VHS -> Digital -> Mpeg2 -> DVD

[djan]

Hi everybody,

I would like to make DVD's from my VHS's. but I would like to know if there is another possibility than capturing. Capturing is always problems and loss of quality. Something like going with digital video output immediately after my VHS and entering with firewall in my PC. All suggestions are welcome. I'm beginner so don't mock of me. :o Thx.

[rfmmars]

If you have a good analog capture card and use a good codec with high capture rate your are not going to suffer any persived lose. If you have regular VHS tapes you might want to play them on a SVHS deck and capture s-video into your capture device.

Most VHS recorders record much better than they play back, so that will be your weakest link. If you have access to a DV camcorder that allows input coversion to DV.avi, go that way.

Richard
photorecall.net

[mustardman]

Another option, buy a DVD recorder. No pesky PC in the middle or recoding needed, and, it is real-time!

(Mind you, nowhere near as powerful either!)

[bb]

Well, I'll add my way here.

1. Choose a good VHS VCR - I have two, one giving a much clearer picture than the other.
2. Adjust the capture (TV card / video card) settings. This is a MUST, else you'll suffer from suboptimal quality.
3. Capture to MJPEG / PCM uncompressed 48kHz.
4. Use VirtualDub to cut off scrambled video at the beginning and ending.
5. Separate the audio by "Save WAV", then encode to AC3 2.0 using BeSweet (you may choose MP2, too).
6. Set up AviSynth script with at least a good denoiser like Convolution3D, TemporalSmoother, etc. Crop off the fuzzy edges and replace them with clean black through AddBorders. You may shift the video to the center, but beware: if your source is interlaced, the vertical shift has to be an even number. Resize to 352x576 (PAL).
7. Encode to DVD compliant MPEG-2 (half D1). I prefer MainConcept's MPEG Encoder over CCE in my recent encodings.
8. Author the DVD.
9. Burn.

bb

[echooff]

Your method is exactly what I am doing with the following 2 exceptions and, of course, the inevitable questions.

1. Mainconcept encoder. What led you to choose it over the other options. I was under the impression It didn't like avs scripts.

2. Half d-1 mpeg2. I know some guides call for it, but I guess it's not clear to me why.

[DSP8000]

With two pass encoding MainConcept it's very close to CCE(sometimes even better),as for the avs files they work just perfect with MainConcept , just choose "open->all files->your avs file" and you're done.I have MC v.1.4.1 but now my favorite encoder is Canopus Procoder Express.

[hendrix]

Originally posted by echooff

2. Half d-1 mpeg2. I know some guides call for it, but I guess it's not clear to me why.

because VHS doesn't have D-1 resolution...plus interlaced half d-1 compresses better - half d-1 at lower bitrates gives a much smoother look to it than an interlaced d-1 footage at the same bitrate, it'll have annoying macroblocks all over it.

[echooff]

Thanx for your responses. Every little bit of knowledge helps.

[bb]

Originally posted by echooff
1. Mainconcept encoder. What led you to choose it over the other options. I was under the impression It didn't like avs scripts.
In my opinion MainConcept's encoder is as good and as fast as CCE, but much more configurable. The user interface is much better than CCE's (it's not difficult to beat CCE's awful UI), and it has more options, e.g. it has a capture module, so that you can capture directly to MPEG-2 from analogue and DV sources. No problem at all with AVS files.

Originally posted by echooff
2. Half d-1 mpeg2. I know some guides call for it, but I guess it's not clear to me why.
Because you can fit a whole four hour VHS tape on a single DVD-R with good quality :) I recently did that with an old low-quality wedding tape, and the resulting DVD wasn't worse than the original VHS. Although VHS doesn't need full-D1, you can use that resolution, of course. But I wouldn't put more than two hours on a single DVD-R.

bb

[echooff]

Thank you for your response. Half D-1 in ntsc is 352x480. I captured my file at 720x480. I can't figure out how to resize to half and keep aspect ratio with mainconcept. Can someone help.

[bb]

You can either resize in AviSynth or use MainConcept MPEG Encoder's internal scaling option (to be found under "Details").

To set the frame size to half-D1, click on "Details", then you can set the video size to width 352, height 480 in the upper left, right above the scaling button.

bb

[Mtz]

Originally posted by bb
2. Adjust the capture (TV card / video card) settings. This is a MUST, else you'll suffer from suboptimal quality.
3. Capture to MJPEG / PCM uncompressed 48kHz.
bb
Hi, bb!
What is the resolution that you use for capture? I mean if your final target is 352x576 DVD format.

I recently did that with an old low-quality wedding tape
I also have an tape like yours. Can you post (if that is not an secret ;)) your avisynth script file? I don't know very much about avisynth and I think that example like yours, can help me.

10x.

[echooff]

Sorry, I should stated up front I had already done both of your suggestions but end up with a squished video. I was hoping there was another setting I missed.

[hendrix]

@echooff...the raw footage will be squashed, it's normal....once you authored your dvd the video will not be squashed

@Mtz...i capture at D1 (480x720)...and use the following script to resize it to half D1 (352X480)



#interlaced sizing script and changes btt to tff
AVISource("xxx.avi")
DoubleWeave().SelectOdd().SeparateFields()
LanczosResize(352,240,0,0,720,240).Weave()
ConvertToYUY2(interlaced=true)#for CCE

#progressive sources
AVISource("xxx.avi")
LanczosResize(352,480,0,0,720,480)
ConvertToYUY2()#for CCE

[bb]

@hendrix:
The SeparateFields/Weave in your interlaced script is not necessary, because you resize horizontally only.

@Mtz:
I capture @768x576, then I crop and resize to 352x576.

My script is not a secret:
AviSource("C:\DV\wedding.avi")
Trim(66,206708)
Crop(4,0,760,564)
SimpleResize(352,564)
TemporalSoften(3,8,16,15,2)
AddBorders(0,6,0,6)

bb

[hendrix]

Originally posted by bb
@hendrix:
The SeparateFields/Weave in your interlaced script is not necessary, because you resize horizontally only.

ahh..you learn something new everyday...thanks bro

[echooff]

Sorry to be a PIA, but just to make sure I understand. The script examples above produce squished mpeg2 files that once passed thru a authoring program and burned onto dvd, will look normal on a tv?

[rfmmars]

Yes I too want to varify that the images will be normal at burn. Using Magix's MEP2004, the clip is sretched horizontaly on the timeline but look perfert in the preview and burns perfect.

Richard
photorecall.net

[bb]

Yes, they will look normal on TV. The DVD players resize either to a 4:3 or a 16:9 aspect ratio, depending on the flag set during encoding. You can verify this on a PC if you play the file in a software DVD player like PowerDVD. If you play it in Windows Media Player, it will probably look distorted, depending on the DirectShow filter used.

bb

[echooff]

Thank you bb.

[Mtz]

bb, when you said that the source is an old low-quality tape, I supposed that you used many filters to improve quality.
Was the TemporalSoften enough?
If I want to use one or two more filters, can you suggest some adding to that script? I can't test your script now because the tape is not here where I am know and I want to prepare a good script.

Thank you very much for your help.

an happy,
Mtz :)

[bb]

Well, what can you expect from an 10+ year old tape... You may of course add more powerful filtering to further improve quality, but I did the job for a friend of mine who watches 4:3 films in distorted 16:9 mode on TV :rolleyes:

But i must admit that the quality was much better than the simple script lets you assume. The downsizing step apparently gains quality (by losing resolution, of course), and the extra temporal filtering gave a clean picture - well, at least as clean as the original was.

There are quite a few threads about VHS capturing here, so you'll find a bunch by searching. You can use better denoisers, repair chroma bleeding, sharpen some more (which I did during capture via Philips' tuner settings). Generally I believe it's better to improve the capturing process right at the beginning instead of repairing awfully captured sources afterwards by creating marvellous AviSynth scripts that take months to complete an encoding.

bb

[djan]

Very thx to all, so all I need is a simple capture card and a good deck. Otherwise, if I want no problem with capture cards, there are the standalone DVD Recorder and the DVI camcorder solutions.

[Pyscrow]

Originally posted by bb
Yes, they will look normal on TV. The DVD players resize either to a 4:3 or a 16:9 aspect ratio, depending on the flag set during encoding. You can verify this on a PC if you play the file in a software DVD player like PowerDVD. If you play it in Windows Media Player, it will probably look distorted, depending on the DirectShow filter used.

bb

It will look normal on "most" DVD players, I have one that stretches the image to fit the screen (a problem with 16x9 only obviously), but the same DVD plays normally in my other DVD machines. The "crook" one is the older one, and I suspect it does not properly support DVDr, and is not reading this flag correctly.

Before you tear out any more hair, just stick your DVD into another machine, just to make sure you don't have a similar problem!

[hendrix]

Originally posted by djan
Very thx to all, so all I need is a simple capture card and a good deck. Otherwise, if I want no problem with capture cards, there are the standalone DVD Recorder and the DVI camcorder solutions.

i use a Canopus ADVC-300 for capturing, it has a built-in Time Base Corrector which is a must IMO if youre capturing from an analog source, i never had a sync problem.