Success - But Still Need Help With Quality

[l333]

I am new to this - please tell me if I am doing this right. I am transfering small VHS material {home movie} to cd. I have the Radeon AIW. I am capturing the VCR tape using the latest AIW tuner and AIW video recorder. I am capturing using MPEG-1 352x240 NTSC {525} - 1.13 Bit/Second. The files are being saved as .mpg files.

My first burning attempt was straight to nero {5.5.9.4} as a regular data file. I have two standalone dvd players - this first attempt resulted in the file playing on my Apex but not my Daewoo. Thanks to you guys I tred again - burning as a video file in Nero and DAO. Now the .mpg plays in both my players. The video is satisfactory but is less than the original.

Quality is my main concern {not space} - as close to the original as I can get and playback compatibility on my standalone Dvd players.

My questions are as follows:

Question 1 - Should I be "capturing" at a different setting or format? MPEG 2?? - if so my choices are Dvd high, full resolution, DVD. I do want the best from these old VHS tapes but I still want them to play in my DVD players.

Question 2 - I do intend to buy a dvd writer in several months. Would a DVD writer allow me better quality as I copy and discard these VHS tapes or will the quality be the same - just obviously more room. If just more room I would rather do it now as if I am not mistaken these .mpg files could easily be copied onto a DVD writer in the future without loss of quality.

Thanks

[Tommyknocker]

If you do convert your video to DVD, you will still lose quality, but not as much as you would to VCD.

[l333]

could use a little more help if anyone would be so kind

thanks

[holistic]

When it comes to MPEG compression,QUALITY - is a function of the bitrate.

For the highest 'quality', my advice to you is the following.

1.Capture in a non lossy format (ie : Huffyuv ) at 352 * 480 (for NTSC)
http://math.berkeley.edu/~benrg/huffyuv.html
Do not capture using mpeg1
2.Using VirtualDub perform the editing and run the filters you need.
3.Export "frameserve" to TMPGEnc and encode in MPEG2. (audio set to 48kHz)
4.A Mpeg2 file will be created that is in the 1/2D1 spec .From this you can make cDVD

*There is info on this site on how to 'frameserve' from VirtualDub.
*With your DVD authoring software you can now make a disk that will play in most DVD players once you get your DVD burner.


FYI - For VHS tape i found 352*480 to be optimal .Bigger resolutions will make no difference in quality. "Quality" will come from the bitrate. Use a 2 pass VBR and set it to 1500 low- 3600 avg- 6000high to obtain ~ 20 minute per disk. For increase your time on disk simple lower the bitrate.


o yes to answer question 2 - you can copy mpeg2 with no loss as long as you do not reencode.

][