VHS quality is NOT POSSIBLE with VCD

[mojo]

After months of testing, this is my conclusion.

I went through several capture devices and LOTS of tweaking in TMPenc, looking for the holy grail of making VCDs that were equal to VHS - but I could never make a disc that looked as 'good' as VHS.

Yet many people here claimed they were doing just that!

So I tried the ultimate test.

Most of the debates about quality came from what cap device people were using - the better the cap card, the better the final result.

So, I decided to bypass this entirely and went and got myself the best possible source material - a ripped DVD.

I copied a FULL FRAME scene from a DVD onto VHS, and then ripped the very same scene and burned it to a VCD so I could compare the 2. Theoretically, this should result in the best quality you can get from a VCD, since the source is pristine and 100% digital - no capture devices at all.

The result? VHS wins. VCD exhibited a noticably softer picture, lacking the fine detail the VHS recording had (if you can call VHS detailed).

That being said, the VCD picture was still good, and the format is much more convienient and long-lasting than VHS, but if you're looking to make exact dupes of your VHS collection (as many of us are) you simply won't be able to do it, no matter HOW good your capture device is.

Of course, SVCD and XVCD are a different story - but neither of these formats give you the recording time or compatability that VCD does.

Can anyone tell me my test is flawed??


Mojo

[kwag]

No Mojo. You're dead on right!.

A good VHS will look much better that any standard home made VCD.

The only problem is that the VHS will wear out it's quality with every pass.

Not to mention the jitter of VHS and drop-outs on the tape. This doesn't happen on a VCD.

But I have some commercial VCD's that I bought from eurekamovies.com, and believe me, they look just like VHS. Of course you are talking about very high end hardware encoders with source material higher that a ripped DVD.

That's what makes the difference.

[Vejita-sama]

Well the real problem is the source. If you are using a captured VHS source you going to lose some quaility in the capture. Compare a VHS tape to a VCD from a DVD rip

[myke]

I'm not saying your wrong because it doesn't matter I'll do my vcd's anyways but which MPEG encoder did you use it may make a difference. As to capturing from a analog source into a digital you're always going to have loss just as going from a analog to analog(vhs-vhs). In ten years will your tapes still play the same as they do now the vcd's will most likely.

[RFontenot]

mojo,

This debate has been going on for a long time. The University of California at Berkley has some detailed info on the subject:

http://bmrc.berkeley.edu/research/mpeg/faq/mpeg2-v38/faq_v38.html#tag53

You didn't mention what decoder you were using, or how you encoded your VCD. Some settings that I have found to make a visual difference when using TMPGEnc:

Perform Inverse Telecine (IVTC) on film source (DVD or Video) and record using NTSCFilm template at 23.976fps. The lower fps gives you an effect 20% boost in bitrate, making for a noticably better picture.

Set Motion Search Precision to High Quality. This significantly increases encoding time compared to Normal quality, but you get a noticeably better picture. Using Highest Quality drastically increases encoding time, but doesn't improve the picture much over what you get with High Quality.

The differences between a well made VCD vs VHS are probably more subjective than objective. A well made VHS tape may initially have a slightly more detailed picture than a well made VCD, but if you were to play that tape a few hundred times and then compare it again to the VCD, you would probably see a drastic difference in picture quality.

RF

[mojo]

Vegita and the others:

Please read my post again - I DID USE A RIPPED DVD for my test!

I copied a scene from a DVD to VHS,and the ripped the same scene and burned it to a VCD. When I compared the two by A/B switching, it was clear that the VHS tape was sharper.

I used TMPgenc for the encoding.

The difference was not slight - it was immediately obvious that the VCD was softer. Even with a $100,000 encoder, you're not going to see a huge difference.


Mojo

[RFontenot]

You still haven't said HOW you configured TMPGEnc to encode your VCD. Configuration is important. I can beat any VCR in a VCD/VCR test by simply setting the VCR to record in SLP mode.

All things being equal, you probably can get a slightly better picture quality with videotape than with VCD, at least initially. However, that difference not so noticable when you are sitting 10' to 15' away from the screen.

RF

[Vejita-sama]

I read your post. Did you read what I said I'm saying the VCD can be equal to VHS quaility. But it depends on your source. If your source is a captured VHS then you are GOING TO LOSE QUAILITY just capturing it.

Going from analog -> digital will cause a quality lost. This lost will be seen in the encoded MPEG.

Basically you're saying: VHS -> VCD w/o lost of quality is impossible. Well no s&it That's like saying VHS -> VHS copy without lost of quaility is impossible However, with a good (eg. digital) source, then VCD will be equal or better than VHS.

I think we're saying the same thing but argueeing over the syntex.

[mojo]

I configured TMPGenc with a pre-set config for VCD. I tried many different parameters and filtering/no filtering, none of which made a dramatic difference. If you know some magic settings to give me an apparent 20% increase in resolution, by all means spill it!

And my test viewing was done about 8 feet away from a well calibrated 27" TV.

I have nothing against VCD - I love the format. But I started out thinking it was possible to make discs that looked equal to VHS, and that's simply not possible. VHS is still about 20% sharper and easily noticable.

If I wasn't concerned about compatability, I would try XVCD, which did look better, but it can only play in a handful of players.

[Devnull]

I've been doing a lot of captures from tv recently. Out of all of them, only one has came out with quality better than VHS, near broadcast. Was I ever able to duplicate that effect? nope

[SatStorm]

There are many parameters here to talk about....

One of them is INTERLACE

VHS has Interlace output, while VCD has progressive.
That makes a HUGE difference on TV Sets!
Remember that progressive looks like crap on mainstream Television Sets!

The technical true is:

The VCD resolusion of 352 X 288 (or 240 for NTSC) is equal with VHS resolution... That by itself don't make VCD equal in quality with VHS.
IF mpeg 1 had interlace output, then VCD could be equal to VHS, even a bit better. But it hasn't, so VHS looks better. It's not better it's look better!

The only way to success equal VHS quality in VCD resolution/file size, is to go xSVCD/D4 DVD. For xSVCD you are out of standards. For D4 DVD we simply don't know really yet. There are more DVD resolutions than 720 X 576, but only D2 (352 X 576) is confirmed untill now! Looks like D4 resolution is a standard too for DVD, and probably exist just for that reason: VHS to DVD conversion. Many tests shows that D4 resolution (352 X 288 - 240 for NTSC) does play on many DVD standalone players, but that don't make it standard (It is like xVCD. Most standalone play them, but that don't make it standard!)

Do this test:
Capture VHS at 352 X 576 (480 NTSC) or (if your card don't support that resolution) 704 X 576 (480 NTSC).
Now, encode it to xSVCD with VCD parameters. How you do that?
Load the VCD template. Unlock it and set audio to 192kb/s, output file to mpeg 2, INTERLACE (not progressive) and use CQ_VBR 1150/100% (You low the audio bitrate to give it to video, because interlace output is more in lengh than progressive). Go to filters and set "de - interlace odd fild" (No adaptive/double etc, just de - interlace odd field). Set also "Top field first" on the advance menu
Hit encode and when finished burn a cdrw for your test with the produced mpeg. If your DVD supports xSVCD, you gonna see your mpeg. Suprise suprise! The picture is equal with a VHS tape, produced by a VCR on the default settings...
Default VCR Settings? Yes! You see, VCR has filters and technology to make the tapes looks better. Sharp filter, shoft filter, TBC, etc...
If you want to see the true VHS quality, set on your VCR all those settings to off. Well, that is the true 352 X 288 VHS. And the picture is equal with the 352 X 288 xSVCD you made...

Now, if you want sharpness, smoothness etc on your xSVCD, that is another issue. It is possible, but not easy.

[vitualis]

I copied a scene from a DVD to VHS...

This is the flaw... You only copied a scene. VCD and VHS are inherently different enough that you can't really judge them with only one scene. For my experience with many many rips, VCDs on average have about the same video quality as good VHS. I'm sure that you could find some scenes where VHS looks BETTER, but as others have stated, even "pristine" VHS will suffer from some analogue artifacts, etc.

Also as others (?and even you) have pointed out, VHS degrades noticably with time while VCDs (if treated with care) will not. My VCD collection on average definitely looks better than my VHS one, for example.

However, you do bring up an important point -- that VCDs may not necessarily look as good in passing as the VHS equivalent -- especially a new one. If I go buy the VHS version of "Shrek", it may well look better (on average) than a DVD rip to VCD the first time I play it... However, whether this remains true after multiple viewings is less certain...

Regards.

[dphirschler]

I'd have to agree with mojo, that VCD, even at its best, is noticeably softer than VHS. I don't know about the rest of you here, but I always have recorded at SP mode on my VCR. That produces a very nice quality recording.

That being said, I have still produced some jaw dropping quality VCDs. The first one that really impressed my was my first DVD rip of Shrek, using a new (at the time) technique I had just learned called "inverse telecine". Now I am sold. Inverse telecine is the way to go.

One thing I've not seen addressed is the amount of noise in most VHS recordings. I don't know if it is the grain on the magnetic tape or what, but it greatly degrades the quality of a VHS picture in my opinion. This noise is almost always easily removed without losing quality (and in fact gaining quality) on most VHS captures. This combined with the progressive picture on a VCD give it superior performance to a VHS tape, even with the noticeably softer picture.

However, if you are just counting pixels, then VHS has higher resolution... even if a good 25% of the pixels in any given frame are 10% off in color due to noise.

Lastly, something I just have to comment on is the assumed "fact" that VHS resolution is 352x240. This is just hogwash. From what I've read, the horizontal resolution is not a hard figure, but somewhere in the realm of 352-480. This fits my own experience. I used to capture at 640, but now capture at 480 and see no real difference. On the other hand, from personal experience, I can state for a fact that the vertical resolution is 480 (NTSC). It seems crazy to me for anybody to suggest that the vertical resolution is only 240 when we are all aware of interlacing and the resulting doubled vertical resolution which is plainly visible on a ___x480 capture.


Darryl

[Tommy]

It could be as simple as Mojo's DVD player is crap. 8)

[Faceman101]

not much more can be said than what has been already but when they say a DVD-Rip, they mean digital DVD -> digital VCD. not digital DVD -> analog VHS -> digital VCD. I used to be a VCD nut, but after seeing some SVCDs my mind has changed. IMO VCD = VHS (after multiple viewings) SVCD = higher than VHS, below DVD. Hong Kong has a huge VCD business so there must be something about them that they like (maybe they have smaller TVs).

[mc4_idea]

Hong Kong has a huge VCD business so there must be something about them that they like (maybe they have smaller TVs).

There are a few reasons for this. Maybe the most important one is the quality. Some of the more recent VCDs I've seen out of Hong Kong are just super looking. I'm amazed at what they can do at that bit rate. It depends on the company. Some of them make amazing quality stuff, and others just make crap.

Another reason for the popularity is Asia was into the optical discs long before mainstream America was. VCD was seen as an affordable step down from LDs.

And then there are computers. The format was popular with college students, who couldn't afford VCRs, but needed computers for school.

VCD players are also very cheap, as are the discs. 80% of the people in Hong Kong have a VCD player, and discs can be purchased for $5-10 US. Bootleg of current movies can be purchased for next to nothing.

VCD offered two languages. Most VCDs had a mono track of Cantonese and Mandarin on one disc (the left in right channels). Retailers could reach both customers with one format that didn't take up a lot of space.

[vitualis]

It seems crazy to me for anybody to suggest that the vertical resolution is only 240 when we are all aware of interlacing and the resulting doubled vertical resolution which is plainly visible on a ___x480 capture.

There are a few complication factors. The main reason why capturing at x480 looks better than say at x240 is because of fields. Many capture cards will throw away a whole field if you capture at the lower resolution. But that doesn't necessarily mean that VHS has an effective vertical resolution of 480. In suggesting this it would mean that you could define 480 lines on VHS which you cannot.

Regards.

[Bstansbury]

Boy this has turned into a real B.S, session... Very interesting though. I wonder if anyone will learn anything out of all of this. Let's hope there is still a chance.

Anyway,.. back to the opening statement by ------

I copied a FULL FRAME scene from a DVD onto VHS, and then ripped the very same scene and burned it to a VCD so I could compare the 2. Theoretically, this should result in the best quality you can get from a VCD, since the source is pristine and 100% digital - no capture devices at all.
----------
This statement doesn't really tell us a lot and I think if you could expand on it in much more detail,.. we could all benefit.

Let me show you how confusing the statement is...

1. YOu copied a full frame scene from DVD to VHS. How did you copy it. I think later you said you Ripped the DVD. Then you had totally digital data on your system. Great. What program and with what setting did you use to get it to VHS. Did you just play the movie and record it the VHS on the fly? That is the assumption. Of course you could have used the "S" video out of your DVD player into an expensive S VHS recorder and captured it that way. Who knows. In reading you post, it seems you did the later, but it could have been via composite output to VCR which is the most likely. It might make a big difference.

2. Then you said you "Did" rip the DVD, which means you saved it to your hard disk in DVD format (what program did you use to Rip?) an then you "Burned" it to a VCD. Well someplace in there you had to use some kind of software to covert and compress the video into VCD format. What software, what did you use to resize it, what was the MPEG compression software, the settings, etc. All of these would greatly affect the quality of your converstion. Did you use inverse Telecine, and was there any filter settings throught conversion. Did you by mistake or otherwise have Deinterlace on or off?

3. Yes there was no capture device,.. but who knows what you were using for MPEG-1 compression and did you really use "Compliant" settings for frame rate, bit rate, etc. Tell us the settings. What encoder did you use to write the VCD, Nero, EasyCDcreator, ???. What CD-RW unit,... i.e., expensive or low cost.. Finally, you said that view the picture via A:B switch,.. therefore the output of your DVD player was connected to the TV by???...composite input while the VCR was connected via "S" video.???. I don't think you used an old style TV A:B coax switch to the TV input,..ugh&^%$#.

Anyway,.. I think I made my point. Until we have the "Real Detail", it would be hard to run a scientific test using a "Double Blind study".

Once we have all these answers, then we can determine if your conclusion were OK or if they were just 1 in "N" example. By the way,.. what kind of DVD or VCD player were you using... and does it really support VCD's.

This should add some fuel to this fire. :P

[mojo]

Ok I'll try to give as much detail as possible, but I believe that the vast majority of these parameters wouldn't result in much of a difference!

- I went composite out from my Sony 7000 (the original, still reference quality DVD player) to a very average VHS machine and copied the teaser (about 3 minutes ) of an original series Star Trek episode. Very crisp, very clear, and good, saturated colors.

- I then ripped the VOBs from the disc with Smart Ripper, and converted these to a project file with DVD to AVI.

- Next I loaded the project into TMPenc, and loaded the default template for Video CD. Totally standard. No filtering or anything else. I encoded the same 3 minutes.

Now, I'm no expert at this, but I imagine that this should result in pretty damn close to the best possible quality (normal) VCD you can make!

- I burned the disc with Nero 5.5, selecting the standard video CD template and wrote the disc on my LG 12X burner.

- It was also a wednesday at about 1am, and I believe there was a quarter moon. I may also have been wearing a dark green T shirt and shorts, so figure this into your quality equation as well!

Anyway, I popped the VCD into my Sony player, and ran it and the VHS tape in sync (more or less). I then switched between the 2 sources to compare the 3 minutes several times.

VHS was the clear winner - it was instantly obvious that the VCD was softer. Offhand, I'd say VHS was about 20% sharper.

Oh, and my TV is a 27" Panasonic, about 9 months old, and yes, I know how to calibrate it properly and adjust my contrast, brightness and sharpness with the appropriate test patterns.

The bottom line is, this was a fair test with reasonable quality equipment and very standard procedures. The only real variable I can see making any difference whatsoever are the settings in TMPenc, but changing those to any great degree would result in a non-compliant VCD that probably wouldn't play back in a lot of DVD players.

My goal (and that of many others) it to make a VCD that is equal to VHS in quality. While many repeatedly say this is possible, I believe my test confirms that it is not.

Most people say that TMPenc is a very good program and gives you excellent results. There are other encoders out there you can use on your PC, but will they result in a VCD that is 20% sharper? Possibly, but from what I have read the difference between encoders is marginal at best.

Now, as I have said, I still love the VCD format. It may not have the resolution of VHS, but it's easier to manage, doesn't degrade over time and is just - cool.

But for people like myself who thought they might be able to convert their VHS tapes to VCD and have a result that was fairly close to the original, it just won't do! The answer seems to be either burn SVCDs or wait for DVD burning to be a lot cheaper...

As always, I would love to hear anything I can try that would dramatically alter the results of my test.


Mojo

[dphirschler]

Many capture cards will throw away a whole field if you capture at the lower resolution. But that doesn't necessarily mean that VHS has an effective vertical resolution of 480. In suggesting this it would mean that you could define 480 lines on VHS which you cannot.

I don't see why not. How could I capture 480 lines if there weren't 480 lines there? If there were only 240 lines, then at 480 I would see the same 240 lines each one doubled.

[vitualis]

As a matter of fact you won't.

Each frame is divided into TWO fields -- and the TWO fields contain independent visual information.

You cannot fully capture the information on both fields on many capture cards WITHOUT setting the capture vertical resolution to 480 (at 240, it throws away one of the fields completely).

However, each field doesn't really contain 240 lines of discrete video information. VHS you remember is analogue. The information is presented in the 240 lines per field but VHS wouldn't actually be able to define that degree of detail (i.e., you cannot have 480 alternating black and white lines say on VHS).

For example, say I play a VCD on a VCD player and capture the video using composite. Similarly, if I capture at 480 vertical resolution, it will look better than capturing at 240. Does that mean the VCD has a vertical resolution of 480?

Regards.

[magelucid]

Two things to add here...

I have also purchased VCD's from commercial sources and they have been pretty damn good. Better than any I've downconverted from DVD or tried to capture with my Radeon. I still have VCD's left over from when I had a Phillips CD-i and they seem to play even better on my SanyoDWM370, try that with any 7yr old videotape =P

If you use some of the tips and tricks these guys listed above you can make slightly better looking VCD's over VHS, it also depends on your visual leniency.. I can take some pixelization here and there, what really stands out to me is nasty dot crawl, and other vhs defects.

One surefire way a VCD won't last longer than a dvd though is if you label them with Neato labels... These things must have acid for the adhesive.. I've lost a good 22 VCD's to those labels. Even on CD's they approved for use. I never label cd's anymore, even with a sharpie.. I always label the jewel case, insert, or put a label over the plastic in a cd album.

If you're not too terribly uptight then SVCD hands down looks better. Anyone that downloaded the LOTR dvd screener can tell you that! ;)

[hilltech]

8) Try this, I've been capturing directly from my directv reciever via s-video and have been getting results that are as good as vhs.

[LavaJockey]

WHAT DO YOU MEAN VCD AIN'T AS GOOD AS VHS?! I captured and encoded a VHS tape on VCD and I played it back on my television (which is about 25 years old), and then I watched it (through my porch window) and the TV screen (which was about 30 feet away) proved that the VCD quality was EXACTLY THE SAME as the VHS source, despite the fact that the sun was glaring on the tube, and I wasn't wearing my contact lenses. Obviously you people aren't capturing or encoding correctly.

[sayler]

I'm relatively new to the VCD scene. I've only captured 30 or so videos on VCDs as opposed to over 2000 on VHS and SVHS aver a 20-year span.

VCD quality is better than my earliest VHS tapes at SP speed and comparable to recent SVHS recorded on non SVHS media. The image may sometimes be slightly softer but it is always entirely free from defects of deteriorated tape.

One thing I have noticed is a difference between players. Don't know whether there is a difference between decoder chips or what but the presence of artifacts and the magnitude of aliasing depends on the player.

I have a Pioneer DVD player and a late model JVC SVHS VCR and I'm doing most all future recording on VCDs.

But if I want the very best in quality at a reasonable media cost I use the DviX format and go to the inconvenience of playing the videos from the computer into the TV.

In any case as DVD media and recorder costs come down VHS will continue to fade into history just like cassette audio tapes.

[resnullius]

Well mojo, i can tell u 1 thing that did have an impact on the quality and it's something alot of ppl here seem to do and i can't undertand why u took the dvd's vob(mpeg) encoded it into avi and then encoded it into mpeg... that's 1 step too much. every time you convert something to a different format you lose quality. So your not giving your vcd an equal treatment... dvd 2 vhs = 1 change of format dvd 2 avi 2 vcd =3changes of format... do the math

[lnetzel]

You have to use HIGH QUALITY in TMPGenc... and definatlet do the Force GOP setting and Scan the damn file and use The blocknoise reducion.. that's standard man! Don't just load a template out of the blue! The flaw in your test is that you did'nt care about how you encoded the mpeg. you have been focus on the source all the time and sure that'
s important.. you can only make shit out of shit but if you use a DVD source then use the best settings in TMPGenc too...

[Macros746]

I'll have to agree that the default template in TMPGEnc is LESS sharp then a VHS of the same recording. However, I think using the sharpen filter in TMPGenc make a huge amount of difference. In the end, I would say that VHS still LOOKs a little better in 4:3 ratio movies but I say VCD take the cake in widescreen where the bits are more efficiently used.

Macros

p.s. People shouldn't jump on the guy's back. He did an honest test with default settings and found that he liked VHS better. Just becuase you disagree doesn't mean he is wrong.

p.p.s. that being said, I prefer VCD...the sound is FAR superior and I feel that my TMPGenc settings give me near enough to VHS quality that when I sit 10 feet away I can't tell a difference (hell, that being said there isn't a huge difference between VCD and DVD on my TV 10 feet away...color saturization is the main difference)

[lnetzel]

-> MOJO... try again using better settings in TMPGenc.. then tell us what you think! I can promise you'll get better result than you already have if you used the default settings. There are tons of documentation on this site on hwo to tweak the settings for best results.

[Shannafey]

Mojo,
I shoot video for a living, and have been a video collector for years. I totally agree with you. I have been transferring my old VHS tapes to vcd to extend their life and for more efficient storage capacity. Also, I like using cds much more than tape, but you are absolutely correct. I also have some store bought vcds, and they too, don't compare to VHS. I won't go to XVCD or SVCD for compatibility reasons. I have a Pioneer DV333, and like, Mojo, have tried many different options and settings and compression schemes. I have also used a $2000 card at work, which, makes for a better image, but still the same opinion.