Asking for basic Hi8 to DVD advice using my existing hardware

[zubblwump]

Hopefully someone will be willing to provide a little help here. I am not a total noobie to video capture/conversion/editing, but I'm no expert either. Just to give you a little feel for where I'm at, here's a little background: Most of my experience has been with VDub, VideoReDo, Pinnacle, and Ulead DVD Movie Factory. I built a networked HTPC and several client boxes throught the house, so I'm familiar with MPEG2, Divx/Xvid, and other formats. Not sure if that helps.

So on to the problem. I'm attempting to capture some home movie footage from my old Hi8 camcorder so I can finally get rid of it. (Amazing the difference between those tapes and the DV camera I now own!) I really don't want to buy new hardware, and top-notch quality is not a huge concern. Although I would like to get it as good as possible, without days of editing. I'm currently using a Hauppauge PVR250 for capture directly to MPEG2. I've also got a Dazzle DVC80 device, but the quality there is pretty bad.

So, what I've done so far is capture the video at the preset DVD Standard Play and DVD Long Play settings, which I believe is something like 720x480, 15 GOPs, and VBR of like 6000 and 4800 respectively. I haven't noticed a lot of difference in quality between the two settings, although the higher quality setting does seem to be ever-so-slightly better. The biggest problem I'm seeing is what appears to be fairly heavy interlacing. I've also tried using the DVD Standard Play preset, but at 352(?)x480. This gets rid of the interlacing for the most part, and reduces file size, but does it hurt quality, given the rather poor source? It's hard to tell on my 19" monitor. Or should I have been capturing at that resolution from video tape to begin with?

I'm willing to do some post-processing to improve the picture a bit, but I'm not sure if that's really an option since the PVR250 only captures directly to MPEG2. I believe VDub Mod works with MPEG2, but is it a good idea since the source is already compressed? Or is there a better way (again, without purchasing new hardware)? Any other tips? I'm sure most, if not all, of this has been answered before, but I did a lot of reading here before posting, and nothing else seemed to answer exactly what I needed to know.

Thanks!

[JohnnyMalaria]

How about buying a cheap standalone DVD recorder with analog video inputs - just connect the output from your aging Hi8 camcorder....

You can do this for about $99!

[zubblwump]

Two problems with that:

One, it's $99 (or whatever) and I already have the PVR250. As I said, I do not want to buy additional hardware at this time.

Two, after capture, I still want to author my own DVDs, adding chapters, transistions, menus, etc.

[Heavensent]

interlacing is not a problem, it just looks bad on a pc monitor.
on regular tv it looks just fine.
and most of the time you use your tv to watch, dont you?

as i see it, just capture to a high bitrate dvd, and be done with it.
no point deinterlacing or filtering unless it realy needs it, or you use LCD tv.

[gadgetguy]

What DV camera do you now own? Does it do passthrough? If so, connect your Hi8 to the analog input of the DV camera, firewire to the PC, and use WinDV to capsfer your Hi8 to DV-AVI.

[jagabo]

Each frame you capture with your PVR-250 includes half of two pictures, or fields. One field contains all the even scanlines of one picture, the other field contains all the odd scanlines of another picture (taken 1/60 second later). When you watch this on a standard definition TV you see one field at a time, in succession. You never see both fields at the same time. On a computer monitor you see both fields (unless the software is hiding them from you, ie, deinterlacing on the fly) so you see "comb artifacts" wherever anything moved.

If you burn the interlaced video to a DVD the DVD player will send the fields one at a time to the TV, exactly as they were originally recorded, exactly as your camcorder sends them to a TV. All you have to do is make sure the field order is maintained correctly through the DVD mastering process. The PVR-250 captures top-field-first so make sure the software detects that correctly.

[edDV]

In other words, your Hi8 "archive" should be DV format via pass-thru (best) or high bitrate 480i MPeg2 over the PVR-250 (next best). The PVR can encode at up to ~14Mb/s but if you want it playable on a DVD it should be in the 7000-9500 Mb/s range the higher the better for the archive.

You might not see much difference on your computer monitor now but it will make a great deal of difference when you (or future generations) present this file to a future encoder or display.

For your home theater network you may want lower bitrate progressive encoding to divx or wmv, etc. to match your other low res juke box files. Just encode again from your archive capture master.

[zubblwump]

Thanks for all the helpful comments so far, everyone. Unfortunately, my current DV camera does not have pass-through capabilities, so that option is out. I currently do not own a LCD TV but as time goes on, I'm sure I will. This said, is my best option then to capture at the highest bitrate and resolution possible with the PVR250 and save this off as my new "master"? Or would some custom encoding setup be better? How much disc space per hour would I need to archive this, then? I definately don't trust the original tape to last, nor a hard drive, so I'm thinking I would need to store this on DVD. I don't have a DL DVD recorder, but I'm thinking I'd need to get one for this. Once I have this new archive to work from, can it be filtered and cleaned up much like DV-AVI? Or will I be limited by the native MPEG2 format?

Also, I don't recall seeing a "high bitrate 480i MPeg2" option in the WinTV2000 app that came with the card. Is there another name for it, is it a custome setting, or would I need to use a different capture program? What options do I have if I later want to spend the time and effort to cleanup the video as much as possible for bigger and better displays? Do I need to keep the original tapes around for future use, or will the highest bitrate MPEG2 file I can get from the PVR250 be as good as the original?

I was only thinking about getting it to DVD now (and I still want that), but I hadn't thought about the future. Any answers to the above questions will help make sure I get something good for future use as well.

But for the current DVDs I'll be making, should I still use the 7000-9500 MB/s range edDV mentioned? I'll be watching it on SDTVs from 13" to "50". I'm sure a large screen HD set is in my future as well. At this high bitrate, should I also be using high resolution (720x480), or will 352x480 look as good? AS I said before, I couldn't make out much difference on my 19" monitor, except that the 352x480 clip looked more progressive without the noticable interlacing effect I saw on the higher resultion. I understand that I may not see that on my TV now, but would I see it on a larger LCD or Plasma screen? Is this more a function of the DVD player than the screen?

[jagabo]

WinTV2000 has 12,000 kbps VBR and CBR presets. You can also create your own presets up to 15,000 kbps. You can burn those MPEG files onto data DVDs but they are not compatible with set-top DVD players (which only allow up to 10,000 kbps total for audio and video).

[edDV]

...

This said, is my best option then to capture at the highest bitrate and resolution possible with the PVR250 and save this off as my new "master"? Or would some custom encoding setup be better? How much disc space per hour would I need to archive this, then? I definately don't trust the original tape to last, nor a hard drive, so I'm thinking I would need to store this on DVD. I don't have a DL DVD recorder, but I'm thinking I'd need to get one for this. Once I have this new archive to work from, can it be filtered and cleaned up much like DV-AVI? Or will I be limited by the native MPEG2 format?

Depends how far you want to take it. MPeg2 is probably good enough if your camcorder is a typical 1 CCD consumer model. If it was a 3CCD prosumer camcorder, I'd go with a DV archive or capture uncompressed and non-realtime software encode to Mpeg2.

PVR-250 MPeg2 choices I'd consider are

1. Highest bitrate (12-15Mb/s) CBR for best MPeg2 archive. 15Mb/s is good for about 38min per DVDR layer. This file could be played on a computer.

2. Highest DVD playable bitrate ~9700Mb/s (9500up) CBR for very good MPeg2 archive. 9500Mb/s is good for ~62 min per DVD layer and can be authored for DVD player playback.

See
https://www.videohelp.com/dvd
https://www.videohelp.com/calc

[zubblwump]

OK, thanks for the help. I'm guessing from the lack of comments that 352x480 for my playable DVDs (not the master archive) is a bad idea. Is this because the scaling to larger displays will degrade the video more?

What's the best free or inexpensive software for cleaning up MPEG2 video, should I decide to go that route in the future? Is VDub Mod good enough, or is there something better? I'd also like to add chapters and transistions to the DVDs I'm making. Would it be best to first split the video files using VideoReDo, or just pick portions of the file for each chapter within the authoring program? (If that's possible, of course. I think I've seen that feature available) If I do add transistion effects, will that cause the MPEG2 clips to be re-encoded, thus losing more quality? If this is the case, perhaps transitions are a bad idea and I should just add title slides or something between the clips and let it do a hard transition to the video. Any thoughts?

[edDV]

OK, thanks for the help. I'm guessing from the lack of comments that 352x480 for my playable DVDs (not the master archive) is a bad idea. Is this because the scaling to larger displays will degrade the video more?

One school of thought is don't correct the archive copy because future tools will be better. Instead edit and correct the "distribution" copy.

Hi8 is capable of much greater resolution than 352x480. Assuming good optics and CCD processing, Hi8 is capable of >400 analog lines or approximately 520-640x480 sampled. DVD choices are 704, 720 or 352x480. 704x480 4:3 aspect is the best match. 720x480 adds 8 black pixels on the left and right but may be your only choice on the PVR-250. 352x480 may be acceptable viewed on a small display.

What's the best free or inexpensive software for cleaning up MPEG2 video, should I decide to go that route in the future? Is VDub Mod good enough, or is there something better? I'd also like to add chapters and transistions to the DVDs I'm making. Would it be best to first split the video files using VideoReDo, or just pick portions of the file for each chapter within the authoring program? (If that's possible, of course. I think I've seen that feature available)

That is a huge topic covered under restoration and authoring. Virtualdub + Avisynth offer many free tools but you will pay in learning time. Other choices are packaged products from Adobe, Sony, ULead and others.

If I do add transistion effects, will that cause the MPEG2 clips to be re-encoded, thus losing more quality? If this is the case, perhaps transitions are a bad idea and I should just add title slides or something between the clips and let it do a hard transition to the video. Any thoughts?

Yes adding transitions, filters and effects will cause a loss of generation (re-encode). This isn't going to make it unacceptable, but re-encoding MPeg2 will cause some loss.

Three quality levels for MPeg editing are:

1. Typical editing program: Every frame drops a geneneration.
2. Native Mpeg (cuts only) editors will only regenerate new frames between I frames surrounding the cut. (e.g. Womble MPeg2VCR)
3. Full native MPeg editors maintain unprocessed frames at first generation. (e.g. http://www.mainconcept.com/site/index.php?id=6875
http://www.mainconcept.com/site/index.php?id=7850 )

[m_yates]

I have the same problem. I am awaiting a reply from Hauppauge to see if there is any way to record a progressive MPEG2 file using the PVR encoder.

One possible solution I found is that the Hauppauge PVR cards can be used to store uncompressed AVI files: http://hauppauge.com/pages/faq/support_faq_pci_videocapture.html

You could save the Hi8 files as AVI files and then use software to convert the AVI files to progressive MPEG2 or MPEG4. That workaround defeats the purpose of having a hardware encoder, but it may be what I try to do if there is no other option.

The DVD's I have made look great on TV, but look like crap on the computer due to motion artifacts introduced by interlacing. You are also losing a good bit of video quality by interlacing, and no current or future deinterlacing method will recreate your pristine original progressive images.

[edDV]

I have the same problem. I am awaiting a reply from Hauppauge to see if there is any way to record a progressive MPEG2 file using the PVR encoder.

One possible solution I found is that the Hauppauge PVR cards can be used to store uncompressed AVI files: http://hauppauge.com/pages/faq/support_faq_pci_videocapture.html

Record progressive from what source? Deinterlacing Hi8 will degrade quality.

You could save the Hi8 files as AVI files and then use software to convert the AVI files to progressive MPEG2 or MPEG4. That workaround defeats the purpose of having a hardware encoder, but it may be what I try to do if there is no other option.

This may be desirable for extreme compression or computer only display, but a DVD made this way will look worse on a TV (interlace or progressive). The deinterlacer in the DVD player or HDTV will be superior to most software deinterlacing.

Hi8 should be kept interlace to DVD for best preservation and best TV display quality.

The DVD's I have made look great on TV, but look like crap on the computer due to motion artifacts introduced by interlacing. You are also losing a good bit of video quality by interlacing, and no current or future deinterlacing method will recreate your pristine original progressive images.

What progressive original images? Hi8 is an interlace format.

What you need is a good deinterlacing software DVD player for your computer.
See this thread from today
https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?p=1597796#1597796

[m_yates]

What progressive original images? Hi8 is an interlace format.

What you need is a good deinterlacing software DVD player for your computer.
See this thread from today
https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?p=1597796#1597796

Thanks for the information. The Hi8 tapes I have sure look progressive on the computer while capturing. I was unaware that they are interlaced. The motion artifacts from interlacing appear much much worse after capturing and compressing to MPEG2 using a Hauppauge WinTV PVR card.

Why do interlacing artifacts appear so much worse? Can I do something to reduce that? It sure looks like crap (on the computer) after converting to MPEG2.

I have VLC installed on my PC and will try to see if software deinterlacing looks OK for computer playback.

[jagabo]

The Hi8 tapes I have sure look progressive on the computer while capturing. I was unaware that they are interlaced.

If you are capturing as DV AVI the computer is hiding the interlace from you by BOB deinterlacing during playback. Microsoft's DV decoder and Windows Media Player does this for you by default. What's in the DV AVI file is interlaced video.

I have VLC installed on my PC and will try to see if software deinterlacing looks OK for computer playback.

VLC's BOB deinterlace will look similar to what you see when playing back DV AVI.

[edDV]

What progressive original images? Hi8 is an interlace format.

What you need is a good deinterlacing software DVD player for your computer.
See this thread from today
https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?p=1597796#1597796

Thanks for the information. The Hi8 tapes I have sure look progressive on the computer while capturing. I was unaware that they are interlaced. The motion artifacts from interlacing appear much much worse after capturing and compressing to MPEG2 using a Hauppauge WinTV PVR card.

Why do interlacing artifacts appear so much worse? Can I do something to reduce that? It sure looks like crap (on the computer) after converting to MPEG2.

I have VLC installed on my PC and will try to see if software deinterlacing looks OK for computer playback.

Whatever was looking "good" was probably looking at only one of the fields. A progressive computer monitor is looking at two fields offset in time by 1/60sec (1/50sec for PAL). If there is motion in the video, the picture will appear as double vision. This is normal.

To make interlace video look good on a progressive display, the player needs to deinterlace. Techniques range from simple (field drop) to motion adaptive bob and weave (done in software or hardware).

The idea is to process the playback not to destroy the quality of the original.

You need to understand interlace if you want to master this game. Interlace will be with us for at least another decade since most DTV and HDTV continues to be broadcast in interlace formats plus all Hi8, DV and most HDV is interlace.

Learn to deal with it.