VHS to DVD guide here.

[Marco33]

After making my firt full conversion of VHS to DVD, I felt I should make a step by step notation to help others. I felt I should post it here first then, if the response is good I might add pictures and post it in the Guides section.

VHS to DVD (NTSC)

Hardware:
Sharp VHS player stereo 4 head (cost effective model)
DAC-100 Converter
Sima Copy Master (optional)
FireWire Card
40 gig main drive with XP and all needed software
40 gig 2nd drive to make capture too (empty)
Athelon 1.5 gig
Ram-512

Software:
Windows XP
Vegas Video 4 (Any DV capture program will do) EX: DVIO
VirtualDub
BeSweet with GUI
FitCD
CCE 2.5 (tmpgenc should work also)
Bit rate Calc
SpruceUp

Connection set up:
Sharp VHS player,Sima, DAC-100, FireWire.


Capture:
I capture straight to (DV) AVI, NO compression. Capture software Vegas Video 4 altho DVIO should get you there. This cap (capture) is to my 2nd drive. It's always a good idea to cap to an empty (de-fragged) drive. After the cap I will have a 30+ gig file AVI (2 hours).


Cut, Edit:
I use Vegas Video to do the cutting and save the new file back to AVI. A script could be used here to conserve space with the cutting.
www.avisynth.org has lots of usefull scripts. I find them very involved and they take time to master.

Sound:
The sound is a two part proccess. It's a good idea to strip out the audio to a seperate file. VirtualDub will do fine. Load the file into Virtual dub. On the File menu under Audio make sure " Source Audio & Direct stream copy are selected" then...File-Save WAV.
Second, change the file to a AC3 (DVD standard). I use BeSweet (and the BeSweet GUI) for that. I open the BeSweet GUI (an overlay for the BeSweet program, sort of like the way windows 3.1 worked over DOS... I digress) You need to tell BeSweet GUI where the the Regular BeSweet.exe is, where the WAV is and where the new AC3 file will be saved. Click the Wav to AC3 button.


Video:
The video is a two parter also. First to run my AVI through CCE I need an AVS script. It's an handler to work between the AVI file & CCE. FitCD will work here. Open FitCD hit the source button and load the AVI. The only thing I would put a check in the box is "ITU-R BT.601-4". Don't know why... but works for me. All the #'s at the bottom left under the Source button should read 720X480. If they don't keep playing with them till they do. The first "round to" # is 2, the second is 16. Hit save script at bottom right. I add the line " letterbox (100,100)" to the script because the VHS tape I used is in Letterbox format and this will cut off the black bars. Us "Notepad.exe" to open the AVS file to add the "letterBox" line.
Right click on the AVS file and left click on "Open With"... and open it with Windows media player. Adjust the numbers in the "letterBox" line in the AVS script to properly cut off the black bars. You may find that 95 & 105 will work better.

Second, fire up CCE, drop & drag the AVS file into the CCE window. Double click the file in the window, a new window will apear. Instead of going over every button, I will just note what I checked. I feel these setting work best for ME. Feal free to play with them. Put check in video files. Check ES. Uncheck audio file. Check MPEG2. Multipass VBR, Passes 3(more that 3 is a waste). Across from the "video files check box" is a file name & drive letter of where the new file will be save. Click on the box if you need to save to another area otherwise leave it alone. If you need to, just change the first box, CCE will change the other 2 below it.

Bit Rate settings. Min 0, Max 9800 (DVD max standard), Use Bit Rte Calc to find the AVG #. Start Bit Rate Calc. For the Video Length take the number from the main CCE window under Duration. Type=DVD, 1 DVD. Audio bit rate 384=AC3. Click advanced, Other ISO files=5. Plug the calculated bit rate into CCE as the AVG bit rate.

Back to CCE, other settings click "video" a new window will come up, Check Add sequence end code & Zig Zag.Now if your end result DVD picture shakes when played on your stand alone player, check upper field otherwise leave it unchecked. Luminance level 16-235. Intra DC precision 10, Aspect ratio DAR 4:3, Time code all zero's. Hit OK. Go to quality settings, Image quality priority 5, anti noise "check" set to 16. Click ok then ok again. File save "filename.ecl". Click encode. Depending on you system this may take a while. On my Athelon 1.5 gig time is = 12 hours.

I use SpruceUp to author my DVD. I use it cause it straight foward. Not too many bells & whistles. Spruce up will accept the MPV & the AC3 file UN-Muxed... you just need to make sure the file name is the same.

[FL350innh]

Marco33,
Nice guide! Good work!

Do or do not.. there is no try... (Master Yoda)

[Marco33]

Thanks

I tried to be as specific as possible since I didn't use pictures... yet.

[ryn05]

Thanks for your hard work, seems like you have everything figured out? Did the end result come out well? Did you have any loss frames?

Just Curious.

Once again, thanks!

[Marco33]

I was very happy with the end result and I'm VERY picky about those things. On my 43" Widescreen, imperfections are easy to see and even I had a hard time telling the VHS from the DVD capture.

Lost frames...

Well the DAC has a funny way of dealing with a poor tape. It skips over seconds in the film and starts up when the tape is better so... it drops frames but almost always in a row.

The last capture I did it dropped 41 frames in 2 hours but the dropped frames were all in a row so about 2 seconds of film is missing. As it turns out, in the scene in the film you can see it only if you realy look for it.

I would not even attemp to convert some old home movies with the DAC, it would drop seconds like crazy.

[Nolonemo]

Seems like an awful lot of work if you have V4. Why not encode in V4 (I mean, it's VHS, how much better quality are you going to be able to squeeze out using CCE). Also if you use DVD Architect to author you can set chapter points on the V4 timeline and the menu creation (with thumbnails) is pretty much automated (of course you may not have DVDA).

Only one other quibble, I would set my max bitrate somewhat lower, I never go higher than 8000000, since some players will gag on the max bitrate, also remember you have to leave a little room for the audio overhead (admittedly almost negligable compared to the video bitrate).

[Marco33]

Seems like an awful lot of work if you have V4. Why not encode in V4 (I mean, it's VHS, how much better quality are you going to be able to squeeze out using CCE). Also if you use DVD Architect to author you can set chapter points on the V4 timeline and the menu creation (with thumbnails) is pretty much automated (of course you may not have DVDA).

Only one other quibble, I would set my max bitrate somewhat lower, I never go higher than 8000000, since some players will gag on the max bitrate, also remember you have to leave a little room for the audio overhead (admittedly almost negligable compared to the video bitrate).

V4... not sure what you are trying to refrence to.

CCE is not just squeezing out the bits it's changing the format. I've captured to straight MPEG2 at 4500. There is a difference between the 4500 Mpeg2 capture and AVI capture converted... a better looking difference with AVI.

9800 is dvd standard. What audio overhead... that's what Bitrate calc is for. So there is no guess work.

[Nolonemo]

V4... not sure what you are trying to refrence to.

V4 = Vegas 4

CCE is not just squeezing out the bits it's changing the format. I've captured to straight MPEG2 at 4500. There is a difference between the 4500 Mpeg2 capture and AVI capture converted... a better looking difference with AVI. [/quote]

Right, you captured AVI and you're using CCE to encode to MPEG2. All I was saying was that you could use the MainConcept encoder in Vegas to encode to MPEG2 which would be less involved.

9800 is dvd standard.

True, but some players don't deal with it well. I don't know whether your stream would ever actually hit 9800 using VBR though.

[Marco33]

V4 = Vegas 4

I new that

I tried that with V4 to convert to MPEG2 but since I need to re-encode any way... why add a step. I just use CCE.

You are right. It will probably NOT hit 9800 but I made up the template and did not feel compelled to change it.

[MJPollard]

I tried that with V4 to convert to MPEG2 but since I need to re-encode any way... why add a step. I just use CCE.

What Nolonemo is trying to say is that "converting to MPEG2 with Vegas 4" and "re-encoding with CCE" is exactly the same thing. Using the Render function in Vegas 4 will create an MPEG2 file, just as if you were telling CCE to input the AVI file and output an MPEG2 file. You're actually doing extra work by using CCE. (Not that there's anything wrong with that, really; a lot of people prefer to use external utilities like CCE and TMPGEnc to create their MPEG2 files.)

[Marco33]

So what you are saying is that if I use V4 to render any size AVI to MPEG2 it will fit on a single DVD+R.

I'm sure you don't mean that.

In some cases that will work fine but if the final rendered MPEG2 file is to big to fit on a DVDR (as with the guide I did) one would have to re-encode anyway.

[mkelley]

No, the point is that encoding to MPEG has exactly the same rules, whether you do it with V4 or CCE.

If your files are going to be too big using V4 they will also be too big with CCE -- same rules. What you need do is understand how to change the parameters of encoding within V4 so you can tell in advance how big the file will be, and adjust them accordingly. There are some bitrate calculators even on this site that will help you do just that.

I do my encoding inside of Premiere (using the built-in MainConcept encoder) and adjust the size of my MPEG file before encoding by looking at what MainConcept predicts the file size to be -- in essence it has a built-in bitrate calculator. I'd be surprised if V4 doesn't have something similar.

[Michelle]

In Vegas select Render As > MainConcept MPEG2 > Custom. Then you can set the min, max and average bitrates. It's only one-pass vbr though.

There is a frameserver around that let's you serve from V4 to CCE.

[Nolonemo]

Unfortunately Vegas 4's MainConcept MPEG2 encoder doesn't have a bitrate cacluator. I use one one on this site myself.