VHS to (X)SVCD video conversion quality

[jeppers]

My goal is to convert stacks of VHS and Hi8 tapes to a digital format and I am concerned about the quality. Before I spend the money to purchase the equipment, I'd like to get some opinions and/or tips. I've seen sample VCDs and SVCDs and they have blockiness and quite frankly are not the quality I would like or expect. I have gotten bits and pieces of answers from the various web sites and forum searches but have failed to come up with a complete answer.

My current plans are:

1. Purchase the Canopus ADVC-100 and a non-TI chipset firewire card.
2. Capture the DV, then convert to MPEG-2 720x480 video, MPEG-1 44.1khz, 224kps audio using either TMPGENc or the Ligos LSX-MPEG encoders. There are many conflicting reviews on which is a better encoder.
3. Create XSVCD at 720x480 so that I could use the same MPG file to burn DVDs at a later time (perhaps SVCD files at 480x480 if the quality does not take a hit).
4. View these video CDs on the TV, not a computer monitor.


Some honest opinions on the following questions would be very helpful:

1. Will the converted digital be as good as the VHS, without the blockiness on any motion? Would waiting another year or two for new hardware and technologies be worth the wait to produce higher quality video?

2. Could converting the DV to SVCD MPEG-2 480x480 produce results as good as the original VHS tape (without blockiness)?

3. TMPGEnc verses Ligos LSX-MPEG?

Regards

[sterno]

First off, let me just say that I don't use Hi-8 or DV capture. I capture from VHS using my Dazzle DVC2 (hardware MPEG2) for clean input or through a WinTV card with HuffyUV if I know I'm going to need to do filtering. That shouldn't make a huge difference with these questions, but you should take it in to account when you consider my opinions.

1. Will the converted digital be as good as the VHS, without the blockiness on any motion? Would waiting another year or two for new hardware and technologies be worth the wait to produce higher quality video?

In general it can be just as good. You might need to experiment a little to get the best results, but it's entirely feasible. It might be worthwhile to wait a year or two just because recordable DVD might be cheap by then and it would be more friendly to high bitrates, but in a year or two it might still be worthwhile to wait another year or two. Technology marches on, at some point you just have to take your chances.

2. Could converting the DV to SVCD MPEG-2 480x480 produce results as good as the original VHS tape (without blockiness)?

I've found that 480x480 using 2-pass VBR and a high enough bitrate ("high enough" depending on what kind of video it is) gives me the same quality as the VHS source. Blocky video is more likely a result of the bitrate being too low than the resolution. If you push the resolution higher you'll have to push the bitrate higher to avoid the macroblocks, and the farther outside the specs you go the more trouble you'll have playing it on a set-top DVD player.

In the end, though, quality is subjective. I'm not using a $3000 widescreen TV or anything, I have a $300 TV from Wal-Mart because it's good enough for me. Nobody else can tell you what's going to make you happy. I would suggest that after you get your hardware you capture a typical 15-minute clip and encode some samples to see what works for you. My personal experience says that if you're capturing from VHS you'd probably benefit more from a higher bitrate than from a higher resolution, but I think I've seen that some people who do VHS->Firewire/DV->XSVCD like you're thinking say they do notice a difference with a higher resolution.

3. TMPGEnc verses Ligos LSX-MPEG?

I've never used Ligos, and I haven't seen many comments on it. I do know that most people seem to agree that CCE is better and much faster than TMPGenc for MPEG2 encoding, but I've never used it either (and it's pretty expensive).