Getting the Best Quality on Hommade DVD's

[Quigonsean]

I was just wondering about somthing. I capture my home movies, and VHS copies of movies not available on DVD in mpeg2 format with WinDVR which only allows CBR, then author in Maestro. When I cap I set the bitrate according to length of movie and extra's etc I will be putting on the disc in order for it to fit.

What I was wondering was do you think I might get better quality if I captur as High a bitrate as WinDVR will let me, then author it in Maestro since it will let me author bigger then 4.37gb. Have Maestro build the DVD on my Hard Drive. Then after that use a utility like DVDShrink or DVD Xcopy or whatnot to size it down to exactly 4.37 to fit a DVD-R.

I was alsoi thinking about. If I know I'm gonna need to run Avisynth in order to make it Anamorphic or whatnot. Might I get better quality if I cap as high as possible CBR then when I run my script and encode it using CCE at a 3-Pass VBR that will allow it to fit DVD-R after authoring.

Or would this not make a differance large enough to justify the extra time and work? Well unless I got no choice but to put it through CCE such as when I use AVISYNTH, which I only use if I'm capping letterbox so I can change it to Anamorphic Widescreen for Authoring.

All opinions are appriciated greatly, and a great big Thank You in advance as I really appriciate the info everyone shares here on this Web Site. Ohh gotta go Historyu Channel is running a special on Jack the Ripper.

Thank You,
Sean Ward

[housepig]

you could try capturing to .avi first, then encoding with TMPGenc, Mainconcept or Ligos encoders, which should allow you to do multiple pass variable bit encoding.

- housepig

[bugster]

IMHO, you will get the best quality by capturing with someing other than windvr, and capture to a lossless avi (huffyuv) or low los codec such as Mjpeg. Then convert to mpeg, using VBR, with a good quality encoder. You can choose from TmpGenc, CCE, mainconcept and others here. Capturing direct to mpeg leaves you too much at the mercy of the capture apps encoder for my liking.

[Vejita-sama]

I agree with bugster except for one point. There's no real reason to enocode with VBR when making DVDs unless you have a really long (runtime) source. If your average bitrate is over 6000~6500kbit/s just encode CBR.

[housepig]

Vejita -

not to hijack the topic, but what is the maximum time you can put on a dvd at CBR=6000?

I know there's formulae floating around on this site, but I can't put my hand on it at the moment....

- housepig

[johnny quest]

In TMPEGenc its 75 minutes at 6000

[txpharoah]

Some general information about VHS capturing in the first part of the guide in my signature.

If you can capture direct MPEG2, and are not editing, AVI would be a waste, and comments such as "lossless" codecs have yet to be proven so don't let wordings like that fool you. Multipass encoding is also not always the best answer. CBR can provide just as good results, and at a fraction of the time.

I'm sure I'll get disagreements out the yin-yang here, but the AVI method was made for editing. The direct MPEG method is one adopted by the broadcasting industry, and works amazingly well - just watch CNN. It was the method made for conversion.

[bugster]

Some general information about VHS capturing in the first part of the guide in my signature.

If you can capture direct MPEG2, and are not editing, AVI would be a waste, and comments such as "lossless" codecs have yet to be proven so don't let wordings like that fool you. Multipass encoding is also not always the best answer. CBR can provide just as good results, and at a fraction of the time.

I'm sure I'll get disagreements out the yin-yang here, but the AVI method was made for editing. The direct MPEG method is one adopted by the broadcasting industry, and works amazingly well - just watch CNN. It was the method made for conversion.

I agrr to a certain extent. The main reason I would suggest capping to AVI and then encoding to mpeg later is it allows you to choose your encoder and your encoding settings. It also allows you to apply filters if required. As for VBR Vs CBR, again I mostly agree, VBR is there to be used in order to get the best run time per disk. However, Quigonsean is encoding home movies and what with camera shake from hand held cameras, and sometimes too fast panning etc, the higher the bitrate you can use the better. VBR allows a high bitrate when you need it and will drop the bitrate when not required. Still, it is all about run-time as you say, but if you DO fill the disc, then VBR, avg 6000 CAN give better quality than CBR 6000, all other things being equal.

[Quigonsean]

Thanks for all the advice. Yeah I do wanna stay with mpeg, that is unless I know I have to use CCE so I can run an AVISYNTH script which I only do to make a letterbox anamorphic. Thats why I got the Aver EasyDVD so I could cap directly to DVD compliant. But I have been putting my Star Wars trillogy on DVD, and cropping down the bars stretching it vertically and running it in cce set to 16x9 which yeilds when authored in 16:9 mode in maestr a true anamorphic widescreen. In this case in order to do that I have to use an encoder for avisynth, so IO thought since I gotta run it through the encoder maybe it would look better if I cap it at a very high bitrate then when I run the script/mpeg through cce set the bitrate lower to where it will fit the dvd. I'm not ding any editing, though the info on vbr is helpfull with my plans to put the videos of my former band on dvd.
Thank you all,

Sean

[Bob W]

I just capture directly to DVD complient mpeg2 at around 8000 bit rate (I think thats right) using an AVer capture card and NeoDVD Plus. Then I have NeoDVD generate the DVD files and use DVD2one to get those files onto a single DVDR. The results look ever bit as good as the VHS source.

[housepig]

Txpharoah -

"going direct to mpeg rather than capturing in .avi and converting" (paraphrase) assumes that your hardware & software will give you better results that way.

depending on your setup, you may get better results that way (and they would certainly be much quicker and more painless, especially capturing something you don't have to edit)... but you may not.

with some lower-end capturing gear, going the extra mile by capturing low-compressed avi's and reencoding them can give better results than capturing direct. Yes, if we had higher-end gear, we might see better results and not have to jump through hoops, but for some of us with more time than money, doing it the long way around can make a silk purse from a sow's ear.

and Johnny Quest, thanks for the info... is that with pcm audio or mpg audio?

- housepig