2+ Hours VHS-DVD - 1 or 2 DVDs for Better Quality - Opinions

[blade29]

Hello. I have a bunch of football games on VHS (avg - 2 hours and 40 minutes each) that I'm converting to DVD. I use Scenalyzer to capture (from VCR through my Canopus ADVC-100 - Analog to Digital converter) and CCE (VBR - multipass - 3 times, 0 Min, 3484 Avg, and 8500 Max, Top Field First) to convert to DVD format (NTSC - 720X480).

I was looking to get some opinions from others on what they think about me using a higher bitrate during conversion, thus using 2 DVDs for each game, instead of 1 DVD for quality reasons? Will there be a significant picture improvement, enough to warrant using 2 DVDs per game for a VHS capture?

I would like to keep the format as DVD and not CVD (or SVCD), so that the DVDs can be used universally in all DVD players. Let me know what you think. Thanks.

blade29

[housepig]

I'm not sure if the quality is going to be so much better with a higher bitrate - I've been doing some VHS captures, and in my tests I didn't see a marked difference between a bitrate of 6000 and a bitrate of 8000, so I usually encode between 5500 and 6500 for space reasons.

But a way to find out - take a 5 or 10 minute capture from your VHS, preferably with some variation in the scenes (lighting, motion, etc.)

Encode them with different bitrates, and compare the captures. If you see a difference that's worth splitting the discs, go for it. If it doesn't look that much better, you can save yourself some time and discs.

[jar5000]

Just remeber that its hard to improve on the quality of the original VHS tape. If you start out with crap, you cant make it look any prettier. A lot of folks use super high bitrates, tons of filters and encode for 20+ hours and swear by a drastic improvement in the quality of picture. Personally, my experiments show that super high bitrates and tons of filters yield barely noticable improvements at best. A lot of my transfers are from VHS tapes that were created from 8mm and 16mm film from the 60's and 70's so its tough to improve on that. Again, thats just my opinion. I would suggest doing a comparison between 2 DVDs and 1 DVD and seeing for yourself the results. It would be silly to waste time and media on something that looks the same as the original. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

[blade29]

Great! Thanks for the replies and comments.

blade29

[wwaag]

Blade 29--Couple of comments.

You indicate top field first. I believe that for DV, its always bottom field first during your encoding. Please correct me if I'm mistaken.

Second, agree with jar5000 that you're not going to improve the quality of encodes from VHS through extensive use of filters, high bit rates, etc. Another option is to halve your horizontal resolution (there's an option in CCE) so that the resulting resolution is 352x480, which is a compliant DVD resolution. I recently put the 9hr BBC series on Rock & Roll on 2 DVDs. Even with an Avg bitrate of 2100, the results were still very good--not much of a difference between the tape and the resulting DVD. Using half resolution, it also encodes a lot quicker.

As an aside, I'm often afraid that we focus too much on the search for "maximum" quality. I've found myself "looking" for such things as mosquito noise, dot crawl, macroblocks, etc. rather than "watching" the video. When I've pointed out these "imperfections" to family members, they think that I'm nuts to be concerned. Just saw Matrix2 this weekend--great movie, but lots of imperfections in the theater presentation--film lines, noise, etc. But--who cared? I suspect not one person in the audience.

wwaag

[andkiich]

Another option is doing a Half D1(352x480), I've found that at similar bitrates for VHS between full and half D1 that sometimes the half D1 can give very good results.

I've gotten upwards of 3 hours at half D1 that looked just like the original source.

[blade29]

wwaag, you're correct. I was referring to bottom field first. CVD is a good option, but this format is only supported by 70% of the DVD players out there. Thanks for everyone's suggestions.

blade29

[geek rock]

wwaag, you're correct. I was referring to bottom field first. CVD is a good option, but this format is only supported by 70% of the DVD players out there. Thanks for everyone's suggestions.

blade29

CVD wasn't even mentioned!

what was suggested was using a DVD STANDARD resolution, of 352 x 480. As your source is VHS anyway, you aren't really gaining anything by using the full DVD res of 720 x 480.

at low bitrates your video quality will look generally better (if a little softer, which isn't really an issue when transferring from VHS) using 352 x 480 than it would with 720 x 480.

-Mark

[blade29]

Geek Rock, is 352X480 a standard DVD resolution supported by all DVD players? If so, can I set the bitrate as high as I want for better quality? I know that 352X480 is CVD format and that's what I thought was mentioned. If I can lower the screen resolution, thus increasing the bitrate (I have to use an AVG of 3484 to fit 2 hours and 40 minutes of video onto 1 DVD), I should have a better picture. Let me know. Thanks.

blade29

[geek rock]

Geek Rock, is 352X480 a standard DVD resolution supported by all DVD players? If so, can I set the bitrate as high as I want for better quality? I know that 352X480 is CVD format and that's what I thought was mentioned. If I can lower the screen resolution, thus increasing the bitrate (I have to use an AVG of 3484 to fit 2 hours and 40 minutes of video onto 1 DVD), I should have a better picture. Let me know. Thanks.

blade29

yes, 352 x 480 MPEG-2 is an official, standard DVD resolution.

you won't be able increase the bitrate, as such - a 3000kbps 720 x 480 file will be the same file size as a 3000kbps 352 x 480 file. but, because the bitrate isn't spread out as much, more bitrate will be allocated to each pixel, if that makes sense.

-Mark

[MrKGB]

i also think that 1/2 D1, aka CVD, aka 352x480 is the best option for VHS material.
DVD @ 3500kbps will be very bad, whereas CVD will be very good, you may even be able to fit 2 games on one DVD! I have 3 hrs CVD film and the size is 2.4G. this was some documentary, with talking heads, so maybe football will not compress so well.
I used tmpgenc CQ 70, max speed 2500.
Do not use CCE for CVD, it makes a lot of mosquito noise, tmpgenc is the way to go!