The Spam Thread!

[huckleberrypie]

I figured out what to do with my old copy of Windows 8.1. Install it on Greta.

The reasons being that Windows 10 has a painfully slow startup time and seems sluggish at times, especially Microsoft Edge. I'm also going to use Greta for my TV recording purposes due to her portability. The fact that I also only use her on road trips is another reason.

Her Intel B960 is capable of recording high quality ATSC streams without issues on Windows 7 and 8.1. I have a "kworld" ATSC tuner and have recorded some broadcast TV using Greta during road trips. I think Windows 10 will begin to affect the recording quality a bit due to the overhead.

The current plan is to test the Vidbox with Greta once it arrives. I will try out the bundled software and OBS and see which one works best for me. I think Greta will be able to handle recording a composite video input without issue. MPEG-2 may be a preferred format for editing purposes, and the final product will either be MKV or MP4.

Aren't you getting any composite artifacting or something along the lines of those when recording ATSC broadcasts?

Also, in other news... I'm sure some of you guys share my sentiment about screen protector films being hard as nuts to apply especially if your place is dusty and/or with pets around.

[cpd2009]

I figured out what to do with my old copy of Windows 8.1. Install it on Greta.

The reasons being that Windows 10 has a painfully slow startup time and seems sluggish at times, especially Microsoft Edge. I'm also going to use Greta for my TV recording purposes due to her portability. The fact that I also only use her on road trips is another reason.

Her Intel B960 is capable of recording high quality ATSC streams without issues on Windows 7 and 8.1. I have a "kworld" ATSC tuner and have recorded some broadcast TV using Greta during road trips. I think Windows 10 will begin to affect the recording quality a bit due to the overhead.

The current plan is to test the Vidbox with Greta once it arrives. I will try out the bundled software and OBS and see which one works best for me. I think Greta will be able to handle recording a composite video input without issue. MPEG-2 may be a preferred format for editing purposes, and the final product will either be MKV or MP4.

Aren't you getting any composite artifacting or something along the lines of those when recording ATSC broadcasts?

Also, in other news... I'm sure some of you guys share my sentiment about screen protector films being hard as nuts to apply especially if your place is dusty and/or with pets around.

No. My Kworld ATSC tuner is fully digital. No analog inputs, just a coax connector for an antenna. The signal has to be pretty strong since the recording software I normally use, NextPVR, usually dumps the ATSC stream into an MPEG-2 .ts file in it's full digital format. Any signal drops and the resulting file may end up getting corrupted. With Windows 8.1 and up, I have to install a third party MPEG-2 and DD decoder since those are no longer bundled with Windows. My extremely ancient copy of CyberLink Powerproducer provides these and they work well with NextPVR.

But, since my cable box likely has HDCP through it's HDMI port, I can only record the footage either through composite or component leads.  My cable box doesn't even have S-Video out. Thus, there will be some comb effects in my recordings off TV unless I invest in an HDMI or component capture device that can ignore the HDCP. The Honestech Vidbox will be mostly used to convert my VHS tapes to digital format first and foremost.

As for screen protectors, I don't use them at all due to said difficulty in application. I risk getting my screens scratched up more, but since I try to keep good care of my devices, they tend to not get too scratched up.

[cpd2009]

The Vidbox device arrived at my doorstep today. Testing it right now using the bundled software recording a 15 minute file of a looping weather channel from cable TV. This is how it's currently hooked up:

Pace HD Cable Box composite output > Sony Hifi VHS VCR Line input, then output through the VCRs composite > Vidbox device connected to Greta.

I really wish my cable box had S-Video out. :/ It's not HD, but it would be a lot better than composite video. I could find a component capture device, which would allow me to record content from cable networks in HD provided that the cable box firmware doesn't disable the analog HD output due to DRM.

Old Jasper does have one of those no-name Chinese PCI TV capture cards. I bought the card in 2005 as a way to improve my then-continuous production of screencaps as well as attempt video capture. I originally used it with my first Windows PC, which contained a 500mhz AMD K6-2 running Windows 98SE, later XP home. Sadly, the bundled software was very buggy and capture on that K6-2 was hit or miss. Capture improved once I got the card in a more powerful system, and it's currently inside old Jasper who has a 1ghz Pentium III.

[cpd2009]

Results of initial tests... the Vidbox works very well. I'm also surprised by the bundled software. It's very basic and has a clunky interface, but it does recording functions well. You can record to a couple different formats such as MPEG1, MPEG2, and WMV. You can also record the video and burn it straight to DVD. The video files aren't deinterlaced, so you would need to add that filter manually later on if you plan on storing the videos on a PC and not burning a DVD.

I'm a bit skeptical about OBS compatibility though. The Vidbox bundle came with a voucher for the Movavi Video Edit 17 suite. I went to test it's recording function, but I ran into the issue I had with the Dazzle DVC100. Movavi could see the video output from the Vidbox, but there was no audio.

I wonder if these devices are only designed to work with their bundled software. I still plan on testing the Vidbox with OBS to see if it does work with both audio and video.

[cpd2009]

I ran into a minor roadblock when it comes to deinterlacing the resulting recordings.

I find that recording to WMV works the best. Recording to MPEG-2 results in frame drops after a while resulting in jerky video at various points. The files are not deinterlaced to make it easier to put the files on a Video DVD. There is no option, at least one I haven't found yet, to allow deinterlacing of the video input inside the Honestech software.

Magix Movie Edit does have something called an "anti-interlace" filter, but it appears to be useless. I applied the filter and marked it on file export, but the video still has interlacing. This is a problem as one of the types of videos I make are compilations of old TV commercials and having the source videos deinterlaced improves the overall presentation.

I rather wouldn't run the recordings through Handbrake to deinterlace beforehand as that would cause quality loss. The only video editor I have that can properly deinterlace video files during export is my ancient copy of Adobe Premiere Pro.

I'll play around with the Vidbox some more. Maybe there's a deinterlace option I'm missing.

Oh yeah, Vidbox works with OBS, but it's a bit annoying to set up. I can get both the Vidbox audio and video to output through OBS and record the streams. Greta isn't powerful enough to record at HD resolution though. I also have to manually go into the Vidbox driver settings and select the audio output each time after I open OBS. This setting isn't retained upon exit for some reason.

[huckleberrypie]

I ran into a minor roadblock when it comes to deinterlacing the resulting recordings.

I find that recording to WMV works the best. Recording to MPEG-2 results in frame drops after a while resulting in jerky video at various points. The files are not deinterlaced to make it easier to put the files on a Video DVD. There is no option, at least one I haven't found yet, to allow deinterlacing of the video input inside the Honestech software.

Magix Movie Edit does have something called an "anti-interlace" filter, but it appears to be useless. I applied the filter and marked it on file export, but the video still has interlacing. This is a problem as one of the types of videos I make are compilations of old TV commercials and having the source videos deinterlaced improves the overall presentation.

I rather wouldn't run the recordings through Handbrake to deinterlace beforehand as that would cause quality loss. The only video editor I have that can properly deinterlace video files during export is my ancient copy of Adobe Premiere Pro.

I'll play around with the Vidbox some more. Maybe there's a deinterlace option I'm missing.

Oh yeah, Vidbox works with OBS, but it's a bit annoying to set up. I can get both the Vidbox audio and video to output through OBS and record the streams. Greta isn't powerful enough to record at HD resolution though. I also have to manually go into the Vidbox driver settings and select the audio output each time after I open OBS. This setting isn't retained upon exit for some reason.

Would going for x264 in an MP4 container work for you? Most people tend to use that format these days, and imho that pretty much negates the need for any of them codec packs since you can load up VLC anyway.

[cpd2009]

I ran into a minor roadblock when it comes to deinterlacing the resulting recordings.

I find that recording to WMV works the best. Recording to MPEG-2 results in frame drops after a while resulting in jerky video at various points. The files are not deinterlaced to make it easier to put the files on a Video DVD. There is no option, at least one I haven't found yet, to allow deinterlacing of the video input inside the Honestech software.

Magix Movie Edit does have something called an "anti-interlace" filter, but it appears to be useless. I applied the filter and marked it on file export, but the video still has interlacing. This is a problem as one of the types of videos I make are compilations of old TV commercials and having the source videos deinterlaced improves the overall presentation.

I rather wouldn't run the recordings through Handbrake to deinterlace beforehand as that would cause quality loss. The only video editor I have that can properly deinterlace video files during export is my ancient copy of Adobe Premiere Pro.

I'll play around with the Vidbox some more. Maybe there's a deinterlace option I'm missing.

Oh yeah, Vidbox works with OBS, but it's a bit annoying to set up. I can get both the Vidbox audio and video to output through OBS and record the streams. Greta isn't powerful enough to record at HD resolution though. I also have to manually go into the Vidbox driver settings and select the audio output each time after I open OBS. This setting isn't retained upon exit for some reason.

Would going for x264 in an MP4 container work for you? Most people tend to use that format these days, and imho that pretty much negates the need for any of them codec packs since you can load up VLC anyway.

There is no option to record in x264 MP4 in the Honestech software. I can record to that format with OBS of course, but it cannot see Greta's GeForce 610m GPU even if I run OBS with the Nvidia GPU manually, thus no hardware accelerated encoding. It uses nearly all the CPU cycles during recording, resulting in dropped frames. There also remains the issue of not being able to de-interlace the video coming off the Vidbox as I record. It doesn't matter what format the video is recorded in, there is still interlacing.

I am exploring a plan B, which is using the Vidbox with Pearl. Obviously, Pearl should excel at MPEG-2 encoding which is my preferred format to minimize quality loss when putting together the source video files into my video editor (Premiere, whatever else is useful) and re-encoding and de-interlacing into the final video for YouTube upload. I am attempting to minimize quality loss as the source videos go through at least two different encoding processes between recording and final editing, hence my preference for MPEG-2. By converting the MPEG-2 into a de-interlaced MP4, and then re-encoding it to MP4 again using a modern video editor, quality loss becomes apparent. By using Adobe Premiere Pro, I can de-interlace the source files during the final render of my TV commercial compilations or archiving them in the final MP4 file. Basically the process would go like this...

Record source videos to MPEG-2 > Import into Adobe Premiere, arrange and edit, and export as DV-AVI > Convert the file to streamable MP4 for YouTube upload or for archival purposes.

It's a cumbersome process for sure, but what else can I do to de-interlace my VHS transfers while minimizing quality loss?

If Magix's "anti-interlace" filter actually worked, I would have just went with MP4 recording in OBS and imported directly into Magix.

The Vidbox device works well. It's the software end of things that is causing my issues, along with a laptop that is showing her age. The only silver lining is that Greta runs a lot cooler with Windows 8.1 and obviously much faster.

---

To clarify one thing... I do know that OBS will probably record a lot better with Pearl. The issue with de-interlacing the recordings will probably remain though.

[cpd2009]

The Vidbox is now configured for use on Pearl, and MPEG-2 encoding works far better. No dropped frames when recording for long periods.

I also feel a bit stupid now. I didn't notice that the Honestech software does deinterlace while recording in MPEG-2 format, but not WMV. Since that's the case, I can use Magix Movie Edit again and render straight to MP4, but I ended up deactivating and uninstalling it earlier in the evening.

It's no big deal. I can re-install and activate it again later on today. I pretty much went through a lot of troubleshooting for nothing, but some good came out of it. But it's way past my bedtime. I need my rest.

[cpd2009]

Good afternoon. I'm currently testing recording with OBS, and I believe I may have found a solution.

By default, OBS records to a very high quality MKV container with very little compression artifacts evident. I'm also able to use NVENC too. I ran the recorded file through Handbrake so I could apply a de-interlace filter, and it worked great.

The OBS method still requires you to manually set the audio output in the Vidbox driver settings each time you start the program, but it's a minor nitpick at this point. OBS excels over the bundled software due to native NVENC support as well as recording straight to a high quality MKV format. OBS still needs some kind of built in deinterlacing function. While OBS is geared more to video streamers and progressive video sources, there are people who may want to stream with a game system that has no progressive output, such as an old analog video game console. Such a filter would be necessary and welcome.

There is one more piece of software I am going to try. The bundled Movavi Video Edit suite. It too also appears to have a hardware based record function as well as a built in video converter. As with OBS, I don't think the hardware acceleration will work on Greta.

Now that is out of the way, there is still one more lingering problem. It's an issue I noticed with both the Vidbox and the old Dazzle DVC100. At some point, video capture programs that use a software-based preview (the bundled Honestech software or VirtualDub), will lose the ability to show the video input preview, yet will still be able to record the AV stream just fine. You just get a black space where the preview would be.

This problem didn't occur on Greta, but has occurred on Pearl. The only possible correlations that I see are the use of integrated Intel graphics as well as using an older Windows version. I would prefer to use the Honestech software to make video DVDs of VHS tapes, but there are other solutions available, and in fact, one may have been bundled with my Vidbox. The aforementioned Movavi suite also has the ability to create DVDs out of recorded videos as well as being able to record from the Vidbox as well. I really don't want to downgrade to Windows 8.1 if I don't have to, since I only have one license and I would prefer to keep that on old Greta.

[cpd2009]

I tried reinstalling the Honestech software, but I'm still not getting a video preview. The program can still capture and record video fine, but without a working preview the software is useless. I believe Windows 10 is to blame for this since both OBS and Movavi are able to see the video input while recording, and they both appear to be using a hardware video overlay while the Honestech software (and probably VirtualDub) both use software based previews.

The only possible way to restore working video preview is to downgrade to Windows 8.1, but I won't do that. Instead, I will use Movavi/OBS for recording, using Handbrake for deinterlacing, and Magix for making video DVDs. I'll ditch the bundled software. It appears to be a bit more buggy under Windows 10.

When I am able to post a review at the HSN product page, I will make mention of the bundled software and probably give the device a three star rating. The device is easy to set up, the drivers work well, and third party application support is great. It's the bundled Honestech software that drags things down. Since this is primarily targeted at beginners, this could be an issue for others who also use Windows 10 and also don't have the technical knowledge of manually enabling the audio output from the device in a third party program like OBS.