Migration¶
Migrating from Decode-Orc 1.x to 2.0¶
Decode-Orc 2.0 introduces a new frame-based internal representation (CVBS_U10_4FSC). This is a breaking change. Project files from Decode-Orc 1.x are not compatible with 2.0 and will be rejected at load time with a clear error message.
Project file migration: There is no automated migration path. Projects must be recreated in Decode-Orc 2.0. This is necessary because the stage names, parameter names, and signal-level domain have all changed in ways that cannot be safely inferred from a 1.x project file.
Renamed stages: The following stages were renamed in v2.0. If you recreate a project, use the new stage IDs:
| Old stage ID (1.x) | New stage ID (2.0) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
pal_comp_source |
tbc_source |
Unified stage; video system detected from metadata |
pal_yc_source |
tbc_source |
|
ntsc_comp_source |
tbc_source |
|
ntsc_yc_source |
tbc_source |
|
pal_m_tbc_comp_source |
tbc_source |
|
field_map |
frame_map |
New parameters: remove_duplicates, pad_gaps, pad_strategy |
Removed stages: The following stage was removed in v2.0 with no replacement:
| Removed stage ID | Reason |
|---|---|
hackdac_sink |
Hardware-specific stage removed from the core distribution |
Renamed dialogues: The GUI dialogues have been renamed to use frame-based terminology:
| Old name (1.x) | New name (2.0) |
|---|---|
| Line-scope | Frame-scope |
| Field-timing | Frame-timing |
New stages in v2.0:
| Stage ID | Description |
|---|---|
cvbs_source |
Load CVBS captures in the CVBS file-format family |
cvbs_sink |
Write output to the CVBS file-format family in a selectable sample encoding |
Signal level domain: All internal signal levels in v2.0 are in the CVBS_U10_4FSC 10-bit domain (blanking = 256, white = 844 for PAL; blanking = 240, white = 800 for NTSC). The 16-bit IRE-based domain used in v1.x is gone. The video_params stage parameters for level overrides now use 10-bit values.
Migration from legacy vhs-decode builds¶
Legacy JSON metadata¶
The current version of Decode-Orc (and the ld-decode-tools Decode-Orc replaces) require TBC files with metadata in the current SQLite format (previously ld-decode used JSON rather than SQLite). Although older JSON metadata decodes will be accepted after a warning, they lack some of the newer fields used by Decode-Orc and may cause the tools to emit warnings about missing parameters.
If you have old decodes the recommended course of action is to re-decode the capture with a current version of ld-decode or vhs-decode. Do not rely on post-decoded files as preservation artifacts as the decoder functionality will vary over time and the post-decode artifact is not deterministic (TL;DR - re-decoding is preservation - keeping old TBC files is not).
Separate Y/C sources¶
Legacy versions of vhs-decode produced TBC Y/C pairs with the format <name>_chroma.tbc and <name>.tbc.
In order to use these files with Decode-Orc you will need to simply rename them. <name>_chroma.tbc should become <name>.tbcc and <name>.tbc should become <name>.tbcy. This is used by Decode-Orc to distinguish composite and separate sources when using features such as "quick project".