Home Video Editing Workflow

Hey!

I'm currently working on editing some old home videos that I captured from analog (Hi8) tapes. The footage is 720x480i, variable frame rate. Resolve does a pretty good job handling the footage, but I've run into an issue I'm not sure how to solve.

Due to the variable frame rate, sections of the video show the "Media Offline" image (both while editing and after exporting). I've tried optimizing the video in Resolve, but it didn't make a difference. I know that Handbrake is capable of converting variable frame rate videos to constant frame rate, but unfortunately it does not handle deinterlacing nearly as well as Resolve, and does not support exporting interlaced footage.

Is it possible in Resolve to handle missing frames more gracefully? For example, repeating the last good frame instead of showing the "Media Offline" image (or even just showing black instead).

Thanks!

Captured interlaced analog video should not be variable frame rate. No wonder Resolve is having problems with it. If possible, capture it again to a constant frame rate. If that’s not possible, you really need to convert it to a constant frame rate and deinterlace it.

I captured from analog (Hi8) tapes.

How exactly?

I captured from analog (Hi8) tapes.

How exactly?

I have an XCAPTURE-1 (borrowed from a friend), which I captured from via StreamCatcher to AVC MP4 files (I would prefer to have captured to a lossless format, but Resolve doesn't support AVI). I have not found another piece of software that is able to capture the interlaced footage from the XCAPTURE-1 correctly.

You should use the software that comes with the xcapture unit, VideoKeeper 2. StreamCapture is a desktop capturing app.

Resolve doesn't support AVI

The format is supported. The codec used inside may not be.

Here's how that helps. If a supported codec is a Capture option...

Cineform and Grass Valley are two supported AVI codecs. Uncompressed RGB and YUV are also supported.

You should use the software that comes with the xcapture unit, VideoKeeper 2. StreamCapture is a desktop capturing app.

The StreamCapture app I have is different than the one that shows up in a Google search. I also have VideoKeeper 2, but had to do some messing around to get it to run in English. It is able to capture to either AVI (uncompressed YUV, according to MediaInfo) or MP4. The MP4 files it captures are also variable frame rate, the AVI files are not.

Resolve doesn't support AVI

The format is supported. The codec used inside may not be.

Here's how that helps. If a supported codec is a Capture option...

Cineform and Grass Valley are two supported AVI codecs. Uncompressed RGB and YUV are also supported.

Unfortunately, I am not able to get Resolve to open uncompressed YUV AVI files. I'm also not sure if the AVI files are properly interlaced, as VLC is able to deinterlace my MP4 files well (60 FPS playback), but the AVI files only play at 30.

I had no problems importing an Uncompressed YUV AVI file on my end. You're sure it's really Uncompressed? No codec used at all, like V210 or something?

Could you post a Mediainfo report of each captured clip in each of the different formats you captured in? This will give us more info to work with.

Could you post a Mediainfo report of each captured clip in each of the different formats you captured in? This will give us more info to work with.

Sure, here are some exports from MediaInfo:

AVI (VideoKeeper 2)
MP4 (VideoKeeper 2)
MP4 (StreamCatcher)

The only normal one seems to be the AVI. I’ve never seen variable frame rate interlaced video. I know the YUYV AVI files are huge, you might try using ffmpeg to rewrap them to a .mov format.

ffmpeg.exe -i inputfile.avi -c:v copy -c:a copy output.mov

The mov files import into Resolve, but it just sees them as audio files, not video. VLC also has trouble with the video ("VLC could not decode the format "yuvs" (No description for this codec)").

Here's the MediaInfo output for it.

Those files look good, they just are not compatible.
If you can open them in the free Shutter Encoder, transcode them there to ProRes 422 HQ or Cineform High in a MOV wrapper (without changing the audio) and you should be good to go and save a lot of space too.

Looks like Shutter Encoder did the trick! I was able to convert the AVI file to ProRes, which Resolve was happy to open. The video looks great, and is being deinterlaced properly. Next step for me will be to re-capture all the footage (which I'm not super jazzed about, but if it means getting a good result, it's worth the effort).

Thank you all for your help!