Capturing PAL VHS to DVD using Ulead DVD Workshop 1.3SE

[pdavis14370]

Apologies up front for not being up with all the lingo . I'm trying to learn as fast as I can! I have read all the capture forums and don't seem to find the answer I need.

I have recently purchased a 2Gb 512RAM PC 140Mb HDD with a MyVivo Nvidia Capture Card and Pioneer A05 DVD burner .. bundled with ULead DVD Workshop 1.3 SE.

I have a new VCR plugged into the graphics card and am trying to capture PAL video from my 21st and Wedding etc and keep on stumbling on what I think is interlacing problems. I capture in MPEG2 VBR 6000 PAL Field Order B with other default settings, and burn at this same setting .. what I get when I play the burnt DVD disc on my TV/Playstation is video of pretty poor quality and the main problem is that I get jagged lines appearing on most movement in the video.

I have captured using Progressive, Field Order A, Field Order B and De-interlaced options, and the first three do not get rid of the jagged lines on TV playback .. only the de-interlaced version plays OK but I seem to have dropped resolution on playback with this capture setting. I have sent numerous emails to Ulead but don't seem to get any constructive solution apart from defrag the HDD, reinstall etc which I have done many times.

Does anyone in the forum have a suggestion? Perhaps I should use other software? My needs are simple, I just want to capture PAL VHS in the best resolution I can for DVD and as a bonus author the DVD in a semi-professional way.

Any suggestion will be most forever appreciated.

Peter (Sydney, Australia)

[wotef]

try capturing at 384x288

[Ookami]

>Perhaps I should use other software? My needs are simple, I just want to capture PAL VHS in the best resolution I can for DVD and as a bonus author the DVD in a semi-professional way

Umm... Why don't you try another capture software, instead of asking if you should? And, BTW, don't capture in the final format (in your case MPEG2), the results will be badder than in the capture to AVI (lossless as possible ;) ) -> then transcode to your desired end format.

A very good and affordable MPEG2 encoder is TMPGEnc Pro.

The best way is, also, subjective... What's good for me is, maybe, overkill for you, or vice versa.

So, my advice, use another capture software (depends on your OS and needs), capture to Huffyuv or MJPEG. After that use a good encoder to convert it to MPEG2 and leave (!) the video interlaced. You will see that the difference is quite noticable...

Also, if you really wanna be a perfectionist (from your posting I take that you don't want :) ), you can use noise reduction filters, color corections etc. etc.

So, if you have the NTFS file system, you could try VirtualVCR, although with your PC specs (I take that it's a 2 GHz CPU and a 140 GB HDD), you should/could even use VirtualDub sync or similar (I did it without problems, even the WDM wrapper was used).

Cheers,

Mijo.

[pdavis14370]

Mijo

You have set me on the right path my friend .. I have converted to AVI (which was HUGE!!) and am now converting the AVI to MPEG2 Field Order B etc via TMPGEnc .. I hope that the resulting MPEG2 is of a higher quality and without artifacts on playback upon conversion to DVD-Video.

I will post the results. Thanks again!

Pete.

[Ookami]

Originally posted by pdavis14370
Mijo

You have set me on the right path my friend .. I have converted to AVI (which was HUGE!!) and am now converting the AVI to MPEG2 Field Order B etc via TMPGEnc .. I hope that the resulting MPEG2 is of a higher quality and without artifacts on playback upon conversion to DVD-Video.

I will post the results. Thanks again!

Pete.

Er, why do you choose Field order B? Mostly, it should be field order A... You can use the TMPGEnc Wizard to detect it for you, anyway (altough, sometimes, it was not correct in my experience).

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=44201&highlight=AVI+field+order

As for the quality of the MPEG2 file, be sure to tweak your TMPGEnc settings, high or highest ME etc.

Good luck and have fun. Don't forget to post your results here.

Cheers,

Mijo.

[Swan]

The weird thing about Ulead's software is that they seem to use the terms Field Order A and Field Order B in a strange way.
What is the normal synonym to Bottom Field First? The logical term would be Field Order B (since A comes before B in the alphabet and the Top Field comes before the Bottom Field). :)

I capture with a DV device, which is Bottom Field First and in Ulead's software the correct setting for Bottom Field First varies:

For DV (bottom field first) use these setting (and the opposite for regular "capture/Tv-tuner cards, of course)

VideoStudio 6 = Field Order B
VideoStudio 7 = Field Order A
MovieFactory 2 = Field Order A
DVD Workshop 1.3 = Field Order A


So, in the later versions of Ulead's software, Field Order A equals Bottom Field First. And in VideoStudio 6, it's the other way around, Bottom Field First equals Field Order B.

My advice to you, pdavis14370, to get Mpeg-2 on the fly-capturing to work with DVD Workshop is to use one of the presets, the PAL DVD preset for example. Deselect any deinterlacing options, then capture using Field Order B.
Burn this on a DVD-RW. If Field Order B is wrong, you will see it straight away.
You won't see interlace lines (that's not how field order problems look).
Field order problems makes movement looks really odd and jerky.
So, if Field Order B gives you jerky video, try capture using Field Order A and burn this to DVD-RW.
One of those settings are correct for your card, but unless it is a DV device you have, Field Order B is the setting for you. One of the Field Order settings is correct for sure.

But! If you capture in avi-format, and convert with TMPGEnc, select Field Order A in TMPGEnc. Confusing I know, but Field Order B is for DV video in TMPGENc. In Ulead DVD Workshop it's the opposite, for some reason.

The "progressive" setting is not usable, always select either Field Order A or Field Order B in Ulead's software when capturing interlaced video.

I agree with Mijo that capturing in a less lossy format than Mpeg-2 and then converting this to Mpeg-2 will yield better quality than on-the-fly Mpeg-2 capturing. But one always risks getting bad sync when having a separate audio and capture card. This can be combated with various software workarounds in some cases, but it takes too much of an effort and too many compromises in my view. Capturing in Mpeg-2 is good because the format has built-in methods to ensure correct sync.

Anyway, my view is that the results I'm getting from Ulead's software mentioned above gives high quality results, even when the Mpeg-2 compression is done during capture. So, if one burns the captured Mpeg-2 straight on a DVD disc (no re-encoding), the final DVD will have more than an "OK" picture and audio quality.