Some confusion about "steps" from an (analog) sou

[akrasna]

Hi,

I have been converting my old VHSs to DVD. So far I have been using the "all in one" solutions ... which capture/format/burn. (I like neodvd for its speed, ulead for features .. and mydvd when it works)
After a few cheaper cards I like the ADVC-50 which took care of an ysync issues for me.

I did not understand why people were
Capturing with X
Converting to Mpeg with Y
Editing with Z
Authoring with Q
and Burning with R

As these packages seemed to do it all.
After some experience I guess the answer is quality and features.

I am a bit unhappy with my final DVDs from these products even though the Mpeg2s I sometime create look good.

I wanted a suggestion about what is a good capture only SW (coming off an ADVC-50 or direct from DV to Firewire)

Also want to understand what I should Raw cature to. I had assumed Mpeg2. But from reading about TMPGenc and that it converts To mpeg for you I assume I should capture raw to something else? AVI?
Why - is it cleaner? less compressed?

Maybe I am just asked for an explanation of each of the stages and where it would pay for me to use a specialized stage product.

In reality I mainly want to copy from the VHS -> DVD but want the DVD product to be as close to the VHS orginal as I can. Fancy effects are not needed.

Even a "you loser newbie wanna-be just read guide XYZ" would be fine provided XYZ has the info I want

Thanks
Allen

[presto]

I am a bit unhappy with my final DVDs from these products even though the Mpeg2s I sometime create look good.

You probably need to let us know what you are unhappy with. In what way is the quality lacking? Is it jumpy?, blurry?

I highly recommend Tmpgenc DVD Author to do everything but capture. It is the quickest way to make a great DVD.

[FOO]

Here's the deal
A capture direct to MPEG2 has the following problems:
1. On-the-Fly encoding can't do as good a job as encoding a file because
it doesn't have enough time. 2 pass encoding obviously can't be done
on the fly.
2. Editing is difficult and things like noise filtering and effects are impossible
with MPEG.
3. It's hard to know the max bitrate beforehand.

Most people capture AVI with either the Huffyuv or the PicVideo MJPEG
codec and then edit,filter or whatever and then encode with a good encoder.
TMPGenc, CCE, MainConcept.
I recommend MJPEG because files are around 1/3 the size of Huffy and
I cant tell the diffrence.

This way you get complete control over everything including the final file size.

All this tends to be overkill with VHS because the source quality just
isn't very good.

[presto]

1. On-the-Fly encoding can't do as good a job as encoding a file because
it doesn't have enough time. 2 pass encoding obviously can't be done
on the fly.
2. Editing is difficult and things like noise filtering and effects are impossible
with MPEG.

Foo, have you even tried ATI MMC and Tmpgenc DVD author? If I took your advice I wouldn't be making several awesome DVD's a day. My computer would be tied up converting avi to mpg for 5 to 9 hours at a stretch. Your opinion of mpg was valid a year ago.

[akrasna]

thanks both of you

Prenco .. you mentioned 2 things .. do they EACH do the whole process or do I need both ATI-MMC and Tpeg...

[FOO]

My opinion is always valid . I know everything

I was just explaining things to the OP
If I was doing VHS I would capture with ATI MMC direct to MPEG2.
If I knew there were no edits and it was FILM I would do the IVTC too.

I was doing that 2 years ago

I almost always capture direct to MPEG2 and edit with Womble and
author/burn with MF2. Fast, easy works good. I do at least 1 movie a day.
I don't like menus so I really dont care whether it's TMPG Author, MF2
or Ifoedit . I just had MF2 first . I find DVDlab slow

Sometimes I have a desperate urge to get rid of the damned logos
and filter some. Then I go ahead and do it the hard way.

I got all the Fururama episodes. Siince they were short I did them all the
hard way and made fancy menus mainly for practice.

[FOO]

Who's Prenco ?
FYI ATI MMC isn't just a program . it's what comes with an ATI
capture card and only works with that.

If you have that, all you do is
1. capture the movie
1.5 possibly edit out commercials
2. put it in an authoring program
3 burn it

[akrasna]

ok ...

so I have an old AIW but I am not using that ....
I AM using the advc-50 .

Will I get better quality on the final dvd (again no fancy effects ..but neo gives me 6 chapters which is all I need) if I use diff SW for Diff stages.

My PC is plenty powerful 2.4gz 500meg etc ..

as "bad" as VHS is .. I see degraidation on the DVD and this is at the "highest" setting ...
some people said they see no diff between their source and final products ..

Can I get those results with this HW? if so with which SW?

and oh yeah its presto ...

Thanks
allen

[akrasna]

another quickie ..

I have seen

"Tmpgenc DVD author"

is that a stand alone product or does it work WITH the regular Tmpgenc?
and if so which stages does each prodcut do?

[FOO]

My VHS captures look just like the VHS.
You are just going to have to try things.

You COULD try reading product descriptions, guides etc.

[presto]

Tmpgenc DVD author doesn't capture. You give it the video and it lets you cut out the bad parts, add chapter points and menus, and burn to DVD.

Tmpgenc is another program by the same people.

With a name like Tmpgenc it HAS to be good.

[vhelp]

@ akrasna,

Within reason...

About the highest quality you can obtain from a VHS transfer project is through
the use of an Analog Capture card.

* Then, you would need to capture (in most cases) w/ Huffy codec, else
...for the pier-resistance (I'm not french) you would capture uncompressed.
...But, this require too much hd space, and opens doors to issues (if you
...haven't already experienced any yet)
* Then, you would you would prepare some specialized filter chains for that
...umph in "noise reduction" that you would need to perform on your VHS
...source captures, in addition to the noise added in through the Analog card.
* Then, you would encode the file (assuming you frameserved) into any of
...your favorite MPEG encoder. Make sure you encode to MPEG-2 for best
...quality results, using minimum of 352x480 resolutions.
* Then, you would proceed to author it to CDR/DVDR disks
* and finally, after all the hard work payed off, you play your masterpiece
...on your cheap DVD player hehe..

There are all kinds of reasons why people go this route or that one etc, but
in the end, it's up to you to decide which one works best. The only way to
know which one is best, if to just do it.

Well, there are ga-zillions of info on VHS transfers to CDR/DVDR ways, but
you have to try at least a few of them.

That's about it.
-vhelp

[akrasna]

Thanks for all answers so far ..

I have already tried several of the packages and read quite a few how to's I just don't seem to get a sharp picture .. it is fuzzy.

Even when I did DV direct with firewire )BOTH with neoDVD and Visual Studio) the quality when down .. I guess I naive-ly thought if its digital going in then it should stay the same quality .. I guess when it does mpeg compression it loses something.

I will play around and try to figure out out which stage I am getting the fuzziness.
I would suspect it could be ....
Raw Capture ...
Avi - MPeg
Mpeg -DVD (or should this stage NOT have any degredation)

Thanks
Allen