Preserving as Much Quality as Possible?

[TwoRails]

I'm capturing old home movies from VHS tape. They are a shamble in there are tons of foot shots and have no structure in that each tape has numerous unrelated clips.

I will need to break the captures into usable clips, discarding the junk. I'm a relative newbie but I think I may know how to preserve as much quality of the clips as I can for later use but would like your opinions, please.

The captured files are in TS format and I use TMPGEnc Video Mastering Works 5 for my editor. I will be making DVDs eventually so I'll export in the DVD MPEG format. So, I figure the best way to maintain quality is:

1) Use the highest bit rate the editor will allow (which I think is 9,200 kbps).

2) Use a constant bit rate when encoding (file size doesn't matter).

3) Even though they are just stereo, use AC3 for sound for compatibility.

How does that sound?

Any and all tips and tricks are welcome!!

Thanks :)

TwoRails

[LoRd_MuldeR]

I moved your thread, because this apparently isn't an audio-only topic.

AFAIK the maximum bitrate of Video-DVD's is 10.08 Mbit/s, but that's for everything (Audio + Video + Subtitles + Muxing Overhead). The Audio+Video can use up to 9.80 Mbit/s.

If you really want "as Much Quality as Possible", then this can be reached - at least for the audio part - by using uncompressed L-PCM. Compatibility-wise, L-PCM should be support just as well, because it's one of the "official" Video-DVD audio formats and thus should be supported by any Video-DVD player.

Nonetheless an VHS tape isn't exactly a "high quality" audio source. So going the AC3 route should probably be sufficient and it safes some bitrate. Bitrate you then can use for the video part.

[Ghitulescu]

He may use the L-PCM WAV at the beginning, to ensure "transparent" processing (denoising, exciting, band passing etc.) and only then to compress the cleaned low-quality-VHS-audio to gain some valuable bits for video.

[TwoRails]

Thanks for the tips :) I've already captured a bunch of VHS tapes with "AC3" turned on, but I'm not going to recapture them for better sound; In the future I'll capture differently for better sound.

I use a Hauppauge TV card for capture (HVR-2250) and my only sound options are "AC3" yes or no. I have no idea what is used for the "no" option...

Any ideas?

[hello_hello]

Are you actually modifying the audio in any way or is it just being cut and spliced along with the video? If it's the latter then capturing using AC3 probably doesn't matter too much, unless for some reason the program you're using (never used it myself) forces you to re-encode the audio regardless.

[TwoRails]

That editor does a recode of the video. I would imagine it does a recode of the audio, too, but it's a guess. They have a prior version that does "smart rendering" and will render only changed clips, but the input has to be MPEG and it outputs to only MPEG, so I'd have to use the newer program to recode to MPEG anyway...