Blu-Ray - Will it provide better VHS to DVD copies??

dvd-dude · Member Joined: 18 Oct 2002

I'm just wondering if when the new Blu-Ray format comes out (or it's competitor) if we will be shooting ourselves in the foot for converting VHS to current DVD-/+Rs.

For example, will we be able to get better results using Blu-Ray - more genuine, archival quality transfers from VHS to DVD? Or is it more of a analog>digital conversion issue that will not be resolved by simply allowing more storage space?

i.e. is a current VHS to DVD-R transfer done today pretty much the best I can do given the limitations of the conversion process? Or will Blu-Ray give us archival quality copies and make me wish I could redo them all?

Thanks for any feedback you can offer.

-DVD-Dude

yoda313 · Regular joe Joined: 15 Jun 2004 Location: sector 001

Hi,

Whats the max capture cards can do today??? 15mbps????? If so than you'd be able to capture more at the MAXIMUM data rate to get the most without sacrificing quality. BUT you still can't get better quality than the video source. I think there is some realistic limit of what you'd capture at. Besides Disc space on your pc/mac would be another limitation. Unless you have a few 200gb drives capping hours at max bitrate would really take up a ton of space for debatable quality improvement.

Kevin
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lordsmurf · Posted: Jul 11, 2005 13:44

Bluray won't do anything for tapes.
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yoda313 · Regular joe Joined: 15 Jun 2004 Location: sector 001

dvd-dude · Member Joined: 18 Oct 2002

That's a good point.... the upside is I could consolodate what I have converted of old home movies onto a few discs!

However, does anyone know what the data transfer rate of blu-ray is supposed to be? Will the Blu-Ray DVD format still use MPEG2 compression? If so it seems like it wouldn't make a difference in quality... I see very little difference between SP and XP when coming from a VHS source to a DVD recorder... I assume SP is somewhere around 6 mbps, and XP is around 8. So if the codec is what limits the resolution I guess you could make it 100 mbps and it wouldn't matter. Am I right in making this assumption? I'm just trying to understand if there is or isn't a difference in quality and why that might be.

Thanks again!

-DVD-Dude

yoda313 · Regular joe Joined: 15 Jun 2004 Location: sector 001

Hi,

Baldrick · Administrator Joined: 09 Aug 2000 Location: Sweden

mpeg2,vc-1 and h264 compression.
up to 36 mbit/s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BluRay

davideck · Preservationist Joined: 03 Feb 2003 Location: USA

coolj1 · Member Joined: 08 Jul 2005 Location: U.S.A

so this is gonna be another war for standardship ......there's the DVD Alliance vs the DVD Forum (+ vs -) Now there's Blue Ray vs HD DVD.
"Here We Go Again "
Thank god i still have my VHS tapes in the attic.
I would love to see the prices on them babies.

dvd-dude · Member Joined: 18 Oct 2002

What about lines of resolution? Is that another limiting factor in this process? If a DVD already has far more than a VHS but that doesn't resolve the issue I'm guessing a Blu-Ray with HD definition still won't do us any good from VHS.

I guess it all comes down to whether or not Blu-Ray will provide high bit rates that would compensate for the artifacts you can get when transferring older VHS tapes to DVD. Does anyone know for sure if this is true?

Thanks for the discussion... this is helping a lot!

-DVD-Dude

yoda313 · Regular joe Joined: 15 Jun 2004 Location: sector 001

lordsmurf · Posted: Jul 12, 2005 10:45

If you use 9000k MPEG-2 and get blocks, your encoding methods are flawed.
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slacker · Member Joined: 05 Jan 2004 Location: SF, CA, USA

VHS transfers on my dvd recorder yield no blocks on XP mode (8700 average bitrate), and visible (though few) blocks on SP mode (4220 average bitrate). Other than the blocks, which are few and far between, I am actually amazed that even by halving the bitrate the video comes out virtually identical to the one at 8700, to my eyes. Even for those extra special tapes, you wonder if it makes any sense to capture ONLY 1 hour on a dvd, rather than two.

zorankarapancev · Member Joined: 30 Sep 2003

slacker,

Which DVD recorder did you buy?

vhelp · ..Semi Neutral.. Joined: 31 Mar 2001 Location: New York

Are you basing your results from your vhs to dvd (via dvd recorder)
from your pc monitor, or tv set ??

To date, there are no hardware dvd recorders that implement any
kind of IVTC in the recording stage. That is such an impact to
quality. If there were such a feature, *then* and *only then*
would a dvd recorder be the final frontier to the one-button
does it all, *and* produces fanstastic (like-original) source quality
if from a Film relm.

Until then, you'll almost always have macroblocks or MB's (pixelation)
in your dvd recorder vob's.

DVD Recorders record the full 29.970 fps (be it Telecine; Progressive;
or Interlace) source. It does not record the source as 23.976 fps
to the vob's when the given source is Film (aka, Telecine) nor does it
re-Telecine/IVTC during the recording stage. It simply records the
original 29.970 fps, and that is all

So, because it is encoding these interlace areas, you will see the MB 's
especially in these fields, and the finished vob's will be 29.970 fps,
and dvd2avi will read these vob's as Interlace (or in some cases, and
depending on dvd recorder) will see dvd2avi's window report as:

PPP II; PPP II; PPP II;

This is how dvd2avi would report, if you were to encode an MPEG and
run it through pulldown.exe, for an IVTC and report as Film / Progressive,
..as most Commercial DVD movies do

-vhelp 3448
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