I need direction please

[Rhebs]

Hello
This forum has been a great help to me already and I have only been here a couple of days! I have been looking for information about VHS to SCVD and mpeg2, because I would like to convert some family video tapes to a nice quality digital format that I can play on my DVD player.(the tapes are getting old!).

This is the equipment I have.

Cap Card=ATI AIW 128
TMPGEnc Plus (the demo version, just downloaded last night!)
Nero for burning
I have also dowloaded some MPG2 Codecs and the MPG2 plugin for TMPGEnc + along with WinDVD.

So far, I have had some success with CDV. The quality is OK, but did not even look as good as the tape. I have also been able to capture an AVI and load it into TMPGEnc, get a working MPG and burn it as a SCDV. This quality seemed good, although it looked like everything was moving a little fast.(maybe it was me moving slow?).

This brings me to my questions

1. With the Equipment I have. Is it possible to capture a MPEG2 with my ATI and encode it properly with TMPGEnc to burn for a SCDV?

2. My ATI card lets me change the settings to capture with and even make a custom setting. I have found numerous tutorials from this forum site and tried all of the default and a bunch of custom setting. Still I can’t seem to capture a MPEG2 file that I can work with in TMPGenc. Is it that my card can’t capture a valid MPEG2 file that TMPGEnc + can work with, or, am I missing a step somewhere before I open the file with TMPGEnc?

Thanks for any help. Right now it looks like I will just stick with capturing to AVI and watching this board for suggestions.

[Tommyknocker]

Well, you do not have the software to capture in MPEG-1, or -2. Look in the Tools section at left and search under capture and see if you see an capture program you think may help.

[Rhebs]

Thanks for the reply. I was not aware that I could use a capture program other than what comes with the hardware.

[Tommyknocker]

Sure. Read the Newbie Guides, and then the Capture section.

[Rhebs]

Great. I think I am understanding this. After reading a bunch of "How-To's" I've realized that capturing a MPEG2 file to burn straight to SCDV is impossible with my hardware, and that TMPGEnc can't open any MP2 files. Also, Virtualdub can't make MPEG2 files, but I can frameserve from Virtualdub with an MPEG encoder and produce a file that MPEGEnc + will take as a valid MPEG2, then convert and I can burn an SCVD. Simple. Now I am wondering, will it be better to framserve, or just convert a captured AVI. I will test this tonight and compare.
Thanks again for your help.

[Tommyknocker]

TMPGEnc can't open any MP2 files

Yes, it can, but the trial version disables this function after a short while.

[Gazorgan]

When capturing from tape, you must filter it. You get tape noise and other problems that really eat up you MPEG bandwidth. noise and Temporal filters 'clean up' the video prior to the final encoding.....jsut filter and frameserve from VDUB. There's some good guides on what filters do what.

[Rhebs]

Thanks for the info.
Last night I captured some avi's and I was noticing that my hardware had a limit on the resolution settings that I could use. Should I just capture with the highest settings, or would it be worth my while to try to capture with Vdub at the 480x480 spec for SCVD? Also if I have an AVI saved already on my hard drive what is the point of frameserving? Am I missing something?

[Gazorgan]

I've never been able to capture with VDUB. And I have over 500 hours of captured and converted material.

I capture with IUVCR (good results but crappy interface and scheduler). I use Huffyuv for tape/laserdisk high quality and MJPEG for TV that's going to XviD/SVCD/VCD. Once I have the capture I edit out in VDUB what I dont' want (commercials, promo's for another movie, ending credits, etc). I usually capture in 720x480 or 640x480 depending on the source. You can capture directly to the final resolution, but you have to remember the major differences between a computer monitor and a TV screen. Otherwise you going to get tall/skinny or short/fat people in your videos. This comes in when encoding to MPEG2 and you are selecting the aspect ratio, do a test encode first.

Then I apply what filters I need to clean it up. This is the longest part. It just depends on the source. I use different filters for Anime than I do for laser disk than I do for TV. Certain TV channels are more noisey than others. Once the preview looks good I do a 30 second sample encode.

Now I go back and crop/resize the video. This goes before the filter section. Always crop/resize before applying filters: Why filter stuff you are going to throw away? There are exceptions, but generally I do it this way. At this point I'm ready to encode the video (audio I do seperately, doesn't take very long at all). If it's going to XviD then I settup the 2-pass and go. If I'm doing MPEG2 then I start the frameserver and go to TMPG. TMPG and CCE can't do what I just did in VDUB. TMPG has some filtering, but no editing feature worthy of the name(just attempt to edit out commercials in TMPG...you'll go insane).

[Rhebs]

Thanks again,
After reading more on this forum, I am wondering if I shoud use Vdub at all. If my hardware resolution has limits, should not I just capture at VHS resolution and then convert with TMPGEnc. This seems to make the most sense to me.

[ImaWeTodd]

VirtualDub is an indespensible (if you want free) video editing program.

I capture using virtualvcr. There are many very basic ones that are good to just capture (amcap, vidcap).

Where VDub comes in is to clean and cut up the video after you capture. I bet your old tapes produce a bunch of noise in the picture. With virtual Dub filters you can clean this out. This will not only improve the visual quality, it will improve the mpeg compressability. If you are not going to DVD, you need good compression so you can have low bitrates. If it can't compress well, you will get digital 'noise'.

On the capture resolution, I always capture interlaced video at my output resolution 480x480 for svcd. That way I don't have to deinterlace/resize.

[Rhebs]

Yes, I agree. I played with Vdub last night a little bit more and really like the editing features. I also now understand the benefit of frameserving, this is a great feature for what I am doing. I'm still having a little bit of a problem with my audio sync(seems to be about 100ms behind) and I am also still testing capture resolutions, but I know I'll get good results eventually. I will have to try 480x480 tonight. So far my best looking final product has been cap 352x480 AVI , edit in Vdub, frameserve to TMPGEnc SCVD format and burn with Nero. Vid looks good, audio is behind a bit but I have an idea why and will work on that tonight as well. Thanks to all for all of your help.