Capture resolution for vhs source ? optimal

[Dwight]

If I intend to maintain the quality of the original vhs tape, should I capture
at 352 x 576 or higher. Will it make a noticeable difference really when dealing with a VHS source if I capture it at 720 x 576. My main intention is afterall to make an SVCD. So what would be the minimal resolution ?

Also I've never made a DVD, so...are VHS sourced DVD encodings
better than 2520bitrate SVCD's from the same source ? honestly

[lordsmurf]

VHS source is 220~240x480. Anything over that will be same as source.
The 352x480, 480x480 and 720x480 will all look the same if the capture card and software are good.

[Dwight]

Thanks, I think I'll test for differences with 1 minute captures in different resolutions to see for myself

[Sulik]

352x576 PAL) and 352x480 (NTSC) is usually your best bet for VHS recordings. It allows encoding good quality with a moderate bitrate (I use VBR avg=3Mbps, max=5Mbps), and it is a DVD-compatible resolution, if you ever want to burn the file to DVD in the future.

Note: Keep it interlaced, unless your source is from film (24fps progressive).

[FulciLives]

Are you capturing direct to MPEG or do you intend to first capture to an AVI file and then convert to MPEG?

If you want to capture direct to MPEG then as long as your capture card is capable of doing that at 480x480 (NTSC SVCD) or 480x576 (PAL SVCD) at a bitrate of 2500kbps then yeah that will work.

However you will get better quality if you capture to AVI first and then convert to MPEG SVCD standard using a dedicated software MPEG encoder such as Cinema Craft Encoder (CCE for short) or TMPGEnc.

If you are going to capture to AVI first then you should capture at Full D1 which is 720x480 NTSC or 720x576 PAL

Then when you use CCE or TMPGEnc to convert to SVCD MPEG you can resize it to 480x480

You do not want to capture at 352x480/576 and then size it UP to 480x480/576

Also even if you would want 352x480/576 for your final size you generally will get better results if you capture at 720x480/576 then resize down to 352/480/576

- John "FulciLives" Coleman