture in Resolve (again, why is that?). With the limited quality improvement and the amount of time involved, I'm back to the OBS method for this job. He'll never know the difference.

Alwyn, yes, Resolve opened your file. No problems. This is another method similar to using Hybrid that I could use.

I'm interested in learning more about your framing problem. How can I test that on my end? I didn't think I was having any issues with my captures but it could very well be that I'm not aware of what to look for.

I also tried importing the avi files into KDenLive and Magix. I got the KDenLive to load the files and was able to do some editing (flip, trim, crop, etc.) but it crashed when I tried to render the video. Tried a couple times with the same result. Gave up. Magix loaded the files but I had trouble with the editing (cropping especially) and I couldn't get any of the files to play smoothly. Playback was super choppy/jumpy so I gave up on that, too. At least for today. It takes a while to figure out new software and I was getting frustrated. I'm going to finish this job with OBS/Resolve, then come back to everything else.