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    Hello,
    I don't know if this is the right place for this but here goes. I have about 5 VHS tapes I want to make into "quality" DVD. (One in particular is a school play which lasts 35 mins). Which means no distortion and interlaced lines that come from coding and re-coding(Capture to WMM to DVD maker). I have the Canopus 110. A competent windows 7 PC with the correct firewire connection and 200gb of space. My source for playing the VHS is a commercial JVC VCR that has TBC etc. I started a project on the latest version of windows movie maker but can only save the video to wmv or H.264 MP4. I used windows dvd maker to burn this project and the results were terrible. I like the WMM format and templates because they were easy and didn't look bad. I inserted subtitles and credits along with adjusting the audio a bit. I know now that I may need to start this project from the beginning again in order to attain the original image output of the tape. I am looking for a lossless process to converting vhs to DVD. My project is saved and I still have the raw avi I captured from TMPenc saved. Any advice on what to do? I put this down for a couple of months just out of frustration. Thanks in advance
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    The Canopus will give a DV-AVI output which is the best quality you are going to get. Transfer to your computer using WinDV which will result in a 13Gb per hour file. Edit with something that can save as DV-AVI, there are trial versions of quite a few decent quality editing suites, such as Sony Vegas. Save your edited file as DV-AVI using smartrender so only any bits you have altered will be re-encoded, everything else will be left just as it is. Then use whatever you choose to encode and author to DVD. Never bothered with DVD Maker but I assume it will take a DV-AVI file and encode it to the correct mpeg 2 format. For DVD leave as interlaced as that is what a DVD player is going to expect to see and use a decent bitrate such as 8000kbs. That'll give you just over an hour to a 4.7Gb DVD disc.
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    Originally Posted by zoink187 View Post
    Hello,
    I don't know if this is the right place for this but here goes. I have about 5 VHS tapes I want to make into "quality" DVD. (One in particular is a school play which lasts 35 mins). Which means no distortion and interlaced lines that come from coding and re-coding(Capture to WMM to DVD maker).
    DVD is normally interlaced. The interlace combing doesn't show up on TV. Deinterlacing is costly. If it's absolutely necessary, the best deinterlacer is QTGMC.

    Don't want quality loss thru re-encoding? Then don't capture VHS to DV. You'll lose color resolution as well, if you do. DV is basically PC-only playback. It is not DVD/BluRay/AVCHD compatible without re-encoding. DV is lossy encoding. DVD is lossy encoding. Two lossy encodes don't make a better result.

    Originally Posted by zoink187 View Post
    I have the Canopus 110. A competent windows 7 PC with the correct firewire connection and 200gb of space. My source for playing the VHS is a commercial JVC VCR that has TBC etc. I started a project on the latest version of windows movie maker but can only save the video to wmv or H.264 MP4. I used windows dvd maker to burn this project and the results were terrible. I like the WMM format and templates because they were easy and didn't look bad.
    If you think WMM output doesn't "look bad", it doesn't matter how you capture your videos. The consensus around here for encoding VHS to DVD/BluRay/AVCHD or anything else: don't use WMM. If your final output looked terrible, it's no surprise.

    Originally Posted by zoink187 View Post
    I inserted subtitles and credits along with adjusting the audio a bit. I know now that I may need to start this project from the beginning again in order to attain the original image output of the tape. I am looking for a lossless process to converting vhs to DVD.
    The editing and additions you did in a lossy format resulted in multiple lossy re-encodes. Lossless is the way to go, but do all that work and cleanup (home made VHS always requires cleanup, not just "editing"). Encode lossless media to MPEG2 as the last step, then author and burn.

    Originally Posted by zoink187 View Post
    My project is saved and I still have the raw avi I captured from TMPenc saved. Any advice on what to do? I put this down for a couple of months just out of frustration. Thanks in advance
    If your original captured AVI was lossless, start again at that point and keep it lossless until you're ready to encode. If it was "DV" AVI, it's not lossless and will have to be re-encoded. For lossless capture, I recommend lossless AVI using lossless huffyuv or Lagarith compression in a YUY2 colorspace.

    You would be amazed at the number of threads in this and other forums by users who had the same experience. VHS to DVD is not a "conversion"; it's capture, clean, add the fancy stuff, encode (*only once*), author and burn. It takes time, learning, and patience. If you're short of one or all three, your best bet is to find a good (older) DVD recorder or send the work to a pro lab. FYI, budget capture cards that capture to MPEG2 are inferior to good DVD recorders, if you're worried about that. MPEG2/DVD is considered a final delivery format. It is not designed for "editing".
    Last edited by sanlyn; 19th Mar 2014 at 07:00.
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  4. Originally Posted by zoink187 View Post
    Hello,
    I started a project on the latest version of windows movie maker but can only save the video to wmv or H.264 MP4.
    Don't use Windows Movie Maker for anything. Cap as DV using the WinDV recommended by Richard G and after every stage encode to a lossless AVI as Sanlyn suggested. If you want to cap lossless, then you'll need either a capture card or a USB capture device, and not all have the ability to cap losslessly. Encode lossy for the second time (DV is slightly lossy too) only when encoding the final DVD. Maybe send your lossless AVI (I use Lagarith) to AVSToDVD for the final encoding if you're not competent to encode, make rudimentary menus, and author, yourself.

    Like Sanlyn, I also recommend keeping it interlaced, but that's up to you. Working with interlaced material, editing and restoring, can be tricky.
    I inserted subtitles and credits...
    You're hardcoding subtitles (burning them into the video)? Why not make them selectable like normal retail DVDs? They can be added during the authoring stage (or with AVSToDVD). The credits can also be made as subs, or a big black screen created for their display (or run during the final scene(s) of the video). That may be difficult for you, though, without the use of an NLE.
    ...along with adjusting the audio a bit
    The audio can be worked on in Audacity and then brought back into the video during authoring.

    You said you wanted to make a 'quality' DVD. What you're doing now isn't the way. Just my advice, worth about what you paid for it.
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    Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
    Then don't capture VHS to DV. You'll lose color resolution as well, if you do. DV is basically PC-only playback. It is not DVD/BluRay/AVCHD compatible without re-encoding. DV is lossy encoding. DVD is lossy encoding. Two lossy encodes don't make a better result.
    Ordinarily I would have said the same but the Canopus he is using outputs DV-AVI so that is the best he will get. It'll take analogue in, in composite or S-Video, and transcode to DV-AVI over Firewire. So WinDV is the way to go, no different to transferring DV-AVI from a camcorder. WMM further transcodes on the fly to whatever crappy format it can cope with so needs to be avoided. I agree it's a two stage process to then go to mpeg2 but as long as the original quality is retained as much as possible by using a decent quality VHS deck and, if it can, feeding S-Video to the Canopus, any quality loss is going to be minimal. The resulting DV-AVI file should look no worse than the VHS original and if the mpeg2 conversion is done with decent settings, then watching the footage from a DVD will look no worse than watching the origianl VHS tape.
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    Originally Posted by Richard_G View Post
    the Canopus he is using outputs DV-AVI so that is the best he will get. It'll take analogue in, in composite or S-Video, and transcode to DV-AVI over Firewire. So WinDV is the way to go, no different to transferring DV-AVI from a camcorder.
    I agree, if VHS->DV is the only method available then so be it. It's better than VHS->DVD. But in other respects I must disagree: VHS->DV and VHS->lossless are not "the same", are not "alike", don't "look alike", are indeed "different", and are not "the same thing " as DV-AVI source from a camcorder. True, most people can't tell the difference, DV fans will pee in their pants when they read this, "paid amateurs" who call themselves pro's do it, and the rest don't care. But you never know: the O.P.'s sense of visual discrimination might differ from yours, so I wouldn't categorically claim that results would be "the same" or that the work would be "less". It's a pain in the neck to clean up the digital mess that DV encoding creates from home made VHS. But as you say, the owner might not have a choice.
    Last edited by sanlyn; 19th Mar 2014 at 07:00.
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    I didn't say they are the same, I said that it will look no worse. Or at least, it can look no worse if the mepg2 settings are right. I very rarely transfer VHS but, when I do, I use a camcorder in passthrough to convert S-Video into DV-AVI, just the same as a Canopus does. That will give me a file that has a resolution of 720x576 (as I'm in a PAL country) which is considerably greater than the resolution of the original VHS. How much this will affect the visual quality is down to how good the A/D converter is in whatever is being used. The Canopus is one of the best and if you go back 10 years was what was being recommended as a way to get decent quality video into a computer from an analogue source. Capture cards have got a lot better since then (at least they work reasonably reliably these days and don't drop frames and unsync the audio from the video like they used to) and so have lossless codecs but he's got what was considered the best not that long ago.

    I suppose the question has to be, does he want to convert VHS into DVD or does he want to create a DVD from footage originally on VHS?
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    Thanks for the input everyone. In answer to the last question, I want to preserve VHS footage on a DVD with a small amount of tweaking (getting rid of the ringing in the audio or at least minimizing it.) Also, adding credits and subtitles to audio the may not be able to be heard clearly. Past that, it does not matter much because its VHS resolution after all. But if this footage is aging as I am, I need to do something soon! By the way, the latest version of virtualdub is not working on my Windows 7 32bit machine. I'm not able to capture with the Canopus 110 (error code -2 relating to the source format) nor can I use the lagarth or huffyuv codecs because they are not working or installed properly. Yesterday I used WinDV to capture and moved that avi right into AVStoDVD and burned the DVD. The whole process took almost 2 hours. I then popped the finished product into my bluray player. The end result was a very close to original video output (no lines/pixels) but the audio was in slow motion and out of sync. I think I'm halfway there with this method. Keep in mind the was no video "cleaning up"involved nor did I add the credits or subs (Darn WMM! I like you but why do you compress to such crappy formats?!). I can see the finish line! I just don't want to disturb this process with editing software that will kill my output. Again, your advice is welcomed and appreciated.
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  9. Hi zoink187

    Do you still have the AVStoDVD project log file? If yes, could you attach it here?



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    MrC

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  10. Originally Posted by zoink187 View Post
    Yesterday I used WinDV to capture...
    Forget VDub, Lagarith or anything else for capping. As long as the Canopus box is in the chain, you should cap to DV AVI and WinDV is the tool for the job. About the audio, hard to say, but did you make sure you were capping it at 48Hz? Check the DV AVI you made with MediaInfo.

    VDub and Lagarith work fine in Win7 32 bit.

    Subs can be added after making the DVD, although you'll have to demux. If you can create the subs yourself, you won't have to reencode the video. Here's Baldrick's guide:

    https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/277950-How-to-add-new-subtitles-to-an-existing-DVD

    Use his Method 2 and don't forget to follow the instructions about 'turning on' the subs in the DVD later. The guide is not about actually creating the subs, but there are many programs available for that.
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    Mr_C_,
    here is the log file.
    Image Attached Files
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  12. Hi zoink187

    from the log file, apparently no issues.

    Could you please cut 1 min from the original AVI-DV an upload it here? You can use VirtualDub or Avidemux to cut.



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    MrC

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    Ok Gang,

    This a general survey on the previously mentioned project. I am simply looking for a ranking on the following capture devices with one being the best. I'm using Win 7 32 bit. An available pcie and older pci slot, and usb 2.0 ports. Mind you I have virtual dub and enosoft dv for capture software so I'm just interested in the hardware. I'm capturing VHS.


    ATI 600 usb

    ADS Tech DVD usb

    Encore ENUTV usb

    AverTV Volar HD usb


    PCI

    Aver EZDVD Maker

    Hauppage Win PVR

    ATI AIW 650 hd

    ATI 7500 AIW VE


    Thanks!!




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    Please separate the PCIs from the USBs please.


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    Originally Posted by zoink187 View Post
    Ok Gang,

    This a general survey on the previously mentioned project. I am simply looking for a ranking on the following capture devices with one being the best. I'm using Win 7 32 bit. An available pcie and older pci slot, and usb 2.0 ports. Mind you I have virtual dub and enosoft dv for capture software so I'm just interested in the hardware. I'm capturing VHS.


    ATI 600 usb

    ADS Tech DVD usb

    Encore ENUTV usb

    AverTV Volar HD usb


    PCI

    Aver EZDVD Maker

    Hauppage Win PVR

    ATI AIW 650 hd

    ATI 7500 AIW VE
    ATI 7500 AIW VE = first place
    ATI 600 usb = second place

    Forget the rest.

    best = cap to lossless YUY2 AVI with huffyuv or Lagarith compression. You need a line tbc of some kind. Most would use an old DVD recorder as tbc pass-thru. I believe you are asking for the "best", not the most convenient. Cap to DV-AVI or MPEG (worst) at your own risk. End of story. IF you're unwilling or unable to try for the "best", I'd send mit to a pro shop for only 5 tapes. Try digitalfaq.com.
    Last edited by sanlyn; 19th Mar 2014 at 07:01.
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    Ok. I do believe we are on video help.Not that I'm unwilling, Convenience does play a role and sending them to a shop is not an option. I am asking for advice and it sounds like ati AIW 7500 is your winner? Again, it's a survey. Thanks.


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    According to your profile's computer specs, you have only 100GB of working space. For work with lossless video, that likely won't be enough. Standard definition from VHS captured to lossless AVI with huffyuv compression will use about 25GB per hour. Even if you capture to DV, 6 tapes plus workiing space for titles, etc., and recoding/authoring will take up your entire hard drive. You could work with one or two tapes at a time, save as-you-go to an external hard drive (500 GB USB drives aren't that expensive these days), and join what needs to be joined from that off-computer source.

    I see that you have the tbc issue covered with your JVC player. There are several reasons for capturing VHS to lossless media. When it comes to VHS->DV, the principle reasons that are "con" are that DV does entail a data loss, you need additional encodes for editing and final output, and because home made VHS is awful, noisy, crazy stuff; that crazy VHS stuff includes rainbows, dropouts (spots, streaks, rips and ripples), blown-out highlights and crushed darks, tape surface noise, halos, DCT ringing, and a host of other defects that get encoded as artifacts. It's possible to clean up tape problems with DV media, but not with the primitive filters found in the usual NLE's. Those defects also show up in lossless capture, but they are in a more workable, lossless colorspace. So the main reason for lossless VHS capture is the opportunity for an easier trek at cleaning up defects. You can do some of that cleanup, or you can do a lot. Another advantage of lossless is that it makes for an archive that is most faithful to the source. Also, lossless media can be encoded to any of several delivery formats from the same capture. The other path to capture and processing would be manono's advice is post $10.

    Deinterlaing: it always involves a cost. Common NLE's do a crap job of deinterlacing. Consider as well that DVD is normally interlaced and so are many forms of standard definition h264. For PC-only or web display, you can make a deinterlaced version. Among deinterlacers, yadif and -- even better -- QTGMC are the best, but you'll need Avisynth for that. Quite often, whether you work with lossless or DV, deinterlace + reinterlace or some form of it are needed for cleanup of some kinds of image problems. All depends on individual videos.
    Last edited by sanlyn; 19th Mar 2014 at 07:01.
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    Respectfully, that sounds like it's bordering complicated but I am willing to learn. What I have to find is a "Happy Medium" , if that's possible, that can address those cleanup issues but doesn't become terribly time consuming or a headache (as in just about now).


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    I can only say that whether you cap to lossless or to DV-AVI, amateur videos and home made VHS always look like the devil without some level of cleanup, as you've already seen with your first effort. Some of us here are picky picky picky perfectionists (I plead guilty), others do some basic scrubbing of the worst of the wost of it and find good editing, encoding, and authoring apps. Much of that filtering and software is free, very little or none of it can be found at BestBuy or Walmart, and all of it is documented in our forum Tools section.

    At the outset it's pretty definite that Windows Movie Maker isn't even in the ballpark for anything. Period. Something like the budget SONY apps can handle DV-AVI fairly well and certainly works with lossless (which you can re-encode to the output of your choice after all editing is done). SONY and similar budget apps are not smart-rendering with non-DV formats. Smart rendering means that only a small portion of the cut/join would be re-encoded; but if you get fancy with multiple audio tracks, etc., you're in for lots of re-encoding unless you go with lossless media. If you do want DV, WinDV is your best capture choice but you need Firewire for it. A better grade of smart-rendering apps comes from decently priced sources like TMPGenc and a few others, some of which are free (free means fewer features and goodies). If you go the "Pro" route from Vegas and Adobe, you have the typical problem of smart-rendering with DV but pretty much forced to go lossless with almost anything else. Once you understand what some software will do and what others won't, the choices get simpler.

    It's impossible to be more specific without two elements; first, we need more information, more detail about how complicated you want to get with your processing, i.e., what kind of output are you looking for? Second, a lot of speculation can be avoided if you can submit a short sample, either of an unprocessed piece of capture you already have, or even a piece of the horrible results you say you already have. A sample is worth a thousand questions and a million guesses. If you need to know how to submit something, just ask.
    Last edited by sanlyn; 19th Mar 2014 at 07:01.
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    I'd like to point out that the ATI 7500 AIW VE is not PCI (it's AGP) and won't work with Windows 7.
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    True. I wondered why it was listed. Thought perhaps the O.P. had an old XP machine lying around that wasn't mentioned in the profile.
    Last edited by sanlyn; 19th Mar 2014 at 07:01.
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    I was referring to the pci version and messed up the model numbee


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    I keep forgetting you have Win7. You're unlikely to find ATI drivers for that O.S. and card combo.
    Last edited by sanlyn; 19th Mar 2014 at 07:01.
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    Even at 32 bit (legacy)?
    If it won't be compatible. Should I just stick with usb or a newer type of card that would support analog s video capture?


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    The ATI model listed is the 7500 AIW VE. If you have an ATI "PCI" capture card it's likely a TV-Wonder, not an All-In-Wonder. The last TV-Wonder drivers ATI ever posted were for WinXP, and even those were modified from Win2k. What is the specific model number/name?

    Short of finding Win7 drivers that will work with a PCI tv tuner card (which might not be possible), the USB ATI device is almost as competent. AFAIK, people are using it with Win7.
    Last edited by sanlyn; 19th Mar 2014 at 07:01.
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    Originally Posted by zoink187 View Post
    Even at 32 bit (legacy)?
    If it won't be compatible. Should I just stick with usb or a newer type of card that would support analog s video capture?


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    Get the USB version of the ATI or Diamond TV Wonder HD 600. Avoid the PCI version of the TV Wonder HD 600, which uses a different chipset, because its automatic gain control will sometimes go crazy and can't be disabled. Unfortunately the same problem exists with all versions of the TV Wonder HD 650 and TV Wonder HD 750 too.

    Windows 7 drivers for the Diamond TV Wonder HD 600 USB are available from: https://www.diamondmm.com/tvw600usb-ati-amd-tv-wonder-hd-600.html

    I have installed the 32-bit drivers and they work with Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. I didn't try Catalyst Media Center with the the TV Wonder HD 600 USB, and you wouldn't want to use it anyway for lossless capture. GraphStudio does work, and allows more control.
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    Correct. It is the TV wonder.


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    Am I correct to assume that Hauppauge's PCIs have the same compatibility problem with win 7 and above?


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  29. Hey, I'm new to transferring VHS to a PC video format. I have a Dell Inspiron with Windows 7, 4GB of RAM and a3.0 Ghz processor. I plugged my VCR into my tower with a USB to RCA cable (red yellow and white) and installed AVS Video recorder because I use AVStoDVD for DVD authoring and I'm pretty happy with that. It's saying that it's detecting no capture device and that I need to install a driver to pick up my VCR connection. Can anyone recommend something? I got my RCA cable off of ebay for $5 and it didn't come with a disc or anything.
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  30. Originally Posted by MiklosTheDisemboweler View Post
    It's saying that it's detecting no capture device...
    That's because there isn't any. And you'll need more than just a driver to make it work. You'll need a capture device. If you look around on this site you'll find lots of information about how to do it. Even in this thread.

    And why are you hijacking someone else's thread?
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