[mythtv-users] quality question.. ways to make it better?

[Bruce Markey]

J. Donavan Stanley wrote:
> Bruce Markey wrote:
> 
>> There is a new filter added after the 0.14 release in CVS that
>> fixes an outright mistake for bttv luma. It also has parameters
>> that allow you to make further adjustments that you can't do for
>> the hardware cards. 
> 
> 
> Can't you do it on the output side on the hardware cards?

You can apply "adjust" as an output filter and you may be able
to do some worthwhile tweaks. NOTE: the defauts parameters would
be hozed because it is set to compensate for bttv problems.

The problem is that if the settings are distorted during recording,
you can't fix it by compensating on playback. For instance. Say
you recorded with the contrast too high and it caused blooming
(edges of white areas become bloated and fuzzy). Once that distortion
is recorded in the digital values of the still frame, playback
at lower contrast won't make the edges sharp again. Same for bleeding
colors with too much saturation and so on.

Essientially what I'm doing is recording into a limited set of
values then strecthing then with adjust to push the chroma higher
relative to the luma right away before writing out to the output
file. You could do the same by using funky picture setting when
recording then strecth with the playback filter but the recorded
files would look weird unless if the playback filter wasn't used.

The point is that the capture chip is the same and not inferior.
With some tweaking, the software encoded files can looks as good
or better than the output files from hardware encoders.

--  bjm