Some limited success

[joeljoel]

ok, so maybe i come across sour on this whole VCD thing... thats because I AM enough of that for the moment

my success, was based on about 50% from what i read here and 25% other research and 25% trial and error

for those of you just wanting a simple VHS to VCD transfer, this MAY (and thats a BIG MAY) work... for me, its about 85% which is crappy quality and not acceptible --- but, i feel like im close

1-- vcr into line in on video card and sound card (im using the cheapest available; ATI rage, CB Live sound)
2-- capture to AVI using a no-compress codec or huffuv lossless (problem: need a 55-gallon drum of disk-drives for an hour of video; realistically i guess its about 20-30 GIG which is more than i have free)
3-- using that tmpeng thing, convert the file to MPEG1 (on my 800mhz machine w/384meg ram running Win2000 it takes about 5minutes of conversion processing time per minute of video -- so i guess an hour long VHS tape going from AVI to MPEG1 is around 3-5 hours of conversion time)
4-- using VCDeasy or some other gui front-end to vcdimager, burn the VCD (i suppose this is another 10-min to hour depending on burn speed)

other stuff i had to do
-- install aspi_v470.exe to get my burner to work w/ANY burn program
-- install cdrdao-1.1.5.bin.x86.win32 unless the burn sw has it in the zip

so if your 16 yrs old and dont have a life, you can spend say about 12 hrs per tape and convert to VCD.... or, if you're 35 and do have a life, you can complain about it and hope the new technology is better than the crap available today

[jtoops]

This was my reply to some early stuff. But just to share again:


Here's my experience, which I thought would be cheap to begin. But then became expensive (wanted to record shows and send them to my Dad):

Had:

0) Have 750 Mhz Athlon, Win982nd
1) Bought ATI All in Wonder 128, just so I can capture
2) Bought AVIO for capturing, because ATI software sucks and because I needed segment capturing (Win98 has 4 gig filesize limits)
3) Bought PICVideo encoder/decoder, because I needed disk space and had been dropping frames. I think with quality 18 it comes out to be 10 gigs an hour.
4) Bought 2nd hard drive, because of still dropping frames and needed diskspace.
5) Bought SonicFactory's VideoFactory, for editing out commericals.
6) Used Virtual Dub for deinterlancing (Areabased one), NEEDED for VCD!
7) Bought Panasonic MPEG Encoder, couldn't get decent results with TMPGEnc (several people have had success though)
Used AVISynth so that I can feed several AVI segments into the Panasonic MPEG Encoder (no brainer for encoding VCD).

Now:

0) Have 750 Mhz Athlon, WinXP Pro (not that I would recommend it, but it uses NTFS partitions - No 4 gig filesize limit) - I planning to upgrade to a faster system.
1) Trashed ATI card, replaced with ADVC-100 (not perfect, but not bad)
2) Replaced sound card with Audigy so I can get the firewire port needed for ADVC-100 - 10 gigs an hour.
3) Bought HP200i Dvd writer, haven't had problems. Let others try to convice you of DVD- and DVD+ formats.
4) Replaced VideoFactory with VegasVideo (for what I do, I should have stayed with VideoFactory), used for capturing and editing out commercials.
5) Bought TMPGEnc Pro, 2 pass VBR Mpeg2, 6000 Avg, 45 mins takes 8 1/2 hours -> Very good quality.
6) Bought DVD Complete for Authoring and Burning. (MyDVD sucks).

In the long run. Get a media convertor like ADVC-100. This allow you to replace your video card without losing capturing ability. (Capturing with slow system is no brainer).

Do NOT buy a device that captures to MPEG2, because it is almost impossible to edit easily and quickly.

You will need an OS like WinNT, Win2000, WinXp (again I don't necessary recommend any) for NTFS partitions so that you don't hit the 4 gig filesize limit of Win982nd.

Quality of video degrades with each conversion. Bad VHS means very bad end product.

Trying to get good quality on VCD and SVCD takes effort. I could get my DVD player to play VCD ok. I couldn't get SVCD to play without skipping. For DVD(s) is almost no brainer. Recommend buying DVD burner (less hassle in long run). If so, buy TMPGEnc Pro (I couldn't be happier with the results).

Note: 4.7 gigs is really around 4.35 gigs. For 2 hours, need to kick average bitrate down to 4200 or so. Not so good quality. At good quality of average bitrate of 6000, a DVD can hold maybe 1 1/2 hours.

Buy Dazzle DVD complete for simple but effective DVD authoring. MyDVD will change your audio leaving less room for Video.

Maybe the above would give you some perspective of someone that's been there but didn't want to speed the time and effort to tweak every little setting to make a decent analog to VCD/SVCD/DVD format.

John

Also, now I have a dual Athlon 1.8. And someone else had posted that CQ was as good as 2 pass VBR (checking that out now).

[mbellot]

jtoops:

One quick correction...

Win2K does not need an NTFS partition to capture AVI files greater than 4GB. I have captured DV-AVIs from my Canon ZR40 well over 30 minutes into a single file (about 20 minutes of DV per 4GB) on a FAT32 formatted 60GB HD.