What is the best way to capture VHS to VCD?

[rage]

I am trying to capture VHS. So far, I no problems with Virtual dub which creates a huge avi file. My tmpgenc can't load it (takes too long). I used ULEAD 4.0, but it creates a non-compliant mpg which is mpeg-2 video with mpeg-1 audio. When I used tmpgenc to encode to mpeg-1 standard, it gives an error that it will not open?
DVD was easy, but I found VHS to be very tricky.

[BipolarChucker]

OK, I'm no expert but you should really be using MJPEG to encode the video as it's captured from your capture card. That way you can set slightly higher than normal VCD (MPEG-1) standard and then recode using TMPGEnc to give best results.

I honestly don't know where you can get the codec from (it "appeared" on my system from nowhere. I have only DVDx and Power DVD installed at the moment so maybe it's part of one of those programs?

I haven't tried MJPEG yet so can't comment on its abilities. If you continue to have problems maybe it could be worth encoding to DivX or ASF but make sure you use a CBR (Constant Bit Rate) or TMPGEnc and VirtualDub will complain bitterly. I still find that I can't encode to DivX with MP3 at the same time so you might want to use Uncompressed WAV when initially recording (encoding) the VHS tape. When you use TMPGEnc you can then select the .WAV file as the audio input. It's the long winded way round but I reckon it will work just fine.

Hope I've helped a little.

BipolarChucker

[BipolarChucker]

OK, I'm no expert but you should really be using MJPEG to encode the video as it's captured from your capture card. That way you can set slightly higher than normal VCD (MPEG-1) standard and then recode using TMPGEnc to give best results.

I honestly don't know where you can get the codec from (it "appeared" on my system from nowhere. I have only DVDx and Power DVD installed at the moment so maybe it's part of one of those programs?

I haven't tried MJPEG yet so can't comment on its abilities. If you continue to have problems maybe it could be worth encoding to DivX or ASF but make sure you use a CBR (Constant Bit Rate) or TMPGEnc and VirtualDub will complain bitterly. I still find that I can't encode to DivX with MP3 at the same time so you might want to use Uncompressed WAV when initially recording (encoding) the VHS tape. When you use TMPGEnc you can then select the .WAV file as the audio input. It's the long winded way round but I reckon it will work just fine.

Hope I've helped a little.

BipolarChucker

[wingnut]

Hi,

I don't personally make VCD from VHS since I found the quality to be blocky given the deteriation and noise of some of my VHS tapes, (some are nearly 15 years old), however the method I use to make SVCD and now 1/2 D1 DVD is identical except for the encoding settings and post encoding changes, so I'd recommend the following;



1. Capture your video in virtualdub as your are doing at present. For VCD I would recommend capturing at VCD resolution or SVCD resolution at most, (e.g. PAL 352 x 288 or 352 x 240 NTSC for VCD or 480 x 480 for NTSC SVCD or 480 x 576 for PAL SVCD). It is debatable, as you may notice from these forums, if its worth capturing at higher resolutions before encoding at VCD sizes, it's an argument I'm staying well out of however, I'll leave it up to you.

2. Once captured add any filters you may need, the vhs filter is quite good but be carefull with temporal noise reduction since it can cause really annoying after images if not set up correctly) and select virtualdub frame server mode from the file menu, this will create a 'signpost' file which pretends to be an avi file when called up in tmpgenc, as default virtualdub tries to save this file as .VDR save your file as .AVI and it will be easier to find when you load it up from tmpgenc.

3. start up TMPGENC and load your new signpost file, it should show the first served frame almost immediately rather than hanging up. If it does hang you probably either dont have a frameserver plugin or the priority settings are wrong for the plugin, but post an update if that happens and I'll run through the procedure. Now select your chosen encoding parameters, presumable 352 x 240 and encode.

**WARNING**



When I first started using this method I couldnt understand why, once I had encoded, if I went back into TMPGENC to encode a small file without frameserving from Virtualdub, it would hand and not startup properly. This is because tmpgenc, or at least the beta 12 versions, store the current project in a temp file and attempt to reload all the settings when you restart. Hence if you are frameserving to C:\fred.avi and finish an encode then quit tmpgenc. If you are not frameserving to c:\fred.avi when you re-start TMPGENC it will hang. To avoid this either (A) select file/new project before quitting TMPGENC, (B) delete the currentcfg.tpr file in your tmpgenc directory before re-starting or (C) ensure you are frameserving to TMPGENC before restarting.

Sorry for the long post, please let me know if I can help further


Regards


Ed