DVDs from 640x480 captures?

[Georgeo57]

I do a cable TV program, and have to make vhs copies of the episodes to show them in other communities.

With my WinGo card, and VirtualVCR, I can capture at 640x480. Somehow, the vcd's I made this way came out better than svcds using Nero, and a bbmpeg encoder.

If I bought a DVD burner, would it give me better resolution, or would I have to capture at 720x480 for there to be a noticable difference?

Thanks.

[bpjenn]

Can you capture at 352x480? That is a legal DVD resolution called Half D1 and many DVD authoring programs will accept it and not re-encode.

[fmctm1sw]

George, I'm a little confused. What exactly did you use to convert to VCD. Nero, BBMpeg, something else? With Nero and BBMpeg, I am surprised you havn't stabbed yourslef repeatedly with a butterknife waiting for it to encode a svcd. BBMpeg is painfully slow and Nero is rarely used by anyone as an encoding tool. I recommend you check out TMPGEnc if you havn't already. I don't have a DVD burner so I can't really speak for that last issue....

[snowmoon]

Yes, I would cap at 720x480.... and here is why...

It may be specific to the winTV cards, so please don't flame me unless you have actually tried this yourself. I have VVcr as a cap program too.

To see for yourself set the capture card to 352x480. Look for a nice sharp credits or stationary logo. You will find a small echo above and or below these contrast lines. Now switch to any rez 480 or larger and the ghost line will go away.

[Georgeo57]

Bpjen; Yeah, Virtual VCR lets me capture at 352X480, but wouldn't the final DVD be limited to that low resolution? Also, are you saying that DVD authoring software wouldn't be able to work with 640X480 captures?


fmctm1sw; I did use TMPEGnc for the VCDs. I used the others for SVCDs because I don't have the full TMPEGnc version.

My vcds came out much better than my svcds. Is that because I used Nero and BBMpeg?

[bpjenn]

If you cap at 640x480, the authoring program will need to re-encode to 352/720x480, which takes a lot of time. 352x480 capturing looks great to me. Most of my capturing is done from VHS or 8mm home movies.

[Turtle D]

I beleive that capturing at full DVD quality (720x480) is a waste of space, time and money when the source is coming from VHS. The quality of a VHS isn't that good (now that we are spoiled by DVD and digital cable/satellite). Also, blank CDs to make (S)VCDs are cheaper than DVDs. I have a Pioneer A05, blanks are $2 a piece. For me, when I 'backup' a show, edit out commercials... the show ends up 22 mins for a 30 min program... fits perfectly on a SVCD. My suggestion would be for tv/VHS capture (or any analog capture) keep it as the SVCD (480x480) format. Most DVD players recognise this format.

I hope I have helped...

-Dennis

[snowmoon]

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=169869

WinTV cards introduce additional blurring when capturing at pixel widths lower than about 400. I would rather have the control on how much to blur in post processing/editing. I once though 352x480 was an appropriate capture resolution too, but the topic shows how the blurring smears things not just in the horozoantial, but vertical too. This leads to a loss of visual resolution that may have been in the source, but is now gone.