Process flow - VHS to DVD - am I on the right track????

[stixx]

Hello all - this is my first post, so I am hoping you guys can provide some guidance.

Currently, I own Pinnacle Studio 10 and have used it to capture video from my VHS tapes, edit, and encode to DVD. The process is easy enough, but I am not very happy with the video quality of the DVD. I have heard about TMPGenc, and was wondering if including this tool in my workflow would provide better DVD quality.

I assume I would still capture from VHS using Studio and edit as well. After that, Im somewhat lost. Would I save the edited files as AVI's and then import into TMPGenc?

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

[victoriabears]

Pinnacle is not liked by many people, how many vhs are you doing, and have you considered a dvd recorder option, more stable and reliable than a PC capture.

[stixx]

Pinnacle is not liked by many people, how many vhs are you doing, and have you considered a dvd recorder option, more stable and reliable than a PC capture.

I have about 18 VHS tapes, some of which are S-VHS. Id like to do some simple transitions which is why Ive been using Pinnacle Studio. However, as stated above, I havent been too impressed with the video quality of the finished product.

[victoriabears]

with that few tapes either get a dvd recorder, or a panasonic combo like es 45v, or get a professional service to do it.

I've got over 600 left to do and I'd never use a computer to capture, too iffy

[DB83]

Can you elaborate on 'not happy with quality'

You are capturing, I assume, as MPEG-2. So what are the settings ?

Many people are un-happy at their self-made dvds as they expect the same as commercial offerings.

But you can get reasonable quality from VHS. Maybe with just 18 tapes the extra cost of the kit required does not make it viable.

[TheFamilyMan]

The most import link in the chain is the MPEG2 encoder, and knowing how its setting influence the quality of the finished footaged. The general rule of quality is: the higher the bit-rate, the higher the quality (to a point, that is). If the pinncale software is doing realtime encoding as it is capturing, it most likely is producing pretty junky quality. If not, experiment with its encoder's settings and set it to the highest possible quality settings. Also, VHS footage has pretty bad video noise problems that really screws up MPEG2 quality; digital filters can do wonders to fix this problem and tools such as VirtualDub come in very handy for this. TMPGEnc also has pretty good noise filters too (at least it used to, I haven't checked the latest versions for a few years now). Also realize the digitizing won't improve quality that is already bad, though it may possibly help a little via filtering.

As to your final question, the answer is yes. You can save as the edited footage as AVI, import it to your MPEG2 encoder and then author the MPEG2 files to DVD. This is exactly how I proceed on my video projects.

[oldandinthe way]

Spend $50 on a Magnavox or Funai SV2000 recorder at Walmart (the same machine two different labels). Record to DVD+RW. Stay below 2 hours per DVD.

Edit and create transitions.

Stay below 2 hours per DVD.

Burn to DVD+R or DVD-R.

[victoriabears]

well said, keep it simple