Best codec for VHS ?

[jace112]

I've been using divx 4 for a while (30 DVD ripped with GKnot) and I'm really happy with the quality of the final video. But now I'm trying to encode VHS tapes. I have a dc10+ under XP, which works well. I capture the video in 320*240 (so I get rid of interlacing) with 100% quality (MJPEG codec). Tape quality is good. But when I try to encode with the divx codec, it looks REALLY crap. I use a "standard" 1000 kbits/s which gives usualy excellent results with a dvd rip (resolution 640*...). GKnot says the resolution (bits/pixel) is fine. What's wrong ?
Is divx 4 useful for VHS encoding ? Is it worth trying some MPEG1 or other codec ?
Thx !

[movmasty]

but is the mjpg intermediate file good??
if so is a divx4 fault
im not experienced with divx4
but if the captured mjpg is good try divx3 with nandub.

Another thing, you could fix on converting the small size of capture,
vhs has about 240 linees of horizontal res,that is like 340/350 pixels,
then try to capture at 352x240 and on converting resize to 352x264(4/3),
or if you need the /16 ratio, crop to 352x234 and resize to 352x256.
you could resize with good results up to 512x384,
but just adapting the vertical res to the horizontal, gives really good results.

[ftack]

Can't believe it's the fault of the codec. Are you applying any noise reduction? Otherwise, you're wasting a big part of bandwidth in encoding noise, which is there even in good VHS sources. I also have a DC10+, under Windows ME and I am using Divx (currently version 5, free version, why do I hesitate to go for XVid?) for my encodes, also at bitrates around 1000. I always do spatial and temporal noise reduction, though.

I rather capture my PAL VHS material at full resolution (720 x 540), or at least at 360 x 540) at 2500 Mbytes per seconds. I first resize and then apply noise reduction for speed reasons. Quality wise, first denoising and then resizing is better(although hard to spot), but I don't like two pass encodes of > 24 hours ;-) For VHS material, I found 448 x 336 to be an optimal size, because at 384 x 288 there is already a slight loss in detail.

[Ookami]

Read the FAQ there are a few interesting threads linked there...

[Frisco]

@ jace112 :
I have a dc10+ and the OS is Win2000. When I capture PAL and then import it into VirtualDub (File - Open video film) the quality is NOT good. But when I make this AVS-script :
-----------------------------------------------------
# AVI-SOURCE
DirectShowSource("d:\video 1.avi",fps=25)
----------------------------------------------------
and then import the AVS-script into VirtualDub the quality is good. Then you can process whit DivX 5, noise reduction, resize, ..,.,..,
I don’t know why it works, maybe it because the dc10+ driver for win2000/XP is beta, but is works for me.

[jace112]

@movmasty: yes, the quality is rather good !

@Frisco: I don't have any capturing issues, it's just the encoding which gives very bad results. I don't think it comes from the beta driver of the dc10+. I'll try your AVS trick.

@ftack: can you send me a very short video ? Just to know: what kind of machine do you have ??? (>24h to encode in 2 pass...)

By the way, thanks to all of you :D

[theReal]

Encoding VHS or TV captures is generally more tricky than encoding DVDs (I guess this is also because DVD material has already been optimized for mpeg-encoding by highly paid professionals)
A bitrate of ~1000 is not high for captures, it's kind of the minimum you should go for. You need to find very good filters to get good quality divx from your captures.
The best filters I know are avisynth's TemporalSmoother (included in the mpeg2dec plugin) and SpatialSoftenMMX, also the noise filter included in divx5 is pretty nice (and fast!). For getting good results with filtering, I'd also say you need a higher resolution. Either you go through the hassles of deinterlacing, or you resize your 1/2 sized source to something bigger and then apply the filters


Just to know: what kind of machine do you have ??? (>24h to encode in 2 pass...) When you apply temporal and spatial smoother filters on a full-res video source, it can easily take that long. With a bunch of slow filters applied, you can encode with 1 fps even on a fast Athlon XP...

[jace112]

I'm gonna try some of your settings ! My pb now is that days have only 24 hours...
:D :D :D
Thx !

[A_Pleite]

I prefer using a resolution of 382*288 because
-I´m a PAL-guy so 576/2 = 388 which means no interlace-problems
-If I set the videoformat to 704*288 and resize with the divx5 resizer to 384*288 it still looks okay.

I always capture directly to divx5,so I have only to encode the audio later. That doesn´t need to much time. I capture with 384*288, Divx5 (GMC * B-frames, noise-filter) with constant quality 4, audio uncompressed.

I have captured a few Simpsons-episodes now ;) and the quality would be really good if I hadn´t to use (table-) terrestrial TV :(

[movmasty]

you capture at what framerate?
and with what cpu?

[movmasty]

you capture at what framerate?
and with what cpu?


* OPS *

[A_Pleite]

25fps
1.4 GHz

But without B-frames it´s possibble to do that job with 650 MHz