Need advice capturing VHS with ATI MMC

[MaRa-23]

Hi, I'm on a mission to convert my family's old home recorded tapes to DVD. I had ViVo on my Radeon X800XT PE so I figured why not. The task has showed to be much harder than I expected, though. I'm currently planning to use ATI's MMC for capturing, I tried with Nero Vision express and Virtualdub but neither of them felt quite suitable.

Anyway, so the tape I'm going to capture is about 2 h and 40 min long and was recorded in LP mode. This is supposed to fit on one single DVD-5. I'm using a composite cable for video, I tried S-Video (through a scart adapter), but I only got BW picture so I figured I should use composite.
To the questions.

What resolution should I use? Should I use VCD, SVCD or DVD resolution? At what bitrates do these formats reach their peaks where there is no gain from setting any higher bitrate than x? Should I use VBR or CBR? The source is PAL and the DVD will be PAL, too.

My system is:
Abit IS7-E
Pentium 4 3.2E GHz Prescott
4*256 MB RAM
Radeon X800XT PE
Hitachi T7K250 160 GB + Maxtor DiamondMax9+ 80 GB
and so on...

Any input is appreciated.

[lordsmurf]

http://www.digitalfaq.com/dvdguides/capture/intro.htm
http://www.digitalfaq.com/dvdguides/capture/intro.htm#mpegbitrate
http://www.digitalfaq.com/dvdguides/capture/understandsource.htm
http://www.digitalfaq.com/dvdguides/capture/atimpeg/atimpeg.htm
http://www.digitalfaq.com/dvdguides/capture/atiavi/atiavi.htm

[greymalkin]

ls beat me to it

[MaRa-23]

http://www.digitalfaq.com/dvdguides/capture/intro.htm
http://www.digitalfaq.com/dvdguides/capture/intro.htm#mpegbitrate
http://www.digitalfaq.com/dvdguides/capture/understandsource.htm
http://www.digitalfaq.com/dvdguides/capture/atimpeg/atimpeg.htm
http://www.digitalfaq.com/dvdguides/capture/atiavi/atiavi.htm

Yes, I've read those before I posted this thread. It's those that put me on the track to use MMC for capturing (among other things). I think I still need some recommendation regarding bitrate though... Can you tell me at what bitrate the resolution 480 x 576 pixels reaches it's bitrate peak regarding quality? I'm just trying to find the best quality at which I can fit 2 hours and 40 minutes of video onto one DVD. Am I doing the right thing in choosing SVCD resolution?

[lordsmurf]

Read this:
http://www.digitalfaq.com/dvdguides/capture/intro.htm#mpegbitrate

480x576 is not a DVD spec, FYI, don't use it.

[MaRa-23]

Read this:
http://www.digitalfaq.com/dvdguides/capture/intro.htm#mpegbitrate

480x576 is not a DVD spec, FYI, don't use it.

I've used it before with xvid -> dvd encodes, works fine on the two dvd players that I have.
So about 4000k is the peak for 480x576? Should I use that bitrate with CBR or should I use something else with VBR?

[mikiem]

If it helps... IMHO The essense of the faq is something like you can have a 3 page Word doc with only one line of text. Doesn't necessarily do anything better then a much smaller txt file. But it does take up more room.

If you want to re-encode your capture, & have the disc space, can capture at higher bitrate in case it captures some minor amount of extra data, & in that case recomend CBR. ATI says in their MMC help file that mpg2 capture is tuned towards speed, with some compromises made -- I've generally found this to be true with whatever mpg2 capture software I've tried, & so as a rule usually re-encode when the quality really matters. But any differences will likely be small, if even visible.

FWIW, if you're capturing orig film at SVCD size, my personal experience is that turning on deinterlace and remove pulldown work very well, though of course you don't want to use this for non-film original sources.

Edit:
And, to more directly answer your question re: bitrate, personally I'd do a few test captures if I wasn't re-encoding, and therefore using much higher bitrates... While the native resolution of your VHS vid is likely to be realtively poor, the noise content is probably high. Noise is the mortal enemy of vid compression -- the nature of mpg2 encoding is to discard (hopefully) meaningless data, recording changes to periodic snapshots of the input vid. Noise is motion and makes determining what to discard, and what is change much more difficult. Noisy mpg2 files will be larger then clean video with the same bit rate settings, & usually look worse too -- for every bit of noise it retains, something else has to be tossed to maintain bitrate. You might find a bit higher bitrate to your advantage. Might also find an advantage in using shrink at minimal levels on the finished project.

[Richard_G]

For 2.5 to 3 hours on a single DVD5, use half D1 (352 x 576) with a bitrate of 3500 kbs. The quality will be as good as LP (or SP for that matter) VHS originals.

[MaRa-23]

Thanks for your answers, they are very helpful.
I will try to capture at half D1 tomorrow. About that bitrate, should I use 3500 kbs CBR or, for example, VBR with 3500 target kb/s and 4000 max kb/s?

[stantheman1976]

You need a good bitrate calculator. I use this one:
http://dvd-hq.info/Calculator.html

[lordsmurf]

Thanks for your answers, they are very helpful.
I will try to capture at half D1 tomorrow. About that bitrate, should I use 3500 kbs CBR or, for example, VBR with 3500 target kb/s and 4000 max kb/s?

Yes.

[MaRa-23]

Hiya, I think I've decided to capture using huffyuv instead and then encode to mpeg2 with filters (I'll encode with TMPGenc)...
I've got a problem with MMC though, that it won't let me capture using a custom resolution, it only offers me these weird resolutions:



Should I just capture at the resolution that offers me 576 pixels in height?
Or should I just capture with VirtualDub instead?

[lordsmurf]

x576 is PAL

[MaRa-23]

I know, it's just that the resolution is way more than I need.
Is there any way that I can calculate how much space 2 hr 40 min video will take in huffyuv format at that resolution?

[Jeremiah58]

Hi, I'm on a mission to convert my family's old home recorded tapes to DVD. I had ViVo on my Radeon X800XT PE so I figured why not. The task has showed to be much harder than I expected, though...

Oh yes, it would be much harder than you could expect or imagine.
I hope that you have a lot of hair on your head, because soon you could start to pull it out trying to fulfil your mission using ATI card.
You have tapes in LP mode, so I would not recommend to use this process. The process itself is obsolete and would not give you good results.
If you have a quantity of those tapes (as I did) I suggest to solve the problem with DVD recorder. You do not need a fancy one with hard drive. DVD recorder in a price range of 200 Euros, like Pioneer or LG would do the job for you in real time recording from your VCR. The quality of the source video would be preserved, which would not happen with any computer capture card. All you have to do with DVD recorder is to press REC and enjoy. You would not have to calculate bitrates, read guides, buy software, post another topics...

[MaRa-23]

Jeremiah58, I guess you're right...
Quality-wise, wouldn't it be best to get a DVD recorder - VHS combo though, since there wouldn't be any quality loss from a cable (composite, yuck)?

Anyway, I'm still going to capture a few tapes so that I can compare with the results I'll be getting from a DVD recorder. :P

[Jeremiah58]

Quality-wise, wouldn't it be best to get a DVD recorder - VHS combo though, since there wouldn't be any quality loss from a cable (composite, yuck)?

May be better, because you do not have to mess with cables. I use SCART cable, so it's easy to conect VCR avd DVDR. There is no visible quality loss with good SCART. Combos were expensive at the time, now I see them in a price range of 400 Euros (LG).

Anyway, I'm still going to capture a few tapes so that I can compare with the results I'll be getting from a DVD recorder. :P

By all means go ahead (I did, as well) and good luck.