Confused about VHS capture to DVD format

[Rooster667]

Hi,

I've captured some video from a VHS source at 768x576 with Huffyuv compression in VirtualDub (using a PCTV Rave card and the btwincap capture drivers). I now wish to prepare the video for burning on to a DVD with optimum quality.

My many questions are:

1) Was this the correct resolution to capture at?

2) So far I have not ran any de-interlacing (or any other) filters - is this OK?

3) I want to crop the video to remove the black borders and the usual bad sections at the bottom of the VHS capture. I need to crop:
11 pixels from the left side, 4 from the right side (X1, X2 offset)
0 or 1 pixel from the top and 27 pixels from the bottom (Y1, Y2 offset)
at this resolution.
Should I crop more so that the video dimensions are multiples of 16?

4) Should I resize the video horizontally at any point seeing as it is interlaced?

5) I realise that I will probably need to use another program at this point such as AviSynth or TMPGenc (with which I am unfamiliar). My video will also be some strange resolution. Do these programs add in black borders around the video to pad it out to a standard resolution? If so how does this affect the resulting MPEG-2 file?

I realise that some of these questions will answer or change the context of some of the other questions, so sorry about that!

If you've got this far, thanks!

Regards,

Shane

[Rooster667]

I should probably add that I don't want to distort the video, so a ratio of 4:3 is probably what I want. The video is in PAL format.
--

I've had a stab at this myself. Please let me know if/where I'm going wrong.

1) I cropped the video from 768x576 to 704x544 and resized to 352x544 in VirtualDub.

2) I ran TMPGenc with the Project Wizard and chose a DVD project: DVD -> PAL with CBR, Linear PCM Audio

Expert settings for source
video type: Interlace
Field order: Bottom field first (field B)
Aspect Ratio 1:1 (VGA)

No clipping - I already cropped in VirtualDub - was this right?

Other Settings:
Video settings: CBR at 8000kbits/s
Encode mode: Interlace
Advanced settings - Video arrange Method: Center (custom size) 352x544

Bitrate setting:
Video resolution 352x576 (autoselect picked 720x576)

[Krispy Kritter]

My guess would be to capture at a lower resolution which is closer to the VHS spec.

Have a look at this guide here: http://www.tomshardware.com/video/20030530/index.html

[Matt D]

I agree with Krispy Kritter. Capture at a lower resolution. In many tests I have discovered that capturing too high can actually cause more artifacting issues while capturing at 352x480 (1/2 D1 NTSC) produces perfect video.
VHS is already a lower resolution than 1/2 D1, so raising the resolution and bitrate just adds more time that you'll have to waste re-encoding it.

[johns0]

I always capture at 720X480/576 avi and then encode at 352x480/576,i found capturing at 352X480/576 and then encoding at 352X480/576 didnt have as good sharpness and details.

[Matt D]

I have tried many capture programs and I don't bother with AVI files at all. I capture straight to 352x480 VOBs and don't have to convert. I used to capture at full resolution, but it produced quite a bit of pixelation, which doesn't happen at 352x480. With better sources than VHS, 720x480 does produce great results.

[teegee420]

I have tried many capture programs and I don't bother with AVI files at all. I capture straight to 352x480 VOBs and don't have to convert. I used to capture at full resolution, but it produced quite a bit of pixelation, which doesn't happen at 352x480. With better sources than VHS, 720x480 does produce great results.

I agree. 352x480 has always produced great results for me.

[Rooster667]

Matt D, what program do you use to capture to VOBs? The software with my card (Pinnacle PCTV-Rave) is buggy and gives very bad results so I'm using VirtualDub instead.

The reason I capture with VirtualDub is so I can remove the noisy bit at the bottom of the VHS picture as well as the black borders. Then I recentre the cropped picture in Half D1 size using TMPGenc.

Also, I've read somewhere on the site (https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=221448) that Huffyuv uses the YUYV/YUY2 colourspace but TMPGenc uses the RGB colourspace, so I should be using another program instead of TMPGenc (or else capturing to 24-bit RGB?)

Is it worth buying TMPGEnc Plus 2.5 or TMPGEnc 3.0 XPress?

Thanks for all the help so far.

[teegee420]

The reason I capture with VirtualDub is so I can remove the noisy bit at the bottom of the VHS picture as well as the black borders. Then I recentre the cropped picture in Half D1 size using TMPGenc.

It probably isn't necessary to crop anything because of TV overscanning.

[Rooster667]

Would the extra noisy bits not waste bandwidth though (or is the quality so low that it's not an issue with half D1 bitrates)?

[teegee420]

I can't answer that definitively but I'm inclined to believe the latter.

[Rooster667]

Ok, thanks.