Waving my white flag...

[Osm3um]

Well, I went and purchased a tbc and a Canopus ADVC55. My primary goal was/is to cut my commercial VHS tapes to DVD (I know, I know, I could have purchased a DVD burner and connected it right to my VCR....)

1. I found Mainconcepts product and used it quite succesfully, except the timer does not work and it freezes WAY to often.
2. I tried capturing to native AVI mode, but man what a pain, converting to MPG takes forever and then making it to a DVD (VOBs etc) takes a long time and then DVDshrink was still necessary on occasion.
3. Tried a couple of other commericial products (i.e. WinDVD), but the encoding was not good.
4. The best way I have figured to do this is to use Sonic MyDVD as it captures, translates to mpeg on the fly, and then makes the DVD image on the HD, which I can then use DVDshrink to burn. But the quality of the encode is pretty bad....

So, now I am thinking of dumping my ADVC55 and trying the Plextor m402u to do mpeg on the fly, but I am concerned by the fact that the only capture program that works with it is the intervido WinDVD....and I am not sure the qulaity in the end will be better.

Sorry for the long post, but if anyone has any suggestions (or comments, please no flames!) it would be much appreciated.

Thanks,
Bob

PS I just don't get it......I can take a commercial Dual layer DVD, and use DVDshrink to fit an entire movie (with AC3/DTS) on a single layer DVD with practically no degradation.....

[SatStorm]

With your athlon 1700 , the only mpeg 2 realtime solution you have is mainconcept 1.4.2 , when of course you manage to set it up.
And better install win2k for this...

The only way to succeed good VHS to DVD results, is capturing to avi, filter, frameserve to TMPGenc (or whatever encoder), Encode to 352 x 576/480 with an average of 3200 (or 4000 CBR for faster results, or 2000 - 6000 CQ @ 65 for smaller filesizes).
With your 1700, 1 hour needs about 1.40 min to encode using TMPGnec and CBR/CQ modes. About 2.30 min for 2 Pass VBR. Not bad...

[FulciLives]

Try ScenalyzerLive to capture to DV AVI

Edit your capture using VirtualDubMod.

Import your edits into an AviSynth AVS script. Use Convolution3D which is a "video noise" filter to clean up the image a bit.

Encode to MPEG-2 DVD using Cinema Craft Encoder or Mainconcept MPEG encoder. Both are MUCH faster than TMPGEnc.

For authoring I suggest TMPGEnc DVD Author with the AC-3 plug-in because it will convert your audio to AC-3 format and overall it is a very easy-to-use stable program. Once you learn it you can bust out a DVD in just a few minutes.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Osm3um]

First of all thanks for your reply as I am quite frustrated!

Regarding the last step using TMPGEnc, should I try to make the MPeg fit to a DVD BEFROE using teh TMPGenc author? OR, when it transcodes teh mpg, make it fit ala DVDShrink?

Thanks again I do appreciate it....
Bob

For authoring I suggest TMPGEnc DVD Author with the AC-3 plug-in because it will convert your audio to AC-3 format and overall it is a very easy-to-use stable program. Once you learn it you can bust out a DVD in just a few minutes.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Osm3um]

Thanks for your reply, I am running my 1700 at 180*10 if that helps! I have avoided teh complications of "frameserve", I suppose I should look into it before I throw in the towel.

With regard to capturing, regardless of which program I use and/or the format during the capture I don't seem to drop a frame (or very few)! MC seems to buffer pretty well when it works and encodes after teh capture as stopped (I'm sure you know that, however).

Thanks,
Bob

With your athlon 1700 , the only mpeg 2 realtime solution you have is mainconcept 1.4.2 , when of course you manage to set it up.
And better install win2k for this...

The only way to succeed good VHS to DVD results, is capturing to avi, filter, frameserve to TMPGenc (or whatever encoder), Encode to 352 x 576/480 with an average of 3200 (or 4000 CBR for faster results, or 2000 - 6000 CQ @ 65 for smaller filesizes).
With your 1700, 1 hour needs about 1.40 min to encode using TMPGnec and CBR/CQ modes. About 2.30 min for 2 Pass VBR. Not bad...

[FulciLives]

If you capture DV AVI then of course you have to encode to MPEG-2 for DVD and you should pick a bitrate that will fit the final DVD. You don't want to set the bitrate too high and then have to use a transcoder such as DVDShrink as that will lower the quality.

If you capture direct to MPEG-2 then again you don't want to re-encode after you capture. That makes no sense. You should set the bitrate to fit your DVD when you capture.

You should not be getting dropped frames when you capture DV AVI but if you try to capture direct to MPEG-2 then yes it is possible to drop frames that way ... usually the faster the computer the less chance of this happening with such MPEG-2 captures.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[SatStorm]

Unfortunatelly, if you don't learn those "complicate" things, you won't be able to succeed good results. It is the nature of VHS that lead to those things.

If you don't wish to handle all this, then sell anything and buy a DVD standalone encoder! Faster, easier and with excellent results.