Capture VHS to .avi at different resolutions/quality??

[Mike]

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

I have many vhs tapes I want to transfer to DVD. Some are high quality
SVHS home movies that I want to keep as high quality as possible on
the DVD. Some are low quality, mono sound, that I'd like to fit as
much as possible onto a DVD ( 3 or 4 hours).

Since I may be working on several different DVD projects at any one
time, I need to keep the 'raw' captured (.avi ?) files as small as
possible. How can I capture the low quality VHS tapes with smaller
file sizes ? Note that I will be doing extensive editing and
combining, since most of these tapes are form 1/2 hour to 1 1/2 hour
long, so I need easily editable files.

I have Nero 6, also have trial version of Ulead VS 8. Would not like
to spend a lot of money on software, < $100 if possible


thanks for any recommendations

Mike

 

[Brian]

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

mrk1949@comcast.net (Mike) wrote:

>I have many vhs tapes I want to transfer to DVD. Some are high quality
>SVHS home movies that I want to keep as high quality as possible on
>the DVD. Some are low quality, mono sound, that I'd like to fit as
>much as possible onto a DVD ( 3 or 4 hours).
>
>Since I may be working on several different DVD projects at any one
>time, I need to keep the 'raw' captured (.avi ?) files as small as
>possible. How can I capture the low quality VHS tapes with smaller
>file sizes ? Note that I will be doing extensive editing and
>combining, since most of these tapes are form 1/2 hour to 1 1/2 hour
>long, so I need easily editable files.
>
>I have Nero 6, also have trial version of Ulead VS 8. Would not like
>to spend a lot of money on software, < $100 if possible
>
>
>thanks for any recommendations
>
>Mike

First your need a large hard drive to store the VHS tapes in AVI
format. 1 hour of video requires 13 gigs of hard disk space.
If you are wanting to retain the quality of the SVHS tapes you will
only be able to store 1 to 2 hours per DVD. Blank DVD's are getting
cheaper these days so that should not be a problem.
You can lower the video bit rate to store more than 2 hours of video
on a single DVD for the lower quality VHS tapes.
Ulead Video Studio 8 and Power Director 3 are good video editors for
the price.

Regards Brian

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

On a sunny day (Sat, 05 Jun 2004 23:32:36 +1200) it happened Brian
<bclark@es.co.nz> wrote in <vgb3c0l44l078q7ha6g1ofbpuh7oe85p69@4ax.com>:

>mrk1949@comcast.net (Mike) wrote:
>
>>I have many vhs tapes I want to transfer to DVD. Some are high quality
>>SVHS home movies that I want to keep as high quality as possible on
>>the DVD. Some are low quality, mono sound, that I'd like to fit as
>>much as possible onto a DVD ( 3 or 4 hours).
>>
>>Since I may be working on several different DVD projects at any one
>>time, I need to keep the 'raw' captured (.avi ?) files as small as
>>possible. How can I capture the low quality VHS tapes with smaller
>>file sizes ? Note that I will be doing extensive editing and
>>combining, since most of these tapes are form 1/2 hour to 1 1/2 hour
>>long, so I need easily editable files.
>>
>>I have Nero 6, also have trial version of Ulead VS 8. Would not like
>>to spend a lot of money on software, < $100 if possible
>>
>>
>>thanks for any recommendations
>>
>>Mike
>
>First your need a large hard drive to store the VHS tapes in AVI
>format. 1 hour of video requires 13 gigs of hard disk space.
>If you are wanting to retain the quality of the SVHS tapes you will
>only be able to store 1 to 2 hours per DVD. Blank DVD's are getting
>cheaper these days so that should not be a problem.
>You can lower the video bit rate to store more than 2 hours of video
>on a single DVD for the lower quality VHS tapes.
>Ulead Video Studio 8 and Power Director 3 are good video editors for
>the price.
>
>Regards Brian
You can make rather small DivX avi files by downloading the
divx codec from www.divx.com, and selecting it in your capture card.
Depending on processor speed you can do anything from 352x288 medium quality
in real time.
For low (medium) quality VHS this is fine, and you need no de interlace
if you use half the vertical lines like this.
At 1500 kbps you would get an hour on a CDR (try mp3 sound).
JP

>

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

In article
<8c5ec142.0406042320.64216c0c@posting.google.com>,
mrk1949@comcast.net says...
> I have many vhs tapes I want to transfer to DVD. Some are high quality
> SVHS home movies that I want to keep as high quality as possible on
> the DVD. Some are low quality, mono sound, that I'd like to fit as
> much as possible onto a DVD ( 3 or 4 hours).
>

SVHS tapes, bring in at full-D1 resolution (704x480 or
720x480). The low quality stuff can be done at 352x480
(half-D1).

704x480 looks okay at 4100kbps VBR video, as long as you
tune the MPEG2 encoder properly. (e.g. TMPGEnc set to
"high" motion search precision, 10bits) If you also use
256kbps AC3 audio, you can fit 145 minutes or so onto a
standard DVD (less if you use PCM audio which is a
massive 1536kbps). If you don't like the artifacting at
4100kbps VBR video, you can trade-off run length for
more bitrate.

Half-D1 video requires roughly half the video bitrate as
full-D1 to look as good. e.g. half-D1 at 3100 VBR video
+ 256 AC3 audio gives you around 190 minutes on a DVD.

www.dvdrhelp.com probably has a bitrate calculator
somewhere.

> Since I may be working on several different DVD projects at any one
> time, I need to keep the 'raw' captured (.avi ?) files as small as
> possible. How can I capture the low quality VHS tapes with smaller
> file sizes ? Note that I will be doing extensive editing and
> combining, since most of these tapes are form 1/2 hour to 1 1/2 hour
> long, so I need easily editable files.
>

Capture at half-D1, using an MJPEG codec (e.g.
PicVideo's) at Q19. Should be around 2MB/s (7-8
GB/hr?). Or, to eliminate artifacting, Q20 is 3.5MB/s
(12GB/hr). Full-D1 requires roughly twice those
amounts.

Large disks are cheap, I have a 100GB capture drive, a
250GB staging drive, and a 200GB scratch drive. That
lets me comfortable work on 6-8 hours of video in the
queue (but I work at 704x480 MJPEG Q20 or 24GB/hr).

> I have Nero 6, also have trial version of Ulead VS 8. Would not like
> to spend a lot of money on software, < $100 if possible
>
>
> thanks for any recommendations
>
> Mike
>