VideoHelp Forum




+ Reply to Thread
Results 1 to 30 of 30
  1. What bitrate is recommended for half-d1 (352x480) video? Is it 4900 since that's half of the 9800 max for regular DVD resolution? What would be the minimum recommended for video sourced from VHS-C?
    Quote Quote  
  2. Member DJRumpy's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2002
    Location
    Dallas, Texas
    Search Comp PM
    Bitrate is dependent on motion or change from frame to frame. You should use as much bitrate as your source requires.

    VHS is by its very nature, 'noisy', which will use up more bitrate. You didn't specify if this was for a CVD, or a DVD. If it's for DVD, use the same MIN/AVG/MAX values you would for full D1. I wouldn't suggest your use CBR at 9 Mbs, simply because it's too wasteful. Use VBR. You should also run your source through a cleaner to remove the analog noise before encoding.
    Impossible to see the future is. The Dark Side clouds everything...
    Quote Quote  
  3. Member
    Join Date
    Jan 2003
    Location
    Nashville, TN
    Search Comp PM
    What cleaner do you use/suggest?
    Quote Quote  
  4. Use Mr Sheen

    OK so what's the benefit of half D1 if you should use the same bitrate? If the files will be the same size why not use D1?

    I'm confused
    Quote Quote  
  5. Half D1 (VCD Resolution) means that you get twice the data rate per pixel of full D1. This means that you can get the same picture quality in half the file size. On normal televisions there is no difference in picture quality between D1 and D2 res, although on a PC screen the D2 res will be a softer, more blurred image.
    Quote Quote  
  6. Member
    Join Date
    Feb 2001
    Location
    Macondo, Puerto Rico
    Search Comp PM
    Hi.

    Does that means that : 352 x 480 @ 5000 will give a quality similar to 720 x 480 @ 9000 using half the space?

    What about using 352 x 480 @ 8000 to get two hours of vhs video on a DVD?

    Regards,
    Jose Febus
    Quote Quote  
  7. Yes it does. That's why I use it.
    Quote Quote  
  8. The Old One SatStorm's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2000
    Location
    Hellas (Greece), E.U.
    Search Comp PM
    Any extreme VHS/SVHS source, can be block free @ 3500kb/s Average.
    Beyond that is overkill.
    Reasons 3500kb/s wouldn't be enough: The quality of the encoder, the mistaken use of filters, bad encoder setup, hardware limitations, Codex limitations during the grabbing, etc....
    That is my opinion. Others may have different
    Quote Quote  
  9. I use 352x480 all the time for my VHS conversions, and use an average bitrate of 2900-3300. This is with the Main Concept encoder in Vegas Video (so I don't have to change programs). If you use TMPGEnc or CCE, you could probably get away with less.

    Robert
    Quote Quote  
  10. Member
    Join Date
    Feb 2001
    Location
    Macondo, Puerto Rico
    Search Comp PM
    I know I am wasting space, but I calculate the bitrate to fill a dvd and then use that bitrate to capture my vhs at halfd1 resolutions. I got great results.

    Due to the fact that I want one VHS in one DVD it doesn't meka sense to me to burn half the dvd, I use all the space available increasing the bitrate (9,000 max).

    Regards,
    Jose Febus
    Quote Quote  
  11. Member
    Join Date
    Aug 2002
    Location
    United States
    Search Comp PM
    I often use 2000 bitrate and 1/2 D1 and my output always looks very good. Not DVD quality, but higher than VHS quality. I would say between VHS and DVD. Also at 2000 bitrate you can fit 240 minutes (2 full movies) per DVD.
    Quote Quote  
  12. Member DJRumpy's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2002
    Location
    Dallas, Texas
    Search Comp PM
    If your not concerned about squeezing additional video onto a DVD, then by all means, use a bitrate calculator, and go for the max allowed. It's wasteful, but your not concerned about waste here. I would guesstimate that a CBR of 4000 would easily be sufficient for half D1 bitrate demands, assuming your using decent motion detection, and your Source material is clean. I'd suggest higher for CAM sources, and dirty video. Setting your max to 8000 will certainly take all of these things in stride.

    Just as an fyi, I often place over 2 hours of video on a dvd using full D1 resolutions with min:300, Avg:4000-4500, Max:8000, and 2-Pass VBR. The quality is excellent. I just depends on the time and resolution that will fit your needs (I have an HDTV...half d1 is noticably different than full d1).

    Last but not least, for filters, I suggest at a minimum, a temporal smoother, or spatial smoother. The 'Optimized 2-d cleaner' is also a good one. You can find them on the DGraft site. Search the forum for a link to it.
    Impossible to see the future is. The Dark Side clouds everything...
    Quote Quote  
  13. DJRumpy -

    When you say half D1 (which I assume is a resolution of 352x480) looks different from full D1 (720x480), you mean that the lower res looks worse than the full res on your HDTV, correct?

    I am preparing to transfer many VHS and S-VHS source tapes to DVD. I am still debating whether to use full res or half. Other posts seem to indicate that the full res yields a better looking picture, while others insist you save DVD space (by using about 4900 Mbps for half D1) and there is no appreciable difference when watching on regular television.

    Your thoughts?
    Quote Quote  
  14. Member DJRumpy's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2002
    Location
    Dallas, Texas
    Search Comp PM
    Any picture a standard tv displays is 'dumbed' down if the source is higher in resolution in order to display it. The digital signal is converted to analog, and pushed out of the composite or s-video jacks to your TV. That said, it you have two identical sources, one 720x480, and the other 352x480, and both were displayed on your TV, both would look almost identical. It's true, that the better the source, the better the end result. In this case, more resolution is better, but the difference, on a standard TV, since both signals are converted to broadcast resolutions, won't look all that different from each other. I only started noticing a difference when I purchased my HDTV.

    Just remember that HDTV is the new standard, and you will eventually end up bying one. If your still not sure, burn a demo of each, and take them down to your local electronics store. The sales reps are usually more than happy to let you see the difference, in hopes of snagging a sale.
    Impossible to see the future is. The Dark Side clouds everything...
    Quote Quote  
  15. The Old One SatStorm's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2000
    Location
    Hellas (Greece), E.U.
    Search Comp PM
    And just for the record, HDTV in Europe and almost all the rest of the PAL world, gonna turn mainstream in 15 - 20 years.

    So, the "rule" is that with NTSC/HDTV the more resolution the better. Also for HDTV progressive output is way better.
    For PAL/Secam world, there is no real difference. And it is way better to keep Interlace your output. (mainstream TVs love Interlace)

    Just for the record, for those who read those posts outside US
    Quote Quote  
  16. Member DJRumpy's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2002
    Location
    Dallas, Texas
    Search Comp PM
    Good point. I can only speak from NTSC experience...
    Impossible to see the future is. The Dark Side clouds everything...
    Quote Quote  
  17. Just to confirm that there are absolutely NO plans for HDTV in Europe. Even PAL Plus died a death some time ago. Widescreen is also suffering from a lack of interest, with no one other than the BBC supporting it at all.

    4x3 PAL still has a lot of life left in it!
    Quote Quote  
  18. The Old One SatStorm's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2000
    Location
    Hellas (Greece), E.U.
    Search Comp PM
    Not only BBC....

    ARD and ZDF from Germany also transmits most of the quality programs 16:9 (and yep, it is PAL plus!)
    In the matter of fact, many German based channels transmits partly or whole 16:9. Arte, 3Sat, Phoenix....
    And almost all the PPV movies are 16:9 (Pal Plus). Canal Plus use it a lot in Tele+ (Italy) CSD NL, Canal+ Espana, etc...
    16:9 moves slow and only for movies, documantaries, music videoclips, etc.. Somehow, the tend to use 16:9 transmission only for "coultour" programs, perhaps because they use to be some money support from EU.

    In 2003, the first HDTV digital satellite channel expected to air in Europe. Also, the Swiss TELECLUB cabel have some cabel transmissions HDTV for swiss (if I remember correct).
    Quote Quote  
  19. Member flaninacupboard's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2001
    Location
    Northants, England
    Search Comp PM
    er, the other terrestial channels (itv and channel 4) use widescreen. almost all of their programs are transmitted in 14:9 on the analogue networks, with 16:9 letterbox or anamorphic available on the digital networks. (sky digital, ntl digital, and i assume freeview does too)
    other digital channels use 16:9, like bbc 3 and 4, news 24 lots of the box office channels, and even bid-up, the scourge of digital TV!
    Quote Quote  
  20. Member DJRumpy's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2002
    Location
    Dallas, Texas
    Search Comp PM
    I wonder if the push for HDTV, and widescreen in the US will affect foreign markets?
    Impossible to see the future is. The Dark Side clouds everything...
    Quote Quote  
  21. Member flaninacupboard's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2001
    Location
    Northants, England
    Search Comp PM
    well speaking as a british consumer (and a technically minded one who's interested in digital video) i have -no- idea what plans our stupid country has. to be honest, i don't think higher resolution TV will ever be popular in this country. our 5.5MHZ broadcasts actually look very good. if you've got a clean signal it's gorgeous. DVD also looks lovely in PAL. it always gets me whenever i watch a R1 DVD in NTSC just how much lower resolution NTSC looks, and i don't know if it's just my eyes, but it seems to have a poorer contrast range. and as for digital, no companies want to invest, because ITV digital went bust, so whenever the words "digital" and "television" come up at the same time interest rapidly disappears...
    And of course those of us with an eye for quality know that no digital system compares with the analogue broadcasts yet. i can't say i'm itching for digital TV to happen, or HDTV, all i want to see is 16X9 broadcasting. that'd suit me fine.
    Quote Quote  
  22. The Old One SatStorm's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2000
    Location
    Hellas (Greece), E.U.
    Search Comp PM
    I have to tell a true here...
    The Technology force in Europe, is basicly Germany (All TV technologies are mostly German). France, always had to present an alternative to anything German, but only few followed their solutions.
    The other European countries, just choosed between those two.
    Now, all european countries have problems (the euro adaption) and that situation gonna keep for more than 10 years. German has great problems right now.
    They knew what was in front of as and that's why in Europe they harry so much to push DVB transmissions.

    The reason HDTV ain't moving in Europe, is the European economy. If we had money, we could buy HDTV sets, as we was able to buy home Cinema sets the last decade and satellite equipment between 1998-2000. But now noone in Europe has money to move the indestry.
    Thanks God we manage to have DVB. That is something.
    Quote Quote  
  23. Member DJRumpy's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2002
    Location
    Dallas, Texas
    Search Comp PM
    I don't think we'd be where we are today in the US, if it wasn't for the government forcing broadcasters to switch to HDTV. Prices for HDTV and Plasma displays have only recently started to drop into the affordable range. Regular broadcast pales in comparison. The same can be said for analog and digital. In the last few years, most of the major cable providers have switched to fiber digital networks, and digital content. The picture quality is far superior to analog. No noise. No distorition. No drive lines. On my regular TV, digital mimics DVD. On my HDTV, broadcast looks like crap. DVD looks good, but even that isn't using the full resolution of HDTV.

    They tell me now that they will soon begin broacasting HDTV over my cable within the next two years, with test markets already taking place. I can't wait.
    Impossible to see the future is. The Dark Side clouds everything...
    Quote Quote  
  24. Satstorm, I don't see many German TV shows in 16:9 format. I have an old Astra 19 degrees analogue system as well as Sky Digital and there are very few 16:9 programmes aired on ZDF, ARD, or the "third" network (WDR, NDR, etc.) Even ARTE don't broadcast much in it other than movies.

    In the UK, there isn't great support for 16:9 outside of the BBC. ITV don't like it and only use it for dramas and some studio based output, Channel 5 rarely use it, Sky don't use it at all on ANY of their services except for one movie channel which broadcasts for a few hours a day!

    The 720 res HDTV standard wouldn't be much of an improvement over PAL so I couldn't see anyone here going for it, although it would be a dramatic improvement over NTSC.

    At the moment, I would settle for high quality images in standard PAL format, however the advent of digital TV has stopped this and we are now left with VERY POOR picture quality on most digital satellite channels. The average BROADCAST bitrate for MPEG2 on Sky Digital is about 3Mbps, this is similar to SVCD although utilising a much larger picture area thereby yielding poorer pictures! And they tell us this is the future of TV!!

    I wonder if our US cousins would settle for a system that gives poorer quality than existing standards in the name of Digital TV!
    Quote Quote  
  25. Member DJRumpy's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2002
    Location
    Dallas, Texas
    Search Comp PM
    I have yet to see anything using the 1024 mode, which itself, is almost twice that of PAL. The demo's you see at the store are always so generic (i.e. water..trees...). Nothing that you would normally watch on tv.

    I've heard the same thing regarding satellite broadcasts here in the us. They are taking the additional bandwidth for HDTV, and instead offering X number of channels with the extra bandwidth, instead of allocating that bandwidth to one channel with good quality. You end up with 5 channels of bad quality.
    Impossible to see the future is. The Dark Side clouds everything...
    Quote Quote  
  26. Since my last post I've just had a play with a new Sony HDTV camera (the first to appear in Northern Ireland). Interesting to see the component output on the side - compatible with nothing we have here!! But it did have strange picture effects on the viewfinder (almost like image lag) as we are trying to view 25fps progressive scan on an interlaced viewfinder! It's going to be used for a new film and the cameraman wanted to see if it would integrate OK with our Steadicam unit. Apparently Sony make a model (the 750) that shoots both HDTV and standard defination on the same unit and has a downconverter board built on board so that you can output onto DigiBeta for editing and only use HDTV editing when you are happy with the final result. Also see that the tapes are about 50 quid each and last 48 mins at 25fps. Anyway, enough waffle ... I'm missing the Simpsons!!
    Quote Quote  
  27. Member flaninacupboard's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2001
    Location
    Northants, England
    Search Comp PM
    The other big difference in the UK is screen sizes. houses in the UK are expensive, damn expensive. the rooms ar small, so TV's are small. rear projection has never taken off here, and plasma hasn't yet, but i'm sure it will soon. the small acreens we all have mean that again, hdtv makes no difference.
    it's interesting, there are exatly the smae issues coming up with digital radio. the only people who -want- a digital radio system are people who care about quality, and the BBC have admitted that old FM radio sounds superior to digital radio, and i have to agree. what a stupid state of affairs, a mult million pound system that sounds worse than it's predecessor.
    welcome to the new milennium....
    Quote Quote  
  28. Oh the joys of working at the Beeb!
    Quote Quote  
  29. Hey, did this thread veer off the original question?

    Theoretically, VHS has a horizontal resolution of about 306 (230 x 4/3). So capturing it at half D1 makes sense. For S-VHS it's about 533 (400 x 4/3), so full D1 makes more sense, assuming you have the bitrate for it.

    The appropriate bitrate is very dependent on the source video, how much action and noise is on it. Using a noise filter can substantially lower the necessary bitrate. Animation can survive much lower bitrates than live action video. Your best bet is to do a test run on a representative sample of your video, say one minute of it, and check it on a DVD-RW.

    You certainly don't get to cut your bitrate in half for using half the pixels. Most of the additional pixels in the 720 version are similar and closely related to pixels encoded in the 352 version. Therefore, with the way MPEG compression works, it requires only a marginal increase in bitrate to accomodate them. Only uncompressed would it take twice the data. I agree with those who say to use about the same bitrate as for full D1.

    For noise filtering, I've tried a few different filters, and TMPGEnc's built-in noise reduction filter is by far the best of what I've seen. It is really good at taking only the noise with no ghosting or blurring. It gives you a great deal of control over how much noise it takes away, and you can test it while you are setting it to see the effect. I use it with a range of 1 for live-action video, and a range of 2 for animation. For most animation you can crank it up pretty high and get virtually perfect video from noisy captures without losing any real detail.
    Quote Quote  
  30. The Old One SatStorm's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2000
    Location
    Hellas (Greece), E.U.
    Search Comp PM
    About the grabbing of VHS/SVHS there are many posts.
    My opinion, after many tests, is that theory and praxis are 2 different things for this matter. Hardware limitation, cable limitations, software limitations, etc, won't allow you to follow 100% the theory.

    For Pal, capturing beyond 388 X 576 the analogue way any source, is a fake, an overkill, call it whatever you want. I can realize that SVCD needs to capture a little bit higher, it is a "small" overkill that way, but with the right filters/bitrate you can succeed good results inbetween the SVCD standards.
    I can't talk for NTSC grabbing. 2 months ago, I had an unforgeting experience with the beaty of NTSC VHS. And yes, there is no overkill with this system. Grabb the higher you can for better results. It is not the same with PAL for sure. I recently learn the explanation for this, but my english ain't good enough to describe it. It has to do with how NTSC transmits the color info and how PAL transmits the same info. With bad ASCI art, if a full line of CCIR input info looks like this:

    ------- --- -- ------- - ------ - ------ - -- - -- - - ---- - ------ ----- ---

    with pal you can grabb with lower horizontal resolution and that gives you only the ------------------------------------------ which is the useful info. You can do this with PAL, because the nature of the system allows that.

    With NTSC you have to grabb the whole
    ------- --- -- ------- - ------ - ------ - -- - -- - - ---- - ------ ----- ---
    and then, during the encoding, the Encoder gonna detect the "nothings" between the "-" and remove them all.

    If you do the same with PAL as with NTSC, you add noise.

    I hope you can understand what I am trying to say, I can't easy describe it better..


    @ energy80s
    I have a 1.85 X 1.98 cm Channel Master dish, both KU and C band, with reception from 45 West to 94.5 East. I can recieve channels from Argentina to Japan. Even some Australian feeds (not true channels). I have Both digital and Analogue.

    ARD digital and ZDF Vision, for all of their thematic channels (plenty of them...) transmitts almost only 16:9. ZDF doku, ZDF theaterkanal, KiKa, Eins muxx, Eins extra, Eins Festival are some of them.

    Almost all of the movie channels from Canal + arround Europe, transmitts in widescreen. In Italy Tele +, Tele bianco, Tele Grigio in France (Canal +, C+Bleu/Jeune), in Spain with C+/Azul/Rojo), in Poland (C+/Bialy/Zolty), in Scandinavia (C+bla/Suomi), in BeNeLux (C+Rood/Blauw).
    All the PPV movie servives also transmitts in 16:9 (kiosk/france, Palco/italy, Palco/Spain, Multivision/france, CSD Kiosk/Scandinavia).
    There are also 4 channels, as an alternative 16:9 transmission of Canal + Espana/France, Nederlands (this called simply C+ 16/9).
    Basicly, 16:9 moves everywhere in Europe, but slow. It is the rule for movie channels, pay per view events and thematic television. All digital, you won't see anything analogue! Typical example, the german Pro 7 channel: The analogue service, has 4:3 transmission. The digital one, in the same satellite, includes 16:9 picture when it is avalaible and dolby digital sound! The nation channels for Austria followed (ORF 1 and 2) and the german speaking channels of Swiss are gonna launch those services in the summer of 2004 for their cabel/satellite subscripters.

    It is naturall not to recieve 16:9 from the analogue astra 1 transmissions. This is only for the DVB transmissions, another reason to force German satellite reception users switch to digital. The picture quality of those transmissions are far better Sky Digital's one (I also have a sky digital subscription (family pack) among other ones... )

    There also expected a HDTV channel in less in a year for Europe. The fist one. It's going to be cultur oriented and FTA.
    Quote Quote  



Similar Threads

Visit our sponsor! Try DVDFab and backup Blu-rays!