Newbie in da house!

[rclayton17]

Hey guys, I've tried doing some researching like I was supposed to, but I still am not sure about my findings.

We are capturing VHS tapes to my computer, going through a canon digital camcorder (firewire). I have winxp pro sp2.

We are currently using windows movie maker (probably the latest version) to capture the video and there are several settings:
1. the (recommended) setting which is 640x480
2. DV 720x480
3. and so on...

we are currently using the recommended setting of 640x480 so that we can save these avi's to dvd and edit them if we want. The DV setting creates a huge avi file as i'm sure you know already, so we just went with 640x480.

So i have a few questions:
1) for my old standalone sony dvd player to play these videos does it have to be mpeg1 or mpeg2? From what I read, it should be mpeg-2.

2) is this 640x480 setting good for converting to mpeg-2 later, or should i have used the DV setting (720x480)?

3) is the capture quality of windows movie maker good compared to other free software? I guess not because I just read that it only captures at a 44.1Hz sampling rate (for sound) or something like that.

Thanks for your help.

[rkr1958]

Here are the steps involved in what you want to do.
1. Capture
2. Edit (if necessary)
3. Encode Video (MPEG-2) and Audio (mp2 or ac3) to compilant DVD standard
4. Author MPEG-2 and ac3 or mp2 audio
5. Burn
6. Play

I'm not familar with Windows_Movie_Maker but I'll give you my opinions. I'm currently doing something similar to what you're doing. I'm converting several Disney VHS tapes to DVD using this method: I capture the tape by VCR ==> RCA-cable ==> Sony TRV-320 DV Camera ==> Firewire to my PC. I used Ulead 6 (which I got off of ebay for $20) to capture. I then extract the audio using Goldwave, convert it to 48-KHz, and use the timewarp function to strech it to the same lenght as the video. I've found that, in general, the audio runs about 0.5-seconds per hour faster the the video. Next I use CCE-Basic (previously TMPGEnc-Plus) to encode the video using 2-pass VBR (max 9000, ave 6000, min 2000 kpbs). I author w/motion menus using TMPGEnc DVDAuthor and use Nero 5 to burn.

O.K., I'm NTSC so I capture the video in AVI at 720x480 and 6000 kps. I've found that I like my audio encoded to ac3 and that's why I go through all the stuff I do with my audio. I could have used CCE-Basic, or TMPGEnc-Plus, to also encode the audio to mp2 and use that stream in my authoring program to create the DVD.

[daamon]

Hi rclayton17,

Welcome to the site and the forums.

Capture using WinDV instead of WMM, and use the DV resolution of 720 x 480, as that's the same as the DVD resoultion full-D1.

This won't increase the filesize - it'll still be about 13.5Gb per hour for DV AVI.

It'll be useful here to point out that using firewire and DV AVI is only a transfer of data from one media (your DV cam) to another (your hard drive). Therefore, the actual data isn't being changed and it's already been created (in the cam). With that in mind, the audio sampling rate is as a result of the camera's settings and not the "capturing" software.

32 bit for 44.1KHz, 16 bit for 48KHz.

rkr1958 covered the rest.

[rclayton17]

Thanks for the help guys.

A friend of mine who has adobe premiere pro 1.5 mentioned that in his video capture settings there is a "fields" setting where he can select "upper field first," "lower field first," and "No Fields (Progressive Scan)."

Usually the term progressive scan comes up a lot when talking about dvd players. Does this "No Fields (Progressive Scan)" setting mean that premiere has better capture quality than WinDV? Either way, WinDV is free and Premiere is expensive so there ya go.

[daamon]

Thanks for the help guys.

No problem.

Does this "No Fields (Progressive Scan)" setting mean that premiere has better capture quality than WinDV?

It's all done in your DV cam - if you can record in 24fps Progressive Scan mode, then that's what'll be in the DV AVI you get from the cam. The settings in Premiere are just telling it what to expect, not what to create.

In general, DV cams record in "lower field first" - so that's how the DV AVI will be.

[BSR]

DV is bff(bottom field first), doesn't matter what program you use to capture, you should set Premiere to capture bff. Unless you have a progressive camera, but they are very rare.
Premiere might have the ability to change bff to progressive(called deinterlacing), but then you are loosing quality, and I wouldn't recommend it.

As Daamon said, the quality of the video captured with WinDV will be exactly the same as capturing with Windows Movie Maker and Premiere. Remember it's not a capture, but a transfer, like copying a file. That's the nice thing about firewire(IEEE1394)

WinDV just transfers, Premiere does pretty much everything under the sun for editing, that is why the cost difference.
Premiere also has a sync lock for audio to prevent video and audio going out of sync. But only needed if you have sync issues.

Welcome to the forum and hope you enjoy video editing.

oops, daamon already posted,

[daamon]

Welcome to the forum and hope you enjoy video editing.

oops, daamon already posted,

Ha ha - It can't hurt to have it twice!

[rclayton17]

Today I captured basically 2hrs of video off of a vhs tape. The file is about 26gb.

I guess it's pretty tough to store these home videos without compressing them to mpeg or whatever huh?

[dcsos]

Yup!
Its practically impossible to ARCHIVE the DV Capture file unless you do it in 4.3GIG bits, very inconvienient...
But of course you could do that and re assemble the full length when you create a DVD of it
Sometimes it pays if you don't have continued accesses to the source tape...or if you don't already have a BLU-RAY recorder!!!(23gig per disc-still too small for you!)

Meanwhile, USE Premiere or TMPGENC to make the MPEG-2 for Authoring,
but don't use Windows MovieMaker

for the Authoring many choices..I like DVD ARCHITECT, others say TMPGAuthor or DVD LAB......

[BSR]

If your looking to store them without converting to mpeg2, I would have to say transfer to a DV tape is the only technology at a decent price now to save up to 13 gig(1hr or 1 1/2hr lp mode).
Then when blueray(or whatever technology) gets cheaper you could transfer them to those disks.

But if you don't plan on editing them much and need them viewable on DVD player, just convert to DVD with a high bitrate to preserve as much quality as possible.

If it doesn't matter how much you fit on 1 DVD and just want to preserve quality, try out CQ mode if available in your mpeg2 encoder, I'm just starting to toy with it.

[rclayton17]

If it doesn't matter how much you fit on 1 DVD and just want to preserve quality...

Sorry, but I can't understand this part too well. If you could re-explain i would appreciate it.

Would you guys recommend encoding with VBR settings (for video and sound) so that I can get the highest quality?

Where's a good TMPGEnc guide that shows what settings to use. I read that if you use a bunch of extra settings the encoding time goes up a lot.

[BSR]

I was referring to how many minutes of video you wanted to fit on 1 DVD.

With CQ mode you can't predict the output size very well, because it gives the whole video constant quality. So if have 1 hr of black video, the size will be small, if you have a lot of motion, the size will be large. It doesn't waste bitrate where it isn't needed.

VBR is great also for say fitting 1.5 hours and utilizing the entire space of a DVD. With VBR you can predict the exact final video size(average bitrate determines this). Definately recommend it over CBR encodes as long as time isn't an issue, remember 2pass vbr takes about 2x longer than cbr.

https://www.videohelp.com/guides.php?guideid=435#435
https://www.videohelp.com/tmpgencexplained.htm
filtering takes a long time if used in tmpgenc, but they are pretty good filters.

[rclayton17]

So once it's in mpeg-2 format, can you edit it? or do you have to decode it to another format first?

[BSR]

It's a lot harder to edit in MPEG2 format.
If your just doing cuts and pastes, then your OK.
If doing motion transitions between scenes and such(what Premiere offers), your going to have a harder time.

[rclayton17]

How does it work? after you edit it and you save as mpeg-2 it has to be re-rendered right? Do you lose any quality doing that? Would you do that in like sony vegas or some other program?

[doppletwo]

The reencoding is the process where you change the video file into an mpeg2. depending on the length of the file you shouldn't lose much if any of the quality if you re encode it correctly.

[daamon]

So once it's in mpeg-2 format, can you edit it? or do you have to decode it to another format first?

See the first response in this thread, the one by rkr1958.

Capture to DV AVI and edit that.
Then encode to MPEG2, author (menus, get your VOBs etc.) and burn the DVD.

[rclayton17]

In VirtualDub I tried to open my 26gb avi file that I captured using WinDV, but i got this error:

Couldn't locate decompressor for format 'dvsd' (unknown)

What program do you guys use to edit your captured video?

[BSR]

download the panasonic DV codec
https://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=193
and you should be OK.

For basic editing with just cuts and such, I use Virtualdubmod.

[edDV]

Back to your original questions.

Hey guys, I've tried doing some researching like I was supposed to, but I still am not sure about my findings.

We are capturing VHS tapes to my computer, going through a canon digital camcorder (firewire). I have winxp pro sp2.

We are currently using windows movie maker (probably the latest version) to capture the video and there are several settings:
1. the (recommended) setting which is 640x480
2. DV 720x480
3. and so on...

we are currently using the recommended setting of 640x480 so that we can save these avi's to dvd and edit them if we want. The DV setting creates a huge avi file as i'm sure you know already, so we just went with 640x480.

No No. Use DV-AVI capture settings for DV and DVD. The "recommended" takes you to non-standard WMV (in a highly compressed mode)

So i have a few questions:
1) for my old standalone sony dvd player to play these videos does it have to be mpeg1 or mpeg2? From what I read, it should be mpeg-2.

2) is this 640x480 setting good for converting to mpeg-2 later, or should i have used the DV setting (720x480)?

3) is the capture quality of windows movie maker good compared to other free software? I guess not because I just read that it only captures at a 44.1Hz sampling rate (for sound) or something like that.

Thanks for your help.

1. MPeg2 in DVD mode (see https://www.videohelp.com/dvd)

2 DV-AVI 720x480

3 Haven't heard of these issues so long as DV-AVI input and output is used.

WMM2 can be used to edit DV format if you keep it in DV mode and avoid wmv. Some DVD authoring programs will accept the wmv file from WMM2 but since it is highly compressed, the results will be worse. Stay in DV-AVI format.

WMM2 will not encode MPeg2, the output DV-AVI file needs to be passed to a DVD authoring application.

PS: The only reason to use WMM2 over WinDV is if you want to use the editing and effects features and you are willing to settle for the limitations of free software. Most free programs make you work hard in lieu of payment.

Alternatives are near free geekware (see above) or packaged solutions. Best of the latter are:

Sony Vegas Movie Studio
Ulead Video Studio 8
Adobe Premiere Elements

Each lists for $99 but can be had for less if you shop. Each has a free demo that you can try.

[rclayton17]

#1) In TMPGEng, when i first select the source file, it shows

Expert Setting for Source
Video Type: Interlace
Field Order: Bottom Field First
Aspect Ratio: 4:3 525 line (NTSC, 704X480)
Content of Video: Video Movie

So I changed the aspect ratio to "4:3 525 line (NTSC)," because 704X480 didn't seem right if i captured at dv-avi which is 720x480 according to my understanding...
Did i make the right change?

#2) Are there any issues with standalone dvd players not being able to play VBR, or CQ, or whatever?

#3) In Vegas 5, when you render as.. there is an option to render using networked computers. How do you set up the computers? Does each machine have to be running vegas?

[edDV]

#1 What did you use for capture? WW2, WinDV, other?
704x480 is a legal capture but unususal for a DV transfer.

#2 DVD players can deal with CBR or VBR but some have tighter limits than others.

#3 Vegas 5 comes with 2 additional licences for networked rendering on separate machines.
Bad news: It doesn't support MPeg encoding, only effects/filter rendering.

[rclayton17]

i used WinDV so it shoulda been the DV-avi 720x480 capture. i right clicked it too, and it says it's 720x480. I was just curious why tmpgenc displayed that other setting when i first selected the source.

1) Does it make a difference if you choose between "4:3 525 line (NTSC)" and "4:3" for the source?

2) By the way, do you guys leave "error protection" checked for the audio settings in tmpgenc (mpeg 2 audio)?

3) when i play these mpeg-2 files in windows media player, when it gets to the very end, it says "windows media player encountered an unknown error." The web help button takes me to this page:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/webhelp/default.aspx?prd=Windows&...09&id=C00D11CD
I'm sure it's no big deal, but i just wanna know if i'm doin something wrong. I doesn't happen with the original AVI file, just the mpeg-2's.

Thanks for the help.

[edDV]

I defer to TMPGEnc experts.

[BSR]

1. I havn't seen a difference. I usually leave it at what TMPGEnc detects unless I see that its grossly wrong, like set to PAL resolutions, when I know it's NTSC.

2. I only export with PCM audio from TMPGEnc, and then convert that to AC3, so this option is greyed out for me. If I did export mp2, then I would leave it checked though, just because its defaulted,.

3. Havn't seen this issue. I use Media Player Classic to view my videos. Might want to try a different video program like that or VLC. Sorry no help.

[rclayton17]

I did a little test. I encoded the same file one time using automatic vbr, and the other using cq. They both had the same settings (8000 kbps max and 1000 kbps min, both had quality of "100."

The filesize for auto vbr came out to be 430mb and the filesize for cq was 427mb.

So i know that some of you guys recommended using CQ, but since i can't tell the difference on my 65" tv, I just wanna know if CQ really is better than auto vbr.

By the way, I dont care to use dual pass vbr because i dont want to take a long time encoding.

[BSR]

I'm not exaclty sure what the difference between those 2 settings is except that you can't change the quality of your p and b frames with auto VBR, which I leave to default anyway.

I always thought that with single pass VBR you would have to set an average bitrate which would determine your final file size. Or at least with live captures with my video card, that's how it's set.

Never seen anyone talk about that Auto VBR, so I can't give you any input about it.
Sorry, but they kind of sound like the same thing ....

I would also like to know the answer.

[rclayton17]

The filesize for auto vbr came out to be 430mb and the filesize for cq was 427mb.

I did another test. I encoded using CBR 8000 and the filesize was 432mb.

My min and max settings for vbr and cq were 1000min and 8000 max. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems as if my movies are using up about 8000kbps anyways with vbr and cq (not that that's bad... i want quality). And by the way, i can't set my max value to anything above 8000 for any of the settings (cbr, vbr, cq...). I tried typing in 9000 but it just goes back to 8000 when i click something else.

Once again thanks for your help.

[BSR]

And by the way, i can't set my max value to anything above 8000 for any of the settings (cbr, vbr, cq...). I tried typing in 9000 but it just goes back to 8000 when i click something else.

Saw someone else having this issue about 2 months ago.
Never seen it resolved.
Could be a bug in specific versions(revisions), look at updateing to the latest, just a guess though.

[daamon]

@ rclayton17 - Are you using the wizard or cancelling that and using a template? Have you used the "unlock" template so that settings can be changed?