Kevin Duffey
July 22nd, 2009, 08:44 PM
Hi all,
I recently picked up the Black Magic Design Intensity card with intentions of using it's analog ports to capture some old VHS/Hi8/DV tapes I still have, to convert them to DVD.
I have the CineForm codec, and the one that comes with the card. I am attempting to do/learn two things. The first is to figure out how to "clean up" the quality of the tapes. I see old DVDs, even movies before DVD that when they are put on bluray look stunning. What are some of the steps used to do something like this? I'd like to upscale them to 720x480 or even HD resolution, but doing so often makes them somewhat blurry/grainy.. loss of clarity. Is there some way using my Adobe suite (After Effect primarily) to upscale them and keep them looking clean/clear in the process?
The second thing is to figure out exactly how to turn 2 hours of video into 2 hours of DVD output. Using the HDLink program with CineForm, there appears to be the ability to convert the incoming capture directly to .mk2 files, yet, when I do this, all I see is AVI files that are huge in size. I've only recorded a few minutes to test it, and they are many GBs in size, obviously way too big for DVD use. I am confused because I select the option to convert directly to DVD and the quality options are not very helpful, there is low, medium, high, film scan, and film scan 2. I'd like to know how to set it to fit 2 hours of capture into 2 hours of DVD and so forth.
As a side note, for anyone considering the Intensity card for analog capture of VCRs, beware that it wont work out of the box. A "bug" has been reported over a year ago and yet they never resolved it. The problem is, somehow the analog output of the composite video from a VCR results in skipped audio/video frames when capturing using the single Y (green) cable on the Intensity break-out cable set. The solution supposedly is to spend about $40 or so buying a composite RCA to s-Video converter, then a s-video to Y/C 2 RCA plugs that use two of the three component cables on the break-out cable set. There is info online about it, but sadly their PDF document explains none of this to you. Another caveat to beware of.. that again their manual does not explain, is that by default the card records the HDMI input. You have to switch it using their software to allow analog record. However, the program is NOT installed on the Windows Program folders with their media capture program. It's found in the Control Panel. If their manual had included this it would have saved me some time looking it up and almost returning the card thinking it was bad. For OSX it is apparently in the Preferences menu.
Anyway, any help on how to clean up old video/audio to dvd or bluray like qualities, and how to best handle the larger file sets of CineForm and/or the Intensity provided codecs into DVD sized video/audio, would be greatly appreciated.
I recently picked up the Black Magic Design Intensity card with intentions of using it's analog ports to capture some old VHS/Hi8/DV tapes I still have, to convert them to DVD.
I have the CineForm codec, and the one that comes with the card. I am attempting to do/learn two things. The first is to figure out how to "clean up" the quality of the tapes. I see old DVDs, even movies before DVD that when they are put on bluray look stunning. What are some of the steps used to do something like this? I'd like to upscale them to 720x480 or even HD resolution, but doing so often makes them somewhat blurry/grainy.. loss of clarity. Is there some way using my Adobe suite (After Effect primarily) to upscale them and keep them looking clean/clear in the process?
The second thing is to figure out exactly how to turn 2 hours of video into 2 hours of DVD output. Using the HDLink program with CineForm, there appears to be the ability to convert the incoming capture directly to .mk2 files, yet, when I do this, all I see is AVI files that are huge in size. I've only recorded a few minutes to test it, and they are many GBs in size, obviously way too big for DVD use. I am confused because I select the option to convert directly to DVD and the quality options are not very helpful, there is low, medium, high, film scan, and film scan 2. I'd like to know how to set it to fit 2 hours of capture into 2 hours of DVD and so forth.
As a side note, for anyone considering the Intensity card for analog capture of VCRs, beware that it wont work out of the box. A "bug" has been reported over a year ago and yet they never resolved it. The problem is, somehow the analog output of the composite video from a VCR results in skipped audio/video frames when capturing using the single Y (green) cable on the Intensity break-out cable set. The solution supposedly is to spend about $40 or so buying a composite RCA to s-Video converter, then a s-video to Y/C 2 RCA plugs that use two of the three component cables on the break-out cable set. There is info online about it, but sadly their PDF document explains none of this to you. Another caveat to beware of.. that again their manual does not explain, is that by default the card records the HDMI input. You have to switch it using their software to allow analog record. However, the program is NOT installed on the Windows Program folders with their media capture program. It's found in the Control Panel. If their manual had included this it would have saved me some time looking it up and almost returning the card thinking it was bad. For OSX it is apparently in the Preferences menu.
Anyway, any help on how to clean up old video/audio to dvd or bluray like qualities, and how to best handle the larger file sets of CineForm and/or the Intensity provided codecs into DVD sized video/audio, would be greatly appreciated.