Best settings for VHS Capture to MPEG2 for archiving...

[VinBob]

Hi All,

Was wondering if someone could kindly advise. I am capturing all my old VHS tapes before they go bad(!) and am capturing using an ADVC-100 into AVI video. I want to encode and store the videos for archiving on my large 500GB hard drive into MPEG2 using Procoder.

My question, is what encoding parameters should I use to preserve quality while not overdoing things to unecessarily extend the encoding time and ending up with overly large files.

I am thinking of using:

Avg Bitrate: 4500
Max Bitrate: 6000
Min Bitrate: 1500
Full 720 x 480 frame size
VBR - 2 Pass
High Quallity (Not Mastering as I thought this would not warrant for VHS source)

Any other ideas on the above? Should I consider CBR and if so, why? I also have seen people recommend using half D1 frame size - is this suitable for this type of application and if so, what are the disadvantages of going half size?

Even though I am not going onto DVD media, I would like to keep the file sizes to a reasonable size and would have thought that a 2hr program should not take more than 4-5GB.

Appreciate any help in advance...

Cheers,
Vincenzo.

[MOVIEGEEK]

Using DV-AVI will get you great quality and at 13GB/h will give you 38 hours on a 500GB HD.
If you insist on MPEG-2 I recommend1 720x480/8,000kbps CBR/Interlaced field order B(even)

[VinBob]

Thanks for the responce - I do intend on capturing to MPEG2 and not AVI as I would not get much on my 500GB drive!

As for the capture options, I am not sure that 8000 kbps would be the best option for VHS source encoding. Also, would CBR produce larger files than VBR? Is Half D1 a good option to go with? If not, any reason why?

Thanks. Vin.

[SatStorm]

DV captures are 720x576/480. So, if you wish to do this on mpeg2, a "on the fly" encoding must be done.

The correct way (the best that is...), is to capture to dv, then filter and finally resize to whatever you wish and encode to mpeg2.
That way, the 352x576/480 framesize end up as a great choice for VHS / SVHS, but only if you have a DVD player capable to playback correctly this framesize (all DVD players do, but not in the best fashion....).
Search a bit on the forum archive, you gonna see plenty of discussions regarding this subject.

Regarding the bitrates: I use VBR myself, using the CQ method of TMPGenc Plus. But I set my projects for 2000 min - 7000 max @65% when I encode to Full D1 and 2000-5000 @55% when I encode to half D1.
I don't know about procoder settings, but I believe the bitrates I show you, gives you an idea.

In your case, you won't be able to capture/encode to half D1 on the fly, without loosing something from the details of the picture. So, it is better to encode the way MOVIEGEEK suggest you, because that way you loose visually nothing from what your source looks like.

[FulciLives]

You have a DV AVI capture device.

So capture that way but THEN right after you capture you can use a software MPEG-2 DVD spec encoder (such as Procoder) to go from DV AVI to MPEG-2 DVD spec.

You also have enough HDD space that you could capture 2 or 3 or 4 at a time then convert to MPEG-2 DVD spec then start with another batch etc.

You will not achieve optimal quality if you attempt to capture straight to MPEG-2 DVD spec as your capture device is not really made to do that and in effect you will be performing a real-time SOFTWARE encode and that is BAD.

Also for home video footage it is suggested you use a one pass software encode using a CBR video bitrate of 8000kbps with LPCM WAV audio or a video bitrate of 9000kbps with AC-3 audio (with 256kbps being the "sweet" spot for AC-3 although you could go up to 320kbps if you wanted).

However that only fits about 1 hour per single layer DVD-R so if you want more space you can probably still get good results doing a 2-pass VBR with a MIN of 2000kbps to 2500kbps ... an AVG of 6500kbps ... and a MAX of 9000kbps. That will give you about 1 1/2 hours per DVD-R if you use 256kbps AC-3 audio.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[VinBob]

All,

Many thanks for the feedback and posts. I am sorry if I did not make myself clear to begin with, but the intention was always to capture using my capture box ADVC-100 into RAW AVI and to then use the software encoder (Procoder 2) to make MPEG2 file for archiving.

My need for help was not the method being used, but one regarding appropriate bitrate to be using considering that I am converting VHS quality video and not DVD quality in the first place. Bit rates of 8000+ seem a little overkill to me and I still end up with a large 7-8GB file. I basically wanted to know if anyone out there had some good experiences with VHS video to MPEG2 and advise on parameters to use to create good quality video while keeping file size to a reasonable size.

Thanks for your feedback!

Vincenzo.

[FulciLives]

As already stated a video bitrate of 8000kbps CBR with LPCM WAV audio will give you approximately 1 hour or 60 minutes when using a standard single layer DVD recordable disc.

That is about the best you can do quality wise unless you up the video bitrate to 9000kbps CBR with 256kbps MP2 or 256kbps AC-3 audio which again will give you about 1 hour or 60 minutes per single layer DVD recordable disc.

Those bitrates are suggested for home video recordings ala stuff you shot yourself on a camcorder. After all memories are more important than cramming more time onto a DVD disc.

However if these are TV shows or movies you are talking about then the quality should be better than home video camcorder stuff. In that case you can lower the bitrate some but what you have to remember is that the less quality in the image the harder it is to encode whereas the better the image in the source the easier it is to record. So a VHS tape will need more bitrate than say a "crystal clear" cable TV channel feed.

Generally speaking you want to lower the bitrate only enough to fit your one movie onto a DVD disc and that is based on the fact that your average movie is 90 - 120 minutes and that the DVD format (single layer) is really best around 120 minutes or less, give or take.

For 1 hour TV shows you are looking at only two per disc even if you cut out the commercials. For 30 minute TV shows you are looking at 4 per DVD or 5 if you cut commercials. For movies you can go more than 2 hours if the movie is longer but quality will begin to suffer once the AVG bitrate gets to or below 4000kbps.

The old days of putting 6 or 8 hours onto one VHS video are done and over. You don't want to do that with DVD.

Please note that everything I'm saying is based on using Full D1 resolution on a single layer DVD disc. If you drop down to Half D1 then you can easily go 3 hours per DVD disc.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

P.S.
Here is a link to a good bitrate calculator ---> CLICK HERE

[vhelp]

hmm.. vhs is always a tough one to discuss, though mainly because of
lack of info on the user's Setup and Equipment and the source that is
on the tape -- its origin -- and how it was recorded to tape.. ie, did
you record in SP vs. EP mode to tape, etc.

Bit rates of 8000+ seem a little overkill to me and I still end up with a large 7-8GB file.

Well, if you are certain that you will never plan on viewing these
lower bitrate encodes on a larger screen tv; hdtv; plasma; or lcd; then
user whatever lower bitrate and resolution suggested..

..But, if you think you might end up viewing them on larger screens, I
can almost guarentee you, you will have regrets..

..that's why its better to go bigger/higher, to be safe, cause you never
know what you will end up wanted, later on. A larger tv/screen is always
nicer (when money becomes available) and altimately, we *all* will be
getting ourselves a larg'er screen, soon.

I basically wanted to know if anyone out there had some good experiences with VHS video to MPEG2 and advise on parameters to use to create good quality video while keeping file size to a reasonable size.

Dispite my owning a popular machine, a Polaroid dvd recorder, I still find
use for the VCR. And, I mainly record in EP mode to tape. Course, it
would help the process (and quality) if you know your equipment, so that
you gain some advantages in the transfer -> MPEG department.

Now, the cleaner your video source signal, the better the results will be
when recorded to tape, and then (captured) and transfered to MPEG. Because
my video source signal is Analog Cable, it is a bit noisy, or SnP like.

Where:

** salt n pepper -- the image has a lot of random white/black (or non-matched
image pixel detail) interpreted as noise/SnP.

Anyways. I don't want to go into detail at this time, here..

..but, I would recommend keeping the video resolution at 720 x 480 and use
a *high* bitrate, like 9000 /hr of video. To maintain most detail/quality, I
would recommend including CBR instead of VBR. As for me, I also use TMPGenc
(mostly, MVBR) for all my encodes. But, I'm in the Advance stages of such
processes.

There are other MPEG Encoder favorites, but I have tested them out and
still find that TMPGenc takes the lead

-vhelp 4155

[mairambija]

visit SPAM and transfer your home video tapes to dvd. You can get a pretty good conversion at a reasonable price from a lot of places. But what are most of these companies lacking? Care and attention to detail! Other ways you get totally amateurish product done with domestic equipment.

[DirtBag]

I have converted a LOT of very old home VHS footage (over 300 hours) . This is old, very noisy LP and EP stuff from the 1980's and early 90's. I tried out all of the high end encoders and here's what I finally came up with.

I Recorded the tapes to DV AVI through a Canopus ADVC-300 with the digital noise filtering feature turned on. The resulting files were still fairly noisy but were cleaned up slightly.. still looked a lot worse than most VHS stuff out there considering the source was so bad.

I ran this footage through various encoders with all kinds of settings. I tested this stuff for over a month straight to see what I had to do to get the best possible quality. I used both straight AVI file to encoder and frame-served from virtualdub into the encoders that would support that. Results are:

CCE = noisy "harsh" looking video
tmpgenc = dark, noisy, poor contrast in dark scenes
MC = crap, blockiness
Procoder = amazing quality considering the source

Here's my encoding routine after MUCH trial and error:

1. Record VHS source to DV AVI using canopus ADVC.

2. Encode file using Procoder @ high quality, 720x480, 4780 average bitrate, 2000 min-8400 max, 2-pass VBR, uncompressed WAV saved as a seperate file.. the only "filter" I used was the crop feature to crop the slop off the edges of the frames.

3. Import resulting mpg and wave into tmpgenc MPEG editor with AC3 addon and save as 1 stream (un-reprocessed video and 128kb AC3 audio) to combine video with audio.

That's it. This results in 2 hours on a DVD-R with room for a menu and the quality is very very good. I had several other people look at the results and they were blown away that the end product looked so much better that the source. I went through a LOT of trial and error to arrive at this method and the results are outstanding.

notes:
The cropping more than doubled my encode times (12 hours per 2 hours of footage on an AthlonXP 3000+), but I had to do it because a lot of this needed to be viewable on a pc, in which case the slop around the edges shows, but if your footage will only be viewed on a TV, you can skip this step.

I did not use "master quality" in procoder. It looked the same to me as plain high quality but greatly increased encode times.

Frameserving caused sporadic "jitter" in the resulting output so I gave up on that method. Although it did speed up the cropping process, I was after quality more than speed.

It seems to me like procoder smoothed out the video some and enhanced the colors. The other encoders are known for keeping sharpness but with old, noisy footage they seemed to just enhance the noise rather than smooth it out like procoder did.. and yes, I tried all kinds of noise filter settings with bad results and/or horribly slow encode times.

I hope this helps.

[jagabo]

Since you are archiving to a hard drive and don't need specific file sizes (eg 4.3 GB to fit on a DVD) use a constant quality (constant quantizer) encoding rather than multipass VBR. Every frame will come out with the quality you requested and the average bitrate will be exactly what was needed to maintain that quality.

I don't know if Procoder supports this but most encoders that do allow you to specify min and max bitrates to make sure your MPG file remains DVD compatible.

[edcherylx]

Be careful using a harddrive as your preservation media. I've read that the average lifespan of harddrives is 6-7 years or less for ones that decide to fail suddenly. Thanks much 'dirtbag' for the post of your experience in trying to get good quality video from VHS. I've been trying to understand how to get more than 1hr on a DVD. I'm going to attempt your process, if I can locate the software and can afford it.

[Speed Demon]

I have converted a LOT of very old home VHS footage (over 300 hours) . This is old, very noisy LP and EP stuff from the 1980's and early 90's. I tried out all of the high end encoders and here's what I finally came up with.

I Recorded the tapes to DV AVI through a Canopus ADVC-300 with the digital noise filtering feature turned on. The resulting files were still fairly noisy but were cleaned up slightly.. still looked a lot worse than most VHS stuff out there considering the source was so bad. ...

@DirtBag: Interesting... I have the Canopus ADVC-300, too and I'm wondering which settings to use. I'm curious, did you (exccept for the noise filtering) just use the standard settings of the ADVC-300 or did you e.g. enhance brightness, contrast etc.?