From VHS to DVD ... can be done easily ?

[stavrosh]

We have recently purchased a Canopus ADC-300 video digitizer and we want to convert to DVD, NTSC tapes we have from our old lectures ( from the late 80s). We have experimented with imovie and iDVD but the end results are not good, that is the video signal seems to be blurred or too compressed. For your information we input the video to imovie and eventually we export it as a mov file or we generate a idvd project.

I would appreciate any suggestions on how we can transfer the VHS material and also some input on Denoising in the OSX environment.

Thanks

[BernieR]

Hello,

If you have a lot of tapes, it might be less hassle and such just to buy a cheap standalone DVD recorder ( about 300USD) and go from your VHS output to the DVD recorder input!

Bernie

[pants]

i'd second getting a set top recorder if you have lots of tapes. you can get ones with tbc in them to help stabilize the signal and help with image quality.

doing this on the computer is totally possible, but takes much longer. if you have them time thats fine, but in the long run it'd more economical to use a dvd recorder.

if you wanted to stay on the computer, after you capture your tapes, you can try using compressor or bitvice and their filters to help denoise the image. but for the price of bitvice and getting compressor, you can get a dvd recorder.

[stavrosh]

Thanks for the input regarding the DVD-recorders, but with this solution we don't alter the relative low quality of VHS material. Several questions to both :
1. Is there a way to save the materail DIRECTLY into mpeg-2 , without saving it first to mov and then encoding it ? Are there software pacjages that they do this , ie capturing the context and encoding it on the fly ?

2. Some PC colleagues have mentioned wavelet-denoising of the VHS material and I am wondering if any of you has heard od a OSX software that can do this.

Thanks

[terryj]

Hmmm....I Have an ADVC-100 Box That I use to digitze
VHS tapes to DV Stream in iMovie, then run through
Compressor to generate my m2v's and aiff for DVDSP.

The Quality I get from VHS is, well VHS quality.
lol!
Considering the tapes have been watched at least
5 times or more, and that they are at least 10 years
old, I don't DRASTICALLY expect them to be of
TRUE DV quality, because they weren't generated
from TRUE DIGITAL files. They are ANALOG converted
to DV, which can only work with in encoding to DV
what it has in the SOURCE.

Some things you can do to help the process I have found:

1. Use a Dedicated VCR, preferably 4 head with the 19u Micron heads,
one that you do not use for anything else, just for this purpose.

2. Make sure to have the VCR PROFESSIONALY CLEANED.
Not dry/wet vcr cleaning tape you buy at radio shack and wal-mart.
I mean take it somewhere reputable where they actually clean the
VCR heads with q-tips and solution and check for worn belts, etc.

3. Make sure you are using the S-VHS component jack to hook
your VCR ( supplied with all Canopus Products) to your Canopus
digitizing box, as this helps signal transfer.

4. Make usre you have optomized the source drive you are saving the
iMovie project on, make sure it is clean and free of other
stored files. A second clean int. HD or even HD partition is ideal for this.

5. Remember that if you end result is MPEG-2, you don't want to try and
degrade it by going down to QT .mov ( using the general codec setting)
and then back up to MPEG-2. Your best option is to within iMovie:
(a) import footage
(b) edit footage, trimming commercials, etc.
(c) save the project
(d) close, then use a standalone Conversion tool
like Compressor, or BitVice, and selecting the iMovie reference
movie icon, drag and dropping that onto the open batch window
of Compressor or Bitvice, and have it create the MPEG-2 from
the RAW EDITED DV STREAM the reference movie points to.

That's what I have found works for me, and I've gotten good results
with the 30 or so tapes I've done thus far.

[stavrosh]

Thanks TerryJ for your analytical response. We are basically following your suggestions and the initial results are good. We have not gone through the DVD-PRO authoring yet (experimenting with iDVD) but I guess is the next unavoidable step.
The last few days we have also been searching the net for possible OSX programs that can help with denoising the material we get from the digitized VHS tapes. We have come across a freeware package called JES interlacer which among other things can denoise well old recorded material. The program ( version 2.6.1) can be downloaded from :
http://home.planet.nl/~jeschot/

Of course if anyone else knows something about another denoising application .. please let us know.

A big thanks to the forum as usual.

[terryj]

your welcome!