"Common" VHS to HD DVD?

[Haopengyou]

I have a lot of vhs movies I would like to convert to dvd. Some are only a couple of years old, some older. I have a Winfast TV 2000 XP tv tuner/video capture card that I have used successfully before. If I buy a new card can I convert my commercial VHS movies into a HD format? What is the best I can hope for in terms of audio and video quality?

[hech54]

"You can't get blood from a stone"....and you can't magically get HD material from a VHS tape. The best you can hope for is VHS quality because your source is VHS quality. Sure you can get LOTS of VHS-quality material on a Blu Ray disc....simply because of the number gigabytes a Blu Ray can hold.

[Haopengyou]

Thanks!

[edDV]

VHS luminance max is 3MHz which is only 240 changes across a line.
VHS chroma components are only 0.5MHz or 40 changes across a line.

When you capture for PAL DVD or PAL SD Blu-Ray your sampling choices are 352x576, 704x576 or 720x576. 352 is somewhat undersampled and 720 is oversampled but the better choice. There is no point to upscaling prior to encoding. The players are capable of real time upscale during playback.

[victoriabears]

I have seen some amazing results from my vhs to dvd transfers , using simple non-svhs vcr's and xp mode on the dvd recorder but then letting the dvd player (pioneer 420V) and my TV Sony 46" LCD Bravia, do some filtering magic.

I have found over processing can be easily done at the transfer stage and it spoils the final image

[wolfdogg]

i have found that capturing using huffyuv the full 480 lines, 720x480 in my case since my setup wont allow capturing at 704x480 for some reason

then on recompress all in one fell swoop;
i deinterlace using blend, compress video to a bandwith of your choice into mpeg4, crop off the messed up edges to the nearest 8-16px, resize back to 4x3(or not), then letterbox or widescreen to a 16x9 ratio(adds black sidebars keeping video the same aspect as source), and compress the audio down to about 128kbps mp3 cbr, then it comes out nicely for me, and is still vhs quality, but looks slightly better IMO once mpeg4 gets ahold of it. .

[lordsmurf]

i deinterlace using blend

That's horrible. Why would you ruin video like this?
Use Yadif.

[wolfdogg]

lol, i have seen the results using different methods of deinterlace. i always that that when previewed through vdsub bleiding looked best. so you mean instead of blending both fields which is what i assume the tv set is doing int eh first place, use yadif to deinterlace? i will try that the very next time. I know my method isnt the best, i was hoping to both help the user with lamen detail, and get some feedback at the same time. thanks.

[2Bdecided]

You don't need to deinterlace for DVD.

If the footage really is interlaced (i.e. it's video source, not film) then you absolutely should not deinterlace it (unless you want it to look stuttery).

In NTSC-land, if it's film, you can IVTC it if you want, and burn 24p with flags to DVD. That's ideal, but not essential. (IVTC isn't always 100% successful with dodgy VHS).

Cheers,
David.

[lordsmurf]

blending both fields

This blurs the video.

Read this: Video Guides > Capturing/Recording > Understanding Your Source
See interlacing section.

which is what i assume the tv set is doing int eh first place,

No.

use yadif to deinterlace?

If you must deinterlace.

[wolfdogg]

ok, the problem if one doesnt deinterlace, then when the file is viewed as a normal avi you get ugly interlaced video. And if i were to set the codecs set to automatically deinterlace ilaced video upon playback, then there is a chance the fact that video is interlaced may be overlooked in the future causing mayhem upon the video restoration process. in short, i like to see it as it is when watching as an avi. anybody else feel like this over here or is it just me?

Would you recommend i go through a paradigm shift over here and use the auto deinterlace from the codec when one views them as avi's?

now when archiving to DVD, i personally have made some mistakes, because i piggy back upon the method i use to AVI. you have pointed out so far a major point that deviates from archiving to avi, vs. to DVD.

Can we detail a clear method, atleast for NTSC so it will become more clear for both myself as well as those following this topic?

My cap card wont cap at 576, and i live in the US, so im ok to stay within the NTSC confines. and to cap at 576 height is probably more than my processor can handle and will cause sync errors. i can barely get it to cap at 480, and still have to deal with sync issues by adjusting frame rate in the end alot of times. Also, its my understanding that 480 height will properly capture all the luminance of the source vhs.

So, if one were to capture vhs using 720x480 in huffyuv,
what steps should be taken next to filter the source to prepare for DVD.

1-crop the bad edges off the vhs capture to the nearest 8 px increments, for example if there is 6 bad pixels on the left edge, and none on the right, one would crop 7 pixels off left edge, and 1 pixel off the right edge, which makes the video exactly 8 pixels smaller. do the same for the top and bottom. (is the nearest 4px ok instead)

2- would it be feasible to lanczos resize back to 480 pixels height here using "same as source" aspect ratio if the height was cropped?

3-"letterbox/crop" to 720x480 format which adds black sidebars to the VHS to make the video to the correct NTSC DVD aspect ratio (720x480)

NOW you have your HD Format, as the original poster asked. you dont have HD quality, but you have HD(16x9 widescreen) format.

4- audio compression - 128kb/s CBR mp3 , to leave more room for video, and is enough quality for the analog source IMO.

the problems i run into next are,

5-what video compression codec should be used here to do this filtering, and if not huffyuv, then @ what bandwidth?

6- what program should be used to convert the final product to MPEG-2? I like to use AutoGK, since i havent quite become interested in avi synth scripts, funny enough, since im a LAMP developer PHP script progammer.

[2Bdecided]

I think you should get the footage right for interlaced DVD first.

Take that and encode it to MPEG-2 for DVD, and also separately deinterlace it and encode it to mp4 square pixel for your PC. I'd do double rate deinterlacing for PC use (i.e. 640x480 59.97fps Q18 H.264 128kbps AAC mp4) but you may not want to use this much bitrate.

Qs 1+2: just mask the rubbish with black. Move what's left to the centre if you want (cropping and adding borders) but the final result should still be 720x480 or 704x480 without actual resizing - that would just soften the image more, and you'll probably mess up the aspect ratio.

3: it'll be the same aspect ratio as the original. Unless you set the 16x9 DAR flag to give you stretchy vision.

4: you should be processing lossless audio. mp3 is no good for DVD anyway, though may be OK if you choose to encode to XViD or something.

Free software? HcEnc, tooLame (or a free AC3 encoder), muxman (or better) for DVD. MeGUI for mp4.

Cheers,
David.

[wolfdogg]

thanks David! and are you still following this Haopengyou?

on steps 1 and 2, can you clarify what you mean by mask? the way i did it didnt really mess us the aspect ratio, because the capture is picking up beyond what a tv monitor would display i assume. so when you see the foldover coming from the vhs, thats not part of the intended stream, so after being cropped the video is actually ends up near actual size. but i will bet it does shrink it by a couple pixels. whould this be enough to cause the softening effect from the resize? if so, how do we avoid this?

mask it? Do you mean for example in virtual dub, do a null transform, crop the edges off, then add a resize filter and set it under framing options to use the letterbox/crop to size, and set it for 720x480? The only problem with this is it will cause additional borders to show. i always like the image to be edge to edge if format will permit. is this the tradeoff for not messing with the resize that allows a sharper image?

step 3 - i wouldnt ever stretch it, lol. i would recommend anybody that likes it stretched to stretch it upon playback to fill the screen. i would prefer to keep the proper 4x3 aspect ratio all the way to the final production. I do stretch it on the hdtv screen sometimes when its quality video however.

step 4 - yes, your right, i will from now on use lame acm 128kb/s for vhs, and something like acm-192kb/s for satellite caps, and something like acm-212kbps for higher quality. thanks for pointing that out. (ill look into the AAC mp4, not familiar with that yet). do you think 128kb?s is too much for VHS? what would you suggest then?

step 5 - ok, use mpeg2 compression for dvd, even though i always knew that, i am not used to using virtualdub for this process. now the picture is becoming more clear (pun intended), now that i am not overcrowded with codecs on my system, and only have ffdshow to work with. that mpeg2 stands out bright and clear! what bitrate should i use, or should i just use the quantizer and take what i get? i noticed that if i use 5000kbps, then it comes out to roughly 2 hrs /4GB, at a first glance, without doing any math, judging from the filesize of the 2 hour cap i recently compressed using mpeg2. so maybe ill try 2500kbps next, to get it near 4hrs of vhs onto dvd.