Getting decent quality in a single layer...

[AdamJosiah]

I recently bought "Roxio Easy VHS to DVD" for backing up those old VHS's. The program is easy to use with lots of features (although rather sluggish and lazily programmed). It captures everything in MPEG2 and has MyDVD built in. The problem I'm running into is that I can only get about 1 hour of high quality VHS footage on a single layer DVD. Using Low quality (Extra long Play setting) to fit the 2 hours I require all on one layer makes it look pretty crappy, and I'm not even that picky. The source file is approx. 8 GB, which means I need a way to cut it in half and still have it look half decent. Any ideas?

[redwudz]

While it's true that you can only get about an hour of 'high' quality video on a DVD, you should still be able to get about 2 hours of 'good' quality video on a SL disc. It mostly has to do with bitrate. A bitrate calculator can tell you the required bitrate for a video of a specified length and a target size.

With VHS the problem may be noise. Trying to encode noise wastes a lot of bitrate. I would check your encoded file with something like MediaInfo and see what the bitrate of the audio and video are. Here's what a bitrate calculator shows for a two hour DVD:




If your encoded video shows similar settings, then more bitrate probably won't help. Maybe the quality of the VHS cap is the problem.