SVCD captures 'n' quality

[pijetro]

I've been encoding my 60 min video clips for some time now (vhsc source, with huffy codec) to VCD on an 80 min cd. Quality is okay.
a)Can I improve quality by going SVCD and using a higher bitrate to utilize the extra 20min?
b) If so, are there any guides (not the battle of the modes please), to different VBR and/or CQ settings and what I should use?
c) Will a 480x480 capture do me the same as a 640x480?

Reason for asking, Vhsc is interlaced and Svcd supports interlacing (thus both fields can get played back without having to deinterlace). It seems to be the closest way to playback my source without sacrificing lines of resolution.

Thanx!!!!
New to SVCD

[therick]

I just finished Empire Strikes Back from VHS and got 63.5 minutes on the first CD and 63 minutes on the second CD. I suggest you go with 352x480 for VHS. At 480x480, you are going to have a tougher time getting 60 minutes of really good quality video on a disc. I would also suggest you look into doing IVTC (if source is film)...good luck


clip - http://www.robbins.dns2go.com/sample.mpg or
http://www.robbins.dns2go.com/sample.zip

-capture from composite video with WinTV Go card using VDub and Huffy @ 352x480 YUY2 and 16-bit 22kHz stereo audio

-frame served with AVISynth to CCE using the following script:

LoadPlugin("decomb.dll")
AVISource("capture.avi")
Telecide()
Decimate(cycle=5)
Crop(0,120,352,360)
CropBottom(120)
TemporalSoften(1,4,4)
SpatialSoften(1,3,3)
AddBorders(0,120,0,120)
ResampleAudio(44100)

settings in CCE 2.5 SP were as follows:

3-pass VBR 0-1575-2592
No changes in video or GOP
NO noise reduction
Image quality priority at 25

audio encoded with TMPEGEnc and toolame @ 128 kbps.

[pijetro]

I'll take this into account. Thank you so much.
But to pinpoint my dilema more accurately, I capture two, 30 minute Vhsc tapes ( thus the 60 minutes of play on my VCD's), but am quite willing to have a 30 minute capture per 80 min disc, if I can up the quality .
That being said, what settings do you suggest for bitrate on SVCD? My captures are fine quality (I'll use the suggested resolutions), and since it's family video archive, I can get away with simply opening the .avi files in Tmpenc, without frameserving. I don't mind having 1vhsc tape=1 80 min cdr.
Thanx for your response, sorry for not pointing it out earlier.

[therick]

well, let me say this. I think there are a lot of people capturing VHS at 480x480 and converting to SVCD...and I did for a while, but I found that on a multipass VBR encode I was having to drop the bitrate to get movies onto two CDs, thus dropping quality as well. For 480x480 you need to have the average at least over 2 MB/sec...personally I don't think that is enough, but the quality is acceptable to me at that bitrate....

but...since you say that you are happy with one 30 minute tape on 1 CD then I would just do a CBR of 2520 and be done with it. Wasteful of bits, but hey what are CDRs, like a quarter? Plus CBR will only take a fraction of the time that a VBR encode will.

[therick]

and to add, the quality will be upped, but so will the noise...so do some tests and decide for yourself