VHS->MJPEG(DV) to SVCD How to do it without quality loss?

[sergueiXXX]

Dear All,
could someone give me a little advice.
I have captured VHS tape trough Digital8 (Sony) camera using FireWire.
(I guess that the quality is not extremely good )
Now I have MJPEG Pal video in resolution 720x560 pixels.
Now if I want to make a long sustained SVCD file (using TMGEncPlus) I will have 352x576 mpeg video file. So we have 720->352 transformation. Is it good? No, I do not think so. So what is the way to avoid it?
Probably I can just crop extra pixels for example through frameserving.
Can you suggest me how I can convert it into more or less compact file without a loss of quality?
I need this file for my DVD player, so it can be VCD, SVCD or DVD. But I prefer something like long sustained SVCD recorded on DVD. 3 hours of VHS on one disc.
Is it possible?
What kind of format and compression should I use.
Thanks.

[bugster]

I have captured VHS tape trough Digital8 (Sony) camera using FireWire.

and then

Now I have MJPEG Pal video in resolution 720x560 pixels.

No, you have DV format avi at 720*576 (unless you did some strange transcoding during capture).

Anyway, as it is a VHS source, I would suggest you encode to DVD using half D1 resolution, which is 352*576. This way you can lower the bitrate enough to get the 3hours per disc you need and still be within DVD specs (SVCD is NOT DVD complaint). If you encode using Tmpgenc, I would suggest letting TmpGenc do the resizing too, it seems to make a good enough job of it.

[sergueiXXX]

Probably I was wrong about secon dimension but the question was about first one. I am still not sure about resizing it is not a double.

[bugster]

Probably I was wrong about secon dimension but the question was about first one. I am still not sure about resizing it is not a double.

No, you were right about the dimensions, just you suggestion that it was in MJpeg and DV format confused me. Anywa, all you can do is try it. As I said, I think Tmpgenc's resizing is fine, don't worry about half/double or whatever just try it. I also suggetsted 1/2D1 as a DVD standard, rather than SVCD, as long as your final media will be DVD of course!

[sergueiXXX]

OK I'll try to make it.
Are there some more suggestion?

[SatStorm]

You could also try do some filtering before encode to mpeg 2....

Of course for something like this you need to read tons of guides, articles, etc. But for sure boost the quality....

[dh]

I have tried to encode (with Tmpgenc) the same video DV AVI both in the half D1 DVD format and SVCD format with the same average bitrate.
It appeared that the picture quality of SVCD format as seen on the TV looked sharper.

I have another question:
Is it a waste of memory or bitrate to capture VHS with full D1 resolution?
If it is captured in 352x288 (PAL) with any lossless codec and convert it to Mpeg2 in the same resolution, will the resulting picture quality be the same as that of the original?

[ronnylov]

I have tried to encode (with Tmpgenc) the same video DV AVI both in the half D1 DVD format and SVCD format with the same average bitrate.
It appeared that the picture quality of SVCD format as seen on the TV looked sharper.

I have another question:
Is it a waste of memory or bitrate to capture VHS with full D1 resolution?
If it is captured in 352x288 (PAL) with any lossless codec and convert it to Mpeg2 in the same resolution, will the resulting picture quality be the same as that of the original?

Original PAL VHS resolution is more than 288 pixels vertical so you should capture at least at 352x576 resolution to get most of the VHS quality. If the source is interlaced and you want to keep it interlaced then you must capture with full vertical resolution.

If you are capturing in DV format then you must capture at full D1 resolution because this is the only resolution the DV codecs will accept.

[ronnylov]

Dear All,
could someone give me a little advice.
I have captured VHS tape trough Digital8 (Sony) camera using FireWire.
(I guess that the quality is not extremely good )
Now I have MJPEG Pal video in resolution 720x560 pixels.
Now if I want to make a long sustained SVCD file (using TMGEncPlus) I will have 352x576 mpeg video file. So we have 720->352 transformation. Is it good? No, I do not think so. So what is the way to avoid it?
Probably I can just crop extra pixels for example through frameserving.
Can you suggest me how I can convert it into more or less compact file without a loss of quality?
I need this file for my DVD player, so it can be VCD, SVCD or DVD. But I prefer something like long sustained SVCD recorded on DVD. 3 hours of VHS on one disc.
Is it possible?
What kind of format and compression should I use.
Thanks.

It is impossible to do it without loss of quality. MPEG2 compression is a lossy compression method. But you can try to keep the loss as low as possible.

I think you have mixed up the resolutions. PAL SVCD is 480x576 but it's not DVD compatible (it may work but it's not a standard format). 352x576 is the best choice if you want it on DVD in a standard format.

The 352x576 format is a compatible DVD resolution in PAL and it's a good choise if you want to put 3 hours of VHS video on a DVD. 704x576 and 720x576 resolutions both use the same aspect ratio, so you can crop the picture to 704x576 and then resize to 352x576 without any aspect ratio problems.

Then you can crop the 352x576 down to 336x544 and add 8 pixels black borders to left and right, 16 pixels black borders at top and bottom. Make sure that you crop the "VHS garbage" at the bottom and maybe the top of the picture. For instance you can crop 8 pixels at top and 24 pixels at bottom if most of the garbage is in the bottom of the picture. Make sure you crop even number of pixels vertically to avoid destroying the interlacing. After the cropping you add the 8 pixels borders on left and right and 16 pixels borders on top and bottom as I said. This makes the cropping block optimized which is good for the encoder, especially at lower bitrates.

I suggest you use Mainconcept encoder 1.4 or Canopus Procoder instead of TMPGEnc if you have the possibility. I have made some quality comparisons of my own and found that Mainconcept 1.4 and Procoder were the best mpeg2 encoders. I compared them with CCE, TMPGEnc and LSX 3.5. Mainconcept was best and Procoder was close behind and then there was a step down to the rest where CCE was better than TMPGEnc and LSX was the worst. The differencies were not huge. The test was made at quite a high bitrate (8 mbit/s cbr at 704x576 resolution and in interlaced format from a VHS capture) and it seemed that Procoder was a little bit less behind at the hard to encode parts so maybe Procoder is a better choise at low bitrates. Mainconcept 1.4 is a cheaper than Procoder so I would vote for mainconcept.

[sergueiXXX]

Thanks a lot for advices.
To ronnylov what program you suggest for cropping. Can I do it in one of the mentioned above programs?

[ronnylov]

I use avisynth for cropping and resizing to get most control of the output. You can also do it with virtualdub.

If you like you can also resize within the encoder (there are rezising options in all encoders except CCE). I prefer avisynth.

You may want to try FitCD, which can automatically generate a resizing script for avisynth.