VHS-C -> DVD = Grainy/poor picture

[Nick Burns]

Setup:
Panasonic G200 VHS-C Camcorder
Connected to
ADVC-100 using a audio splitter cable to stereo and using the Composite-to-SVideo adapter for the video.
I'm using Radio Shack's Fusion AV cables newly bought for this capture (filtered ends on the ADVC)

Captured with ScenalyzerLive build Jul 28 2003
Encoded with TMPGEnc Plus 2.521.58.169 (I loaded in the DVD template that's provided)
Authored with TMPGEnc DVD Author 1.5.15.49

The DVD compared to the VHS-C tape is not a colorful (color loss?) and it looks like it's filmed rather than video tape (if that makes sense)

Where in this setup would the degradation occur?
Are there codecs that I should have installed and which program do I apply them to?

Thanks for any insight.

[proggy]

which DV codec are you using? In Scenalyzer you have the option of DV1, DV2, or canopus DV. I have better luck with the canopus DV codec. You have to install the codec separately or you will not be able to play your recorded avi file.

Also, make sure you are comparing the final dvd on a standalone dvd player connected to your television, and not on a software dvd player on your computer.

[Nick Burns]

I do have the Canopus Codec installed, but I captured using Type2 DV-avi file. Should I recapture?

Yup, the comparison was made on my standalone player. I can switch between the DVD player and the VCR easily, and the difference between the two is unmistakeably bad.

[proggy]

I would recapture and test it out. You have nothing to loose but a blank DVD and some time.

Also make sure that your IRE setting is correct on the ADVC-100. If you are in the US, switch 2 should be on (IRE 7.5).

[Nick Burns]

I would recapture and test it out. You have nothing to loose but a blank DVD and some time.

Also make sure that your IRE setting is correct on the ADVC-100. If you are in the US, switch 2 should be on (IRE 7.5).

Yup, this switch was off. Thanks for pointing this out to me. The box had a sticker on it that said US version, so I assumed everything was set correctly. The only switch I moved was the default to analog instead of digital. I only gave the booklet a cursory glance. *boot to the head* to me for not reading it. I'm now guessing this had a big impact on the capture?

[Nick Burns]

OK. I'm going to tackle this project again. One last question:

I have Mainconcept DV Codec v2.04. Which codec would be best: Canopus Codec or Mainconcept?

[proggy]

If you do not have the canopus DV codec installed, use the DV2 option. If you have the canopus codec installed, try both the DV2 option and the canopus DV option and see what looks better to you.

I prefere the canopus, but other people on the forum might prefere mainconcept. It is just easier to compare for yourself.

[Nick Burns]

OK. ADVC-100 switched to NTSC 7.5, and captured with Canopus DV Codec.

I'm ready to encode with TMPGEnc Plus. Would the DVD NTSC template be the best to use? I've read lordsmurf's guide on TMPGEnc Plus, but it really doesn't get into bitrates.

Sorry for the lame questions here, but I'm a newbie at this and this is my first capture - it's our Wedding video from 8 years ago and I really want to get the best quality from it. The video is only 1h30m long.

I'm going to go ahead and use the DVD template for now, and if any better suggestions come along, I'll just re-encode again. I'm burning to a +RW for testing anyhow, so I'll do this as many times as necessary till I get it right.

Thanks again for any help!

[BrainStorm69]

For putting video tape onto DVD, you should use a half D1 resolution (352x480). Anything higher is not capturing extra detail. A variable bitrate averaging 4000 kbps should work just fine for capturing all the detail at pretty much the minimum filesize. You could try even lower and see if hurts quality. A wedding video probably doesn't have alot of fast paced movement, so you could probably go even lower on the bitrate without hurting quality.

[proggy]

no dis-respect, but I have to disagree with brainstorm. If this wedding video contains your reception, there will be plenty of fast movement.

No matter what you are encoding, you want to have the highest bitrate that you can fit on your DVD. Why would you purposely make it lower?

He did bring up a good point though... You can get a way with a lower bitrate (if necessary) by using half DVD resolution. However, it is not necessary unless you are putting more than 1 1/2 or 2 hours of video on it.

Some standalone DVD players (new cheap ones) do not play half D1 resolution movies very well. I had a panasonic DVD/VHS player that flickered terrible with half D1. I returned it promptly and bought the zenith that plays half D1 very well.

Remember though, just because I disagree, doesn't mean you should listen to me. If you want to do this right, you have a long road ahead of you and it would be best to try all the options yourself (full d1, half d1, canopus codec) to see what looks best to your own eyes.

To give brainstorm some credit, you will probably not see any difference between half and full resolution because you are capturing a low resolution source. I can see a difference when looking on my computer monitor, but I cannot see a difference on my television.

[curritch]

Nick. I have created several DVD's now from VHS-C source data and I can't tell the difference between the DVD video and the VHS-C video.

My setup is different than yours, though, so I can't give you much help.

I use a miniDV camcorder to digitize the video, Pinnacle Studio 7 to capture and edit, TMPGEnc Plus to generate the mpg files and Moviefactory to create the DVD's.

I don't use the DVD template in TMPGEnc. I notice that it uses a fast motion search precision, though, which could be a source of degradation. I have made some awfully jerky mpg's trying to speed the process up.

It would seem that you could determine whether the degradation is associated with digitization or mpg encoding by comparing the DV avi file with the mpg file. I assume that one of your applications can play both. Then you could at least rule out one or the other.

[Nick Burns]

My first attempt at this was crappy, and is why I started posting for suggestions.

I used Scenalyzer capturing with Type2 DV-AVI
Encoded with TMPGEnc Plus with the DVD template

The DVD had a lot less color than the VHS-C and at first it seemed a little jerky, but smoothed itself out. I could see some slight ghosting around people (me in particular) as compared to the VHS tape.

I wasn't sure where in my process I was having problems.

proggy suggested the Canopus Codec (which I installed) and to check the NTSC dip-switch. The NTSC was set to 0 instead of the IRE 7.5, so I switched that, and captured with the setting set to Canopus compatible DV-files - I'm assuming that is the Canopus Codec it is reading.

So now I'm at the point of encoding again and want to make sure I do that step correctly. I'm hoping to gain by other's experience as to what the optimum settings would be: bitrate, CBR vs VBR, etc.

I know this is a whole trial and error process, but I'm trying to keep that to a minimum - but since I don't really know what I'm doing (), I need to know what to try to lessen the errors.

So if there are some tried and true step-by-step suggestions for encoding, I'm all ears.

[curritch]

I can tell you the TMPGEnc settings that I use. I didn't invent them. I got them from somewhere probably this forum.

Video tab:
Stream type-MPEG-s Video
Size-720X480
Aspect Ratio-4/3 Display
Frame Rate-29.97 fps
Rate Control Mode-2pass VBR
Profile & Level-Main Profile&Main Level
Video Fornmat-NTSC
Encode Mode-Interlace
YUV Format-4:2:0
DC Component Precision-10 bits
Motion Search Precision-High Quality (slow)

VBR Settings:
Average Bitrate-6000
Maximum Bitrate-8000
Minimum Bitrate-2000
Max Pass-2 pass
Enable Padding-Not enabled
P Picture Spoilage-0
B Picture Spoilage-20

Advanced tab:
Video Source Type-Interlace
Field Order-Bottom Field First (field B)
Source Aspect Ratio-4:3 525 line(NTSC, 704x480)
Video arrange method-Center(keep aspect ratio)
No filters enabled

GOP structure tab:
GOP Structure-IBBPBBPBBPBB
Number of I Pictures-1
Number of P Pictures-3
Number of B Pictures-2
Output Interval-1
Max Frames-18
Output Bitstream for edit-disabled
Detect Scene Change-enabled
Force Picture setting-Disabled

Quantize matrix tab:
Quantize matrix-default
Output YUV data-enabled
No motion search-disabled
Soften block noise-disabled

MPEG settings tab:
Stream type-MPEG-1 Audio Layer II
Sampling Frequency-48000
Channel Mode-Stereo
Bit Rate-192
No boxes enabled
Deemphasis flag-none

System Tab:
Stream Type-MPEG2 Program (VBR)

If you have not changed settings before you will have to unlock things via the unlock file under extra. After changing the settings I save the new ones as a custom template rather than modifying the built in template. I don't know what all these things do but i do know that the Motion search precision setting makes a difference. But be advised that when they say slow they mean slow. So it may be that you will want to create a relatively short test file to try things on and then do the whole project when you have an approach that seems to work.

Good luck

[Nick Burns]

Thanks curritch, now that is some info!

I started the encoding and it reported that it would take about 20hrs, as opposed to the 2 1/2hrs it took using the DVD template. So I'll have to set it up tomorrow morning.

If anyone else has some comments to those settings, let me know!

[BrainStorm69]

If anyone else has some comments to those settings, let me know!

Personally, I have had good results with the settings lordsmurf suggests on his site (www.lordsmurf.com) under the heading "Convert using TMPGEnc Plus" (on the left side of the page). And encoding using his settings doesn't take nearly that long.

And back to the half D1 resolution issue. I don't know if some stand-alone DVD players have a problem with that resolution - they shouldn't since it is a legal DVD resolution (mine doesn't have any problem). And the resolution of VHS (or VHS-C) is 240x480. That's why using more than 352x480 is a waste. If you use half D1, you can halve the bitrate and keep the same quality. That is to say, encoding at full D1 requires an average bit rate of about 8000 to guarantee excellent quality. As I mentioned above, you can use 4000 with half D1.

Finally, just looking at curritch's settings, it looks like you will probably get good results, but it will take some time to encode.

[Nick Burns]

Thanks BrainStorm69. This "D1" you are referring too... is that during capture or during encoding? And I did read lordsmurfs guide, but did not see anything related to bitrate, as I understand that will affect quality. Did I miss something there?

[BrainStorm69]

D1 is 720x480 resolution, that's all. Half D1 is 352x480 resolution. I'm talking about encoding it at that resolution as I'm assuming you have already captured. But you can also capture at that resolution. That would save time on encoding since you wouldn't be resizing.

If you re-read lordsmurf's article on that link I gave on his page you will see his suggestions on bitrate for encoding VHS captures to mpeg-2. I'd give you a direct link here, but lordsmurf has his website set up to discourage that sort of thing.

[Nick Burns]

My DVD is just not turning out as good as my source tape.

From what I gathered, the ADVC-100 source "capture" is 720x480. I used ScenalyzerLive to capture, but from what I read, since I'm only copying data from the ADVC, it won't matter what program I used to get the video.

Following the guide here:Configuring TMPGEnc for high-quality, DVD-compliant MPEG-2
I set TMPGEnc Plus 2.5 to these NTSC Video Only settings

• Video:[list:797d9a4d40]
• Stream type: MPEG-2 Video
• Size: 720x480
• Aspect ratio: 4:3 Display
• Frame Rate: 29.97 fps
• Rate control mode: 2-pass VBR[list:797d9a4d40]
• Average: 6000
• Maximum: 8000
• Minimum: 4000
• Padding: Disabled
• P spoilage: 0
• B spoilage: 10

[*]VBV buffer size: 0[*]Profile and level: MP@ML[*]Video format: NTSC[*]Encode mode: Interlace[*]YUV format: 4:2:0[*]DC component precision: 10 bits[*]Motion search precision: Highest quality[/list:u:797d9a4d40][*]Advance:

• Video source type: Interlace
• Field order: Bottom
• Source aspect ratio: 4:3 Display
• Video arrange method: Center
• Filters: None

[*]GOP structure:

• Number of I pictures: 1
• Number of P pictures: 4
• Number of B pictures: 1
• Output interval of header: 1
• Max. frames in GOP: 18
• Output closed GOP: Disabled
• Detect scene change: Enabled
• Force picture type: Disabled

[*]Quantize matrix:

• Quantize matrix: Default
• Output basic YCbCr: Enabled
• Floating-point DCT: Enabled
• No half-pixel motion: Disabled
• Soften block noise: Disabled

[/list:u:797d9a4d40]
I then authored in TMPGEnc DVD Author and burned only the video to +RW for testing purposes.

I played it on my standalone player and it just doesn't compare to the original tape. It seems hazy, ever so slight pixelation to the picture (the tape looks a whole lot smoother) and the color still looks a little washed out (though it has improved since my first run).

Does anyone have any other suggestions/settings to try?

Thanks to everyone thus far, I'm learning a great deal from this site.

[curritch]

Nick. Not being familiar with your capture hardware-software maybe this doesn't make sense.

But I would still suggest trying to isolate the degradation to either the capture process or the mpg2 encoding processa

In my situatiion I first digitize the VHS-C video with my mini-DV camcorder. Then I transfer the miniDV video to my computer where it ends up as an avi file. Then I create the mpg2 files with TMPGEnc.

Both kinds of files can be played by Windows Media Player.

Subtle degradation would probably be hard to detect but it would seem that significant degradation during mpg encoding would be detectable by comparing the before and after video.

This would at least point you toward the capture process or the mpg encoding process as being the culprit.

I still believe that my final output is for all practical purposes as good as my VHS-C source data. But maybe I haven't done as critical a comparison as your are doing. Or maybe my source video quality is such that I am simply not noticeing any further degradation.

Good luck.

[pijetro]

How does the .AVI play on your monitor?? This is the first step in pinpointing the problem...

BTW, if you source is clean, and there's no noise, encode for HalfD1..(352x480)..

[Nick Burns]

Besides the fact that I'm watching interlaced video on a monitor, there is not much difference in the quality between the .AVI and the .MPG file in Windows Media Player. The only difference I do detect is the .AVI file is wider, whereas the .mpg is a more square picture.

I've recaptured the first 5 minutes of the video and using the settings I posted above I changed the encoding to:

Full screen (keep aspect):
352x240
352x480
704x480

None of them really produced the same quality of picture as the tape.

I did not change the bitrates with those resolutions. What should the avg/min/max rates be for each of those?

[curritch]

Nick. If you can't tell the difference between the avi and mpg files (except aspect ratio) then that would seem to point toward the digitization and frame compression process, rather than the mpg compression process.

If that is the case then I have no suggestion as to how to proceed since I use a different process there.

If all else fails, if you know someone who owns a digital camcorder that digitizes analog video, then it might be useful to try an alternate approach to creating the avi files. But that's really getting out in left field.

[axolotls]

I would switch your settings back to 0 IRE (not 7.5 IRE). That is the default for Canopus NTSC settings

I was led to believe that all NTSC DVDs should be mastered at 0 Volts (0 IRE). Something about preserving the dynamic range of your video.

[BrainStorm69]

I would try changing your bitrate settings for D1 (720x480) to

average 8000
max 9000
min 2500

For half D1 (352x480), you could halve them.

[Nick Burns]

I think this coming down to two possible causes -

1) Maybe I have more of a critical eye than I thought - the wife is saying the video is turning out just fine and she has no problem with the results and giving copies to the parents.

2) and this probably the most probable cause: GIGO - I'm using my Panasonic Camcorder (the same unit that made the tape) to play it on the ADVC. The tape is now reaching about 8 1/2 years old and only played maybe 4 times in that period (more so recently since I'm trying to transfer it to HD). I'm beginning to suspect that if I were to buy one of the high-end JVC SVHS machines with a TBC, I might get a better quality capture and thus a better looking DVD. Only problem is, I just spent the cash on the ADVC, I don't think the wife wants to sink another $300+ on another VCR (we alread have 3 of them- none of which are hi-quality) - no matter what "features" it has. Birthday is coming up in June, maybe I can sweettalk her into buying one for me, er us, then. Can anyone suggest a good model # to buy whether it's from JVC or other?

[yamato72]

Nick, before you sink any more dough, may I suggest trying some filtering in VDub? You sound just like me a year ago when I started capping my Hi8 video. Remember that your TV set is very forgiving. The noise you are seeing is there on the tape, it's just being amplified by the analog-digital-back to analog path that it's taking.

You say that the avi looks similar to the finished mpg file when played on your PC. That's good because it means you're at least succesful at the encoding process. Where I think you are having trouble is that your mpeg encoder is dutifully encoding all that noise. It wastes bitrate, takes forever, and looks crappy.

I use an ADVC-1394 and my capped video looked like junk on my TV too. After several weeks (more like 2 months) of experimenting with vdub filters, I ended up with a finished product that was indistinguishable from the original. I recommend you do some experimentation as well. Check the forums for tips on filtering VHS and see what you think. You can check my past posts as well, you'll find I'm a big fanof the DNR and Smart Smoother filters for VDub.

I'm a cheapskate so I'll always spend hours on a "free" solution rather than blow money on a fix. Good luck.

[Nick Burns]

Thanks for the encouragement yamato72. I'm assuming that you are using VDub on the captured AVI file and not capturing directly with ADVC-100, 'cause what I've read is that VDub can't capture from that device. At least, I wasn't able to.

Do you have a particular thread that might get me started in the right direction?


Thanks again for the help!

[yamato72]

I'm by no means an expert, but this thread:

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=151578&highlight=

covers the basics of what we've been talking about. The original poster also uses an ADVC-100. Ignore the posts that say "cap uncompressed or mjpeg" or whatever since the ADVC doesn't do that. Scroll down to my post and see if it makes sense to you.

PM me if you have any other questions, I love my ADVC-1394, due to its great capture quality and trouble-free performance. You have the same device as me but in an external box. You're doing nothing wrong on the capture end as long as you have the 7.5IRE setting correct.

And oh, I'm doing the same as you - I started off last year capping video of my first child, and just recently went back and finished up putting my wedding on DVD. I was also working with 8-yr old footage and believe me, you don't want to wait any longer to get the video off those old tapes.

[Nick Burns]

Thanks for the link

PM me if you have any other questions...

Let me play around with VDub for a little while and I may take you up on this offer... so just keep this info in the back of your mind for now.


Thanks again!