VHS quality is NOT POSSIBLE with VCD

[AndyWatkins]

Mojo,

I tried VCD same as you and it's just not much good. can't see the point of bothering. tried for a few weeks and decided to stop wasting my time. I shall wait 6 months until the DVD-writter war is over, buy the winner for a few hundred quid and copy all my dvtapes to DVD which is going to be so much superior to VCD there isn't any point bothering with VCD.

I did wonder about SVCD but use Adaptec EasyCD creator to burn CD's and it doesn't do SVCD. I am going to download a copy of ulead movie thingy free for 30 days to try SVCD and minidv on CD to see what the quality is like just out of interest. But I will almost certainly just wait for a DVD-writer.

As everyone on this forum probably has a computer, and DVD-writers are already available, far superior to VCD, and far more compatible with houshold DVD players than SVCD why don't we all just give up and buy a DVD writer!

If anyone sees the gapping hole in my logic, please explain, I'd be interested to here where I've missed the point (highly likely!!)

Andy

[fspta]

I have been reading posts regarding VHS->VCD and I have been trying the different ideas flying around. My objective is to capture my home made VHS movies of the kids onto a CD (I do not care for compatibility: XVCD/SVCD is ok). Almost every post refers to "...now SVCD is another story....". Is it possible to capture and encode VHS to SVCD and produce at least the same quality as a VHS. If so, can someone tell me share his settings!!! I have been trying (with MMC and Vdub) and no luck!!!!

I am using:
AIW 128 PRO AGP card with 32MB
PIII 733MHZ, 128MB
30 GIG hardwrive (7200 RPM)
MMC 7.5 installed and Vdub with wrapper.
Tgenc.

TIA

[Macros746]

First of all, it is never possible to copy from a source file and have the end file be of equal or superior quality unless you are doing a digital transfer (i.e. ripping DVD to Hardrive or disc to disc copying of VCD) But it is very possible to have great quality Captures on SVCD or VCD. I have an AIW with MMC 7.5. Try capturing with MMC or with Virtual Dub to the MJEG codec (quality setting 18). Many people prefer the Huffy codec but I really think that TMPGenc encodes MJEG better. Anyway, capture at 352 x 480 (I am assuming NTSC TV here...if I'm wrong just change to PAL standards) if your videotape is homemade (i.e. recorded from TV by you) and cap at 640 x 480 if you have a commercial Videotape. (I won't go into the long explanation but basically capturing to a higher resolution for broadcast is overkill (I know there are many who disagree here) capturing to a slightly higher res. is desirable for commercial Videotapes). Then use a resize filter in VD and whatever other filters you feel necessary (you may want to mess with some of the color filters to get the colors as vivid as in the source) then frameserve. Here you have two options....frameserve straight to TMPGenc and make a VCD (I recommend the Sharpness filter set to around 100...test the WYSIWYG preview to see your preference) or you can demultiplex the cap in Virtualdub and feed the video into CCE for a SVCD (see the excellent guides here and at www.doom9.net for help) then remultiplex with the sound file and burn as a SVCD. Neither the SVCD or the VCD will have superior quality to the source file but both of these will get you VERY good results. It really depends on how much of a stickler you are. The VCD option is certainly easier and, if you don't mind XVCD then upping the bitrate can help immesurably. If you want to use MPEG 1 and XVCD then you may want to try capturing to 640 x 480 and resizing to 480 x480 when you unlock the VCD template. This all sounds very complex but, if you read the guides and ask for help, it really isn't. Good luck.

Macros

[KSJ]

Mojo,

I tried VCD same as you and it's just not much good. can't see the point of bothering. tried for a few weeks and decided to stop wasting my time. I shall wait 6 months until the DVD-writter war is over, buy the winner for a few hundred quid and copy all my dvtapes to DVD which is going to be so much superior to VCD there isn't any point bothering with VCD.

If you only tried for a few weeks, no wonder you didn't get any good results. I was told when I first started attempting to make VCDs last autumn that it would be a 6 to 18 month process to get a result I was happy with. In that time, I have had to go back to the drawing board repeatedly. I consider myself lucky that this past weekend, in my fifth month of working on it, I managed an encode I consider to be satisfactory, which is to say slightly better than SP speed VHS. I can in all honesty say that VHS quality IS possible with VCD--one encoder I know produces VCDs and SVCDs that have fooled my roommate into thinking he was watching a DVD at first glance. At closer scrutiny, you can tell it's not quite THAT good, but it's MUCH better than anything you can find on VHS.

Now, understand that what I am attempting to do with VCDs is not perhaps what you are trying to do. I am a collector and I enjoy archiving certain of my favorite television shows, because it takes too long for them to come out on DVD and/or video. Problem is, I also want good quality, and so I have been recording at SP speed. When you think of most shows running 5-7 years at 22 eps a year, that's anywhere from 50-75 tapes. Large, ugly tapes that clutter up everything, don't have very good quality, wear out, jam machines, blah, blah, blah. I got a PVR so I could copy to tape at first generation quality and still edit out commercials, but that meant I could go from 2 eps per tape to 3--still not a great solution. On VCD, I can fit more episodes into a smaller space (even at 1 ep per disc, I can fit four discs in slimline cases in the same space as 1 VHS tape, and even more if I use CaseLogic folders instead of slimline cases) design custom labels that are more artful and attractive than row upon row of tape-spine labels, and in general keep things tidier and more attractive than they have been previously.

And as I said, capturing off my PVR, I have now, after five months of effort, made an encode that looks better than SP VHS. But it took months--and I got lucky for it to take a few months as it did. It took hundreds of hours of effort, frustration, testing, retesting, and completely scrapping my entire process and trying a different approach. The approach I finally came up with is one I found neither on this site nor came by from any suggestions from those who took the time to share their knowledge and experience with me, but one I came up with on my own through trial and error. One mentor told me encoding is an artform, not just a science. It's not just as simple as capture, edit, convert. Everyone has a different way of doing it, because everyone has a different hardware and software setup, and that's just the way it is.

I did wonder about SVCD but use Adaptec EasyCD creator to burn CD's and it doesn't do SVCD. I am going to download a copy of ulead movie thingy free for 30 days to try SVCD and minidv on CD to see what the quality is like just out of interest. But I will almost certainly just wait for a DVD-writer.

My experience is that Ulead isn't all it's cracked up to be, and certainly not worth the money they charge for it. Editing in Ulead MediaStudio Pro VideoEditor led to my samples being out of sync and halting/jerking, and the encode quality of the output video was not great. I got better results with TMPGenc. Maybe that will change when Ulead releases the new MPEG encoder they're rumored to be working on, rather than using Ligos, but for now, the finished result had a lot of flaws and Ulead didn't offer nearly the options I needed.

As everyone on this forum probably has a computer, and DVD-writers are already available, far superior to VCD, and far more compatible with houshold DVD players than SVCD why don't we all just give up and buy a DVD writer!

Because personally, I'm not willing to wait a couple more years before starting to get rid of these blasted video tapes, and it's going to be at least two years before DVD recorders--and DVD media--come down into my price range. And if you're talking about a PC DVD writer, then I believe you still need to go through the whole capture and encode process, which will lead to the same questionable results and trial-and-error process you wish to avoid now, and if you're talking about stand-alone home entertainment DVD recorders, considering they're presently double the price of PC recorders, it's going to be just that much longer before they become priced for the average consumer.

If anyone sees the gapping hole in my logic, please explain, I'd be interested to here where I've missed the point (highly likely!!)

Andy

Mainly that it's just going to be a long time before DVD recording becomes consumer-friendly for your average person. But in answer to the primary question here of whether a home-produced VCD can be comparable to VHS, the answer is "and then some."

Try download one of the Muffle encodes from the alt.binaries.multimedia.buffy-v-slayer.repost group some time if you want to see just how good a VCD encode can be. Aside from the slightly tweaked aspect ratio due to the anamorphic widescreen of the BBC broadcast he captured from, they are, quite simply, stunning.

KSJ

[dumwaldo]

- 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!

Mojo

ok this in a nutshell is where you went wrong. if you want to make VCD's sure the template will work but if you want to make nice looking VCD's you need to use some filters. this will dramatically increase your encoding time but it will also dramatically increase your quality.

i captured a 30 second commercial from broadcast TV using the huffy codec. i then took that commercial and ran it through TMPGEnc with the default VCD template. the result was noticably lower quality. i then opened the settings dialog and on the advanced tap i added and configured some filters. the filters i used were noise reduction and sharpen edge. i was satisfied with my color saturation and overall tones but if i were not i would use the custom color correction and not the basic color correction.

all of these filters have a prieview window in the configuration setup so it is remarkable easy to set them up for your paticular encode. not all files require the same levels of filtering. this is something that you will have to play with on your own and figure out. this is the difference between an encoder and a good encoder. anybody can point and click and make a VCD but to make a good VCD you need to adjust settings and not just use defaults.

now i also mentioned that this slows the encoding process a great deal. converting my huffy avi to VCD with no filters was less than 2 minutes. converting the same thing with filters took a little over 10 minutes. if your looking for the quick easy way VHS wins hands down but it certainly is possible to make a standard VCD that is as clear and sharp as a VHS tape. infact because you have the ability to adjust and filter the video as you re-encode to your final MPG you can actually produce a better quality VCD than VHS if you are working with a dirty signal.

now just one last thing... i noticed the number of 20% quality improvment thrown around to bring VCD up to acceptable standards... well IMHO the the noise reduction filter alone can result in a 20% increase in quality. you might want to try enabling high quality mode and raise the value in the still picture and range feilds.

i dont know much about interlacing either but i do know that anything over 240 pixels (288 for PAL) needs to be interlaced so i have to assume a DVD is interlaced. you might need to use the deinterlace filter as well but i really havent got a clue what method you would use within that filter. it seems this advice was already offered by SatStorm who seems to know about interlacing much better than i do.

all in all if you cant get a 20% improvment over the default template using filters then you may indeed be better off making VHS tapes.

peace out,
dumwaldo

[kinneera]

Just a couple of other thoughts on the DVD-R later vs. VCD/SVCD now question. If you are aware of the specifications for DVD, have the luxury of a DVD-player that accepts non-standard VCD/SVCDs, and exercise some care in how you author your VCD/SVCDs, you can make the odds of your VCD/SVCDs collection being portable to DVD in the future very high. Thus, in my humble opinion, you can ultimately have the best of both worlds. Perhaps an analogy will be helpful. Since a typical movie for me on SVCD fits in 2 discs, 3 at the most (80 min), the total amount of space a movie occupies is ~1.6-2.4GB. A single layer DVD can store 4.3GB. Thus, sometime in the future, I could fit 2 SVHS quality movies on a single disc. The analogy then, is to the concept of using LP or EP mode on VHS to accomplish the same thing. But of course, SVHS quality is far more appealing than LP or EP quality VHS, to put it lightly.

Also, for shorter video, such as recordings of half-hour TV shows, there is a certain physical convenience to using CDs over DVDs in terms of labelling and locating a particular episode. If there are one or two episodes on a disc, identification and retrieval is easier than searching through 10 or 12 episodes on one disc. Maybe a little superficial reason, but still a matter of personal preference that might appeal to some people (like me). It doesn't seem like broadcast quality is really good enough to justify DVD (at least in the NTSC part of the world) for this endeavor, anyway.

[ejai]

Break through all this technical mumbo jumbo and it all comes down to what the eyes can see. I agree whole heartedly with mojo that vcd is not equal to vhs in any video quality compacity except when the vhs gets old. I've been doing this now for about 2 years and have not found anything that creates a vcd that looks as good a freshly bought VHS tape.

The only thing reasonable to vhs quality is svcd. I've spent literally over a thousand dolllars searching for that holy grail that would produce vhs quality vcds. I also purchased several professionally mastered vcds that looked great but none came close to the clarity of the vhs counterpart.

I admit certain scenes on the vcd looked just as good or sometimes better than the vcd version, but this was far and few between. I'm now convinced to get the quality I desire I would have to get a DVD burner. I am a perfectionist when it comes to video, this makes me very critical when judging video.

I've tried software and hardware hoping to believe that there was something out there that would do the job but found imitations never the real thing. I feel most people have become comfortable with the lack of quality coming from vcds, while others know this can't be all there is.

With all the tech talk and theories abound the truth is VCD can never be better in qualtity than VHS. It might come close or vhs might degrade in time but under any other circumstances the VHS tape has much clearer and sharper quality.

I'm not searching anymore for answers, my search is over and DVD is the future and rightly so.

Ernest