Suitable capturing for final DVD from VHS

[Inssomniak]

Using mencoder to capture video/audio from capture board, the source is VHS, I want to capture the video to be finally mastered for DVD playback, I know I cant improve the quality, but want to make sure I capture the video in the correct formats, bitrates, etc for playback on DVD players.

what is the best avi format to capture to? for later conversion to mpeg2 DVD format.? I want to capture it as close as possible resolution wise, etc. so I dont have to upconvert/transcode/yaadaa yaaaadaa so much after capturing.

I thought 320x240, with 48k audio, so I capture the audio as PCM? or can I capture it as mp3?

looking for the best mencoder options to capture VHS tape, to finally play back on DVD.

[Jerry Attrix]

The quickest way to capture VHS (or any other video source) to DVD is using a DVD recorder - the domestic type, not the PC drive. It's far, far, quicker than using a computer and you get very high-quality MPEG2 in real-time. Actually the quality is way beyond anything a VHS or SVHS will put out. The machines are now getting quite inexpensive, and permit "topping and tailing" of captured clips. Naturally you can copy from the disc to your computer for editing if you need to. I've had a machine for about 3 months and in that time have only powered up the VHS to play old tapes. All my recording - mostly from a set-top digital box - is directly to DVD-RW.

[disturbed1]

First you need to capture at a DVD resolution (352x240, 352x480, 720x480) if you don't want to resize.

Uncompressed video will yield great results with little CPU needed, but a fast HD is needed. You can use a lossy compression like Huffy or MJPEG which uses some CPU power and not as much HD speed.

I use tovid to encode my avi to mpeg, here's the options it passes to mencoder.

nice -n 0 mplayer -benchmark -nosound -noframedrop -noautosub -vo yuv4mpeg -vf-add spp -vf-add hqdn3d -vf-add scale=720:480 "cap01.avi"
cat stream.yuv | yuvfps -r 30000:1001 -n -v 0 | nice -n 0 mpeg2enc -M 0 -a 3 -f 8 -b 8000 -g 4 -G 10 -P -D 10 -F 4 -v 0 -n n -4 2 -2 1 -q 5 --keep-hf -o "01.m2v"

Takes about 3hours to convert 1 hour of 704x360 (16x9) MJPEG footage captured from my DC30pro on a P4 1500.

The PVR250 and PVR350 have LInux drivers for hardware mpeg encoding with great results, but as Mr. Attrix notes, unless you already have a PVR2/350 it would be easier and more cost effective to purchase a set top DVD Recorder.