8mm->DVD, Lessons learned

[jarroyo]

Well, I just spent 3 weeks investigating and trying out many different options for converting our 8mm home movies to DVDs (DVD-R). What follows is my conclusions. These are completely colored by my perspective, but I thought others embarking in the same journey might find it interesting.

My Requirement: To move over 40 2hour home movies from 8mm to DVD for posterity. The quality should be as good as the 8mm tape. My wife is quality control and the definer of acceptable quality.

My System: 1.6Ghz P4 Sony Vaio 512Mb Ram, 60G hd. Windows XP Home SP1. Cendyne DVR-105 burner. Maxwell DVD-R media.

What I tried:

- ATI All in one WOnder 8500DV capture
- Hauppauge PVR-250 Capture card
- TMPENc Mpeg encoder
- MainConcept Encoder
- Huffyuv AVI compression
- PicVideo MJPEC conpression
- Pinnacle Visual Studio V7
- Ulead MovieFactory V1 &V2
- Ulead Workshop
- ATI MMC 7.5, 7.6, & 7.7
- Direct to MPEg Capture with MMC
- Direct to MPeg Capture with Pinnacle
- Direct to Mpeg Capture with Ulead
- NeroVision Express DVD creation
- VirtualDub
- PowerVCR
- IuVCR
- ScreenBlast SoundForge for audio editing

As you can imagine, I cannot give you all the ins and outs of my trials, but here are my high level conclusions:

- No program that used software based direct to MPEG capture yielded acceptable results for my quality control dept

- Capturing in AVI with Huffyuv and converting to MPEG using TMPGEnc or MainConcept yielded excellent results

- Hardware based MPEG capture yielded excellent results, comparable to the AVI/Mpeg conversion

- When it comes to MPEG encoding MainConcept and TMPGenc were far better than any other one I tried (Nero, Ulead, Pinnacle)

- If you go the AVI route, I suggest you have a large, fast harddrive (7200RMP Ultra ATA/133). I found that I had problems with dropped frames until I tried a drive with these specs.

- VirtualDub VfW seemed to drop frames with the ATI. Probably because I was using a wrapper for the WDM ATI drivers. I found MMC, PowerVCR and IUVCR had less trouble with dropping frames.

And the winner is...

It all came down to quality and performance. I had settled for the ATI 8500DV card with the combination of PowerVCR/HuffyUV for capturing because of the nice simple UI and the ability to capture with low frame drops. For conversion, I was all settled on MainConcept. TMPGenc is just as good if not a little better but I could encode 2 hours of video in MainConcept in about 7 hours vs 16+ hours for TMPGEnc. When I looked at doing this over forty times, the $100 difference did not seem as bad!

Right before I was going to fork out the $150 for MainConcept, I came across some information regarding the Hauppauge PVR-250 which has a hardware base MPEG encoder. The cost $150... In my investigation, I found that a whole lot of people had trouble with this card but the ones that got it to work were very positive on it. I went to circuit City and got one. I figured that the worst that could happen is that I had to return it and reinstall Windows. Having used windows for over 12 years, I am used to reinstalling. Did a backup of the system and read as much as I could from www.shspvr.com. Well, I followed their advice and did not have any trouble with the installation.

The results were comparable to the AVI/MainConcept solution. Quality control approved, so I was pleased. The software to capture, WinTV2000, has some pretty major issues, but I found a utility called WinTVCap which is basically a command line utility to do time captures without preview. Just what I wanted. My CPU runs at 5% when the capture is happening and no dropped frames. Since it goes directly to MPEG the hard drive requirements are not as massive.

So, with the PVR-250 I can capture and encode in one step with similar quality. The problem is that it only supports MPEG and editing MPEG can be a pain. Most of what I am capturing does not require editing, so this is not an issue for me. Also since it is only MPEG, you have to use their software to capture. Some utilities are being created by open source guys, so there is help coming. This might be an issue for you. I sure miss PowerVCR!

To author DVDs I was working with NeroVisionExpress (with MPEG plugin). It has a very simple menu creation function which is just what I needed. The annoying thing is that it insits in reencoding the MPEG even when its 100% DVD compliant. I finally settled on Ulead MovieFatory V1. It has a very simple and slick menu function and can burn the final product. V2 has some nice features but I think they really messed up the menu creation funcion. I prefer Nero to burn so I just create an iso image with MF and then burn it with Nero.

One last thought. Both SW based encoding and HW based encoding created MPEGs with sound/audio sync problems. This lead me to check out the Canopus 100 and Canopus 50 which captures to DV. Everybody loves it and claim no sync problems. My issue with it was that I had to buy the card, the MainConcept encoder (dont want to grow old with TMPGEnc) and probably another Harddrive. I just could not afford it. I found a guide in this site which took me through the procedure necessary to fix the sync problem and since the Viao came with SoundForge, I can get perfect sync with its stretch function.

In summary, SW encoding with TMPGenc or MainConcept and HW encoding gave me acceptable results. If I were to go with SW I would use MainConcept because I dont want my computer tied up that long doing encodings with TMPGEnc. The HW route met my requirements at the lowest cost and the fastest capture to dvd time. I would however be careful about going with the PVR-250 unless you are comfortable with messing with drivers, installs, and patience with crummy user interfaces. In the SW route, you have to know how to tune your system to give you good performance and thus few dropped frames. Tuning a system can be tricky and not something that is the same for all systems.

I am not trying to convince anybody to agree with me. Quality and performance are subjective things in the world of video capture, so your milage might vary. My wife and kids really love the movies in the DVD with menus and chapters and they claim the movies are just as good as the source. Who am I to argue with them

Hope this is helpful to somebody else because I sure wasted a lot of time in it. This site was invaluable in helping me through this process, so I felt compelled to share my results. I certainly appreciate the knowledge from everybody here.

[filmjax]

What an outstanding post... I only wish more people could post such detailed experiences. Thanks! I'll be doing something similar to this very soon!

[drewson99]

great report, but this process is something I have been doing a lot lately and I'm wondering why you didn't cap to AVI directly via firewire, then convert to mpeg2? this has given me the best results.

(or is that what you did?)

Andy

[jarroyo]

Thanks to you and filmjax for the kind words, I am glad the post was of interest.

I believe that to go through Firewire I needed either a Digital camera with the DV stream or a box that would cap analog and convert to DV. That is why I looked at the Canopus option. My source is analog (old 8mm camera). The ATI AIW 8500 was actually free, so for analog capture the price was right and actually performed well once I tried the right hard drive and PowerVCR.

If I had to do heavy editing to my captures, that might have been the best solution. I have honestly not played too much with NanoEdit (comes with the PVR-250) to edit MPEGs, but there are mixed reports out there.

[DEmberton]

Forgive my ignorance on the subject, but what did you use to go from film to a video signal to feed into your capture card?

And one thought: if there was ever an issue of dropped frames, would it not be possible to play back the film at a slower speed? Ideally you'd capture one frame at a time to ensure the best possible quality and no frame loss.

Dave

[Baldrick]

jarroyo: Is it okey that I move this great article to user guides section? it will then be included in the first page and I will also add it to the how to sections later.

[arcorob]

Hi ..Great Post ..I guess when you say 8mm you mean Camcorder 8mm , not 8mm Project (I do those, what a bear)

Not bursting a bubble, you definately have travelled the ground I walked until a few months ago (and tough ground it is) when I decided DV is the way to go with firewire. And costs less also........READ

I made sure I purchased digital 8 camera's with Video passthru. This solved enormous problems I also purchased a firewire card for 15 dollars.

The first problem it solved was space. When I was capturing to AVI via ATI AIW card and virtualdub, it was running at 1.2 gig a minute. Needless to say, a space hog. Then having to edit and convert back to AVI (YES) back to AVI because only TMPG would properly handle the output this way.

TMPG , input AVI and Output MPEG2. Very cumbersome.

The digital mode solved all this. Capture was a breeze. Old 8mm..No problem, pop it in. VHS ..hook up the cables and pass it through. Net result, less space used, easy edit and render as I could now render in my edit program and NOT back to AVI.

Glad to read of your experiences...where were you when I need you ...LOL

Best to you
RobA

[jarroyo]

DEmberton: From the 8mm Camcorder I had some composite RCA jacks and both the ATI AIW card and the PVR-250 also take in composite jacks. These transfer a analog singnal which then is captured. Regarding dropped frames, in my mind dropped frames are symptoms of something not right. In my case was a not well tuned system so I opted from trying to fix the problem.

Baldrick: If you wish, sure.

Roba: You are right, DV would have put less of a burden on the harddrive and done a great job without dropping frames. I took my request for a digital camcorder, with a great business case, to my home's finance department, but she who must be obeyed claimed that we could not afford it (something about school, dipers, new carpet, etc). Camcorders with passthrough are pricey. The other option was Canopus, but the way I saw it, it would have cost me $190 for the Canopus 50 and still needed to buy the MPEG encoder (MainConcept). I could have gotten away with TMPGEnc, but again, it took too long to encode. With what I went with it cost me $155 for the PVR-250 card. I had had a digital camcorder, thats a no brainer, I would have followed what you described.

Thanks all for your comments.

[arcorob]

You live with a SHE WHO WOULD BE OBEYED ALSO ?? LOL

I hear you . Mine was very smoothly disguised as business needs since I do have a wedding video business. I purchased a SOny TRV540 specifically because it has a SLOW SHUTTER feature which is excellent for filming 8mm Projector fil and

right after that , saw a BRAND NEW Hitachi Digital VMD965LA at overstock.com for 382 dollars ...Not refurb. I could not resist....though SWWBO (above ) tried ......

Best to you and thanks for the afternoon Laugh !

[mpb]

Well, I just spent 3 weeks investigating and trying out many different options for converting our 8mm home movies to DVDs (DVD-R). What follows is my conclusions.
- Capturing in AVI with Huffyuv and converting to MPEG using TMPGEnc or MainConcept yielded excellent results
It all came down to quality and performance. I had settled for the ATI 8500DV card with the combination of PowerVCR/HuffyUV for capturing because of the nice simple UI and the ability to capture with low frame drops. For conversion, I was all settled on MainConcept.
So, with the PVR-250 I can capture and encode in one step with similar quality.
This site was invaluable in helping me through this process, so I felt compelled to share my results. I certainly appreciate the knowledge from everybody here.

Thanks for the informative post!

You ran into a lot of the same issues I did, and my conclusion was similar to yours. I wound up, for the sake of pure obsessiveness on quality, capturing in Virtualdub *uncompressed* and encoding with TMPGenc. (I have tried Mainconcept and it's good, but I'm used to working with TMPG and speed isn't a problem on my system. but I agree with you anyway)

However once I made the big jump to DV, that sealed it. I'll never go back. It was expensive, but since I wanted a camcorder anyway, and needed a timebase corrector to capture older and more worn tapes, at least the value combination was good.

The ease, results, consistency, and basically every aspect of the PROCESS of capturing is about 900% better capping through the AV passthru on my Canon ZR-45 camcorder to DV-AVI, editing if necessary with Premiere or Moviemaker (which will let you leave it as a DV-AVI thankfully), encoding with TMPGenc, and burning. I have a capture running in DVIO right now as I'm typing this... no framedrops, near-zero CPU use, firewire, the whole nine yards.

But for anyone not using camcorder passthru and DV-AVI, your solution is about as good as analog capture is capable of being.

[jarroyo]

mpb,

You are killing me! I really, really wanted to go the DV route. I agree DV is the way to go. In fact, the Canon ZR45 is the camera I took forward the budget comittee. Are you happy with it?

I think I am going to appeal the decision and make the case that in developing countries babies dont wear dipers. I really want a digital camcorder...

But actually, I am happy with the PVR-250 and will probably stick with this option until I can afford the camera I really want when I need it. I blame my wife, but the truth is that I'm too cheap to spend the money when other more pressing things are in the horizon...

[Will Hay]

Great post, thanks
When trying the huffyuv route, were you doing short tests or did you capture a full 2 hours of 8mm?
Will

[jarroyo]

With all the major tests (Huffy being one of them) I did 2 hour and 1 hour captures. Many of them I actually burned to see the quality since the quality on the TV is different than the one I saw on the computer (probably the fact that it is interlaced)

When converting to MPEG, for 2 hours I used VBR 8000 Max, 4600 Average, Interlaced, Top field First (I Think). For 1 hour, VBR 8000Max, 6500Average, Interlaced, Top First . Audio was always Mpeg L2 Stereo at 48Khz, 224 bit. They both settings gave me very good results. I pretty much went with what the bitrate calculator gave me in the tools section. It was amazingly accurate.

[Will Hay]

Hi, thanks for the reply.
The reason I asked was I recently had two 80gb D740X Maxtor hdd's working as one 160gb on RAID 0, but have had more sucess splitting and using as two conventional drives. Having successfully used the huyyfuv myself I couldn't get anywhere near a 2 hour avi on my 80gb drive, trying a ten minute test I wouldn't have had enough storage space.
A ten minute clip was coming out at 8gb, whereas the same test with the PicVideo mjpeg codec at quality 19 was nearer 2.5gb
I wondered if you were changing any settings to reduce the capture size maybe?
Many thanks,
Will

[jarroyo]

Humm. I used Huffyuv and it yielded files of about 70Gig for 2 hours. 33G for 1 hour. I do not know enough about huffy to know why yours was bigger than 80G. MJPEG was significantly lower at level 19. Level 20 gave about the same sizes as huffy. <subjective opinion warning> I felt that MJPEG compression lost too much so I backed away from it </subjective opinion warning>

I borrowed (yes borrowed, I have geek friends) a 120Gig 7200 Ultra ATA/133 for this test.

[kitty]

I agree great post!

You mirror some of my own findings. I am going the PVR250 route and hit my latest stumbling block. My PVR250 VBR caps are not well liked by Ulead DVD MovieFactory2 - bad sound sync. I'll try to cap at CBR to see if it handles that better.

[jarroyo]

Kitty,

Oh the dreaded audio sync problem! I tell you that was one of my biggest frustrations. Here my understanding is limited but here is what I found out. For the most part, there are to main reasons for audio sync problems:

1) It is my understanding that during capture the PVR-250 uses your sound card to sample the audio. If your sound card is off, you will have this problem. My soundcard seems to be off since I had the problem no matter what capture hw I used.

2) Editing the MPEG file can cause the sync problem. This tends to be mostly on VBR just by the nature of Variable rates. Nanopeg has problems with this. There is a tool called nanofix in the www.shspvr.com site that is supposed to help with this problem, but since I do not edit (yet) I havent tried it. I have read that Womble MPEG2VCR ( www.womble.com ) is supposed to deal well with this problem but at $250, its outside my range.

If your problems are before editing, I do not know of anything you can do to avoid it, but I was able to fix it with the following procedure which I learned from this site:

1) Import your MPEG into Virtualdub (freeware). Go to the very last frame and write down the time (i.e. 1:58:04.879)

2) Use a Demux utility to split audio and the video bbMPEG is supposed to do this and its free. I have used TMPGEnc since Im still withing the 30 days and its simpler. This will create two files xxx.mpv is your video and xxx.mp2 is your audio.

3) Import the xxx.mp2 into an audio editing program (i.e. CoolEdit or SoundForge). You will see that the audio is probably longer or shorter than what you wrote down in step 1 (in my case 1:59. xxx). Use the "Stretch" function to make the sound match (or come close to) the number in step 1. If you know what you are doing, you can even clean up the sound with some of their filters. I dont have a clue.

4) Save the file. Unfortunately, unless you have MPEG2 support in the utility (I Dont) you will have to save as wave (.WAV). In this case you will have to encode the wave to MPEG2. If you have TMPGEnc, it will do it. Even better is a tool called TooLame and TooLame GUI (see tools section) which are also freeware. (I am not as cheap as I sound BTW)

5) Miltiplex the two files into an MPEG file. You are done.

There are many technical reason why all this stuff happens and the fix works, but I am not sure I understand it. All I know is that if I do the above my daughter's singing is in sync with her lips in the videos.

I believe the above information is accurate, but I am stuck in a hotel room in Austin, TX because of ice and I dont have my notes with me.

BTW, those of you going the DV route. I have not heard of many (if any) having sync problems during capture with DV. This problem was what made me look into DV. The PVR-250 does allow you to record straight from Cable a function I would have lost if I went DV. Never mind that I will probably not use this function, but it makes me feel better...

[rhegedus]

BTW, those of you going the DV route. I have not heard of many (if any) having sync problems during capture with DV. This problem was what made me look into DV. The PVR-250 does allow you to record straight from Cable a function I would have lost if I went DV. Never mind that I will probably not use this function, but it makes me feel better...

First of all, thanks for taking the time to write such an informative post.

Now, the Canopus ADVC-100 has Video and Audio (L+R) IN sockets that allow capture from any source that you can connect to. I'm capturing VHS to DVD using this and have been pleased by the results.

Regards,

Rob

[mpb]

Kitty,
BTW, those of you going the DV route. I have not heard of many (if any) having sync problems during capture with DV. This problem was what made me look into DV. The PVR-250 does allow you to record straight from Cable a function I would have lost if I went DV. Never mind that I will probably not use this function, but it makes me feel better...

DV = perfect audio sync all the time, every time. The firewire captures sound as well as video; no special arrangement required.

Worth Every Penny! but very expensive. I waited about half a year before dropping the bucks on a miniDV because of the cost.

[Will Hay]

Humm. I used Huffyuv and it yielded files of about 70Gig for 2 hours. 33G for 1 hour. I do not know enough about huffy to know why yours was bigger than 80G.

Maybe I got my sums wrong, I'll test again

MJPEG was significantly lower at level 19. Level 20 gave about the same sizes as huffy.

Yep, I found that too, and I couldn't find any drop in quality once burned between mjpeg 19 & 20.
Will

[ewingr]

ARCOROB'S post earlier talks about purchasing a DV Passthrough camera , and that 'fixed' his space problems. This implied to me that he is saying it captured direct to MPEG. Is that right?

I have a SONY TRV535. I find that what it captures to depends entirely on what sofware, (and I presume, what hardware, i.e. 1394) it is passing through. I have always captured to AVI, and converted with TMPGENC.

That being said, I am interested in bypassing the AVI phase, but reading here, I am concerned about doing that. I edit with Premier, then convert using Video Server through TMPGENC. I have never had video/audio synch problems (am I lucky, or is it because I don't do MPEG until after editing?) I interest in captureing to MPEG for all the obvious reasons: space and time. But I don't want quality to suffer, or frustration to arise during the editing process, or audio synch problems.

So, I guess I'm interested in one last thought from anyone about if I should continue to capture to AVI first, or consider MPEG capture. I AM interested in quality pictures. I'm burning to DVD; using DVD Workshop, after authoring from Premier, and encoding with TMPGENC.

[jarroyo]

From my experience, if I needed to do editing, I would not go for MPEG format. This format was not intended for editing and I have not seen any tool that handles it well. For speed, you can move from TMPGenc to MainConcept or CCE Basic. They are both very fast and good quality.

The passthru I was talking about is the DV passthrough. A camcorder with passthrough, will take a video input convert it to DV and pass it through to the computer via the firewire cable. DV is actually a compression format of an AVI file which compresses at a 1:5 ratio. This helps with the space problem.

So to answer your question, I would stay with AVI and convert with TMPGenc, MC, or CCE Basic if I was doing editing. Otherwise, I would consider straight to MPEG, but only from a HW based MPEG.

[ewingr]

Jarroyo

Thanks for your reply!

Say, I just tried MC Demo today, and it is FAST! Based on a small test, it is takes about 5% of the time TMPGENC does. I suspect on a larger file, it won't be that impressive.

One problem: I am using a FrameServer from Premier (Videoserver093 by videotools) to Frameserver to TMPGENC. I tried the same with MC, and got audio, but no video.

Do you know if I can frameserve from Premier to MC, and if so, how to go about it? I've searched the site, but don't find anything. I'll try searchin more. Probably try a post directly on this topic as well.

Thanks

Thanks

[jarroyo]

Roger,

Sorry, I don't have any experience with Premier. I have only frameserved from Avisynth. I saw that you started a thread around that question, hopefully you will get an answer there.

[txpharoah]

The VHS->DVD guide would have worked well for 8mm->DVD conversion as well. Just replace the soure type when capturing.

Otherwise, looks like you had a lot to go through. Some of your problems actually had quick fixes, but in the end, as long as you found something that works and you're happy with it, that's all that matters.

[troyvcd1]

How do you go from 8mm film to your computer. I am talking about film that needs to be played with a movie projector on to a movie screen. Anyone have any experience with these old movies. They dont have any sound you just put them on the old movie projector and watch them.