Another VHS --> DVD Conversion Question

MrSpeed wrote on 6/14/2004, 9:12 AM
I know this has been beat to death but I did not find any answers in the archive.

I see that others have used the products such as the Canopus ADVC-100 but in the interest of cost savings I plan to use the pass-thru feature of my DV camera to 'capture' my old vhs tapes. The length of each movie will be 2 hours plus a sensible navigation menu.

1) I believe I can only capture at full D1(740x480) with this method...correct ?

When I encode to MPG would I be better off at half D1 with say a bitrate of 4K or Full D1 at 4k.

I realize that common sense says that half D1 would be the way to go but does the interpolation from D1 to half D1 cause any additional losses that may offset the bitrate/pixel advantage of converting to half D1 ? I wanted to hear the opinions of others because I'm not sure my eye is the best guide.

These are family movies and not episodes of a television series so quality counts. I want these DVD's to be my new masters for future editing as well.

I did see the article in the Vegas form that mentions doing two captures and then combining them to cancel out noise. I'm not sure if I am going to go that nuts.

Thanks,
Rich

Comments

bkthiess wrote on 6/15/2004, 11:59 AM
I don't know about the D1/half D1, I'm still relatively new. But in order to fit more than 1 hour on a DVD, you're going to have to reduce the bitrate to around 4,000 kbs. (A full quality, 1-hour DVD is 8,000 kbps). You're not going to have the same high quality, obviously, but it will fit.
Chienworks wrote on 6/15/2004, 1:31 PM
You really don't want to use these DVDs as masters for future editing. Editing DVD-encoded material is a bear at best and is extremely slow and cumbersome. You'll be far better off recapturing from VHS than to try to use the DVD versions.

The size of the frame you use when encoding isn't what determines the output file size. That is determined solely by the length of the material and the bitrate. Using a lower bitrate will allow you to fit more on the disc than a higher bitrate, though at a somewhat reduced quality level.

However, that being said, when you get to very low bitrates a smaller frame size may look better. I've found that the cutoff for material recorded from VHS seems to be about 2Mbps. Above this bitrate material looks fine at 720x480. Below it, 320x240 or 360x240 may look better. It's somewhat a personal judgement call though. Lower bitrates with higher resolution may be sharper, but the bits have to be spread across more pixels so there will be more artifacting and areas of solid color. Lower resolution will have fewer artifacts but the image will be softer. You probably won't be looking at anything close to that low though. 4Mbps will easily allow over 2 hours on a standard 4.7GB DVD. At this rate full frame size definately looks better than half size.