difference between programs(vdub and ms movie maker)

[sinesurfr]

Upon searching the forum for a specific thread comparing the quality of output between Windows Movie Maker (v.2) and VirtualDub(mod) and perhaps other programs (Ulead VideoStudio), I couldn't find anything. I was wondering if there was a general opinion on whether the difference in quality between these programs is noticeable or if asking a question like this is akin to asking if xvid is better than divx 5/6 or vice versa (note: for me, I don't notice a visual difference between codecs). Thanks.

[Blue_MiSfit]

Well... it sort of depends on what you are capturing. If we're talking about DV, then no it won't make a difference. If we're talking about analog capture then yes there will be a big difference.

WMM only supports capturing to WMV last I heard, which can be lower quality than capturing to a lossless (huffyuv, lagarith, ffv1) AVI, applying filtering as necessary through AviSynth, and then re-encoding via proper 2 pass to an MPEG-4 codec for storage, or MPEG-2 for DVD.

We need more information about your particular situation to provide more information :)

~MiSfit

[sinesurfr]

Hi Blue Misfit,

Thanks for your prompt reply. I had just bought a ADS Tech USBAV-191 VideoXpress USB 2.0 capture device for my laptop and I was mainly interested in capturing VHS footage of public domain films. The capture device came with Ulead's VideoStudio 9 and from what I had read in the USBAV-191 reviews on Amazon, many recommend Windows Movie Maker over the bundled software. Having read that, I had assumed that Windows Movie Maker suffices for VHS capture of feature length films onto avi. But from what you're saying, my assumptions may be a bit off and I'm interested in how big of a difference we're talking here. Maybe it can't be reduced to technical terms and I just have to see it to understand, but I'm not closed off to the possibility of it being otherwise. Thanks again.

[Blue_MiSfit]

No problem.

If you're not worried terribly about filesize, I would say capture in VirtualDub, using interlaced XviD @ CQ3 or CQ4, and LAME MP3 CBR 128kbit. That should preserve the VHS pretty well.

[sinesurfr]

sorry, I'm not quite too sure what you mean by CQ3 or CQ4, since I could only find them in terms of audio, but not video. Is there a guide outside of this one, http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/capture/start.html
that you can point to? And do I capture the video before encoding or after? I guess perhaps the CQ3/CQ4 only applies to capture parameters, since I have never run into them when encoding in XviD.

Also, I'm also a bit worried from having read about the 20-40 GB/hour requirement for the HUFFY codec, especially since I'm on a laptop with a 40 GB hard drive. Plus, I'm also concerned about whether my Pentium M 1.7 GHz with 512 MB RAM will suffice or not. I figure that these are not concerns that come up when I work with Windows Movie Maker and would assume that the load on my hardware shouldn't be a concern as well with VDub.

Thanks again.

[Blue_MiSfit]

:search: :)

Some essentials

1) Your system is more than powerful enough to capture to HuffYUV.

2) Capturing video means that you are digitizing an analog source, and encoding it on the fly to some digital codec - be it raw uncompressed (gigantic), lossless compressed like huffyuv (smaller but still large), or lossy compressed like xvid (much smaller, but information lost)

3) 20-40GB / hour is definitely what I would expect. If you want to preserve the "best" quality and still have a small output filesize, you have to capture to huffyuv first, and then re-encode that capture with a lossy codec like XviD - preferably in its 2 pass mode.

4) There are several encoding modes with XviD. There is 1 pass CBR, which is pretty much always a bad idea. There is 1 pass VBR, which is also generally not the best idea. There is 1 pass CQ (constant quantizer) which is a great idea if you are capturing directly to XviD (a good choice if you don't have the hard drive space to capture to lossless first), and finally, there is glorious 2 pass VBR.

Finally, a clarification: the bitrate of a frame is a function of the quantizer of that frame. In other words, lets pretend that a single frame at quant 2 takes up 15kb. that same frame at quant 3 would take up less - let's say 10kb, and would look a tiny bit worse (maybe). The same frame at quant 4 would be even smaller, and look also a bit worse. See how it works?

So to sum things up (sorry for rambling), if you don't have the space to capture to a lossless codec, and then re-encode with 2 pass XviD, just capture straight to 1 pass CQ XviD, setting the CQ value to 3 or 4. It should give you very nice results, and not be too big :)

You may need to drop some of the quality settings like VHQ a bit to sustain full frame rate capture. Do a test, and see what the highest settings you can sustain without dropping frames, then actually capture your tape. If you need more quality, then reduce the quantizer. If it's too big, then increase the quantizer.

I hope that clears things up
~Misfit

[Techiejustin]

what about those of us who can't capture to huggyuv because it crashes in Vdub? Vdubmod doesn't work either.

Any other lossless codecs?

[Blue_MiSfit]

well... it shouldn't crash :) the problem is elsewhere. HuffYUV is a very stable codec.

There are many lossless codecs - lagarigh, ffv1 (inside ffdshow's vfw encoder), MSU lossless, x264 lossless, you name it.

~MiSfit

[sinesurfr]

Blue_misfit
rambling to you = crucial information to me
Thank you once again for not only a prompt but a thorough reply. I feel much more confident in doing this and I guess before I ask any further questions, I'll take your advice to its fullest (including honing my searching skills). :)