Bitrate for capturing VHS or TV..

[Laz]

Whats a good bitrate for capturing VHS or TV? using divX pro 5.0.5
I presume the resolutions are either 384x288 or 640x480..

or am i totally lost?

[scharfis_brain]

IMO I would not recommend to capture directly with divx.
You only will get unpredictable filesize and quality.

[Laz]

so should i capture raw, uncompressed video.
then what would be best to encode it with?

thanks.

[hakko504]

Capture to HuffYUV (will save about 50% space) then convert it to DivX5.05 or XviD with Gordian Knot.

[Laz]

Ill give it a shot..
but im VERY n00b to Gordian Knot... :(

[kaitsuburi]

your thread title is misspelled in a very interesting way :D

[Laz]

rofl sorry :(

edit: now fixed :)

[begu]

Well, I capture directly to xvid (nic).
I use enable interlacing to get smooth motion video.
Bitrate must be over 2000 kbps for acceptable quality, when using full PAL resolution (720 x 576).

For better quality I use 4000+ kbps.
Interlaced video eats bandwidth, I know, but I prefer smooth motion, because I watch my captures from my TV and deinterlacing destroys the motion.

With xvid codec, I can crop vertically even number of lines from bottom and top of the video and maintain interlaced encoding. I use sigma designs x-card for playback, which can reproduce interlaced smooth motion even if I crop vertically. (I crop vertically for example letterboxed movies, which have black bars at the bottom and top of the screen). This cropping also allows lesser bitrate for encoding.

I use "virtual dub sync" for capturing and use little realtime noise reduction in the settings. Of course capturing at full resolution PAL directly to xvid takes much cpu power, but it is worth it, because I don't need to recompress anything. I just don't have time for recompressing operation, so best option for me is direct xvid conversion.

[bpjenn]

I capture directly with DIVX at 6000kbps 320x240 with excellent quality. Yes, the file sizes are a bit high, about equivalent to MPEG2 4000kbps, between 25-35MB per minute (after re-encoding audio to mp3, 128kbps). About 25 minutes on a CD or 2 1/2 hours on a DVD. I use virtualdub and find this simple and fast, compared to capturing with huffy or mjpeg and then encoding to DIVX and mp3. A real time saver. Some of us have a life.

[bkam]

Originally posted by bpjenn
Some of us have a life.And some of us have an addiction :D. I got a card only about a week ago, I capture in Marc FD's YV12 version of the Huff codec, which is much easier if you're already used to the Avisynth 2.5x filters and setup. Also, something in the neighborhood of 20-30% less space taken, and I get 0 frame drops as opposed to... uhh... more than 0 with HuffYUV. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention, I capture at 640x480 NTSC.

[begu]

Originally posted by bpjenn
I capture directly with DIVX at 6000kbps 320x240 with excellent quality.
Isn't that overkill ?
I've found that lower resolution needs big bitrate to avoid ringin in sharp edges. But if You use higher resolution, that ringing is not so visible.

And my capture card outputs better quality with full resolution 720x576 PAL, because it's filter's are optimized for that resolution. So I get better quality out from the capture chip with full resolution rather than 384x288.

But of course, when the resolution is higher and the ringing is not visible, there is possibility for macroblocks to be present. In my tests I've found that 4000-5000 kbps for full res. is enough, but there are macroblocks in fast motion @4000 kbps. With 6000 kbps and little (chroma)noise reduction there is no macroblocks.

To sum up, my advise is that You should capture with full res, if You already use high bitrate (6000 kbps). Of course much CPU power is needed though. I have P4 2400@2800 (154 FSB) with mem ratio of 4:3 and capturing with virtual dub sync I get 75-95 % of CPU load (little real time noise reduction turned on). Still zero frame drops, thanks to audio resample. I'm using nic's Xvid, maybe the koepi's is faster, because it has some optimizations for P4. But nic's has too, maybe I have to test the koepi's codec. Still, I have sticked to nic's because so far all is ok (why fix something that is not broken?).

I've noticed that if I use higher bitrates, the CPU load increases. I think that high bitrate eats memory bandwith, and I can't capture for example over 8000 kbps, because CPU load rises to 100 %. But the quality @ 6000 kbps is awesome and when capturing using interlaced encoding, the motion is very smooth. It is difficult to tell difference between live broadcast and capture @ 6000 kbps with interlaced encoding (and decoding). Thanks to sigma x-card's high quality video-output.

Only broblem in these high bitrate captures is the space consumption. I'm considering to buy DVD burner next month. But what we all really need is blu-ray or something similar with cheap media ;)

[bpjenn]

I can't capture above 320x240 without dropping lots of frames with my 800MHZ system. Besdides, at that resolution deinterlacing is not necessary. I only view on my computer monitor and interlaced video looks horrible when there is a lot of motion.