PAL VHS to DVD

[jmayme]

Hello.
I just bought my MSI @nywhere Plus tv-tuner thinking about backing up my old pal VHS'es. The card comes with a software that can be set to record in Pal dvd settings. The file comes out fine as and mpeg-file and I got all cables and things that are needed. But the outcome of the picture seems horrible. I don't know if I am expecting too much of it, it seems to be roughly around 0,5 mb per second. The picture looks "dusty" and unsharp, even though I have changed the settings for sharpness.
I tried using VirtualVCR where the picture looks amazingly sharper than with the previous software. Though the filesize comes out enormous. I tried using codecs but that only seemed to make the videofile hack and run unsmoothly.

I hope I could produce something that comes out with less loss of picture but still ain't too big a filesize. Don't know how much room there is on a dvd actually. If anyone could help me please write. I would really appreciate it.

[mikiem]

1st off with fact software, make sure you're capturing mjpeg avi or at least mpg2 rather then mpg4.

From a bit of quick googling, a quick guess would be not to expect too much out of it. That said, if it gives you a decent picture in VirtualVCR, it's probably worth trying out some of the capture software listed in the tools section, see how they compare. To try and narrow it down, I'd suggest googling on video capture using the card's chip (Conexant Decoder CX23881-17 according to MSI site), as I believe that card's sold under other brands -- see what others are using.

You will want to use a codec -- fact software does too -- but the choice of which one is up to you and your HD space. HUFFYUV is popular, as is Picvideo, but newer codecs are gaining in popularity. Check the posts here for some ideas of what others use.

[FulciLives]

Try the PICVideo MJPEG codec (not free but very good) or the HuffyUV codec (free but makes a bigger file size).

Either way you will get a large file size but remember this is just for the capture. After the capture you will convert to MPEG-2 DVD spec using a real MPEG-2 encoder such as CCE or TMPGEnc Plus or any number of such encoders.

There is a great capture guide on the doom9 website that you might want to read.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[jmayme]

I saw something called video input format in the cardsoftware program which lets you choose between;
YUY2, UYVY, RGB24

Just curious if any of these makes any difference in the picture?

[FulciLives]

I saw something called video input format in the cardsoftware program which lets you choose between;
YUY2, UYVY, RGB24

Just curious if any of these makes any difference in the picture?

You want YUY2 format.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[jmayme]

Hmm. Any good bitrate that would work with vhs capture? Thought about encoding the file later on,

[FulciLives]

Hmm. Any good bitrate that would work with vhs capture? Thought about encoding the file later on,

That all depends on the running time.

Here is a bitrate calculator ---> CLICK HERE

In general don't set the video bitrate to more than 8000kbps if using MP2 audio or AC-3 audio ... make the max 7500kbps if using PCM WAV audio.

Most of the time you should do a multi-pass VBR encode unless the running time is short enough so that your bitrate is very high (such as 7000kbps or higher) then you can just do a CBR single pass encode.

If you have to use a video bitrate of approximately 4000kbps or less consider using Half D1 resolution instead of Full D1 resolution. Half D1 is 352x480 NTSC or 352x576 PAL whereas Full D1 is 720x480 NTSC or 720x576 PAL.

Half D1 is less resolution meaning you get a "softer" picture but at low bitrates it will still look better than Full D1 at low bitrates (where you don't get the "softness" but you get a lot of ugly compression artifacts).

This of course applies to MPEG-2 DVD format encoding. The capture should be done with PICVideo MJPEG (on the 20 or 19 setting ... 19 cuts the file size down a bit and the loss of quality from the 20 setting is not really noticeable) or with HuffyUV ... no bitrates can be chosen with these capture formats.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman