Simplest way to convert home VHS movies to DVD using VirtualDub?

[Pickngrin]

I have found myself overwhelmed with lots of technical details. What I'm looking to do is convert some old VHS home movies to DVD using VirtualDub. Does it make sense to use Divx compression, or am I defeating the purpose? I have wound up with some massive files when I don't use compression. Also, what are reasonable frame rate settings, etc, to use for capturing VHS that is of mediocre quality to begin with?

Thanks!

[Bodyslide]

Here is a Great Place to read up on using Virtualdub....I would only use Divx if you plan on viewing from a PC or a Divx Player. I will be using the huffyUV codec for all my captures...

https://www.videohelp.com/tools/HuffYUV

http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/capture/start.html

Good Luck

[redwudz]

As much as I like VD, I'm not sure it's the best program for your purpose. It somewhat depends on what format you are capturing the VHS to the computer. If it's AVI, fine. VD may work well. But with medium quality VHS, it would be easier to use a device or program and capture in MPEG-2 format and eliminate a bunch of encoding. The Hauppauge video cards are good for that.

But if you are capping in a AVI type format, HuffyUV or Lagarith Lossless Video Codec would be two popular choices, though they do take up a bit of hard drive space. After filtering and editing, that VD is fairly good at, you could frameserve the output to a MPEG-2 encoder, then author and burn as a standard DVD. This would eliminate the edited file taking up more space on your HDD.

Or optionally, you could encode to Xvid or Divx format, made to play on a computer or a Divx set top player.

For actual encoding settings for Xvid and Divx, that's more of a personal choice, also dictated by your source quality and the desired output size. About all I can suggest is to take a short representative clip and try different encoder settings. A good place to start would be to use Quantizer mode in your codec settings for VD and pick a number between 2 and 3. Two should be the about the same as the original quality, three a bit lower quality, but smaller in size. Some filtering in VD may also help, but it will slow the encode times. Many options.

If you want easy, but less control, maybe FairUse Wizard, AutoGK for Divx/Xvid. For MPEG, ConvertXToDVD, FAVC, or other similar all-in-ones.

[mpack]

Also, what are reasonable frame rate settings, etc, to use for capturing VHS that is of mediocre quality to begin with?

I have no location for you, so I can't tell if you are in a PAL or NTSC zone. Whatever, if the eventual goal is DVD video then you should capture at a standard (DVD supported) PAL or NTSC frame size and frame rate in order to avoid any later need to interpolate lost data. If you intend to do any processing with VDub then the capture should be with high quality settings, either lossless as others have suggested, or DV, or high bitrate MPEG2. You need to use a codec that preserves the interlacing.

I'm also not sure what you mean by "converting VHS to DVD using VDub". VDub processes video in various ways, it can clean up video and it can convert it to DVD compliant frame sizes etc... (if the capture was wrong) but it isn't a DVD authoring package, nor does any VDub variant have a built-in MPEG2 encoder AFAIK, so you are going to need other software.

[Pickngrin]

Thank you for the input. I am reading the site you linked. I'm in the US, so I am using NTSC.
My version of VirtualDub is 1.8.3, and a lot of the options aren't the same as those listed on the doom9 site...

[ark]

DO NOT BE OVERWHELMED

READ ALL THE GUIDES AVAILABLE ON THIS SITE.

After reading all the guides, you may be able to decide - exactly what you wish to do - then we wll try to help you out with pertinent answers

[pepegot1]

Use VideoRedo or an equivalent and snub the Dub in this case.

[Pickngrin]

Thanks for the input. I wound up capturing with VirtualDub and Huffyuv. The 2 hour 20 minute video wound up being a ~65 GB AVI file. Unfortunately, the audio and video are not in sync (audio precedes video somewhat). I looked up how to resolve sync problems but this opened up a new pandora's box. I tried using the interleaving function in VirtualDub, but haven't yet got it. I read about some small freeware program that fixes the sync problem, but I think my 65GB file was too large for the program (smaller files would open, but not this one).
Am I better off re-capturing using another program? I don't want to invest $$ into buying pricey software for this....

Thanks again...this is more complicated than it would seem on the face of it.

[lordsmurf]

What capture card is being used?

[Pickngrin]

What capture card is being used?

Pinnacle PCTV Pro with BtiPCI driver

[Pickngrin]

So is it likely that my problem is due to the software (VirtualDub)?

[Pickngrin]

Success!!! There may be several variables involved, but one primary one may have been that I didn't realize I had been utilizing the onboard sound, as opposed to my EMU0404 card. I used AVStoDVD to convert the huge AVI file and it came out very nicely.
Thanks