DVDs no better than SVCDs?

[Georgeo57]

I recently started using a DVD burner, and was able to capture from a VHS tape at 720x480 using the Btwincap drivers, but the DVD came out no better than a SVCD I made. How can I get an as exact a clone of a VHS tape as possible?

My capture card is a Win TV-GO
I'm capturing in Virtualdub and encoding with TMPGEnc
my VHS player isn't the best quality
processor:Pentium III, 500 mHz

Thanks,
George

[Michelle]

VHS is low quality material. No matter what you do, a DVD from a VHS source will not look better than a well-made SVCD.

[Gees]

How can I get an as exact a clone of a VHS tape as possible?

Lots of tips for achieving the highest possible quality are in the Guides. But you'd never surpass that, except to possibly "fake" better quality with use of filters (ex: noise reduction, smoothing, etc.)

Many people recommend use of a TBC for the most "pure" capture from VHS. My svhs player has TBC & noise reduction, but standalone TBCs are more powerful.

the DVD came out no better than a SVCD I made

Was it a very good SVCD? or very bad? :c) You don't provide any details about what methods and/or settings were used for each, so it's impossible to tell what you are comparing each to.

Put a little more info here and chances are someone will be able to tell you some key settings that can be improved upon.

[Georgeo57]

Gees

The SVCD quality really wasn't all that good.

Here are as complete a list of settings that I could put together:

These settings were used for both the DVD and the SVCD

Win TV -Go capture card
format: 720X480 YuY2 (YUV 4:2:2 interleaved) 1036800 bits
video compression: Huffyuv. v.2.1.1 lossless codec YUY2 Predict med.
audio compression 44,100 khz 16 bit mono
frame rate 29.97 fps
captured in overlay mode

Any other settings would be the VirtualDub defaults

Thanks,
George

[Spicuzza]

Georgeo57, the simple answer is that you simply don't have the representative detail in VHS tape to support a frame size of 720 x 480.

Try capturing 352 x 480, uncompressed AVI, then encode that to DVD and see if that doesn't improve the quality.

[Georgeo57]

Spicuzza,

Thanks.

Also, something I forgot to mention is that since I don't use any filters or edit the avi in any way, I've simply been feeding the file directly to TMPGEnc without frameserving through VirtualDub. Should I be doing it that way?

George

[Solarjetman]

If you do not edit the video in any way, frameserving a Huffy encoded file will not give you any advantage I am aware of.

[rsuave5]

I CAPTURE ALL THE TIME FROM VHS IN 720X480. REVIEWING THAT FILE WILL SHOW YOU IT IS A VERY NEAR REPLICA OF THE VHS. SOME THINGS THAT MAY REDUCE THE QUALITY WHEN CAPTURING IS IF YOU USE A/V CABLES, GOTO S-VIDEO IF POSSIBLE, YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO CAP A NEAR EXACT COPY OF THE VHS IN 720X480 WHERE THE MOST LOSS COMES FROM IS THE ENCODE IN TMPGENC.

THERE ARE ALOT OF SUGGESTIONS CONCERNING SETTINGS IN TMPGENC. JUST SEARCH I FIND THE MOST BENEFICIAL IS UPPING THE BIT RATE AND MOTION SEARCH PRECISION. I ALWAYS RUN HI-QUALITY SLOW IN THAT FIELD OR THE HIGHEST QUALITY SLOWEST SETTING IF IM REAL CONCERNED ABOUT QUALITY. UP THE BIT RATE TO THE HIGHEST YOU CAN TO FIT ON YOUR DVD. I ALSO EXPERIMENT WITH 2 PASS VBR OR 1 PASS CBR WITH A HIGH BIT RATE.

MY VHS CAPS AND SUBSEQUENT DVD BURNS ARE NEAR EXACT COPYS THAT ONLY THE MOST ANAL OF DISCERNERS CAN DISTINGUISH FROM THE ORIGINAL. I HAVE A CHEAP CAPTURE CARD TOO!

[Georgeo57]

rsuave5,

The only way I can capture 720X480 is with the huffy codec. If I try uncompressed, I get too many dropped frames.

Would it be better then to capture at 352x480 uncompressed, if possible?

I noticed that TMPGEnc already set the bit rate for 7,900, so the only other thing I could do was set the motion search precision to highest quality

[housepig]

Georgeo -

you've stated that the DVD doesn't look any better than an SVCD, but how do either of them look compared to your original Huffy avi?

I capture from VHS too, and if the VHS is crisp & clean, I get a crisp, clean avi. If it looks like crap, I get a crap avi - you're not going to get better than your source signal.

I'm also someone who supports capping in 720x480 - I've done 352x480 & 720x480 comparisons with nice-quality, commercially manufactured VHS, and I can see the difference - the 1/2 D1 has a lot less detail and sharpness than the Full D1.

So if your avi looks good, and your mpeg doesn't, it's something in the mpeg encoding. If your avi doesn't look as good as the VHS, something is hinky in your capture.

[The village idiot]

The only ways to make it "look" better are going to be with filters in Vdub or TMPGEnc, or with a good quality hardware based TBC with built in adjustable noise reduction and video processing.

I would choose the hardware method if a had a choice. But you, like me, probably do not have a choice, so that would leave Vdub, etc.

Also a change to 1/2 D1 might help as suggested.