VHS Capture : 352x480 @ 6500 or 720x480 @ 4000

[jfebus]

Hi All,

I need to convert several VHS to DVD and when trying to capture at 720x480 @ 4000 I get artifacts. Will 352 x 480 @ 6500 look better?

Regards,

[mpb]

Hi All,

I need to convert several VHS to DVD and when trying to capture at 720x480 @ 4000 I get artifacts. Will 352 x 480 @ 6500 look better?

Regards,

At 352x480, never capture more than 4900kbps. Since the DVD maximum is 720x480 @ 9800kbps, with half a frame you get maximum possible quality at 4900. Any higher bitrate at that resolution is 100% wasted space.

However you will get even better quality capturing to DV-AVI, Huffy, or straight AVI, at 352x480, and then converting to mpeg2 with TMPGenc @ 4900 peak VBR (4900/3600/2000 ought to be close to optimal).

4000 is very low for 720x480 from VHS because that sort of frame size will overemphasize all the artifacting from the tape... a higher bitrate is needed to sink them "into the background". Even sending VHS through DV-AVI firewire, this is very visible - the "wasted information" of the large frame is quite apparent. When you're dealing with a VHS source, it's fairly safe to make your final compresses all at 352x480, 4900/3600/2000, and use the CQ of 100 if you are using TMPGenc's Automatic-CQ-VBR.