2 Hours of DV Vs 2 Hours of VHS on dvd

[jim s]

I need a little help to figuring this out. If I have a VHS tape and capture it with Premiere with a Canopus ADVC-100 (Analog to Digital Converter) could put that on a DVD and the quality would be the same because it’s a lower resolution? But if I capture 2 hours of dv camcorder footage and put that on a DVD the picture quality may not be as good since its more information?

Also Premiere pro only gives me the option capture DV resolution only. If I used something like Virtual dub and capture my VHS analog tapes in VHS resolution would that would be quicker or would it would it take longer since its has to change the resolution to DV format anyway?

Thanks for the help,
Jim

[proggy]

I'll give your question a shot. If you capture VHS with the Canopus, you will have more than enough quality to represent the original VHS tape. If you record 2 hours with your DV camcorder, you will have to compress that file in order to fit onto a dvd. However, that does not mean you lose picture quality. Any picture quality you may lose, if any, will not show up on the television. If you have ever backed up pressed dvd movies onto dvd-r discs, you would be hard pressed to find any differences on your television.

I would not worry about losing "information" by going to dvd.

[proggy]

Sorry about the double post, I had to step away for a minute.

For the second part of your question, You should capture at 1/2 dvd or full dvd resolution. If you capture at any other resolution, you will have to convert it to a dvd compliant resolution later which will take more time and could possibly degrade your capture because of the interpolating done in the conversion process.

Hope that answered your questions.

[FulciLives]

Well the CANOPUS ADVC-100 only does DV NTSC 720X480 or PAL 720X576 so that is how you should capture it.

However if working with a VHS source I would use Half D1 resolution when you do your MPEG-2 for DVD encoding. Half D1 is 352x480 NTSC or 352x576 PAL whereas the 720 values given above are Full D1

Half D1 hits the MAX bitrate at around 5000kbps and you need approximately 4500kbps to fit 2 hours on a DVD if you use 256kbps MP2 or AC-3 audio.

That's close enough that you can probably just do a straight CBR

If you want to do a 2-pass or multipass VBR then I usually set my MAX at 6000kbps (can't hurt) and my MIN at 2000kbps and like I said for 2 hours you will need about 4500kbps for your AVG unless you are using LPCM WAV audio in which case you need a CBR or VBR AVG of 3300 which is getting a bit low so you should really do a VBR encode.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[jim s]

Ok that makes sense. I see in Adobe Premiere there is an export media option as “NTSC Progressive” so I will choose that option. To get more VHS material on the DVD. Now under my audio options it gives me “ PCM audio”, “Main Concepts mpeg audio” and Sun Code for Dolby Digital”. I would guess that for the audio I’d choose "Main Concepts audio" to have smaller files?

Thanks,
Jim

[FulciLives]

Ok that makes sense. I see in Adobe Premiere there is an export media option as “NTSC Progressive” so I will choose that option. To get more VHS material on the DVD. Now under my audio options it gives me “ PCM audio”, “Main Concepts mpeg audio” and Sun Code for Dolby Digital”. I would guess that for the audio I’d choose "Main Concepts audio" to have smaller files?

Thanks,
Jim

If you have the capability to do 2.0 AC-3 audio (aka Dolby Digital) then you should do that.

Both MP2 audio (MPEG AUDIO LAYER II) and AC-3 audio (DOLBY DIGITAL) take up the same space at the same bitrate but the AC-3 will sound better and is more compatable with stand alone DVD players than MP2 audio.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[jim s]

Thanks that clears it up for me.

And the “Sun Code for Dolby Digital” Is the only AC-3 option Adobe Premiere Pro comes with. I wonder if you could add other AC-3 plug-in's or would they all be the same as the one provided??

Thanks,
Jim

[FulciLives]

Thanks that clears it up for me.

And the “Sun Code for Dolby Digital” Is the only AC-3 option Adobe Premiere Pro comes with. I wonder if you could add other AC-3 plug-in's or would they all be the same as the one provided??

Thanks,
Jim

I don't know jack about Premiere or the newer Premiere Pro but I do know that most programs that come with an AC-3 encoder charge an arm and a leg for it and it has something to do with the licensing fees that Dolby Labs charges.

So you are lucky you even have ONE option for AC-3 encoding.

Anyways as far as 2.0 AC-3 goes you should use either 224kbps or 256kbps

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[jim s]

With Premiere Pro it allows you to use the Surcode plug in 3 times and then they want your to purchase it. But if you are going to author DVD’s with Adobe’s Encore it comes with an AC-3 option.

Also Surcode defaults to 192kbps and you suggested 224kbps or 256kbps. Would I notice and difference in sound with a higher sample rate?

Thanks,
Jim

[FulciLives]

With Premiere Pro it allows you to use the Surcode plug in 3 times and then they want your to purchase it. But if you are going to author DVD’s with Adobe’s Encore it comes with an AC-3 option.

Also Surcode defaults to 192kbps and you suggested 224kbps or 256kbps. Would I notice and difference in sound with a higher sample rate?

Thanks,
Jim

192kbps is usually considered good enough for 2.0 AC-3 audio and this is what most commercial DVD discs use but I have seen commercial DVD discs use 224kbps as well as 256kbps for 2.0 AC-3 audio.

Bear in mind that we aren't audio experts here and working with audio files that are less than STUDIO GRADE A so the idea is that little bit of extra bitrate helps the less-than-perfect audio that we DO have.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[jim s]

I tried those export settings as NTSC progressive (VHS res), AC-3, Multiplexer none. And when I tried to import it in to Adobe Encore and it said the video resolution was unacceptable and needs to be 720 x 480. The files I have now are a *.m2v and a *.ac3. Could I use Nero to burn these files with their plugin's. I don’t need fancy menus.

Jim

[Cornucopia]

I see in Adobe Premiere there is an export media option as “NTSC Progressive” so I will choose that option. To get more VHS material on the DVD.

Progressive vs. Interlaced--Progressive doesn't necessarily give you any more space. Available space is dependent upon bitrate and program length only. All progressive may do is possibly give you better quality for a particular bitrate, and in your particular case, I very much doubt it.

Think about it--you've got a VHS or DV master (both interlaced), you're going to save as DV.avi file (interlaced), to be encoded as MPEG2 (either interlaced or progressive), and shown on regular TV (interlaced) right? Then why go through the effort and complexity of de-interlacing, with it's concurrent loss of quality (both spatially and temporally), when it will have to be re-interlaced to even be shown.
If your VHS tape had progressive, film-based footage on it, I'd understand a little better, but this doesn't seem to be the case.

If you REALLY just want to make more space---use a lower bitrate!

This will probably also clear up the "unsupported resolution" error message.

Scott

[jim s]

I wasn’t even thinking about progressive scan. It was the only template that didn’t have DV in front of it. So I thought it would be a VHS resolutions. And I don’t see any thing about adding new templates. Maybe I can frame sever from Adobe and use another program?

[jim s]

Templates Updates:

http://www.mainconcept.com/adobemedia/downloads.html

This is what I was looking for