Convert a VHS Video to blu-ray?

[Haopengyou]

Is there some one step way to convert a videotape to a blueray (I think HD) file? I know it is possible to convert a tape to a DVD file and then have a player upgrade the signal as it is playing to HD file/quality. I am especially interested in a machine (VCR/DVD dubbing ability) that will do this.

[Baldrick]

I changed your subject from bluetooth to blu-ray. .

You could use a blu-ray recorder like http://www.panasonic.fr/html/fr_FR/1432141/index.html ....but why?

[SatStorm]

Or you can buy a Hauppauge HD PVR USB card, that captures realtime to H264 and produces files that BluRay understands.

VHS gonna stay of VHS quality on whatever you convert to. Converting VHS to BluRay won't make better the picture you know.

[DVWannaB]

If you have a DVD recorder or use free tools to create DVD. I would go that route. No need to spend extra money to create video that essentially wastes bitrate and space. A blu ray disk of VHS transfer will not look any better than a 720x480/576 DVD. If your goal is to archive a bunch on VHS on one blu ray disk, then the Hauppauge unit of blu ray recorder would be the way to go.

[SatStorm]

Well, it's not exactly like this...
Unfortunately, mpeg 2 at the DVD bitrates can't be blockfree with noisy VHS sources without filtering. I have plenty of them, so I know.
I'll start next week (when my new card arrive) to convert VHS to H264 at 3100-3500kb/s, because I hate macroblocks and I don't have the time (and the patients) to filter raw VHS captures. I mean, for 10 years, I try to convert my tapes to DVD and without filtering, the results are awful. The tapes are now 10 years older and I have to do something quick if I wish to keep the content. H264 is a solution. The fast and block - free solution.

[Persistence]

I put 20 hours of old VHS on a BD-R-DL at 5 mbps and used about 34 GB of space. It was a condensed selection of highlights from a mountain of old VHS casettes. The source video was analogue 320x280 and had been converted to MPEG at 320x480. The quality final result was close enough to the original tape: OK for scenes of the dearly departed, fuzzy enough to hide blemishes, and somewhat blurry for wide shots or sports scenes. It is what it is. The main achievement was to create a single disc with a menu to allow recipients to revisit old occasions, events, or childhood episodes without the hassle of multiple DVDs or need for a VHS player.

[vhelp]

Just thought I'd pop in here. As some of you know, I like to push the envelope a little in these endeavors.

There's another alternative to h264 capture-n-encode, on the fly. I've been at it for a while now, testing various scenarious and trying to obtain the best all-around settings for this method, and I think I found something worth considering. But its getting a bit late for me now, fussing about with this for 4 hours. Tomorrow's another day.

Here's a short receipe for the time being, and tomorrow I'll post some settings I used in this, but you'll need at least a 2-core cpu for starters:

capture card -> x264_vfw codec -> h264_vfw.avi -> dgavc[demux.264] -> tsMuxerGUI -> newvideo.ts

* for the capture, the x264 bitrate was 4000

Believe me, this .ts actually plays perfectly in my WDTV. And the worse of it was based off a vhs tape, previously captured and filtered and then encoded to mpeg at 9000 cbr bitrate, (2 years later) only to be used as the experimental source and yet again, re-encoded. I can't recall the exact lossyness passes it went through since its inseption, but my guess would be somewhere around the 4x or more recodes. So, I gotta say, not bad..not bad at'tall.

This WDTV is something else. It really works--for virtually everything!! The WDTV makes a great test bed for various video encodes. Quick and dirty guager. No more fumbling around with DVD r / rw discs, burning, waiting, and waiting for the playback, etc. With the WDTV, you just pop copy your vid's to a mem stick, pop it in and press go. No waiting.
bye-bye dvd disc writer tool/guager..you are finished!!

With a little luck (finding an upload host) I'll post the .ts demo video tomorrow for you's to review.

-vhelp 5136

[SatStorm]

I tried that some time ago myself.
Capture with virtualdub at H264. It works and it's ok, but not as stable as I wished to. Soon or later, when our computers can handle it, the software encoding is going to be mainstream. It happened with mpeg 2 before.

All the nmt based solutions (WDTV, PopCorn Hour, eGrate, etc) can handle those files with no problem. I have myself a PopCorn Hour and I'm very pleased. The only problem they have, is that they don't support well .ass subtitles, so when you watch anime with karaoke, you have a problem.

[lordsmurf]

It won't happen until i7 is low/medium-end tech and software really does use 4-8 cores effectively. I don't see that happening for probably 3-4 more years, unfortunately.

It will really come around when hardware finds a way of fooling older software that is single-core usage only into using more cores. I don't know if that's possible, but it seems potential to me.

[PuzZLeR]

You can still just encode it to the DvD spec, which is fully compatible with blu-ray. And encoding this to HD will only unnecessarily add much more bitrate, more encoding time, headaches, etc for almost zero benefit. VHS reaches the law of diminishing returns at DvD resolutions as far as I'm concerned. As well, this will work if you're thinking of having lots of content on one disc.

I mean, for 10 years, I try to convert my tapes to DVD and without filtering, the results are awful...

I understand your pain. It's been that long, maybe longer for me too.

H264 is a solution. The fast and block - free solution.

I thought so too, but I wouldn't agree just yet. Look carefully - that blockiness could be replaced by a blur/smear instead, which is quite lucid, and also quite horrid, on a big screen TV. If so, choose your poison.

And if you're using x264, it can't handle interlacing, can't effectively do pull-down with SD, etc, so at the blu-ray spec, particularly with SD (since HD would be a waste with VHS source) it would not be an efficient encode IMO.

Sorry my friend, I hate to inform you our wait for that ultimate encode could be another few years yet...

[SatStorm]

Hi PuzZleR,
that's why I'll try my luck with that new Hauppauge card that captures realtime to H264. Because it is not x264 and it does handle interlace.

I know about the smoothing, so I'll add more sharpness to the source. Another alternative, could be a capturing to a DVD Recorder Standalone HDD, playback from there upscaled and captured at 576p or 720p, which is not interlace.

But that card didn't arrived yet to start testing it.

I wish to try all the possible workarounds. I have SECAM tapes from the early 80s and they are a pain in the ass already to capture them in colour. I don't have any more time for those tapes!

[markqc]

lets say I'm a noob/bonehead;

any way to dump old vhs / SD video to blu-ray discs easily?

I dumped my old VHS onto my hard drive using windows movie maker capturing the video at 720 x 480 30 fps and variable bit rate.

next I have another 55 or so video8 and HI8 tapes and then after that over 50 DV tapes.

it would be nice to be able to use blu-ray discs as then I don't have 100 DVD's to burn.

I tried this sony picture motion browser crap and DVD architech 4.5 but no way to move it into blu-ray that I can find...

[markqc]

deleted.

[markqc]

I put 20 hours of old VHS on a BD-R-DL at 5 mbps and used about 34 GB of space. It was a condensed selection of highlights from a mountain of old VHS casettes. The source video was analogue 320x280 and had been converted to MPEG at 320x480. The quality final result was close enough to the original tape: OK for scenes of the dearly departed, fuzzy enough to hide blemishes, and somewhat blurry for wide shots or sports scenes. It is what it is. The main achievement was to create a single disc with a menu to allow recipients to revisit old occasions, events, or childhood episodes without the hassle of multiple DVDs or need for a VHS player.

what software did you use to that recognized the mpeg and allowed you to burn the SD video to BD?

thanks