Beautiful looking piece of machinery. What is the downfall of using this device for your captures, both audio and video? Other than your not going to end up with an uncompressed file for post processing? What do you get if you just capture with the HDMI ouput port directly to the BM HDMI input? The comb filter in the Crystalio II sounds like it's better than the BM hub. I think the BM hub is only 2D. Just food for thought.

Elvis

for ntsc LD Crystalio II definitely has the best comb filter and analog to digital conversion. hld-X0 has a very good s-video output too. BM doesn't support 1080p60 so its going to have to be 720p60 for LD captures.

Correct on the BM support. But why do you need BM to support 1080P60? The picture coming out of the X0 is interlaced, so leave it interlaced. You would be capturing an analog signal in NTSC 8bit 4x3 thru the BM?

So I guess I'm a little lost here. Are you going to use the Crystalio II for analog to digital conversion? If so, what are you going to get coming out of the HDMI output on the Crystalio II? Is there settings to choose from? Obviously if your already digital from the Crystalio II, your not going to be doing any changes with the BM, basically your going to just pass thru and write. Right? So the 8bit capture is not necessary unless your bypassing the Crystalio II, right?

Or is the S-video output on the X-0 the way to go into the BM via the decoder ? Meaning let the comb filter from the X-0 do the work.
Guess you have two choices of capture. I'm thinking the X-0 (s-video) => decoder (s-video) => BM , is going to give you the best picture to work with in 8bit YUV 4X3 NTSC uncompressed. That is for picture.
Now for sound?? separate captures, what's the work flow? X-0 (Spdif) => decoder (Spdif) => Crystalio II (HDMI) => BM (PCM capture)
Process the picture (I like to use Neat Video in Adobe Premiere, do this last before authoring), leave the sound attached from RCA is fine, since your going to be replacing it in the video editor, hopefully Adobe Premiere, line up the new audio captures to the film and dump the old audio RCA after lining up the new separate audio tracks underneath. That's it. What kind of authoring will you do at this point? Guess you could do a few different ones. BR, DVD, etc.

You can't scale without deinterlacing so 480i to 1080i essentially means you're deinterlacing it just to interlace it again.

So don't scale, stick with 4:3. Others can scale as needed when they watch, correct?

That's an issue of aspect ratio. Scaling is enlarging or shrinking the image.

We are dealing with two separate formats here. NTSC LD and Muse LD.
Ntsc LD as you know is composite format therefore it needs y/c splitter(comb filter) to turn it into component form.
Muse LD is a component format so there is no y/c seperation. Ld player here acts as a transport. It reads the signal and outputs it to decoder. The player does no encoding at all. It is not possible to get any video out of the player alone. Digital audio is burned on the disc just like ntsc LD so the player can retract that information without the decoder. Decoder only has component output with fixed resolution of 1125i analog(1035i visible). Modern equipment see it as 1080i with black borders for the missing % 4 resolution.

Ntsc LD you know how it works. It is 480i composite. You split y/c with comb filter to make it component then deinterlace to make it 480p progresive then upscale to 720p or 1080p.
We can grab the signal at any of these points.
1- hld-x0 composite-> bm composite in using bm's comb filter and capture as 480i component signal.
2-hld-x0 svideo->bm svideo in have bm capture 480i component signal. X0 has a superb 3d comb filter.
3-hld-x0 composite-> crystalio 2 composite in. Here you have 2 options. Crystalio 2 has 2 seperate chips for sd deinterlacing. Faroudja fli2300 and gennum vxp. You select which you want to do deinterlacing depend on content. Then output 480p hdmi into BM. 480p is the lowest crystalio will do.
Once the video is progressive gennum vxp chip can upscale upto 1080p. But bm will not take 1080p60 so 720p60 here is the optimum.

Question is do you think software will better deinterlace and upscale then faroudja or gennum vxp chips?
If yes, svideo from hldx0 into bm is the best.
If no, 720p60 hdmi from Crystalio 2 is the best.
Crystalio 2 can merge ac-3, dts or pcm audio with picture on its hdmi output.

For example:
Star wars phantom menace ep 1 disc.
1-Hld-x0 composite into crystalio 2.
2-Hld-x0 rf out into my lexicon ldd1 rf demodulator then into crystalio 2.
3- crystalio 2 hdmi out into bm shuttle in 720p60 with ac-3 5.1

For film-based content, you can absolutely beat any hardware by using a manual software IVTC since you can precisely invert the original pulldown pattern. The hardware can guess wrong sometimes (low motion/high noise) or have to drop to interpolation for a few frames at an edit point to reset.

For video-based content, you would have to compare but my guess would be that software can probably beat hardware older than a couple years in most situations (since it doesn't have to be realtime).

Thanks Substance for that explanation on Muse, I didn't know that it was a component recording. Interesting.
Well, here is how I would capture the picture, knowing what I know now.
The BM has a component input on the hub. I would go as follows X0 (component) => BM (component) capture in 1080i 8bit uncompressed. Will the BM software see it this way thru the component inputs? I'm thinking the BM hub doesn't treat component as HD like it does on the H.264.
Then you can deinterlace if you want with Adobe Premiere. Personally I would stick with the interlace. You could do both.
In answer to your question, I think you should try different setups/flows to see which works best.

Oh, interesting!
I'll give these settings a try later with my X9/VPS3800/Kuro setup.

Does anyone have the latest manual for the Crystalio VPS3800? I'm specifically looking for the instructions for the 3D comb filter settings and what each them does.

Here you can find the explenation from Substance:

3D comb filtering really better?

Perfect! Thanks.

You're welcome. I discovered Faroudja's True Life menue to tweak with LD picture. It's incredibly good.

I prefer the Vxp Gennum for de-interlacing but will have a look at the True Life settings. Still playing around to get the best out of the comb filter. It's the best one I've found to date but I keep changing the settings depending on the disc. What are your settings if you don't mind me asking?

OK!!!enough headache for you guys. Here are the best settings for Laserdisc for Crystalio II. Calibration settings were done with i1Pro2 spectrophotometer, i1 display pro colorimeter and Calman 5 software on already calibrated Pioneer Elite Kuro Pro-141FD signature edition plasma monitor(Oppo bdp-105 as pattern generator). I calibrated both HLD-X0 and MLD-7020 inputs and they turned out near identical settings. These settings should work on most Pioneer branded players with minimal errors(pro calibration needed on each player for best/most accurate results).

Video Settings:

Video= -28
Contrast = 10
Color=Sharpness=hue= 0

Color Temperature:

R offset: 2
G offset: 0
B offset: 4
R gain: 2
G gain: 0
B gain: 2

User(custom gamma):

16
20
34
45
58
70
84
100
107
118
130
145
152
167
176
188
200
213
223
235

Overscan: +1

Position: 0,-1

smooth scaling: 2

Dot crawl Settings: Adaptive

Chroma upsampling filter: 0FF

Chroma Filter: OFF

3D comb filter: ON

Luma gain: 8
Chroma gain : 8
Luma Coring: 28
Chroma coring: 40

all other settings are either default or off on all menus. hope this helps.

Hi Substance, thanx for having you around, really!



Did you mean "Brightness= - 28" ?



it may work for VXP Gennom but to fight green tint of Faroudja this would look completely different, would it? I found a fast way to eliminate it by treating R offset & gain neutral or evtl. offset until +4
G offset & gain -2 to -3
B offset & gain +4 to +6

There is a slower way: to go with both R's to minus zone to see a green tint even better, then eliminate it with slowly using G to minus and B to plus and then pulling R's into 0 or even + zone again to reach a desired saturation.




Great!!! Both VXP and Faroudja. BUT: there is another function connected with this "User IRE" numbers: a Gamma Value. Every time you press on OK after correcting every single IRE number, a Gamma Value for that same Number can also be adjusted. I left it on 0 all the time but do you know what is it's for?

I really have to say, on a bigger picture (1,5 meter wide) VXP looks good in colors but detail and homogeneity are unclear and picture looks like sort of "washed". It's like VXP tries to find detail where there is no any on an LD. Faroudja (incl. True Life ON) looks extremely clean, full of strong color, no any deinterlacing artefacts and like a real beautiful painting! It's a real beauty! I know you like VXP better, but maybe on a smaller screen it works...

Thanks Substance! Really useful. At those settings though I'm noticing quite a bit of checker boarding on fast moving scenes. Is there another setting to reduce this effect?

Seroxx, I have to say that the faroudja has a lot of trouble with fine detail and doesn't produce as stable an image as the vxp and I notice it "wobbles" when struggling with fine lines (for example chain mail armour in braveheart) do you notice this as well?

Yes I did, but I'm not disturbed by it 'cause it appears only sometimes. About the fine detail: after months of testing several LDs on a big screen (1.5 m < ) tweakining Faroudja True Life, VXP Gennom, Reon and Marvell Q-deo I only can say that if anybody looks for "detail", one should use any HD format please. Detail is not an LD virtue and you may recognize it looking at any wide shots on any LD. LD can not give more resolution than there is. What I find great about LD is that if processed correctly trough Crystalio 2 it can perform maximum of accuracy of given resolution and transfer. I like having a clean LD picture to enjoy it, and thanx for the suggestion, Braveheart was a great choice to enjoy after a long time, and somehow it seems to be appropriate because of next Saturday
Thanx to Substance and all that Gamma numbers, I really enjoy my picture, sorry "lively oil painting" now; this is my setting flow:

X9 - Crystalio 2 Faroudja True Life 1080p60 - AVR Pioneer Marvell Q-deo YNR set mostly on 2 (this depends on a LD transfer) for de-noising - HD 3D Projector Panasonic PT-AT 5000 Reon processing with automatic or manual H-sharpness and Detail Clarity levels, Color saturation if needed - Wall.

I liked VXP on the beginning better before I discovered True Life of Faroudja. Everything changed in seconds. I was bluffed. That Faroudja True Life chip was in my former DLP Projector InFocus 5700 which I loved very much for 10 years. I'm happy to have gotten this quality back! VXP I will probably use for HD.

Substance... excuse my curiosity please, do you have your ideal Crystalio 2 settings for Hi Vision LDs too? Top Gun or Dances with Wolves as a reference?