[Chris Wright]

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1508203

[Chris Wright]

1. short answer, buy a panasonic 4 head vhs that outputs component and Blackmagic Design Intensity Pro 4k(support capture and playback output and its mjpeg codec)

2. long answer(for when you have free time to read below)

2 words: compression and resizing.
Tip #1. Many capture cards, have a native resolution size and then they just resize to whatever you request. If you have a fast computer, try to capture
their native, even if its way bigger than you need. You can then resize with professional software/hardware later on.
If you have space issues, capture 640×480 or 720×480 29.97fps. but I’d go with 720 so that you have a standard scalable resolution. Don’t capture with
contrast filters on! AE can do better unsharping/contrast in post.
if the software allows it, try 720×486. There’s 486 visible lines sometimes in the source footage. Think “the ring”.
a digital NTSC video frame is 720 pixels x 486 lines, and a PAL video frame is 720 pixels x 576 lines.

other technical considerations for ntsc:
color management: BT.601 16-235 or 0-255 full gamut(test). (don’t use 1953 color)
White point is D65 6500k. Top/even field.
0.91 pixel aspect ratio
gamma 2.2

Tip #2.Capture at little to no compression so you can recompress later. It’s called generation loss. The more you compress, the more blockiness/artifacts appear. Some of the best capture cards actually can be set to many pixel sizes and you can choose the codec of your choice depending on your hard drive speed.

I used to use an ati all in wonder, cheap picvideo codec with Virtualdub. no droppped frames! 2700KB/s ; it’s perfect for 7200rpm hard drives. supports
Advanced Deblocking of Highly Compressed Video, DirectShow Codec.
https://www.accusoft.com/products/picvideo-m-jpeg-codec/pricing/

Some newer models: all component, not composite:
Blackmagic Design Intensity Pro 4k ProRes and DNxHD, or as fully uncompressed 10-bit video,
Black magic decklink can capture uncompressed, for instance. but it needs special usb renises driver
Diamond Multimedia USB 2.0 High Definition can capture component.
StarTech.com Standalone Video Capture component.
Matrox MXO2 Mini High Definition HDMI and Analog I/O Device component
Hauppauge Colossus PCI Express Internal HD-PVR With Component

Tip #3. You’ll want a 4 head S-VHS with component output and Time base correction to reduce fringing and poor color. If you can find one used in TV stations, they are professional quality. Clean with alcohal on the heads, run dummy tape cleaner. You’ll want to stay away from composite. It is an old, noisy way to combine all singals. s-video is a little better. Use component intead, as it is the best.

Tipe #4
If you have a slow computer and little disk space, Picvideo codecs(a motion jpeg) always worked well for me because its intraframe-only compression is easy
on computers, hd space and cpu’s. Prores/DNxHD is also small.

Tip #5
codec capture roundup:motion jpeg’s or jpeg2000 or prores.

advantage mjpeg:
mjpeg tolerates rapidly changing motion in the video stream, whereas compression schemes using interframe compression can often experience.

disadvantage h.264:
cpu lag, interframe compression can often experience unacceptable quality loss when the video content changes significantly between each frame. temporal
compression can create “artifacts” or remnants of previous R-Frames, until the next I-Frame refreshes the scene

advantage h.264:
smaller file size than mjpeg
advantage ProRes:
compatible mac, small size, less compression

fully uncompressed:
if your raid can handle it, go for it! nothing beats 100% perfect quality uncompressed.

Tip #6 Output or final render gear:
output: Blackmagic Design Intensity Pro 4k-realtime playback output
other stuff:
supports color management BT.601.hardware Algolith box, terrenax box, topaz enhance,After Effects preserve upscale, DCT artifact removal, resize, flicker,
mosquito noise, color halos, deinterlacing, etc.
———-
Tip #7 Deinterlace with the highest quality deinterlacer before final render/upscale or you wasted ALL previous steps!

[Chris Wright]

is your monitor color managed?
try importing it in AE with color management. It should look perfect.
if not, import into AE and use an adjustment layer, utility-color profile converter that burns in the correct color.
neither premiere or adobe media encoder supports color management. why? dunno.

windows media player classic home cinema supports color management for playback.
HD is rec709.

[Chris Wright]

Tinny sound
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/30/874168#874190

ADR location atmosphere
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/168/858838#858839

Remove silabence
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/168/858830#858831

[Chris Wright]

dead pixel 6 will remove up to 3 specks with thickness, remove speck and visible boundry box.
Ae6
https://f1.creativecow.net/6195/dead-pixel-6

[Chris Wright]

Is this a log dpx? Interpret and render logarithmic if required. Log stores overbright values similar to 32 bpc.
This is required to work in linear while editing. Also, you can use cineon converter log to Lin effect with adjustment layers and visa versa before rendering.

Also, 8 bit dpx can possibly have histogram errors from the past. If you do any blending and color correction beware of that. And work in 16, 32 bpc, AE will dither for you upon render time.

There can also be color management issues thrown into the mix as well such as universal printing density.

[Chris Wright]

try multiband compression for small differences of loud and soft and then follow with rms normalizer for overall volume.

[Chris Wright]

try random read/write uncompressed tests, and blackmagic tests video over a longer time, not just a short burst giving a true mb/sec. for example, a 840 evo says at least 400mb/sec but in actual real world @ 200 mb/sec. it’s called marketing.

average read speeds of 4GB of evo 840 is 115 MB/sec!
https://www.anandtech.com/show/6527/mydigitalssd-smart-bp3-msata-ssd-review/5

4k random read is about 40MB/sec!
https://www.storagereview.com/samsung_840_evo_ssd_review

[Chris Wright]

https://f1.creativecow.net/8358/free-star-wars-5-look-for-after-effects5

[Chris Wright]

if you have the fastest computer on the planet(10ghz) and a slow media/cache system, you’ll never get realtime playback. 4k requires 1200mb/sec not even including multiple layers and color management. you’ll need raid 5 on both separately.

a little known fact about low end non-Pro asynchronous ssd’s. they usually publish only the compressed speeds of 500mb/sec, but uncompressed(ie. no mp3,zip) they are 200mb/sec or lower!)

also, disable SATA power management and enable ahci, in your bios to speed things up. enable trim in OS. Do NOT defrag ssds.

the Windows Write-Cache Buffer Flushing disabled will increase speed too vs reliability.

look for uncompressed random benchmarks vs sequential because image sequences will copy much slower compared to video. 128k block size format too.

and please get samsung pro vs non-pro if you use red vs gh4 mp4 footage.

the non pro fall apart with larger file sizes.

use the Blackmagic Speed Test. SLC vs MLC. ssd drives filled up with MLC=slowwww.