vhs bitrate?

[spiralnebula42o]

Does anyone know bitrate for most vhs tapes old and new?

-Jay

[junkmalle]

VHS is an analog format. It has no bits. Hence no bitrate.

[spiralnebula42o]

hmmm.. what bitrate do you think would be vhs quality? Iam thinken about converting vhs tapes to svcd.

-Jay

[hexxisoft]

dont even bother with SVCD. i usually just do a VCD spec file and it works great for VHS/analogue tv. i backed up my entire tape collection to VCD-DVDs and they look relatively indistinguishable (unless the signal is a bit flawed, much like my old starwars trilogy.)

[junkmalle]

I suppose your real question is:

"What bitrate should I use when transfering VHS tapes to DVD?"

The short answer is to create 352x480 NTSC (352x576 PAL) MPEG 2 files with 3000 to 4000 kbps video.

The long answer is that this is a complex subject and the bitrate will vary depending on the contents of the tapes, whether or not you can inverse telecine, the quality of the VHS tapes, VCR, and capture device, the amount of time you want to spend cleaning it up, and how good you want your final results to be. The answer can be anywhere from about 1000 to 8000 kbps.

[yoda313]

Hello,
I believe vcd is "near vhs" quality {1150 bitrate}. But if you have a dvd burner why not encode to dvd? It won't improve the source but it will look nicer having full menus and having full motion menus if you want. DVD is: 720x480 ntsc 48khz audio - 2000 video bitrate and up.
Kevin

[spiralnebula42o]

ok well I don't have a dvd burner, anyways so what everyone is telling me is to use vcd. Why is it better to use vcd for vhs, wouldn't svcd be better quality?

-Jay

[lordsmurf]

Read: http://www.digitalfaq.com/understandsource.htm

[junkmalle]

SVCD has better resolution than VHS horizontally, the same resolution vertically.

VCD has slightly better resolution than VHS horizontally, but only half the resolution vertically. With VCD you have to deinterlace. One of the most common methods of deinterlacing is to simply throw away one field. So you can end up with half the temporal resolution too.

Use SVCD if picture quality is more important to you than minutes-per-CD. You can get 30 to 45 minutes on an SVCD, about twice that on VCD.

Do the experiments for yourself. Make both SVCD and a VCD clips from some of your tapes. Compare the results on your DVD player and TV.

[FOO]

Just do 480 x 480 at 2500 vbr kbps on an SVCD
it will be sufficient for a VHS tape

VCD simply sucks. Don't bother

[lordsmurf]

352x480 CVD best

[fmctm1sw]

ok well I don't have a dvd burner, anyways so what everyone is telling me is to use vcd. Why is it better to use vcd for vhs, wouldn't svcd be better quality?

-Jay

I'll agree with Lordsmurf about CVD. When you DO get yourself a DVD burner, you'll be way ahead of the game. Although if you insist on VCD, that resolution will work too, you'll just have to resample the audio. I've been using 352x480 at about 3500kbps VBR.

[adam]

Interlaced sources should be kept interlaced, if possible. VCD isn't a good choice for VHS since it only supports progressive video, but it can still do a decent job.

If you go SVCD shoot for 45-50 mins per disk. If you go CVD shoot for 50-55 mins per disk.

[lordsmurf]

240 minutes on a DVD is 2500 VBR
CVD is 2500 VBR

DVD is 4470MB
CD is 700MB

1x DVD = 6.4x CD

So, unless my calculator is broken, shouldn't

240 / 6.4 = 38 minutes per CVD ?

I think aiming for 45-55 min is way too much for CVD.
Not unless the VBR max is low (more like CVBR) and you'll get more artifacts.

I use 4000k max on CVD/SVCD/HalfD1-DVD

[adam]

352x480 at 2mbits is a sweet spot for mpeg. This is mentioned in many compression ratio charts at mpeg.org. This works very well as a center point when determining bitrate. When using a lower quality source like VHS, I find you can generally get away with a little less bitrate as well. At 2mbits you can fit just about 50 mins per disk using CVD and 192bitrate. I found that you can easily squeeze another 5 mins worth of content, at a bitrate of around 1.8mbits in CVD format, especially if you use a little less bitrate for the audio or use higher GOPs (still compliant.)

Your calculator is fine but you used the wrong numbers A cd is not 700MB when making a SVCD. SVCDs are burnt in mode 2 so it would be 800MBs. That makes quite a bit of difference. Also where does 2500 come from? I understand its about the maximum bitrate you can reasonably achieve with SVCD but maxing out your bitrate usually isn't practical. Also the whole point of using CVD over SVCD is to increase compressibility due to a lower resolution, so you can easily get away with much lower bitrates then 2.5mbits.

I think aiming for 45-55 min is way too much for CVD.

45 mins is about the absolute minimum amount you can fit in SVCD or CVD format! That's with 224kbit audio and the video bitrate maxed out. You can't even go much lower without making a non-compliant disk. Obviously the standard was intended to give you a little bit of working room otherwise it wouldn't have support for VBR, you'd just max out your bitrate and get about 45mins per disk. Few commercial SVCDs use an average bitrate of ~2500kbits. A typical SVCD can easily hold about 50 mins per disk. With CVD you can get away with a little bit more. The quality can be quite good.

I use 4000k max on CVD/SVCD/HalfD1-DVD

That is not a CVD or SVCD then. My suggestions were for compliant disks. Obviously higher averages and max bitrates are preferable but they come at the expense of compliancy and a larger filesize. Sometimes you have to make reasonable concessions regarding bitrate.

[lordsmurf]

I have a couple of pressed CVD and SVCD from Asia. They used 2520k VBR exclusively, and the bitrate topped off at anywhere from 3000-4000k. These come from the heart of the region that made the format.

What should be the min/max/avg for CVD/SVCD then?
The only real difference in the two is the resolution.

I have never gotten a CD to go to 800MB in Mode 2 on any burner. I'm probably not holding my crystal ball right or something. Since I pretty much moved straight from S-VHS to DVD, I've never worried about it much.

[adam]

Those most certainly were not commercial SVCDs or CVDs then. By law, CVDs haven't even been released commercially since 1998, and both SVCD and CVD have a total max bitrate of 2778kbits and a max video bitrate of 2600kbits. This is common info, catalogued in the What IS sections to your left and available in the ISO specifications which can be purchased for about $50.

Just to clarify, you are talking about pressed cds not DVDs right?

I can guarantee that those disks would not play in any hardware SVCD or CVD player (note I'm not talking about dvd players with SVCD/CVD support, but the real things) as they are pretty much always very strict regarding compliancy.

Bitrate settings for CVD and SVCD? Same is with any other format...

min= as low a bitrate as you think you will need, so about 0-500.
Max= max allowed after subtracting audio + overhead. You only get about 48kbits multiplexing overhead, but if you have any subtitle streams you have to subtract a whopping 500kbits. Typical max bitrates for 224kbit audio are going to be around 2500kbits or so.

Avg= whatever you can get. For SVCD I aim for above 2mbits. If I can't get this I use CVD. If my bitrate falls below 1700kbits then I spread the movie out on more disks.

You can't get 800MBs on a cdr? What are you using to author/burn with? Back when I made lots of SVCDs I overburnt to about 840MBs and then I switched to 90 min cdrs and got about 910Mbs on each disk. Not too shabby for cd based media really.

[TheFamilyMan]

With my experiments with "converting" VHS to CVD, compression artifacts where always a problem, even when goosing up the video bitrate by stealing audio bitrate. My source material sucked, probably due to too much noise and shaky picture quality (home videos).

When converting VHS to MPEG2, video noise must be dealt with if you want top rate results. IMHO all VHS is very noisy; most people probably never notice it.

[ZippyP.]

IMHO all VHS is very noisy; most people probably never notice it.

Using a noise reduction filter will help. Noise and shakiness (like camcorder footage) will consume bitrate making your video appear bit-starved. TMPGEnc has a noise filter built in but it increases encoding time considerably.