DVD-R @ 352x480, 352x576, from VHS

[cosmin]

Hi,

I think that the conversion of VHS to DVD should be done at the resolution 352x480 (NTSC) or 352x576 (PAL). A lower (VCD-like) resolution will lose quality; the common high DVD resolution (720x480/576) is unnecessarily high for this purpose, because the VHS source has a low horizontal resolution.

So in order to fit as many VHS tapes on a DVD-R, without losing quality, 352x480/576 is the way to go. However, I am surprised to see a lack of support for this resolution in some otherwise-important software. Even TMPGEnc doesn't have a predefined template for this, and I had to make one of my own (I suppose such templates are also available as 3rd party downloads).

My question is:
Can anyone recommend me a good DVD authoring package (preferably cheap/free) that works well with this resolution? I tried Ulead DVD Workshop 1.0, and it has lots of features, but it upconverts my already-converted videos to full resolution.

Thank you very much,

[kantazo]

And what bitrate can you suggest?

[chaseru]

I just completed transfering my VHS collection to DVD. I captured the video at 740x480 then resized in VirtualDub to 352x480. I also had VirtualDub run 2d and temporal video noise filters (more filtering for cartoons, less for live action).

I frameserved to TMPGEnc, which if you use the wizard will encode at 352x480 by default depending on the video length. I generally put two videos on one DVD so in the wizard I told it to "fill" 50% of a DVD using a bitrate of 3000-4000. you can always override and tell TMPGEnc to encode at 352x480.

DVD MovieFactory will accept 352x480 MPEG2 files without recoding, but it always crashed on me when I tried to insert chapter points.

I ended up using SpurceUp, which had no problem with 352x480. I was able to purchase an unused SpruceUp CD on ebay for $100. BTW the SpruceUp registration website still works for getting the key for a valid new registration number.

The resulting DVDs looked great. The kids will play one of the transferred DVDs and I will often think that I bought the movie on DVD.

[TheWolf]

@cosmin:

Hold your resolution and use any authoring-prog you wish!
The trick is quite simple and called DVD Patcher!
Do the following:
1. Use DVD Patcher to change the rersolutiion of the entire film (MPEG2) to 720x576(PAL) or 730x480(NTSC)
2. Author your film(s), use menues and so on.
3. Again use DVD Patcher to re-patch the .vob-files of the film(s) back to the original resolution.
4. Burn them on DVD and watch them on TV without any re-encoding and without largen up the films

I did this several times and it works great.

[K2]

I do not agree with your statement. perhaps it is more an opinion?

the common high DVD resolution (720x480/576) is unnecessarily high for this purpose, because the VHS source has a low horizontal resolution.

The factors are numerous, including your capture card quality.
Use a resolution that looks best to you. With my hardware I can see that 720x480 is better. To each his/her own.




P.S. The answer of DVD patcher, changing the headers works just fine.

[Nolonemo]

Assuming you have a legit copy of DVD WS, you can apply the 1.3 patch, that will give you a box to check so that your 720x480 won't reencode. I know it works because I've burned 720x480 with DVD WS without reencoding.

[cosmin]

Thank you very much for your replies. The solution with DVD Patch sounds quite well, even though if I will start using programs that support this resolution natively (like Ulead DVD MovieFactory), it might be a good solution as well.

Kantazo wrote:

And what bitrate can you suggest?

I didn't decide upon the bitrate yet, but if I am using a half resolution, I don't think I need a very high bitrate. I think I will do trial-and-error (and I also need to try the impact of denoising or other filters that are supposed to be applied on data coming from analog sources).

Chaseru wrote:

I frameserved to TMPGEnc, which if you use the wizard will encode at 352x480 by default depending on the video length. I generally put two videos on one DVD so in the wizard I told it to "fill" 50% of a DVD using a bitrate of 3000-4000. you can always override and tell TMPGEnc to encode at 352x480.

Putting two videos on one DVD (given the half resolution) seems a good outcome. I wasn't sure if it's enough to change the resolution in TMPGEnc, or if I needed to adjust other parameters to make up for this adjustment, but maybe resolution and bitrate change are enough. I intend to use 2-pass VBR.

TheWolf wrote:

The trick is quite simple and called DVD Patcher!

I didn't know about it, thanks!

K2 wrote:

I do not agree with your statement. perhaps it is more an opinion?
[...]
The factors are numerous, including your capture card quality.

I am capturing using a DV camera (Sony) on the tape via the analog input, then I am downloading the 720x480 video via the FireWire. I think this is one of the best ways to do high-quality capture.

You are right, capturing at a lower resolution may decrease the quality, because sampling may not be done accurately enough. On the other hand, capturing at full resolution then decreasing the horizontal resolution using a cubic interpolation, should not affect the output quality. It is a fact that VHS has a low horizontal resolution, about 210-240, which gets translated to less than 352 horizontal pixels (SVHS has a little more, about 400, which gets translated to roughly 600 pixels).

For example, see
http://www.dvgear.com/videoformats.html

Nolonemo wrote:

Assuming you have a legit copy of DVD WS, you can apply the 1.3 patch, that will give you a box to check so that your 720x480 won't reencode.

If you meant that my 352x480 won't be reencoded as 720x480 - that would be great.

Thank you very much again for your answers.

[LanEvo7]

352x480 works wonders for me. I capture at 640x480 using my AIW 8500 and virtual dub in MJPEG codec. I then use TMPGEnc CQ setting at 65% with soften block noise filter. The result comes out extremely close to the original VHS copy. Sometimes I need to change the % if there are many fast moving scenes. Doing that I've been about to fit between 300min - 360min on one DVD

[baker]

can I just say its grea to see a post like this.

the best way to do a vhs conversion is as follows:

1. capture at 704x576(480) in the mjpeg format DO NOT USE HUFFYUV
2. with a bit of avisytnth add a temporal smoother at 2 THEN resize to a bicubic 352x576.
3. put this file into CCE and encode!!!


wella, brilliant copy!!

Baker

[House de Kris]

My question is:
Can anyone recommend me a good DVD authoring package (preferably cheap/free) that works well with this resolution? I tried Ulead DVD Workshop 1.0, and it has lots of features, but it upconverts my already-converted videos to full resolution.

My Sony burner came with a free program called MyDVD which will not re-encode 352x480 into another resolution. Only trouble is that it will always convert the audio to LPCM. Major bummer.

[RayS]

My AIW Radeon video card came with TV s/w that also serves as a digital VCR. In the past year ATI updated the resolution formats so that the standard capture modes support VCD and one of their 'CUSTOM" settings is now called DVD Medium at 352 x 480. I think it does a great job allowing two hours worth of VHS home movies to be put on a single DVD-R. However, I've been disappointed with the AIW cards ability to capture w/o dropping frames. So please don't take this as recommondation for ATI.