Should I use dvd shrink on my vhs captures to burn to dvd?

[joshua_98]

Hi all, a relative Newbie here needing some help. I've been working my way through converting all my vhs tapes with college bb games to dvd, and have a question. I have a Media Center PC, 2.8G P4, 160GB HD, 1.5G RAM, and Hauppage Win-PVR PCI II tuner card. The software I use to capture, edit, burn is Showbiz v1.3 and Sonic MY DVD 4.04. This works ok except that the BEST I can normally capture the video at is DVD1, 4-4.5Mbits constant and 224kbps audio. This is for a game that, when commercials are edited out, is about 80 minutes. When this is burned to DVD and played on a TV, the picture is pixelated and a little fuzzy. Since I have just started into ripping DVD's and found out about dvd shrink and the other programs like it, can/should I be using it in someway so that I can capture the video at a higher quality and shrink then burn to dvd? Showbiz does not give me an option to capture in AVI, and from what I have read, that is probably the best format to capture and edit in, so maybe I should be using different capture software also. Also, since I don't have Nero( I do have Recordnow), is there a way to burn dvd's that I'm backing up using DVD Decrypter with either of my dvd burning software? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Joshua_98

[mmasw]

wow....you pack a lot of questions into a single paragraph

ok, the 1st issue you have is the quality of your tapes and how you import them into your capture card.

Basketball games are very high motion, so any degradation in the analog>digital transfer you should try to avoid. By this I mean you should have the best VCR for this process you can afford. You should study up on TBC(time base correction) as this can greatly facilitate higer quality in the capture. Also , if both your vcr and your capture card have S-Video connections you should use them as that will improve quality.

As to the bitrate you use combined with DVDShrink, you would be able to use shrink to increase your bitrate/minutes ratio. I have done that myself, with analog sources, but it is my opinion that you shouldn't go much below 75% compression with deep analysis mode. You'll have to experiment to see what suits you best.

To be honest, if these game are real important to you, you should bite the bullet and capture at highest possible bitrate. Then split the game onto 2 dvd's by halves, and be sure to use quality blank disks. Spending an extra $1.50 to archive a classic game is a minimal investment.

As to AVI capture, I doubt you would improve the quality that much unless you go to a configuration that captures/imports in DV format. Going that route would depend on how much time and money you want to invest.

If your 'editing' is mostly simply removing commercials, the start frame/end frame tool in DVDShrink's Reauthor mode is simple. I use it all the time for "editing"


As for burning, I don't know about RecordNow, but there are guides here for RecordNowMax/DX. Once you have your VIDEO_TS folder, ImgTools Classic can convert to an ISO and then DVDDecrypter can burn. For that matter, I believe the latest version of DVDShrink has an ISO option, so there you go.

[joshua_98]

OK. thanks for the help mmasw. I got imgtools classic. Imgtools burn won't work for me because I don't have Nero. On more question though, after I capture and edit my video, it is in mpeg2 format(the best quality capture format Showbiz has), how do I change that into a format that DVD shrink will recognize to compress? I may have missed something really easy here, so forgive me for the possible stupid Q.

[poncho]

OK. thanks for the help mmasw. I got imgtools classic. Imgtools burn won't work for me because I don't have Nero. On more question though, after I capture and edit my video, it is in mpeg2 format(the best quality capture format Showbiz has), how do I change that into a format that DVD shrink will recognize to compress? I may have missed something really easy here, so forgive me for the possible stupid Q.

One way is
Use DVD Lab... there ..You willl import the mpeg2 video...and at the end You will have vobs files......those one you could "Shrink"

Good look

[rhegedus]

Capture as uncompressed avi, edit and then encode to mpeg with TMPGEnc at an average bit-rate calculated by the DVDRHelp Bitrate calculator. An average bitrate of 7000kbps should allow over 80mins on a DVDR - this is a pretty high bitrate and all the high speed motion should be really crisp (just use normal motion estimate settings).

By capturing as mpeg straight away, you lose the opportunity to fine tune your encodes.

[mmasw]

OK. thanks for the help mmasw. I got imgtools classic. Imgtools burn won't work for me because I don't have Nero. On more question though, after I capture and edit my video, it is in mpeg2 format(the best quality capture format Showbiz has), how do I change that into a format that DVD shrink will recognize to compress? I may have missed something really easy here, so forgive me for the possible stupid Q.

as far a img tools: once you have the ISO, several programs can burn the file as a dvd without needing the nero engine.

As far as MPEG2: yes, you need an authoring program to convert mpg2>vob (VIDEO_TS folder). If you do not have one yet, I would recommend TMPGEnc DVDAuthor. You'll find it in the tools section here and it has a 30 day free trial period. There are plenty of guides here on how to author.

[joshua_98]

Thanks for all the help.
mmasw
I've found that MYDVD can write the dvdfiles created from my mpeg2 files to the hard drive, and from there I can burn with imgtool and decrypter, and possibly even recordnow. So there's my authoring software.
rhegedus
I've yet to find a way to capture in avi. Showbiz just does not have the option, and sonic Mydvd, Windows movie maker, and Windows media center will not capture through my Hauppage card. Is there some other software that will capture through my card that is available?

On the other hand, I think I will just stick with my current capture technique, I'll just bump up the quality since I can now compress the videos. Again thanks for all the help.

[rhegedus]

rhegedus
I've yet to find a way to capture in avi. Showbiz just does not have the option, and sonic Mydvd, Windows movie maker, and Windows media center will not capture through my Hauppage card. Is there some other software that will capture through my card that is available?

VirtualDub

I did my first captures on a Hauppauge WinTV card using this method.