Capturing VHS to MPEG

[q1aqza]

I wish to convert my old VHS home movies and 'archive' my purchased VHS movies to VCD and SVCD (later to DVD when I get a writer). Most of these do not need any further editing so the time saved in encoding real-time is a big advantage, but some of my videos do need re-editing. I have been looking at the following products:

1. Dazzle Hollywood bridge
2. Canopus ADVC-100
3. ADS Instant DVD
4. Hauppauge Win TVPVR
5. Dazzle DVCII

After reading numerous forums/posts and read about all the various problems and quality issues with all of these devices (except the Canopus which seems almost too perfect!!) my shortlist is the Dazzle DVCII and the Canopus ADVC-100. The big plus for the Dazzle is the real-time encoding and the price is approx £100 cheaper than the Canopus and I'm sure family and friend wills soon ask me to do conversions for them so again time saving is again of benefit. I have almost decided to go for the Dazzle but the issue is the conversion of the VHS home videos that need re-editing (which I know the Canopus would be great for).

I would appreciate some feedback on this idea for using the Dazzle. Only for movies that I wish to re-edit, capture at MPEG2 with a very high bit rate to obtain as much quality as possible then use Flask or Vidomi to convert to an AVI using the huffyuv codec, I can then open/edit/render in Studio 7 and encode as I normally do for my DV home movies using AVIsynth & CCE 2.5 - does this sound a viable solution? I see this as only one extra step (the MPEG to AVI conversion) than when I convert from my DV camcorder ?.

Thanks for any replies.

[fakesky]

had 0 problems with the wintv PVR,
and with the right settings you´ll get relly good quality.

If Im going for the outmost quality I capture at higher quality
than its intended, 12mbit dvd at full res gives a relly
good svcd when downsized.

Dazzle have had problem with not beeing able to capture
more than 70min, dunno if its fixed but I wouldnt pick
that one if I wasnt sure.

[q1aqza]

Fakesky,

Thanks for your reply. I read that the 70 min issue is fixed with a small patch.

My reason for discounting the WinTVPVR is I have read various reviews on it that praise the high bitrate capture but discount the quality when capturing at SVCD bitrates. The Dazzle seems to get better reviews at the lower bitrates, which is the main objective for me. It also comes bundled with useful software such as a software DVD player which I do not have and the Moviestar editing program that I understand can do limited MPEG2 editing which will save me converting back to AVI to edit with Studio7. I guess it's all down to personal objectives.

I have now pretty much decided to go with the Dazzle.

Rgds.

[SatStorm]

I am not a fun of realtime grabbers/encoders. Almost all of them are CBR, and the very few ones supporting VBR is something like CQ or 1pass VBR, with bad (for my opinion) results.

To tell you the true, when you realise that in a year from now the realtime encoding with the use of TMPGenc will be possible (don't mention the possible 2 Pass realtime encoding with CCE today....), then the use of realtime grabbers is a waste of quality...
In less than a year, some progs gonna grabb analogue, frameserve at the same time and encode in realtime. There are solutions even today for this, but OK the quality yet ain't good.

From this ascpect, I propose cheap solutions, well known and well tested.
Personally, I found myself became a fan of hauppauge's PCI cards, the cheapest out there. That win tv primio fm, is amazing! With a duron 1.2 system (it is my second pc, dedicated to analogue grabbing), I grabb full CCIR 601 resoltuion,with on ANY OS (including Linux) and then I encode to mpeg 1/2. The results are always better any realtime grabber I ever tested. Plus, I can grabb and encode in realtime to divx or to my new "love": xvid (kick ass).
I grabb hours and hours and hours with no frame drops, no probs, at all possible resolutions, with any possible codec, with any software mpeg 2 solution. I don't see the reason, when you have a fast cpu (>1.2) to go realtime hardware solution!
I spent.... 79euro for this card and it does anything! Even software mpeg 2 (which if you increase the bitrate, produce identical quality with win tv pvr at the same bitrates (talking for bitrated more than 4000kb/s! I tested that with the latest Unlead software and xp1700
Even filesize ain't a plus: If win win tv pvr (a good realtime encoder) need to grabb up to 5000kb/s to present good quality, why not grabb to mjpeg PicVideo at 18 value? You will re-encode anyway for vcd/svcd/1/2 D1 Dvd if you grabb realtime to mpeg 2 with 5000kb/s. The pic mjpeg and the mpeg 2 will be almost the same filesize. But mjpeg totally have better picture quality!...
About the extra time you need to encode, that ain't as it use to be. With a duron 1.2, TMPGenc plus 2.54, 2 Pass VBR and motion estimate search, I encode a 2 hour avi in 260 min, almost 4 and a half hours! With my athlon xp 1700, I encode the same avi movie in about 3 hours! Ain't that much anymore....

So, I suggest go for a CPU upgrade and buy any cheap BT808 based card (like hauppauge PCI cards). Get a 80MB+ HD (I am ready to by a 120mb one) and it is all you need and want.

This is my opinion, other users may have others...

[googlioboy]

From what I understand, the the dvd authoring products at Mediostream work fairly well at automatically capturing MPEG2. The "Plus" package also allows you to edit your footage, put in your own backgrounds, buttons, and menu music, and add 5 chapter stops per hour of footage. The drawback: the program only allows for 90 minutes of video for one side of a 4gb dvd-r. But for $49.95 for download and $59.95 for the program on disc, it might be worth a look.

[q1aqza]

I was all set to buy the Dazzle but I read on a forum that there is a compatibility issue with SIS Chipsets. I double-checked this on the Dazzle tech support website and it was confirmed that when the DVCII is installed on SIS 735 chipset moboards the 2nd IDE channel devices become disabled. Unfortunately I have this chipset and I have emailed Dazzle to obtain an eta on a fix, otherwise I am back to researching the best product for my needs.

Satstorm, I have looked at the cheaper options but I am also planning to convert many of my old VHS movies to SVCD (and later to DVD when I get the h/w) and many of these have macrovision which I understand you can't overcome on a basic capture card (whereas my previous shortlist DVCII or the Canopus ADVC-100 do). I agree that s/w will do a better quality job at SVCD bitrates, however, the time factor to do all this even with a fast s/w encoder (I have CCE 2.5 and a 1.4 Athlon) is going to be at least double the time compared to a real-time card and when my family and friends start asking it will be huge amounts of time!!

When I do eventually get a DVD writer I have read that the high bitrate capture with the Dazzle and the WinTVPVR is on a par with the s/w encoders so looking longer term I really do believe I should go with the real-time MPEG route.

[SatStorm]

There are always 3rd party software solutions for macrovision, don't mention cheap and well known hardware ones
A VCR with TBC and a de-macrovision device, is THE perfect solution. No software can do better this job with analogue picture yet. Ain't expencive too...
Also, I remind you something: VHS is 352 X 288/240 and SVHS is 352X576/480. The use of bitrates beyond 3000kb/s is a totaly waste for SVHS and bitrates beyond 1500 are a waste for VHS... The use of higher resolutions don't give nothing. In a way, it is a minus... (file size increase, no quality increase...).
If, now, a vhs with 720 X 480 and bitrate 5000kb/s looks better a mpeg 2 interlace file with 352 X 240 resolution and a bitrate about 1500, is because of bad convertion in general. You see, the really reason is that with low bitrates, good work needed for good results. With high bitrates, no work needed for the same results!

Now the looking longer term issue you mention...
The reason we need hardware mpeg 2 encoders , is because todays PCs ain't powerfull enough for realtime mpeg 2 software encoding.
And like today we don't need hardware mpeg 2 cards to play DVD video on our PCs, in a year we'll not need hardware mpeg 2 encoders to grabb in realetime......
In 2 years, software encoders gonna be faster and better any today's realtime encoder.
So, it is what we define "longer term". I define it as 3 - 5 years. From this point, a hardware encoder ain't a long term product.
In generall, there are no longer terms with PCs..
This is my opinion..
Of course, you gonna by, so it is your money! Choose where to spent it best for your needs!

[q1aqza]

I can get already get realtime encoding speed using CCE with CBR but obviously VBR adds the time in number of passes accordingly so I am still swayed toward the hardware option for now. For me, with computer hardware long term is next 12-18 months so I don't feel that spending £150 on a hardware capture card is too much of an issue if I decide switch back to software capture when software gets much faster, but I take your points and I will put some more thought into it. Excuse my ignorance , but what is TBC and what 3rd party products are there that can overcome macrovision?

[Xesdeeni]

SatStorm says:
> Also, I remind you something: VHS is 352 X 288/240 and SVHS is 352X576/480.

VERTICAL RESOLUTION

Both VHS and SVHS record and play back 480/576 lines (two interlaced fields), because that is the television standard (technically it's 525/625, but only about 483/580 lines have picture in them). 240/288 lines would mean dropping one field, and if you take a look at a VHS recording, you will see that this is not happening.

You are probably confusing the horizontal resolution with the number of lines. Horizontal resolution is often quoted as "vertical lines of resolution," and VHS is noted as having about "240 vertical lines of resolution," while SVHS is often quoted as having "more than 400 vertical lines of resolution." But as the references say, these are VERTICAL lines, not horizontal lines. Lines of resolution is measured using one of the standard test patterns (http://www.bealecorner.com/trv900/respat/).

This is made more confusing by the fact that the "vertical lines of resolution" measurement is not for the entire horizontal line. The standard specifies the number of vertical lines for a width equal to the height or a 1:1 relationship. That means you only use 3/4 of the number of lines of our 4:3 lines.

The fact that 240 is also the size of one field has led to the common misconception that it refers to VHS capturing only one field, but this is not true.

So "240 vertical lines of resolution" means about 320 lines would be visible across a VHS line.

HORIZONTAL RESOLUTION

From this you might get the impression that an equivalent digital resolution to VHS would be 320 (or 352) x 480/576. But it isn't as straightforward as that:

For the horizontal analog measurement, they are talking about black to white and white to black transitions. If we only had black and white pixels, then we could indeed assume 320 pixels per line (or 352) was an appropriate digital equivalent.

However, video seldom has such large contrasts. We see a lot more dark gray to light gray and light gray to dark gray transitions (ignoring color). In the analog domain, these are easier to deal with and we could actually get many more of these transitions per line than the specified 320. The correlation isn't linear, but we can easily get twice as many dark to light transitions as we reduce the contrast. Moreover, these transitions do not have to be aligned with any pixel grid, so you can actually get an edge that is shifted a much smaller difference than 1/320 of a line from the line above and/or below it.

However, in the digital domain, we will always have only 320 (or 352) transitions per line, regardless of the difference between adjacent pixels. And they are always at the exact same horizontal position with relation to the lines above and below.

So although 352 is a good starting place, and 720 is certainly overkill, you will definitely be losing some resolution from your VHS captures if you go with 352 pixels.

Xesdeeni

[lusid]

If you are commited to doing real time capture, and consider the quality loss acceptable, then you really should look into editing software that can edit mpeg-1 and mpeg-2 without needing to re-encode the whole file. M1-edit and M2-edit are the best imho, so I would suggest at least looking into them for the videos you need to edit.

On the other hand, if you have the storage space to decompress to huffy, why not capture to huffy to begin with, at least for things you know you'll need to edit.

I have to agree with your assessment of the wintv pvr. I saw it in action at comdex last year, and was initially impressed by the demos capture quality. But once I dropped it to VCD spec it looked absolutely horrid. It's really difficult to accurately convey just how bad it looked, and the signal it was capturing from was pristine.

I also saw the ads instant DVD device, and that device was clean even at vcd bitrates. I'd still like to get my hands on one for a while to do some real testing. If it's files are on spec for vcd, svcd, and DVD, and it really performs as well as the demo unit seemed to, it would be a great buy. I'd be curious about how well it handles poor quality material, like a noisy cable feed or an old VHS tape.

Here is what I've settled on personally, for now.
For real-time captures I use WinDVR to capture from a WinTV-FM. It's VCD is the cleanest of the real time software encoders I've tested, and it also does mpeg2 up to DVD res. It's running on a PIII-850, a low end machine by todays standards but still above the minimum specs for that app. Has some audio encoding issues, but they are easy to compensate for. If it's a one shot show I want to grab, or just need to convert from a clean source, I use this box. I also run it as a back up recording in case my good quality setup fails for some reason. rare, but things happen.

For good quality captures, I use a winTV-fm card and capture with AVI-IO in huffy format. Then I filter with virtualdub and/or avisynth and encode with tmpgenc. Converting to VCD with filters it takes 1.5 hours per hour of video on the dual 1600+ machine I use. It only takes 30 minutes per hour of video if I don't use the noise filters. I VCD 2-3 shows a day like this, completely automated with a combination of batch files and vbs scripts. I've done DVD resolution captures on this as well, and it's fast enough for me to replace my automated VCD routines with DVD routines, but I'm still experimenting with the format, and good media is still too costly.

[SatStorm]

@Xesdeeni

Basicly my friend, you are confused.....
You keep posting this all the time to the forum: VHS is 352 X 576/480
Well, it isn't. SVHS is that resolution.
My english skills ain't good enough to explain this further, so I suggest you to read further for the subject...
Have fun