How to compress videofiles?

[BigDrago]

Hello.

I am going to transfer some VHS to my PC.
What format is best in saving to? I want to compress them. Is x264 best?

[netmask56]

Best to transfer at the highest quality possible with your capture card - MPEG2 if possible THEN compress that file to whatever you need from a size point of view. With a MPEG2 file to work with editing and processing if necessary will be a lot easier than if you capture direct to say DivX or any other compressed format. Once you have the final version format you want you can delete the MPEG2 file if you have a disk storage problem

[neomaine]

Best to transfer at the highest quality possible with your capture card....

You were fine up until that point. I would not recommend capturing directly to MPEG2 unless you can capture a a high enough bitrate to support the type of video, and, be willing to have at least some trouble in editing.

I would recommend capturing to lossless, like huffyuv, editing as necessary and THEN encode to x264 (if that's what you prefer).

[BigDrago]

Ok.

I'm planning to import video into Adobe Premiere. And after I'm finished editing I will save it with StaxRip and use x264.

[hech54]

H264 is great but it still a bit of a "dead end" format if you plan on sharing the video with friends and family. Remember that you will end up with a "video file"...not something playable in a player like grandma's DVD player.

[BigDrago]

Ok. I just thought x264 would be the best since almost all movies (torrents) is encoded with that.
I want great quality but small size.

I'm not burning it to DVD's. I could just connect the computer to the TV.

[budwzr]

Ok. I just thought x264 would be the best since...

Yes, it is the best, but not everyone is up to speed with their hardware yet.

[BigDrago]

Does it use a lot resources to compress?
I have intel i7-2720qm, 8gb 1600mhz ram. SSD-drive

[netmask56]

Best to transfer at the highest quality possible with your capture card....

You were fine up until that point. I would not recommend capturing directly to MPEG2 unless you can capture a a high enough bitrate to support the type of video, and, be willing to have at least some trouble in editing.

I would recommend capturing to lossless, like huffyuv, editing as necessary and THEN encode to x264 (if that's what you prefer).

As I have been doing this for years as a commercial exercise I couldn't agree - we capture VHS using a DVico MPEG2 capture cards and then edit the resulting MPEG2 file in Womble and spit out a DVD conforming MPEG2 master file - it's been a good income generator for 8 years doing grandma's family VHS and weddings etc. The process is quick, it's stanardised in the process and simple for the operator to do. I agree that using huffyuv and others might result in technically a slightly better image but when you consider the original VHS quality it's not worth the effort from a commercial throughput point of view. One has to decide whether it's worth the time and effort to squeeze an extra 1% improvement costing way more iin hours to do that simply getting the job done. Editing in MPEG2 is dead simple these days and I have never had a glitch.

[BigDrago]

I connect the VHS to the DVI-camera and from the camera I have a firewire to the pc. Is that a good solution?

[hech54]

I connect the VHS to the DVI-camera and from the camera I have a firewire to the pc. Is that a good solution?

Many people use that method.
And I also agree with netmask56....NOTHING wrong with capturing to MPEG2 via a capture card like a Hauppauge that was designed to capture that way. Lossless purists make me want to vomit.

[neomaine]

I connect the VHS to the DVI-camera and from the camera I have a firewire to the pc. Is that a good solution?

Many people use that method.
And I also agree with netmask56....NOTHING wrong with capturing to MPEG2 via a capture card like a Hauppauge that was designed to capture that way. Lossless purists make me want to vomit.

Actually, not a lossless purist at all. When I did capture it was with an ATI AIW to MPEG2 and it did a fantastic job for what I wanted. Maybe things things have become better in the MPEG2 editing arena. Probably depends on how and what settings are used.

I was leaning towards lossless in this case because of the mention of Vegas Pro for editing. Just figured it would be easier/better quality to go lossless and not introduce artifacts before the editing process if not done correctly. As far as 1%? Then you must be capturing at 9k or better to have effectively no difference, and, mustn't use any filters for the 'grandma' projects. We each have our own acceptable quality levels. If your's works for your business, that's just fine.

And, I didn't dispell using MPEG2 outright. I gave a couple of qualifiers with enough bitrate and possible trouble editing (based on what the capture did for i/b/p frames).

There's nothing wrong with going straight to MPEG2. But, you do have to admit at that forced re-encoding you loose your chance of correcting some issues as well as creating some. What level everyone is willing to except is up to them.