VHS capture to VCD/SVCD resolutions

[arasaki]

Hi everyone,

I'm capturing some VHS movies to VCD and/or SVCD. The VHS quality is really high so I was considering capturing to SVCD. (Please don't tell me you can't get better than VCD quality from VHS, I've read it so many times.) For various reasons, I wanted to see if I could capture 45 minutes to lossless avi, then convert that to BOTH VCD and SVCD using Virtuadub filters --> TMPEGenc.

My question is, what resolution should I do this at? Currently I'm capturing at 640x480 but get about 150 dropped frames per 45 minutes. I know standard SVCD is 480x480, and VCD standard is 352x240. Does that mean if I capture at 352x480 (to reduce drop frames), I won't be able to encode that into SVCD?

System I'm using:
PIII-700
512Mb ram
ATI AIW Radeon w/all the tweaks on Rage3D page
20Gb 7200 DMA enabled HD
40Gb 7200 spill drive

[KoalaBear]

VCD and SVCD are rigid standards that (surprise, surprise) work best with filmed entertainment, quite well with broadcast video, and rather poorly with home camcorder footage. As a result, most of us end up making X[S]VCDs of one kind or another to achieve an acceptable degree of quality.

This is possible because there's no such thing as a 'Philips chip' to ensure that the video decoded by the player conforms to format specifications. In reality, DVD, VCD and SVCD are often handled by a single generic MPEG-2 decoder that will play almost anything you give it provided it's a valid MPEG program stream.

This means if your DVD player can handle SVCDs, it will very probably handle XSVCDs at resolutions of 352/720 horizontal by 240/480 vertical at bitrates up to 2600 Kb/S.

352x240 and 352x480 are both good for VHS, but at a given bitrate the smaller frame will have fewer artifacts and the bigger frame will be more sharp. Which one looks "best" is a judgment you have to make for yourself.

Videotape degrades over time whether you play it or not, and the older the recording the weaker the sync pulses become. This can cause you to drop frames no matter how fast your system is, especially if you don't drop frames when you capture from any other source.

[arasaki]

Well, my DVD player is a Daewoo DVG-3000N which is suppose to support almost every format out there except for mini-Dvd.

If I'm getting what you are saying correctly, it is possible to create SVCD with a 352x480 resolution capture, however, this is not "compliant SVCD" and would be better off as an XSVCD? So my next question is, does 352x480 capture affect the aspect ratio of the XSVCD playback or does the DVD player adjust for this someway?

I've yet to get 480x480 captures to burn with correct aspect ratio in SVCD format either.. not sure what I'm doing wrong, thought I have a hunch its something to do with AIW/SVCD/Nero settings that I've read a little about on this forum.

[vhelp]

arasaki, evening. . .

to get the correct aspect (at least, this is what i've always done, and works all the
time) In TMPG, under the Advanced tab, chose "Fit to Screen", and should fill to
screen correctly. I also cap at 352x480 - and encode same, to SVCD (or, xSVCD)
Quality of my caps, at least IMO, are great looking for the quality of the source I
use, being Satalette.
But, even sat has problems, that is, my providers source QUALity!! Some clips are
great quality caps to AVI, while others are sometimes not what I would expect, but
can live with, cause quality is still very good*

I never have problems, anything else, and I'm in for a posible surprise.
My site has clips using the "Fit to Screen" method I just mentioned. U can D/L some
and see for yourself. If they look incorrect, THEN, I'm WRONG - NOT!! he, he...

But, nevertheless, encoding is such fun!

* used loosely.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: vhelp on 2001-12-10 20:39:52 ]</font>

[arasaki]

hi vhelp,

Thanks for the response. You have a great site going. I will try your approach with tmpgenc when I get home today. May I ask what program you use to burn your SVCDs?

[vhelp]

arasaki,

Let me ask you. . . did you D/L any or all the clips?
You gotta fast connet?

I used TMPG !!

My website is growing, as I learn more and more from various
sources, ie, frequent'ing VCDhelp's forums and viewing people's
posts, mostely. . . .is how I get ideas of new things to add to
my website. I'm winging it!! He, he..........

JFYI:
------
When I capture clips (tv shows or movies or commercials, etc)
The quality of the SOURCE will vary, depending on certain things.
Star Trek-O series, are from the old style process, and for some
reason, I can't seem to slow down the encoding processing. . . it
just zips right through, like right now. I capped "Mirror Mirror" this
evening (6pm) and am encoding it, its now 7:53pm, will see how
long it takes. capped at 352x480.
Anyways, as I was saying. . . In speaking of quality of SOURCE from
my satalette, I finished doing a commercial. A new one I saw for
the first time. The quality of the THIS commercial ws fantasic! I
was lucky to of captured it. Yes, I encoded it as well. I'd like to
add it to my Samples Website this evening, if I can. Maybe you
would like to take a look at it if you have the time? My point is
that 352x480 isn't really all that bad, especially, if the SOURCE is
really good quality! Mine happens to be most of the time, though
at times, I'll find some shows/commercials, etc. will look on the blurry
side. And, that's not from my encode OR capture card! But, from
my provider sending me this SOURCE.
YOU (or anyone else) can get this same quality from your caps, if
you capped to AVI (no, not speaking of MPEG1 or MPEG2 real-time)
Anyone can get good quality encodes to SVCD, anyone. And, with
just about ANY AVI type capture card! Just have to work out the
problems/issues with your MB/PCI/IRQ/Card, etc. ...and you're in
business. There's no secret about it - or my captures! Really!!
The only way to know, is to find out - on your own! Just do it!!
Insperational yet?

I'll get to you on the total time it took to encode my
capture of Star Trek - "Mirror Mirror"!!

Oh, and thank you for your comments about my website!

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: vhelp on 2001-12-10 20:39:15 ]</font>

[rmartin]

I am capturing vhs tapes and regular cable TV using the standard composite connection. I have not tried to capture 352 x 480, only 352 x 240 and 480 x 480. Being new to this, I'm discouraged by the final quality of VCD. I'm unsuccessful in getting my DVD player to play SVCD's so I mainly capture in 352 x 240 using VDUB and avi_io (tried both).

Using WINTV-PCI, The capture settings are:
Frame Size - 352x240
Frame Rate - 29.97
Image Format - YUY2 (also tried 24bit)
Compression - PICVideo MJPEG set to quality 20 (also tried huffyuv)
Audio - CD Quality

I encode the avi using TMPGEnc with the VCD preset and:
Motion search precision - Highest quality
Using Noise reduction, sharpen and Deinterlace Filters (default settings)

I'd like the quality of VHS capture to be comparable and the capture from cable TV to be as good as VHS. Is this unrealistic? Am I missing anything? I've tried tons of captures in both circumstances and although I got the quality to improve, it still isn't what I'm looking for.

Thanks for any advice...

[vhelp]

Ok, as promised in my previou post here (above)

Here is my specs for this evenings Capture and Encode to MPEG2 (SVCD)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2 hrs, 52 minutes for the 1 hour capture of Star Trek-O "Mirror Mirror"
this evening!

My "system process" setup for this project is below

Anyways, my setup is:
---------------------
* Windows 98
* ATI Rage Fury Pro (agp) (not used for capturing)
* ATI-TV Wonder (I only like capping at 352x480)
* VFW driver (I used hauppgues version, though not using hauppage card)
* WDM driver (not using, but is listed in avi_io and VD)
* APPs: avi_io
* Encoder: TMPGenc 12a
* SVCD or xSVCD cuz I use 352x480 - - hint: greatly speeds encoding
time, see above times!

My System specs:
----------------
* Athlon T-Brd 900mhz w/ pc133 128mb ram
* plus (above) specs

Anybody see "Mirror Mirror" ??? . . .and liked it? ? ?

Curious, if I had a 1.4g cpu or higher, would it be possible to do
real-time capture for this 1 hour capture and encode ?? he, he...

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: vhelp on 2001-12-11 18:13:57 ]</font>

[Xanadu]

I'm using the AIW Radeon myself and I'm GOD DAMN frustrated. Maybe someone in this thread can help me...

I've got a Dell Dimension 4300, 1.7GHz, 512MB RAM, 80GB HD running WinXP. When I cap using the software that comes with the card (I think I have Version 7.1), I drop frames like a mofo. Caping to AVI makes the cap look like it's recorded in slo-mo, caping to MPG gives a fluid video when the frames are there, but I'm dropping 30%+ frames. When I use AVI_IO I don't drop frames, but the AVI cap STILL looks like it's moving slow, like maybe 96% speed. Audio/video sync perfectly. Is there some tweak I need to do to make the video motion look smooth and natural, or am I expecting too much from this card?

John D.

[TIbrO]

That Radeon on a P4 system like that should not drop a single frame, dude. You're going to have to stick to coming here and probably start a new thread so people can help you figure out what is wrong with your system that is not letting you capture correctly.

I have a question, though. What codec do you use to capture to AVI? I would use PICVideo MJPEG set to 18, 19, or 20. AVI_IO and that codec let you make smooth captures that have a very low frame drop. I am talking like one frame dropped every 300 captured. Another thing you might want to do is disable the virtual memory pagefile, since you only have one hardrive. You have 512MB of RAMBUS, you should be fine.

[arasaki]

vhelp,

I downloaded the racecar svcd clip, it was pretty fast d/l about 70-90k/sec. I use netfirms myself, its pretty cool. I meant to ask you which program you used to *burn* the CD.. Nero? I wasn't aware TMPEGenc burns cds =P

Anyways, I switched to 352x480 resolution last night and captured 1hr30mins of video last night and reduced my frame drops in half (only get 75dropped/45mins now which is pretty good for this source I guess). However, the processing time is taking forever. Took all of last night (8hrs) to encode the first 45minutes. But maybe I'm using more filters than you on Virtualdub. I just do cropping, low temporal smoothing, and low smart smoothing. After that, I need another 8 hours on TMPEGEnc to do a 2pass VBR to encode to mpeg format!

Xanadu, DON'T use the software that comes with Radeon card. It's crappy and it stinks! You should just install the latest drivers for the card you can find on the ATI site. Go to http://www.rage3d.com/radeon/ and check it out. They have a good user guide and faqs about getting your Radeon up and running correctly using other software. I use Virtualdub to capture and it works like a charm. Another thing you should find out is what your hard drive speed is. Is it 5400rpm or 7200rpm? You want a 7200rpm drive for video capture, otherwise it will drop frames like crazy because your drive can't write fast enough. I wish I had a 1.7Ghz cpu.. hehehe

[N0SoopForU]

arasaki,

Smart Smoother is very CPU intensive and will more than likely double the time it takes to encode. Try disabling Smart Smoother(if you don't really need it) and I bet you'll see a drastic change in encoding time.

[vhelp]

arasaki,

First of all, I'm only on lunch right now, and am home (live 5min from work) so
i'll be darting out of here shortly - so, don't expect any fast replies till later on
this evening - should you add anther post here!

Anyways. . .

I've ben searching (about every day) for a new storage site. Found one last
night, started UPloading THAT new clip ("Match" and only on file made it, and
all the other files didn't!! Even tried seporate much smaller files, but no go!
they must have shut me off !! I'm suppose to have 50mb space, but haven't
even used 1mb. Tried again, a little while ago, but no files showed, and, well,
you can see my frustration. I'm not selling or using there site for storage, so
I'm not breaking any rules on there site. Well, anyways. . . . . . . . . . .

Xanadu, you didn't state what you were capping and at what res. ie,
704/720/352 x 480/240? ? ?
and other details about your capturing and setttings and encodings.

Tibro's right. . . you should NOT have any drops in frames, but you didn't say
what you're resolutions for capping were - 720x480? ? ? You could be taxing
your process due to insuficient system/mb/cpu/bios/video driver/capture driver
issues, etc. See if you can find some info to your left in the many guides
abaiable here, and go to http://www.rage3d.com or http://www.rage3d.com/radeon for more
info (tweaks and things) I admit, when I've gone there, I get lost. So, I don't
even bother. Its not all that organized. I went there to find solution to my
ATI Rage Fury Pro (agp) card, to get a the latest driver for it, but could not
find it, and/or was too mixed up in other driver(s) listing there. I was don-founded
by the mess and just GAVE UP. I now since, have fixed my problems, but would
have loved to D/L the latest driver this card just to see if it fixes some of the
bugs going on still, ie, when I move my mouse down in Taskbar, mouse will
dissapear and come back. Just cut to the chase and plot the drier somewhere,
and not here and there, but you choose which one. Dummy!

arasaki,
...must be your filters. I belive that the ones for (smart smoothing) and
(temporal smoothing), and (cropping) are taxing your encoding times,
and also the 2PASS - Screw it! unless you source is that bad!
Or, are you trying to in addition to quality, fit on one disk?
In my prev. encoding projects/processes, it used to take me 7 to 8 hours
only, for (resizing) 640x480 to 480x480, and (sharp) and (deinterlace)
and then finally frameserving to TMPG. Then I brought it down from the
640x480 to 352x480. Encoding times barely decreased still, but did some
anyways. My latest capture and encoding process (see my website) has
ben revised and (IMO) IMPROVED dramatically. Did a cap yesterday eveing
of Star Tre-O "Mirror, Mirror" and the whole encoding process too 2hr:52mn
I was able to burn to cd and then start my next capture, this time of
Star Trek-V "Time and Again" and the encoding (finished laste night) took
2hr:56mn to complete! I love these numbers now. Sure beats the pants off
my previous 8 hours, sometimes 12 hours to encode a 1 hour episode.
I love it, I love it, I love it...!
I'm not saying that my encodes are DVD quality (though sometimes I can
sure kid myself, he, he...) but I am and will say that NOT ONLY is it VHS
quality, but better!! Yes, better than VHS quality.
arasaki, you said that you D/L a clip (or two?) What did you think of the
quality? Please let me know. And, if you haven't, then D/L the rest and see
for yourself. You have FAST connect, ya bummmmmmm! I'm jelous.
Oh, and why don't you set you pc up and a web server, and instead, house
your clips on your hard drive, etc., etc.??? This is what I will be doing when
I get DSL or CABLE!!

Oh, I use Nero 5.5xxx to burn my CDs!!
To get past the FF/RW issues, I drag a file (SCANDAT.DAT) into the EXT
folder before I burn. Then, my FF/RW works fine in my Apex ad-500 and
ad-1500 players. Both these two units give off different quality playback.
But, I like them both. And, tmpg doesn't burn to cd. Don't remember stating
that.

Another thing, though my harddrive is 30g, it's speed is only 5400rpm, he, he...
But frame drop for me @ 352x480 is 7 - 10 per hour. No impact what-so-ever!
another he, he...

Well, you can visit my website (above icon) for more samples.

See you guys much later tonight!

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: vhelp on 2001-12-11 11:56:38 ]</font>

[mpack]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-12-11 11:15:20, arasaki wrote:
You want a 7200rpm drive for video capture, otherwise it will drop frames like crazy...
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

I believe that is an urban myth. What you really need is a UDMA64 drive (Ultra ATA), and a recent motherboard chipset that also supports UDMA64, and you need W98SE or later to take advantage of it. You also need to remember to actually enable DMA for the HD, as Win disables it by default.

What matters for capture is sustained data transfer rate and cpu utilisation - this is optimized by using DMA; within reason the speed the disk rotates at doesn't really matter.

[Xanadu]

Well, I'm trying to cap for DVD, so I tried both 720x480 and 640x480 with nearly identical results.

I'll check that Rage3d site out, but doesn anyone know how to tweak an XP system? I can't find where you set the HD to DMA, or where you set system optimization. I'm beginning to wonder if I should revert back to Win98SE, the only thing XP seems to be good for is eliminating the 4GB ceiling, and since I use AVI_IO I don't need to worry about it anyway...

John D.

[biggdogg]

anybody know why the quality when i convert to vcd is not as good as when i start out from vhs. using ati all in wonder card mmc 7.2. picture looks great when im recording but not that good finished using nero to burn it..when i did a 2min clip it looked great but when i did a longer one the movie jumps or hesitates i guess thats frame drop not sure .........help

[arasaki]

mpack, thanks for clearing that up.

biggdogg, sorry can't help you unless you give more details.

I have another question for everyone. Is there another way to specify aspect ratio in the TMPEGenc advanced setting other than "full screen"? If I have a 480x480 encoded avi for SVCD, do I set the Source Aspect Ratio to "1:1 (VGA)" and the Video Arrange Method to "Full Screen (keep aspect ratio)"? I know it works if I just use "Full screen" without the keep aspect ratio, but this gets annoying when I try to play it on computer and get the aspect ratio messed up resizing the windows. What settings do you all use for burning SVCDs?

[Shabubu]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-12-11 12:51:57, mpack wrote:
<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-12-11 11:15:20, arasaki wrote:
You want a 7200rpm drive for video capture, otherwise it will drop frames like crazy...
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

I believe that is an urban myth. What you really need is a UDMA64 drive (Ultra ATA), and a recent motherboard chipset that also supports UDMA64, and you need W98SE or later to take advantage of it. You also need to remember to actually enable DMA for the HD, as Win disables it by default.

What matters for capture is sustained data transfer rate and cpu utilisation - this is optimized by using DMA; within reason the speed the disk rotates at doesn't really matter.

</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

It wll be easier to get them to look for UDMA66 Though I can say that with prices the way they are you might as well get a nice big 7200 drive.. and go SCSI

[vhelp]

I also want to note to those that aren't aware. . .
Please don't be under the impression that if you get everything just right,
that is, use the same capture card I use, maybe even the video card,
and cpu, etc., and then you go to capture a VHS tape, only to fine out
that the qualtiy is not matching what I have posted at my website.
Cause it doesn't work that way. What I have posted at my website are
captures I did from a Satalette source. Satalette happens to be a little
more cleaner than a Cable source, though I've never actually capped
from Cable. I'd like to, just to see its results.
Don't expect your VHS captures to match my sample clips. Last thing I
want to hear is... "How come my caps aren't coming out like yours?"
..."I did everything the same way as you!"
Unfortunately, I don't have any sample clips from VHS on my website.
But, I am thinking about do this. But, I'm not so sure that anyone
here would be interested in the results, so. . . just to put you guys
out of your mizery!

Some may be curious why I don't cap at 480x480 (which I can do)
but my answer simply is:
* don't need to, as 352x480 is just as good.
* 480x480 (or SVCD) will only be resized down to 352x480 anyways,
so you can see why you're justing "killing" yourself over nothing when
you encode (and resize for some) to SVCD res.
* encoding times for a 1 hour of video is very quick (for me) these
days, vs what it used to be in the past, like 8 hours or more, vs my
now 3 hours (or less)

Question**, if someone offered, I'll give you $15 for doing 1 1/2 hours work
minus tax, etc $5 bucks. . .
and, another offers your $10 for 1 hours work (tax-free), which would you pick?
So, why are you capping at such higher res. and working EXTRA hard and
LONG for your SVCDs ??
Now, sometimes, depending on the source you are capping, it helps just
a tad in quality to go the highest you can. I belive in that and have stated
that somewhere's here in this forum, BUT, for my projects, 352x480 works
out fine, being that the source is Satalette and clean signal. No need to
work my cpu sooo hard and sooo long for the SAME results!

** at least this made sense to me, he, he... I was aiming for an anyligy.
sorry my spelling sucks big time!


------------------------------------------------
. . .revised web site

[biggdogg]

what i meant was when i was done with the vcd i thought it would be alotclearer than it was when i was wathing it record the picture was real nice so i thought it would come out the same way....im using ati all in wonder radeon mmc 7.5 and using nero to burn so is ther a better program or other stuff that will give me qaulity thats what im looking for as is all of us also since i recorded from an anolog camcorder should i play the tape from the c corder or take the tape out and use the vcr as i am now does that matter?

[vhelp]

biggdogg,

No, it won't look the same (as you see it in your window) after you encode it.
Weather you watch it on your tv screen inside a window or through TMPG's
window (when you're encoding an AVI)

[mpack]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-12-11 17:04:16, arasaki wrote:
do I set the Source Aspect Ratio to "1:1 (VGA)" and the Video Arrange Method to "Full Screen (keep aspect ratio)"? I know it works if I just use "Full screen"
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

"Full Screen" is the correct setting - the "keep aspect ratio" part means that it will stretch either the height or width of the image to fit either the height or width of your tv, but it won't fit both if it means changing the aspect ratio. The fact that your PC player can't show MPEGs in their correct (TV) aspect ratio is a problem with your player, not with your encoder settings.

I suggest you d/l the freeware Sasami player (I don't have the link handy but you could try the links or tools areas of this site). This does a very good job of playing MPEG2s with correct handling of aspect ratio, interlacing, keeping audio in sync, navigating within the video etc.

[jfebus]

Hi All,

Is there any advantage in capturing vhs in 352x480 instead of 352x240? Can I create a VCD using 352x480?

Regards,

Jose

[arasaki]

Thanks for the tip mpack.

jfebus, from what I've read around here, capturing at 352x480 then resizing down to 352x240 will give you better looking video than a straight 352x240 capture.

Yes, you can create a VCD at 352x480 resolution, but it is not "standard" VCD format and is classified as XVCD.