Best way to capture VHS

[miked00]

I have the Indiana Jones movies and the Star Wars special edition VHS and I want to convert them to a digital format. I was thinking of going with CVD, since its almost like SVCD but with better bitrates. Does anyone have ideas as to the best capture settings or the best settings for encoding, or what formats to use?? thanks

[Nitemare]

Questions like this one always generate a LOT of debate, but since you're planning to make a CVD anyway, then the best resolution to capture at would 352x480. (NTSC) This resolution is extremely popular for VHS capture anyway as it will capture ALL of the video data available on a VHS source. (2 interlaced fileds of 352x240... or 352x480).

This capture resolution is hotly debated, but since CVD resolution is also 352x480 (NTSC) then no one should argue much about it on this particular thread. ...right, gang?

The format you use depends on your capture device. If it's an analog capture card, either capture using huffy or an MJPEG codec to AVI and encode to MPG with TMPEG or CCE.

If using TMPEG, load the AVI as a 4:3 source instead of a 1:1 VGA. Encode the film to CVD specs and burn. No deinterlacing is needed and it will look correct when played back on your standalone player.

Other capture devices let you capture to MPEG2 directly. IF this works for you at acceptable quality (rare) then cap it directly to MPG. If you're in a PAL area then substitute the PAL resolutions wherever you saw 352x480.

Good luck!
Nitemare

[Matt D]

Not sure what card you use, but depending on this you may never get the quality you are looking for. I used to have a card that captured to AVI and it always looked like crap IMO. Blocky, grainy, just horrible.
Now I use a DVD card and s-video cords to capture straight to VOB. If you have a good VCR you will get a capture that's every bit as good as the original, and a clean source is the most important thing to start with.
You can then use DVD2AVI and TMPGenc to create CVD's that will look as sweet as a transfer from VHS can.

[secretagent]

i use showshifter program to capture vhs in high qualilty wmv2. then change the .wmv extension to .asf and encode in tmpgencode. I get excellent results everytime