recovering original film from VHS

[mpiper]

I have several old films on VHS. These are telecined into 29.97 fps.

After I capture the video, can I use an inverse pulldown funtion (like on CCE or some standalone program) to recover the original progressive frames?

If I do, what fps will it be? I am guessing 24, since that is film speed.

If I have a final video at 24 fps with progressive frames, can a regular tabletop DVD player in NTSC-land play it?

Any thoughts from our panel of experts?

Thanks!!
Mike

[junkmalle]

I have inverse telecined from VHS captures with VirtualDub. For perfect results you need to have very good captures though -- no, or very few, dropped frames. The final result is 23.976 fps.

[BSR]

If I have a final video at 24 fps with progressive frames, can a regular tabletop DVD player in NTSC-land play it?

I do not believe 23.976(24)fps will play in your DVD player unless you encode it with 2:3 pulldown, or set maybe some flag for your DVD player to do it.

EDIT -
In TMPGEnc I set the frame rate under Video settings tap to "29(internally 24)" or something like that(I'd have to check later.)

[junkmalle]

BSR is right, in TMPGENC, the correct settings are:

Setting -> Video -> Encode Mode -> 3:2 pulldown on playback

Setting -> Video -> Frame Rate -> 23.976 fps (internally 29.97 fps).

This is essentially the equivalent of most commercial DVDs.

[mpiper]

Thanks for the advice.

I am using CCE as the encoder, so I hope it's inverse pulldown will work. It is supposed to automatically detect field order shifts, etc.

Now for my next question. Most people seem to feel that 352X480 is the best resolution to capture VHS at. I prefer 720X480, and have always used that. I have several videos that I want to convert, but they aren't worth their own disk. As such, I am capturing them at 352X480 to maximize the bitrate for a smaller frame size.

I have been using Encore to author all my DVDs, but it won't accept 352X480 as a valid resolution.

Since I have invested in several major programs, which meet my needs 95% of the time, does anyone know a free program that can take an m2v and ac3 file set and allow me to author a DVD with several titles on it?

Thanks!

[briandugas]

Thanks for the advice.

Since I have invested in several major programs, which meet my needs 95% of the time, does anyone know a free program that can take an m2v and ac3 file set and allow me to author a DVD with several titles on it?

Thanks!

TMPGEnc DVD Author

It's not free, but you can use if to get this one job done. It has a trial period.

[dphirschler]

DVDauthor with DVDauthorgui will do it. Free, powerful, and very easy.


Darryl

[mpiper]

I actually downloaded TMPGenc DVD Author and it accepted the 352X480 Perfectly.

I tried DVD Author and it's GUI, but the OCX was not registered on my system, so I couldn't get it started.

I may try again, but for now the TMPGenc works. Depending on the price (I'll have to double-check) I may go ahead and pick it up as a secondary authoring tool.

THANKS!!!