vhs capture to dvd

[johns0]

just ordered a liteon LDW411S and plan to capture crappy quality finnish vhs tapes at about 2kbps at 352x480 to fill aprox 4.2 gigs with menus using dvdit to get about 5 hours worth,just like some comments or suggestions.

[tito13kfm]

IMHO 2kbps isn't enough to utilize 1/2D1.. why not just capture as an XVCD and author as DVD? I've tried using 2kbps with xvcd, svcd, and 1/2dvd and can tell you that svcd looks best to my eye, but to keep it dvd semi-compliant (hackable to burn to a dvd that is) I went with the runner up.. being xvcd.

There is a guide on here about burning VCD to a dvd.. try following that.. or just do what I do and capture at 352x240 2kbps (48000hz for sound) and use TMPGenc DVD author to author it.. occasionally it complains about non-compliance, but it always works for me.

[johns0]

what i meant to say was i capture at 640x480 at 10kbps mpeg4 codecs
and encode at 352x480 48khz audio ,i tried encode at 352x240 and it came out terrible,2kbs is good enough for my tastes at 352x480,already did quite a few files encoded with those specs onto non compliant svcd with lesser bitrates that looked good.

[FulciLives]

what i meant to say was i capture at 640x480 at 10kbps mpeg4 codecs
and encode at 352x480 48khz audio ,i tried encode at 352x240 and it came out terrible,2kbs is good enough for my tastes at 352x480,already did quite a few files encoded with those specs onto non compliant svcd with lesser bitrates that looked good.

When I do HALF D1 (352x480) on DVD I first capture at FULL D1 (720x480) then resize to HALF D1 (352x480) when doing my MPEG-2 encoding.

Most people will tell you that HALF D1 (352x480) will MAX the bitrate at around 4000kbps but I find in my testing that it is more like 5000kbps (or very close to it).

I'm a quality freak so I do a 2-Pass VBR with a 2000kbps MIN and a 5000kbps MAX and an AVG of 4000kbps although you could go as low as 3500kbps and still get really good results.

In my opinion I would never go less than 3000kbps for an AVG

I really can't imagine 2000kbps as a good bitrate for HALF D1 (352x480) unless it is something "simple" with little detail such as animation.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[johns0]

we are talking about finnish old country tapes that look nasty so quality isnt the first priority

[lordsmurf]

Some people just like to watch garbage quality. Look at all the Kazaa downloaders and broadcast tv viewers.