a decent VHS capture

[futuristic-gr]

hi there,

been trying with several ways to capture video from VHS and each one sucked in its own way. i wont say much to blur your mind. here is where i ended up:

i just wanna capture VHS from VCR tape of an event that is taking place each year, starting from 1990 till 2000. The final format will be a single DVD per tape. So, i ended up in direct rip in MPEG-2 encoded .mpg file and then put this file into Pinnacle Studio 10 for the basic authoring like a short video intro and menus. The problem is that i HATE, man i HATE that stupid line that is suuposed to be the "metadata" of the tape.

i opened the .mpg file in virtualDub and used the null transform filter cropping the pixels i wanted. But then i realised that i have to be in Full Processing Mode, and i think this is too much; recompressing my really old video twice...

any ideas please? i dont wanna be a guru of video to just capture old VHS tapes that have no demand on fast moves, special colour and stuff like that.

please a little help here...

[setarip_old]

Hi!

Burn one test DVD (to an RW DVD, if you like). Chances are the line will not be visible when played on a TV...

[futuristic-gr]

is there any chance the dvd will not play these lines if it wasnt for a vhs capture???

[nibbles]

Well the garbled lines at the bottom of your vhs captures will
never been seen on a TV, because they get played in an area
that is off the screen, called the overscan area. If you will only
be playing the DVDs on a TV, you're already set.

But if you watch the videos on a PC, you will see them unless
you change the pixels to black or crop them off.

So don't you just want to take a few mpeg2 video files,
open them using avisynth & VDub, apply a Letterbox(0,16)
filter, and direct stream copy? I didn't think that was
re-encoding, but I'm n00 here.

Using something like this .avs script:

LoadPlugin("MPEGDecoder.dll")
MPEGSource("d:\myclip.vob")
Letterbox(0,16)

and open that script in VDub? That just replaces the bottom 16
pixels of video with black pixels, no cropping or changing aspect
ratio. I dunno good luck, though.

[AVIL]

@nibbles

The operative you suggests leads to an huge uncompressed YV12 video (as mpegsource decodes mpeg to uncompressed frames).

I don't know any method to crop a mpeg video without recompressing. Perhaps with ReStream utility you can fake the decoder stating in the header that video resolution is smaller than real (ie, 720x736). It's possible that dvd expands video vertically and offending lines dissaper. But it's only a mad idea (I doubt DVD authoring programs copes with this fake files).

Good luck.

[Awatef]

@futuristic
There is no way to crop a video file without re-encoding.
As said by setarip, the bottom ugly part shouldn't be visible on TV.
If you want it perfect for any display device, you have to capture losslessly, with Huffyuv for instance, do what you wanna do, be it cropping or filtering, then encode in 2-pass VBR MPEG-2.
This method should produce better results than your present method, but it costs more hard disc space and more time of course.

[nibbles]

Thanks for the correction Avil. I wasn't making any sense.
Then I forgot what website this was on when I figured it out.
I hate that. Very bad. :thanks:

[VWRacer]

Do you have access to a standalone DVD recorder? I've been experimenting for the last couple of weeks with a Panasonic model for the purpose of transfering SVHS to DVD, with the minimal amount of problems. So for, it is working great. No dropped frames, no sound sync problems. Perfect image quality and stability.

Racer

[ehl367]

Another - quicker option, is to play the video with Media Player Classic. MPC allows you to increase the video size on the fly with the use of the keyboard - Num key 9. A small increase while playing the file - say to 1.02 or 1.03 of the original, should put the black line off screen.

[Blue_MiSfit]

Indeed, standalone DVD recorders are great for little "I dont give a crap" consumer quickie jobs with no hassle. Connect the ins to the outs, play the VHS and push record on the recorder.

There is no substitute for capping into huffy or whatever, avisynth, and cce (or HC etc.. if you're not so lucky), then authoring with menus etc... Plus it can ultimately be faster if you have to run off more than one copy.

Give it a try though with your already handy MPEG-2. NTSC TVs are so forgiving it's not even funny.. I mean cmon, we all used to watch VCDs and think they were ok :D :D :D

~MiSfit