Bitrate for VHS to Bluray

[pijetro]

Hello all...
I'm in the process of encoding about 18.5hrs of VCR footage onto single layered BD.
Doing the bitrate calculations, i find that 2.5kbps of .h264, with 192kbps dolby digital should fit fine.

My question being, does this bitrate contain enough information without degrading quality?
I've done a sample test, but it's hard to tell on a progressive screen. Before i start encoding and burning, i'd like to ask somebody who's been down this road before.

Thank you very much.

[johns0]

Long as you keep it at 720x480,I've re-encoded my Supernatural season 1 dvd at 3 kbps with 192kbps dd so i could have all 22 episodes on blu-ray with CC converted to srt and it's very close to the original quality in that there is no moire patterns in very dark scenes.

[poisondeathray]

It depends on many things, such the source quality and condition, whether or not you've cleaned it up and/or captured it properly with TBC. If it's "typical" VHS content , usually 2.5Mb/s isn't enough unless it's really cleaned up, stabilize, professionally shot footage. It also depends on your subjective point of view - for example, some people think youtube is "great" quality , others think it's "horrible"

IMO, johns0 example is less relevant, because a retail , progressive DVD source is going to compress much better than some noisy , home video interlaced VHS

If you have blu-ray playing software (e.g. arcsoft TMT, powerDVD, winDVD), you can do some tests by mounting an iso before burning and see if the bitrate is adequate for your needs

[pijetro]

Thank you...
It's actually 8mm footage transferred via handycam through a Matrox BOB (I just used VHS quality as a reference point)...I totally understand the whole TBC, cleanup, etc....
Thankfully, the source footage is shaky home video, and i don't expect the customers to analyze anything the way we would...
So long as it resembles something to within 85% of original..
Macroblocking is my only concern...
My test footage showed very little pixelation. But again, i can't be sure, until it's output, and viewed.

[johns0]

On my comments the same applies to vhs as long as it is decent,any niosy source will require more filtering and bitrate but that goes without saying.

[jman98]

On my comments the same applies to vhs as long as it is decent,any niosy source will require more filtering and bitrate but that goes without saying.

Dude, just admit that you blew it and didn't compare apples to apples with your post instead of trying your lame "Uh what I said applies anyway" type response.

I find it interesting that you say "that goes without saying" because you didn't say it in your first post. Seriously lame.

[johns0]

On my comments the same applies to vhs as long as it is decent,any niosy source will require more filtering and bitrate but that goes without saying.

Dude, just admit that you blew it and didn't compare apples to apples with your post instead of trying your lame "Uh what I said applies anyway" type response.

I find it interesting that you say "that goes without saying" because you didn't say it in your first post. Seriously lame.

What's lame is that you always attack peoples comments without giving any help to the op.

You don't need high bitrates for sd video such as dvd and captured vhs encoded to .H264,just author the video and burn to a rewritable or put on a usb stick and see what it looks like on your hdtv.Use a higher bitrate if you see macroblocks and artifacts.

[poisondeathray]

If you're seeing macroblocks, and are still trying to cram this amount of footage onto the BD25, the other preprocessing options are to denoise it farther, stabilize it more - this will lower your bitrate requirements and you will see fewer macroblock artifacts. The other encoding options are to use a 2sec GOP (compatible with SD blu-ray when the max rate is < 15Mb/s) , use higher alpha/beta deblock values

[lordsmurf]

I've been doing 15mbit to MPEG2 BD.
That looks great.