Please help with this question...

clearvu wrote on 5/6/2003, 7:07 PM
I'm planning on capturing VHS video to my computer in order to eventually render it as MPEG2 for DVD. I do NOT want the DVD results to be less quality than the less than perfect VHS.

So here's my question. Since VHS is lower quality than what MPEG2 for DVD is capable of, would it make sense to lower the MPEG2 quality in order to get more onto the DVD? Since DVD only holds about 1 hour of high quality video and VHS is not high quality, couldn't I lower the bit-rate without affecting the VHS quality? Or would lowering the bit-rate make the original VHS even worse?

If lowering the bit-rate IS an option, how much of a change could I do without losing quality?

Thanks greatly!

Comments

Paul_Holmes wrote on 5/6/2003, 8:41 PM
If you capture the VHS through your camcorder to a DV AVI file and then render to mpg you will still lose quality. If you render using Main Concept using the DVD-NTSC template at 6000vbr you will get an mpg that is probably indistinguisable from the original VHS on a regular TV, but as you get towards 4000vbr you will definitely notice the loss of quality. Also the more motion in your source the higher you should encode it.

Whatever source you have, when you render it to mpeg you lose quality because of compression. It doesn't matter if it was a high-quality source or a low-quality source.
clearvu wrote on 5/6/2003, 9:19 PM
When you say "6000vbr", are you referring to the MAX bps? What about the AVG and MIN settings? Should these be changed too?
Paul_Holmes wrote on 5/7/2003, 10:43 PM
The DVD-NTSC template is already configured for 6000vbr. Some in this forum who have done a lot of experimenting claim you should never go below 2000 minimum, although I haven't had any bad experiences with the default DVD-NTSC template. If I want to go lower I just use the same template and change the average to something lower, leaving the high and low alone.