DVD-recorder with best MPEG2 quality?

[ernstblaauw]

Hi,

I'm a volunteer in an association. We got a lot of S-VHS tapes with own made movies (movies of journeys through Europe). Some of them are already 20 years old. To preserve those tapes, we want to convert them to DVD. We already got an S-VHS video recorder with SCART output, Thus, we want a DVD-recorder that records the tapes onto a DVD using the SCART input. Because those tapes are quite old already, we want to buy the recorder which produces the best MPEG2-quality so that the already bad quality tapes do not lose more quality than needed.
Which drive do you recommend? I live in Europe and use PAL.

With regards.
Ernst

[SeeMoreDigital]

Ernst... As a seasoned member you should know that asking "what's best" is a breech of the forum rules....

That said, when it comes to transferring S-VHS to DVD, you need to use the s-video output of your VCR not the scart (AV1) output (which offers "composite" video signals)...

Thankfully most DVD recorders are fitted with an s-video input so you should be okay on that score.... but as with any "real-time" analogue to digital MPEG-2 capturing you will need look for players that offer "high bit-rate" capturing (the higher the better)!


Cheers

[ernstblaauw]

Ernst... As a seasoned member you should know that asking "what's best" is a breech of the forum rules....

That said, when it comes to transferring S-VHS to DVD, you need to use the s-video output of your VCR not the scart (AV1) output (which offers "composite" video signals)...

Thankfully most DVD recorders are fitted with an s-video input so you should be okay on that score.... but as with any "real-time" analogue to digital MPEG-2 capturing you will need look for players that offer "high bit-rate" capturing (the higher the better)!


Cheers
You're right, I have to specify where I have to look for. Let me rephrase my question:
My goal is, to loose not too much of the quality of the tapes. Therefore, I'm looking for DVD-recorders that produce MPEG2 with quality not much lower than the original tapes. I can use quite some bitrate for that, but of course it is handy if a not too high bitrate is required. Let's say I want to record around a bitrate of 4000 kbps.
I think most of the players achieve a reasonable result at 4000 kpbs. But, I don't know that for sure (maybe all stand alone recorders produce quite bad MPEG2 at 4000 kpbs) and I can imagine that there have to be some chipsets that do not produce reasonable quality, or maybe the SCART connector is bad, or something else is going wrong.
So, I got 2 questions:
1. Which DVD-recorder and/or chipsets produce quality almost as good as the S-VHS source at 4000 kbps? Or: which DVD-recorder do I have to avoid because of the low quality MPEG2?
2. Does someone know a comparison between stand alone DVD-recorders?


I hope this post is not against the rules :)

[SeeMoreDigital]

All stand-alone DVD recorders capture at a constant MPEG-2 bit-rate, which is why it's advisable to capture at the highest possible bit-rate!

Once you've captured to DVD, there's nothing stopping you from transferring the MPEG-2 stream to your PC's HDD, running it thru' some "clean-up" filters and re-encoding to MPEG-2 over 2-passes at a lower bit-rate ;)

At the end of the day, only you can decide what you're going to be happy with "quality-wise"!

[ernstblaauw]

All stand-alone DVD recorders capture at a constant MPEG-2 bit-rate, which is why it's advisable to capture at the highest possible bit-rate!

Once you've captured to DVD, there's nothing stopping you from transferring the MPEG-2 stream to your PC's HDD, running it thru' some "clean-up" filters and re-encoding to MPEG-2 over 2-passes at a lower bit-rate ;)

At the end of the day, only you can decide what you're going to be happy with "quality-wise"!

Ok, thanks for your advice! Do you know of any quality differences between the chipsets regarding their MPEG2 they produce? Because HC and CCE and TMPGenc do also not produce the same result? Or do you think it doesn't matter?

[SeeMoreDigital]

Ok, thanks for your advice! Do you know of any quality differences between the chipsets regarding their MPEG2 they produce? Because HC and CCE and TMPGenc do also not produce the same result? Or do you think it doesn't matter?Sorry but no, I can't help you with the encoding performance of specific hardware recoders... there are just too many devices out there!

Sufficed to say though, I guess there will be differences between "hardware" MPEG-2 encoders, in much the same way there are differences between "software" MPEG-2 encoders, especially with "low-priced" devices!