Quality of Video for VHS

[ROBO1964]

OK, I am trying to decide if I need a new video card or not. I currently have Dazzle Digital Video Creator. Not the greatest but it does a fairly decent job for my purposes. I have never had any problem capturing video with it regardless of settings.

My problem is that I want to take some video from my Digital Camcorder and then edit and transfer to VHS to watch on my TV. I may also try making a VCD since I have some software that will do that.

With the Dazzle DVC my maximum capture size is 352x240. Years ago I was told that the bigger the capture size the better the trasfer back to Video Tape will be in terms of the quality of ther video. I have since read information that the bit rate is more important and the Dazzle DVC can go to 3 million.

So.....what determines the quality of the video for transfering back to VHS for viewing on TV. Would my device be OK or should I look into getting something better for my goal.

[tmcmvd]

Hmm...when capturing from plain VHS in theory the lower resolution should prove good enough, but when you get in to the subject a little you will see that capturing in a higher resolution gives better results when reproducing the video.

Higher bitrate is higher quality in terms of color, detail, blockyness etc.
You video will always keep the lower resolution.
Most DVD players won't play anything with bitrates higher then 4500-5000 total (including audio).
At this bitrate you won't fit much video on a VCD.

When using higher resolution with this same bitrate 4500-5000 you can create a S-VCD. This will have much more detail (more like television) than VCD.

Problem is the VHS source...no matter what you do...it won't get better.

So for optimal result on playback to tape, capture in hires, if possible without or little compression or high MPEG2/MJPEG quality.

For playback on DVD using VCD, same story, convert to a lower resolution afterwards or create a S-VCD.

New card won't cost mutch...perhaps some tv card will do, but it req. hi cpu power and lots of and fast hdd space, so that will depend on your hardware.

If you don't have the hardware try looking for a MPEG 2 hardware encoder..I thing some dazzle card may do. It's always better than MPEG-1/VCD quality. Just remember that VHS won't get better and all modifications you do to the video like noise resuction/color correction are more effective at higer resolutions (the noise is also "smaller") and should be done before the MPEG encoding. With a hardware encoder this is not possible though. You will have to correct signal during capture if possible.

Greetz.