Hi, First i would like to thank everyone who has helped me in the past. O.K. I took minions advice and just purchased a canopus advc 50, a sata 200gb hard drive and a video stabilizer to increase image quality. What I am wondering is I want to convert my vhs tapes to DVD with the best quality possible. I am using video studio 7 for capturing and have tmpge encoder and tmpge dvd authoring and some other ulead dvd authoring software. Should I capture in DVD or DV(avi) format? Is the differeance in quality worth the encoding time? Also if I capture into Mpeg 2 should I use varible bit rate or constant bitrate and how do you judge the setting to fit on one 4.3gb dvd? My goal is to simply have one VHS tape per DVD with close to the original VHS quality. One more thing I have a widescreen tv what display setting do I use when encoding with tmpge? Do I use 720x480 with a 4:3 display or 16:9 display? I think all tapes that are not in widescreen have to be set at 4:3. Thanks for all the help in advance it is quicker to ask questions then spend the 16 hours having to test every setting. Thanks
Generally speaking you will get Better quality Captureing to DV AVI and then useing a Standalone encoder Like Tmpgenc or the MainConcept Encoder(3 to 5 times faster than Tmpgenc) to encode the Captured file to Mpeg2 for DVD... If you want to save time and capture to Mpeg2 then I would suggest that you Not use Video Studio 7 to capture to Mpeg2, I would suggest useing "Intervideo WinDVR 3.0" because it has much better Mpeg2 capture quality it can also capture to DV AVI and the Version that I have allows you to Capture the audio directly to Dolby AC3, this feature was taken out because of Lisenceing Problems with Dolby Labs.... For Widescreen you should use the 16:9 aspect ratio when encodeing and/or captureing..... And to calculate what Bitrate you should use so a movie will fit on a DVD-R you should get a Bitrate Calculator, I use one called "PowerBit" and to use it you Just Put in the Length of your Movie in Minutes and then Put in the number of audio tracks and then put in the Bitrate you are going to use for the audio and then it will calculate the Bitrate you should use to Encode/Capture the Mpeg2 video file...If you use a Video Bitrate of 4875kbs and a Audio bitrate of 192kbs you can fit exactly 2 hours on a 4.38gb DVD-R......Well good luck...Cheers
Thanks again minion, I recently have been using Mainconcept video encoder and you are right it takes less time and gives much better picture. Maybe I am too picky because you can easily see quality differences when on a huge screen. What is the best dv version to capture in dv1 dv2 or dv(raw). Also can you give me some hints on how to best use mainconcept encoder? How do you set audio bit rate in this encoder. Also does Lpcm vs. mpeg2 audio make a big differance and which one is best? I also have been trying mainconcept to capture with because it displays screen size and dropped frames. One last thing that has been plagueing me is 356x480 abetter quality for vhs because the pixels are less spread out or is 720x480. There has been a lot of contradictions about this on the forum. Some say 720x480 gives better quality and others say 356x480 is better for vhs because it's orginal size is only 320x240 and hence the pixels are not streched as much. If you could please set me straight it would save me a lot of frustration. Thanks again
Hi ,As for what type of DV you should capture to I guess it depends.. "Type 1 DV" is the newest format but some Encoders will not support Type 1 DV Files... "Type 2 DV" is the older DV Format and is Supported in many more Programs but the quality might be a Little lower than Type 1 DV" "Raw DV" is probably the best quality DV because it is the least Compressed but it also takes up more Drive space and you need to have a Fast Drive" Haveing a couple good DV Codecs installed on your PC is a Good idea because some codecs are only Type 1 or Type 2 and some codecs are better at decodeing than other codecs and when you add an effect or transition when editing the Codec is used to re-encode that part of the Video so a good quality DV Codec is nice to have...MainConcept actually have a Couple good DV Codecs, I have even used them for Captureing useing my Analogue Card and it works pretty good..... As for the Audio format to use in the MainConcept encoder I would only use LPCM audio if you are going to later encode the LPCM audio to Dolby AC3, If not then capture to Mpeg1 Layer 2 audio because LPCM takes up far too much space on the DVD..(LPCM is the same as Wav audio which is uncompressed so the files are huge)..... There are some settings in MainConcept encoder that will help you get the best results... First run the encoder and Load in your File and click the "Details" button and were it says "Search Method" and "Search Range" set them to there Highest Settings(15 & 31)..Now click the "Advanced" button, In the Lower Right side is were you can set the Video Bitrate and weather to use CBR or VBR encodeing ,I suggest useing VBR encodeing with the Max bitrate set at 8000kbs and the Min set at 3000kbs and the bitrate that you are going to use set as the Average(Use a Bitrate calculator).. Now at the top choose the "Audio Settings" heading and here is were you set the Audio format and audio Bitrate, If you want just average Quality set the audio bitrate to 192kbs and if you want better quality set it to 384kbs and that is basicly it, any of the other available setting don"t really need to be adjusted..... As for what Resolution is best to capture to when captureing from VHS and makeing a DVD I guess it depends....if you are makeing a Standard Full D1 DVD the It is better to capture to 720+480 and if you are Makeing a Half D1 DVD then it is better to capture at 720+480 and then filter and resize the Image down to 352+480.... I allways found it best to Capture at the highest Resolution possible no matter that the Source resolution was and If I had to resize down to a Lower resolution afterwords I allways found that I got a Much sharper Image with more fine detail than if I were to capture that same footage at a Lower resolution.... Another method that also works well is to Capture your footage at 720+240 which makes the Image Progressive and then use AVISynth to first filter the image and sharpen it and then split it into Fields to resize it to 720+480 and then Bob-Deinterlace it which would get me a Progressive 720+480 image with very good detail...... Well gave a good one ...Cheers
