Keeping VHS capture low (tried all!!!!)

[veryhappyjk]

i'm trying to keep divx-encoded vhs captures bitrate low, but it seems even with 388*288 it requires 2400 kbit.

i tried many combinations of filters.
actually i capture at 720*576, in this order:

while capturing, video denoise filter (vdub plugin) and compressing with mjpeg (qual. 96/100).

after:

1. deinterlace
2. resize to 388*288
3. vhs filter (no smoothing)

then divx with one pass, fixed quality=3

but it requires about 300 Kbyte, which is too high!! (i encode dvd-rips at 452*336 very high quality at 120 KByte/sec, with divx5)


is there a way to make bitrate from vhs acceptable?
it's common to have such high bitrates?

i already tried: temporal smoother; smart smooth. seems like the only fiter that lowers bitrate is "video denoise" (the one which I actually use) from a russian programmer.

bye bye saverio m.

[DJRumpy]

Perhaps if you described why 300 Kbps is too high? Are you seeing some kind of artifact? 2400 kbs is high, even for full DVD resolutions. You should be able to encode at 720x480 at somewhere around 800kbs and expect good results. You should also use mutlipass to get better results than one-pass cbr.

[veryhappyjk]

I found the best technique is temporal smoothing; vdub built-in it's very very good though default it's a bit high.

I also found raising resolution raises quality very very little if compression quantizer isn't lowered also.

However now i have good results with this combination:

->vdub denoise filter ( q=8 ) during capture
then
->video denoise
->smart resize with precise bicubic

then, xvid with fixed quantizer (q=3). (vhq=2,qpel ON, lumi masking ON, chroma motion ON, max b-frames=3)

this way, i went down to about 100/120 kbyte/sec.
for cartoons, i need a stronger temporal smoothing.

byebye Saverio M.

[DJRumpy]

It sounds like you've already resolved your own problem, although you should try other smoothers, as there are many 3rd party filters that are far better than VirtualDub's. You can start here: http://shelob.mordor.net/dgraft
Try the Spatial Smoother's as well, as they do a decent job on analog noise.

I also found raising resolution raises quality very very little if compression quantizer isn't lowered also.

This is because the larger resolution requires more bitrate to display without artifacts. If you increase the resolution, you must also increase the bitrate to keep the quality.

this way, i went down to about 100/120 kbyte/sec.
for cartoons, i need a stronger temporal smoothing.

Also, for cartoons, you should use an anime filter. They will be far more effective then the temporal smoother in VitualDub. Typically for cartoons/anime, you can turn the anime filters up as high as you like. They will sharpen the lines, while removing noise from the color area. They are perfectly designed for cartoons.

[veryhappyjk]

> This is because the larger resolution requires more bitrate to display
> without artifacts. If you increase the resolution, you must also increase
> the bitrate to keep the quality.

I always use VBR, this leads to automatic bitrate raising, but i.e.
388*288 with q=3
is very very similar to 480*360 with q=3, even if the bitrate is raised by about 20.
to notice differences i must lower quantizer also.

for cartoons a very well working combo is: somewhat heavy smoothing + cartoon filter.

i also found vdub integrated denoise filter (it's a temporal one) work better than "temporal smoother".
next time i will try temporal cleaner (j.casaburi).

byebye and thank you very much