two newbie questions

[angusdei]

Hi,

I’m going to transfer a number of VHS tapes to DVDs. and will be using TMPGEnc for encoding. I have two basic questions:

1. What VBR bitrate is considered appropriate for my case? Since the quality of the video on my tapes is understandably far from perfect, I guess values ~4500 bps would be fine?
2. I will probably want to have mono sound on the DVDs. Could you just point to a guide, if any, for doing this type of conversion? Straight forward TMPGEnc encoding seems to disallow using mono audio (there’s only a choice between Stereo, Joint Stereo and Dual Channel).

Thank you

[auenf]

actually, cause your source is 'noisier', it is going to require more bitrate to encode than a 'clean' source (ie Progressive FILM source).

also since your are capturing from VHS, you really should encode to Half D1 or 1/4 D1 (SIF) to save space.

Enf...

[angusdei]

I have tried to encode a DV AVI file with Ulead DVD MovieFactory, various resolutions. 352x288 has produced noticeably worse quality than 704x576. 352x576 has been quite good, but the size of the .mpg file was virtually the same as with 704x576 (maybe because I tested just a 20-second clip?)

Also, TMPGEnc does not seem to allow to downsize the original 704x576 – it disables the edit fields.

Also, in some posts I’ve seen people saying about encoding a VHS source in different resolutions - 352x288, 352x576 etc. Do I miss something? Neither Adobe Premier 6.5, nor Ulead DVD MovieFactory does not seem to allow to change the resolution for capture. My understanding is that setting the resolution different from the source resolution can be applied to encoding but not to capturing. Am I right or not?

[auenf]

you can capture in different frame sizes, but how and if is dependant on your capture hardware mostly, but some apps can override it.

i suggest using Half D1 (352x576) which allows you to use a fair bit lower bitrate than full D1.

Enf...