VHS Video To DVD

[Emmaxxx]

Hiya and a Happy New Year to you all

The old VCR has finally been laid to rest, well, not quite......

Now we have the new, all singing and dancing PVR (Thanx to Santa), all those video tapes that have taken over my side unit over the years can now be replaced with, er, something else....DVD's come to mind!

Before I finally lay them to rest (in the big wheelie bin), there are quite a few I would like to back up to DVD.

I've had a little play today, but I'm struggling to match the quality of the original tape, that's if you can call it quality.

I have Ulead DVD Movie Factory V4 and Virtualdub at my disposal.
Virtualdub won't allow me to capture at 720x576 Pal as it throws up an error "418 unsupported format"
I'm using the Huffyuv 2.2.0 codec for compression, but it seems in order to capture in AVI format you need an awful amount of HDD space. 30GB would only give me about 20mins playing time according to Ulead DVDMF4?

I've quite a few children's sing-a-long videos, lasting about 45mins each and would like to to put at least 2 onto 1 DVD, possibly 3.

I can't understand why an avi would take up so much space when compared to the quality of a DVD movie of around 4.37GB ?

Please could someone be kind enough to give me a few pointers in capturing at high qulity (or at least to match the original) and also re-encoding to fit onto DVD.

I have, at present, just 30GB to play with, with a possible 80GB or so once I've cleared off a few movies

Thanx

[VIPER_1069]

search the forum for VHS to DVD theres loads of guides and posts on it on the forum

[bionic]

Antoher good lossless codec are lagarith, it offers a bit higher compression than hyffyuv.

[Emmaxxx]

Thanx for your replies.

I've looked at past posts on the subject dating back as far as 2003 but still not sure how the AVI-compression process works, and why Virtualdub won't allow a 720x576 format? It will only accept 352x288 at best.

Using Ulead Movie Factory, capturing to avi format with or without compression selected, results in the same capturing time available....about 21 mins with the 30GB I currently have available....is this correct?

If I select a compression, does the software then compress the captured AVI to make a smaller, more managable file size?

What size file can I expect say from a 1 hour captue using the laqarith codec?

My intensions are to capture 2 tapes to avi format (2 - 2.5 hours max),
then encode with DVD2SVCD and finally author with TMPGEnc DVD Author.

Alternatively, to capture to MPEG2, Author as above, then use DVD Shrink to the required size. But my thinking is, using DVD2SVCD would give me the best results in terms of quality.....would you say this is correct?


Thanx for listening,

Emma
***

[bionic]

Its dependant on the source, if you have a very clean signal a good source and you have the hardware, mpeg2 could definately be the way to go, only way to know is to test and see if your happy with the results.

Since your capturing vhs, any resolution above 320x240 is by many considered overkill (this has been debated A LOT, and opinions may vary)
This consumption is based on the vhs format original resolution.

What size file can I expect say from a 1 hour capture using the laqarith codec?

According to my tests aprox 10-40% more compression than with huffyuv depending on source.

Doom9s capture forum is a good place for info

[Emmaxxx]

Capturing AVI format at 352x288 resolution was very blocky.

Mpeg 2 was OK, but not like the original.....Slight blocking and lines were a little jagged.

I guess AVI 720x576 is the way to go but at the expense of a extremely large file.
Would you say, approximately, a 1 hour capture would take up 60GB?
And would DVD2SVCD accept such a large file?

As regards the source, the signal quality is as good as you could expect from a 6 head player.

Than***

[bionic]

Would you say, approximately, a 1 hour capture would take up 60GB?

Dont know, just capture one minute and multiply the size with the amount of minutes to be captured

And would DVD2SVCD accept such a large file?

yes afaik



Oh and remember blockiness might occur different on a tv, if you have a dvdrw do a test burn

[cobo]

In VirtualDub capture mode, under Video, try selecting Preview instead of the default Overlay. This is necesary to enable capturing in all format sizes with some capture cards. Capturing blind by selecting No display could also work. Preveiw mode uses more CPU power than Overlay, No display uses the least.

You might also want to look at Doom9:
Capture FAQ
Capture Guide

[Duracell]

Originally Posted by Emma***

Virtualdub won't allow me to capture at 720x576 Pal as it throws up an error "418 unsupported format"

VirtualDub is only able to capture in resolutions which are supported by your capture card; mine (BT848) does 640x480 max;

[ChickenMan]

Emma, also check out VirtualDub's notes on capturing at http://www.virtualdub.org/docs_capture

As said, the capured pic size is dependant on both your capture card (must be extremely basic and very old if all it can do is 352x288) and the drivers you have installed for it. Have you checked out that there are no updates to your drivers?

For old VHS tapes, personally I've given up using Huffyuv or similar and just use Xvid and set bitrate at about 2000. The AVI's come out small and really with little if any loss in quality bearing in mind the originals are pretty crappy compared to a normal DVD anyway. You do need a fast PC though. You can then use VirtualDUB filters to "clean up" the image as well, difficult when saved as an MPEG2 file.

[LTR12101B]

I'll have a tinker with lagarith for Camstusdio as well, so far my best results on that have been with Alparysoft (which with free registration, does not logo... the test on this guys page seems to suggest that it logos the video).

Rember there is a severe bug in HuffYUV 2.2 - it's apparently ok with YUV formatted material (so may work. with video capture), but can make a hell of a mess with RGB formatted source.

[Emmaxxx]

Captuing at 720x576 was solved by switching from VirtualDubMod to VirtualDub 1.6.11. After all, if I could cature at this resolution using Ulead, there was no reason why I couldn't do the same with VDub.

I tried 3 different codec; xvid, Hfyu and Lagarith.
Typical file size were around 620MB for a 1 minute captue. Hfyu gave me the smallest file.
The CPU worked at 70-80% max, no frames were dropped using Hfyu and Lag. but as for XVid, that was dropping frames all the time for some reason.

Just when i thought I'd cracked it, playing back the 1 minute captures however wasn't so successful...Video playback was almost in slow motion and way out of sync with the audio.....Have I missed any settings?
I seem to think VDubMod gave me the option to sync video with audio but I can't see any settings in V 1.6.11 to do the same.

My system:
Pentium 4 Prescott 3.20ghz with Hyper Threading enabled
200GB 8mb cache 7200rpm Sata HDD
1 Gig Corsair PC3200 Ram
WinFast TV 2000XP Expert WDM Tuner\Capture card. (with latest drivers).

Before capturing, Antivirus and other running processors were diabled.

Thanx for your help guys
M

[bionic]

I have a WinFast TV 2000XP Expert too, its been quite a while since ive used it though, but if i recall correctly their drivers are/were a pain, lots of sync issues.
You might wanna look into this opensource driver and the picvideo m-jpeg codec

I think i had the same issues with huffyuv, divx and xvid, using m-jpeg(or mpeg2) it was ok though.
The bundeled PVR is actually not a bad alternative imo, as long as you can find a version that matches the drivers.


A good place for info on that card is the tv-cards forum

[Emmaxxx]

Thanx for links bionic.

I tried the alternative drivers, they seemed to install OK but my Device Manager showed up a few problems with devices not properly installed, so I reverted back with System Restore.

The WinFast TV 2000XP Expert wouldn't be my first choice of card but it came with my machine. Ideally I'd like a DVB card for more choice of channels, so the tv-card forum is a good source for a future purchase.

[Emmaxxx]

Well I've made a bit of progress. Capturing at 720X576 without dropping a frame isn't a problem with Vdub and the quality matches the original tape.

However, encoding the avi with DVD2SVCD (1.2.3 b1) produces poor audio (rapid clicking over the audio).
I'm using the AC3Enc4.bat plugin that besweet points to for conversion to ac3 (224kbps).
The extracted wav that besweet creates wont load into any conversion app that i have, nor will it play.
If I extract the wav with Vdub, that plays fine which suggests the clicking is produced during the Besweet conversion.

Anyone with any suggestions to solve this?

Thanx

Just to add, for capture, 48khz 16bit stero was selected for output.