Bikspk
7th August 2006, 03:48
I think I finally got this mostly figured out. The goal here is to get a program you recorded from an HD channel, specifically a movie, onto a DVD compatible with even the cheapest DVD with the least drop in quality. What you end up with is a DVD with progressive, 16x9 aspect ratio, 24 fps video that plays well on my HD widescreen from my progressive scan DVD (don't know what happens on a normal 4:3 TV with a non-progressive DVD player but who would have that combo and an 8300HD DVR).
Capture:
I would expect that you would have read through the Doom9 site to get capture working in VirtualDub. Best starting point is:
http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/capture/start.html
There is plenty of material. This is specific to the capture settings for 8300HD "Copy to VCR" of HD movies.
1) When you use the "Copy to VCR" function with an HD recorded program from an 8300HD, the output on S-Video will be a letterboxed 640x480 progressive video. The letterboxing is not exactly even, I found that the top box was 58 lines high and the bottom 62 giving a video height of (480 - 62 - 58) 360 lines or, 640 x 360 (16 x 9) widescreen video. Use the "Cropping" functionality built into Virtualdub to cut out the letterboxing. No use in recording the (120/480) 25% of each image that is just black boxes.
2) Encoding - the HuffYUV (http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/software2.htm) compression algorithm works great. It's lossless and works well with what comes from the S-Video capture. There may be a better compression algorithm (faster) that is lossless but I haven't run across it. You will end up with a big file in the end but I figured since HD space is cheap, why throw away the quality. VirtualDub reports 4:1 compression (have read 2.67:1 for 640x480 video somewhere).
Processing: I have had success at producing an intermediate file which has the same quality as the original that can then be further compressed to fit on a DVD
1) Every movie I have recorded to my 8300HD from an HD channel has been telecided, that is, the original film was 24 frames per second and was modified to be broadcast at 29.97 frames per second by blending two frames to make three followed by 2 non-blended frames thus making the original 4 frames into 5 (5/4 x 24fps = 30fps). Recommend that you search around for "telecide" and 3:2 pulldown to get more info. I had success in using the 3:2 pulldown - adaptive functionality of VirtualDub which automatically took the 3 blended frames, converted them to 2, and dropped the frame rate to 23.97 ish. In regards to quality, this got rid of the "jaggies" that were present in the original video. In regards to size, this reduced the size of the video file to (23.97 fps / 29.97 fps) 80% of its original size. Combined with the cropping, the size of the resulting file is (80% 3:2 pulldown * 75% cropping) 60%.
In regards to audio, I left it uncompressed. While this may result in higher compression of the video in the end, it prevents synchronization issues and is most compatible.
Lacking exact numbers here, 120 gigs of hard drive space will allow you to a) capture 2 to 2 1/2 hours of video, b) process the captured video and c) do the final encode.
I had success in cropping and doing the huffyuv encoding during the capture process (Athlon 4200 Dual Processor, 2 gig PC4000 memroy). For slower machines, the cropping/encoding may have to occur during the intermediate processing step.
Making the DVD:
Okay, I'm taking the easy way out on this. My DVD writer came with Nero so I use Nero Vision 4 to make the Video_TS VOB files required for the DVD. It's as simple as selecting the processed AVI file, setting up for 2-pass encoding, and letting her rip. There are intermediate steps involved with Nero like creating chapters and the like which are beyond the scope of this thread. I did experiment with 2-pass Xvid / DivX encoding since my DVD player will play DivX movies. However, since I'd like the DVD to play on pretty much any DVD player, I stuck with conventional methods. In the end, the video is 23.97 frames per second with AC3 audio.
While this methodology is specific to getting movies from my Scientific Atlanta 8300HD DVR onto a DVD with the best quality possible. I would imagine that other DVR's output similar video over their S-Video and the telecide will be the same.
If you see any way I could get comparable quality faster or better quality I'd be willing to give it a try and report back the results.
My recommendation would be to read as much as possible on the Doom9 site, browse around, follow links and get an understanding of what telecide, 3:2 pulldown, interlacing, compression codecs and the like before heading down this path. It will make life a lot easier.
Finally, I'd like to thank everyone who has posted in these forums, the guides written by Doom9, and the developers of VirtualDub for taking the time to educate the rest of us. Cheers
Capture:
I would expect that you would have read through the Doom9 site to get capture working in VirtualDub. Best starting point is:
http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/capture/start.html
There is plenty of material. This is specific to the capture settings for 8300HD "Copy to VCR" of HD movies.
1) When you use the "Copy to VCR" function with an HD recorded program from an 8300HD, the output on S-Video will be a letterboxed 640x480 progressive video. The letterboxing is not exactly even, I found that the top box was 58 lines high and the bottom 62 giving a video height of (480 - 62 - 58) 360 lines or, 640 x 360 (16 x 9) widescreen video. Use the "Cropping" functionality built into Virtualdub to cut out the letterboxing. No use in recording the (120/480) 25% of each image that is just black boxes.
2) Encoding - the HuffYUV (http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/software2.htm) compression algorithm works great. It's lossless and works well with what comes from the S-Video capture. There may be a better compression algorithm (faster) that is lossless but I haven't run across it. You will end up with a big file in the end but I figured since HD space is cheap, why throw away the quality. VirtualDub reports 4:1 compression (have read 2.67:1 for 640x480 video somewhere).
Processing: I have had success at producing an intermediate file which has the same quality as the original that can then be further compressed to fit on a DVD
1) Every movie I have recorded to my 8300HD from an HD channel has been telecided, that is, the original film was 24 frames per second and was modified to be broadcast at 29.97 frames per second by blending two frames to make three followed by 2 non-blended frames thus making the original 4 frames into 5 (5/4 x 24fps = 30fps). Recommend that you search around for "telecide" and 3:2 pulldown to get more info. I had success in using the 3:2 pulldown - adaptive functionality of VirtualDub which automatically took the 3 blended frames, converted them to 2, and dropped the frame rate to 23.97 ish. In regards to quality, this got rid of the "jaggies" that were present in the original video. In regards to size, this reduced the size of the video file to (23.97 fps / 29.97 fps) 80% of its original size. Combined with the cropping, the size of the resulting file is (80% 3:2 pulldown * 75% cropping) 60%.
In regards to audio, I left it uncompressed. While this may result in higher compression of the video in the end, it prevents synchronization issues and is most compatible.
Lacking exact numbers here, 120 gigs of hard drive space will allow you to a) capture 2 to 2 1/2 hours of video, b) process the captured video and c) do the final encode.
I had success in cropping and doing the huffyuv encoding during the capture process (Athlon 4200 Dual Processor, 2 gig PC4000 memroy). For slower machines, the cropping/encoding may have to occur during the intermediate processing step.
Making the DVD:
Okay, I'm taking the easy way out on this. My DVD writer came with Nero so I use Nero Vision 4 to make the Video_TS VOB files required for the DVD. It's as simple as selecting the processed AVI file, setting up for 2-pass encoding, and letting her rip. There are intermediate steps involved with Nero like creating chapters and the like which are beyond the scope of this thread. I did experiment with 2-pass Xvid / DivX encoding since my DVD player will play DivX movies. However, since I'd like the DVD to play on pretty much any DVD player, I stuck with conventional methods. In the end, the video is 23.97 frames per second with AC3 audio.
While this methodology is specific to getting movies from my Scientific Atlanta 8300HD DVR onto a DVD with the best quality possible. I would imagine that other DVR's output similar video over their S-Video and the telecide will be the same.
If you see any way I could get comparable quality faster or better quality I'd be willing to give it a try and report back the results.
My recommendation would be to read as much as possible on the Doom9 site, browse around, follow links and get an understanding of what telecide, 3:2 pulldown, interlacing, compression codecs and the like before heading down this path. It will make life a lot easier.
Finally, I'd like to thank everyone who has posted in these forums, the guides written by Doom9, and the developers of VirtualDub for taking the time to educate the rest of us. Cheers