you've heard of mystery black boxes well here's a mystery white box there's no branding on this
anywhere looks like it has residue where it might have been glued onto something
but otherwise there's no stickers or writing or anything on it on this side it has an HDMI port
on this side it has composite video and left and right audio and here it has USB power and a switch
for 720p and 1080p so it's obviously some kind of video conversion device I'm leaning towards
thinking this is for converting composite video to HDMI because if it was from the other way around
you would think it would automatically detect the resolution instead of having a switch for it
and if this does a decent job at converting composite to HDMI then that will come in handy
for me because I have this PC set up with an HDMI capture card as I featured in a previous
video it's the pyle plink5 and the hardest thing about installing this was opening up the
case of the computer and putting in the card once I did that Windows automatically loaded
the drivers and it works perfectly with Windows 10's built-in camera app now I'll try connecting
the mystery white box device to the capture card using the world's thinnest HDMI cable
see if it produces any kind of video signal that the computer recognizes it says no signal
and that's not the capture card displaying that because if I unplug it it changes back to the
other message we saw earlier please connect a video source so I'll connect the video source
and within a few seconds it changes to no signal I have it set to 1080p I'll try switching it to 720p
it briefly flashed on the screen 720p at 60 hertz try switching it to 1080p
1080p at 60 hertz so it is working now let's try connecting a video source to
it here's the composite video output of a Sony DVD camcorder just off screen on the left there
now I'll try plugging in and we do get a video signal so that's
converting composite video to HDMI which the computer is capturing I have it set to 720P
and the video capture software is set to 720p at 60 frames per second this is a test of using the
Sony DVD camcorders composite video output into this mystery white box device which is
converting it to HDMI which is being captured by the computer so we'll see how this turns
out this is a widescreen video signal so it'll match the aspect ratio of what it's capturing
well I think that looked pretty good actually and it does appear to be capturing at 60 frames per
second but what would happen if I switch this camcorder to 4:3 aspect ratio because the vast
majority of composite video that anybody is going to want to capture or even just display on their TV
is going to be 4:3 aspect ratio so here's a test of using it to capture 4:3 aspect ratio video
and obviously this does not look correct because everything is getting stretched out to widescreen
so that's going to be a problem with this unless your media player or video editing software is
capable of squishing it back down to a 4:3 aspect ratio everything is going to look stretched out
so here's a sample video I captured of a 4:3 video source and obviously that does
not look correct if I just play it in Windows Media Player but if I open it
in VLC media player and then go to the video menu go to aspect ratio and change that to 4:3
now that looks correct more advanced video editors do let you change the aspect ratio
of a clip but basic ones like iMovie or in this case Microsoft's new clipchamp do not
because if I go to that video file I just captured and wait for it to prepare and drag it down to
the timeline you can see it just stretching out the widescreen and I don't think there's yeah if
I try to downsize it you can see it keeps the same aspect ratio so that's not going to work
luckily there is a way to change the aspect ratio of a video without needing to re-encode it
so there's no loss of quality it's called ffmpeg you can find it at ffmpeg.org you go to download
and scroll down it's available for Windows Mac and Linux I'm going to be using the windows
version so scroll over to the windows icon and then you go down to Windows builds by btbn
then scroll down and the one you want is ffmpeg-master-latest-164-gpl.zip
and you download that so here it is in my downloads folder you just double click on it click
on it again then go to bin and the file you want is ffmpeg.exe to make things easy I'm just going
to copy it into my user folder which is right here on the desktop so just click and drag it there
and copy it over and now we're also going to take that video file we want to change the aspect
ratio of which is in my camera roll folder to make things easy I already renamed it to incorrect.mp4
because normally it gives it this long file name that's difficult to type in so
I just made it easier copy that to the user folder
now go to a command prompt just type cmd and here you are in your user folder you
have ffmpeg.exe and that video file and the command you type is ffmpeg
-i to specify the input file which in this case is called incorrect.mp4 then you type -aspect
4:3 -c copy and then you specify the output file name and I'll call it corrected.mp4
and it shows a bunch of scary messages on the screen but just ignore that
type exit to get out the prompt and once you go to your user folder here
you'll see the new file called corrected.mp4 now for some reason when you open it in Windows Media
Player it still shows the incorrect stretched out aspect ratio but if I open it in VLC
you can see it now plays at the correct aspect ratio without needing to change
it and more importantly if we now open that file in a video editor
and drag it into our timeline it now shows up as the correct aspect ratio here's another test of
capturing video from the Sony DVD camcorder using the mystery white box device and the
method I just showed to correct aspect ratio so now you can see it is a proper 4:3 image
and it is multi-system I have it connected to my Sony mavica floppy disk camera whose video output
is switchable between ntsc and pal so if I switch it to pal we get a full color pal image from it
but being able to get good results from a live camera feed is a pretty
low bar because it is an inherently clean and stable video signal and
the same definitely cannot be said about videotape especially VHS so now let's try
capturing some video from everybody's favorite VW Jetta instructional tape
could you pop the hood Cali sure great I want everyone to see a couple of things before we
move on now when you open the hood place the prop rod in the hole identified by the arrow
you should check fluids when your Jetta is cold and on a level surface that way you get a more
accurate reading and prevent overfilling because the fluids will have settled the engine oil
dipstick is marked in red for easy identification and if you look for a dipstick to check the
automatic transmission fluid level well you're not going to find one wait you're not? I thought
all automatic transmissions had a dipstick well most do but your Volkswagen is a little different
the transmission is sealed because it requires minimal maintenance and
a unique fluid that helps reduce wear so you should see your Volkswagen dealer for service
well I think that doesn't look too bad for VHS but this is about as good as it can get because this
was a commercially and professionally mastered tape made on decent quality tape stock and as
you can see it was recorded at SP speed with a Hi-Fi stereo sound track now how about something
a bit more challenging a homemade recording of analog cable that was recorded at EP speed
you know how much he averages a day?
40 bucks no idea being a beggar could be so lucrative
he's not a beggar he's a street performer how romantic you have no idea
well you can't expect HD quality from this kind of source material although
this Sony VCR does its best to try to enhance it with what they called
reality regenerator but at least the image is stable unlike many VHS EP captures I've seen
I also tried capturing a macrovision encoded tape and it didn't seem to be affected by it at all
you stick out like a sore thumb around here hey what about you?
I fit in better than you at least I'm wearing cowboy boots oh yeah you blend
well everything was going fine until I tried playing this head cleaner tape which has
a stereo audio test on it and I noticed the left and right channels are reversed
this is your third cleaning
your video and audio heads will now be cleaned this is a mono audio test
stereo audio test Right Channel
stereo audio test Left Channel
your video and audio heads are now clean press stop and eject tape now do not rewind
I double checked all my connections I even switched to a different VCR just in case that
was the problem I checked the HDMI capture card with my camcorder again channels are fine coming
out of this channels are fine coming out of the VCR the problem is even with the cable is plugged
in where they should go the white one into the left the red one and to the right it's reversed I
don't know if this is just a weird quirk with this particular unit or all these conversion devices
have the audio channels reversed but if you get one of these you should test it by plugging in
only the left channel and make sure that comes out of the left speaker and plug in the only the
right channel make sure that comes out of the right speaker if they're reversed you'll have
to plug the right channel into the left input and vice versa to get it to actually come out correct
speaking of audio if you're going to be capturing from a mono VCR or a mono
camcorder and you only have one audio cable coming out of it please either use a Y cable
to connect it to both the left and right inputs or fix it in editing
because no one wants to watch a video which only has audio in one channel
if you're going to be capturing video from a vintage computer or video game
console you'll definitely want to have a CRT set
up to monitor the action because this setup has a lot of input lag
and if you're wondering if the audio and video are in sync the following video clip has the
slamming of a trunk lid which serves as a perfect test slate and checking that in my video editor
I determined that the audio is four frames ahead of the video at 60 frames per second
well that about covers Jetta's comfort and
convenience now let's move on to Jetta's performance let's do it
[music]
owning a Volkswagen means that you're getting a car that's designed for fun
to drive performance everything about driving one feels different you feel
the road the car and how you're connected to it all the more you're in the driver's seat
the more you'll experience what German engineering is all about
I managed to pry open the case and on the bottom of the circuit board it says mini AV
to HDMI 1080p version 3.0 from 2012 and it has two main chips this one I tried prying off the
heatsink but despite how haphazardly it was placed it's really stuck on there so I don't
want to risk breaking it so unfortunately we won't be able to get look at any markings on
that chip but that's the chip that converts the analog video and audio to digital
de-interlaces the video upscales it to HD with the switch to select either 720p or 1080p then
this chip converts it to HDMI for the output this chip is a silicon image SII 9022 acnu and
you can look up the data sheet for that but it basically just takes uncompressed digital video
and converts it to HDMI the only other thing of note on the circuit board is a pin out for
a serial port probably used for debugging and possibly for firmware updates for these chips
considering that these little composite to HDMI converter boxes cost anywhere between
six and ten dollars on sites like Amazon eBay and AliExpress I really can't complain
the only thing really wrong with it is that the left and right audio channels
are reversed and that can be easily fixed by swapping the cables and also that it
stretches out everything to widescreen but like I showed that's pretty easy to fix using ffmpeg
but considering that the HDMI capture card I'm using it with costs around a hundred dollars
if all you're going to do with this setup is just use it to capture analog video that
doesn't really make sense you'd be better off getting a purpose-built setup designed
exclusively for capturing analog video but since I already wanted to have an
HDMI capture card anyway then this kind of setup is useful for me it may not be
the highest quality setup especially since it doesn't have an S-video input but if I
just want to have something that's quick and easy to set up that doesn't take any
extra time to de-interlace and upscale the video then this will come in handy for me
what's the matter? there's no meat in this the girls wanted vegetarian lesbian lasagna