VHS Capture Size Massive?

[donkey33]

Hi all,

Was asking questions at a forum I frequent but was referred here as there are more experts on the matter I've been told.

Had a good bunch of VHS tapes. Old sport tapes, family movies, etc. Probably around 50 or so at 3 hours each. Plan was to capture them all, spend time trimming and cropping and upload each individual section to my file server. A copy of them all would go to DVD's or an external HDD for backup purposes.

I had a copy of Cyberlink's PowerDirector which I thought would work fine. It has MPEG2 capture and my capture card (http://www.digitalnow.com.au/product_pages/Dual7164.html) has a hardware encoder although I didn't get the software with it so might not be using that.

Anyway, I've been capturing away using the DVD HQ profile provided with PowerDirector which captures at 720x576 and at 8000000 bitrate. Captures look fine. I've tried lower settings to see. Half resolution was bad, same resolution with lower bitrate was fine but the space saving wasn't too great so I stuck with full resolution and full bitrate.

The thing is, these capture sizes are huge. I'm not looking to put these on DVD so I don't need to squeeze them onto a disc but each disc is around 10-12 GB in size. At 50 discs, I need 500-600 GB in space just to house them on the server.

Now, that's not the issue. 2TB HDD's are very cheap these days but I want to know if this is the norm to try and keep 1:1 quality. Every setting and test I've done can compress the file down but I lose quality and that's the top priority.

So, is this normal? I mean the huge file sizes and if so, am I stuck with those kinds of sizes or is there some kind of compression I can do without losing a lot of quality? Capturing the same disc with the DVD HQ profile versus the same profile but with half the bitrate makes the quality very similar. Hardly noticeable drop but the file size really only reduced from 10GB to 8.5GB. Not that much really.

Thanks

[TJohns]

8 Mbps = 1 MByte per second ... simply crunch the numbers and 3 hr tape ~ 10.8 GB. If lowering the bitrate gives unacceptable results, your only other option is to switch to a better compression codec that will give a better result at lower rates.

[donkey33]

Thanks.

So pretty much, the file sizes are correct and I just find the same and that's it. Being new to this, different compression codecs are like a different language at the moment.

[2Bdecided]

DV is 13GB per hour. Uncompressed can be several times that. Be happy that 4GB per hour is giving you the quality you want

Cheers,
David.

[PuzZLeR]

When using MPEG-2, at 720x480, (720x576 in your part of the world) I use very similar file sizes to yours to capture VHS to get satisfactory results (to my eyes). You are on par. I would highly suggest not using anything less than 8mbps as you will get noticeable quality loss for most captures, especially more so if you're capturing live sports events (motion, interlacing, etc).

If I wanted to squeeze more quality per file size I'd look into another codec, but that invites other issues like editing, compatibility, problems with interlacing, PC resources, software, etc. for maybe a percentage of added compression when MPEG-2 is fully established in many areas despite maybe more bitrate demands.

Personally...meh... I wouldn't bother. I will bet these are precious memories for you too so why bother complicating things when, as you similarly notice, hard drive space just keeps getting more and more cheaper per GB?

What's funny is that some people here may say you should use even more file sizes, like using DV (as mentioned) or even lossless formats.

But if compression is your thing for relatively high quality with VHS, you're doing just fine using high-bitrate MPEG-2.

[PuzZLeR]

Just noticed you're doing some cropping - unlike trimming/joining, this needs a re-encode, and a loss of quality with any lossy format like MPEG-2.

Does P/D do the cropping during the capture? If so, then high-bitrate MPEG-2 is still a good option IMO as I explained in my last post, but if you need to re-encode the final result once more to MPEG-2, then you may want to consider capturing, if possible with P/D, to a lossless format first instead - then re-encode to high bitrate MPEG-2 in the end (maybe even with a better MPEG-2 encoder than what P/D might offer).

Regardless, in the end, if compression is what you want, high bitrate MPEG-2 is still the best option IMO.

[yoda313]

if compression is what you want, high bitrate MPEG-2 is still the best option IMO.

You might want to consider h264 if you don't want to author to dvd. Editing h264 might be tricky but if you simply want to capture to a file and playback later without being encoded to an actual dvd that might be the way to go.

A hauppauge hd pvr might be overkill for vhs material but it is a hardware encoder box that is external via usb. It can encode up to 13mb. I had just done a 2 hour capture of high def material at 3.5mb and got a file size of just under 4gb with very good quality. (720p off my cable hd pvr via component and fiber optic).

I have done vhs caps to my hauppauge with a vcr that had svideo and got very good results. I had done the conversion afterwards with avstodvd to get "real" dvds that would play in regular dvd players. The results were very good to my eye.

But the advantage of capping to h264 would be smaller file sizes with fiddling with capture bit rate. And h264 is very portable now with many players and devices accepting it.

Yes you can do 720x480 capturing on the hauppauge hdpvr with svideo and composite inputs on the front of the device. However it will not capture to mpeg - only to h264 but that will be perfect if you want to capture to smaller file sizes.

Edit 2 - and yes you can make dvds from the hauappage hdpvr but it requires reencoding with something like avstodvd like I mentioned. Its more work than simply capturing to mpeg then authoring afterwards. But if you don't intend to author dvds h264 is a good way to go.

[PuzZLeR]

I agree that H.264 is a great solution for lower-bitrate high quality video but editing is still a major pain today.

Yes, it's getting better and better, such as the experimental VideoReDo promises to be. But we are still a few years away from having solutions and hardware/software that can do it as easily as we can for MPEG today - unless it's Ok to wait for this.

[yoda313]

@puzzler - isn't simple cutting lossless for h264 possible? I can't name a tool off the top of my head but if you just want to cut clips out you should be able to without reencoding.

As far as serious editing an intermediate step like high bitrate mpeg2 would do it to lighten the load on the processor(s). But if fancy fades/wipes/dissolves/brightness aren't needed and just trimming is desired than h264 SHOULD be suitable for that.

Again correct me if I'm wrong but I think lossless cutting for h264 is possible without reencoding.

[edDV]

@puzzler - isn't simple cutting lossless for h264 possible? I can't name a tool off the top of my head but if you just want to cut clips out you should be able to without reencoding.

As far as serious editing an intermediate step like high bitrate mpeg2 would do it to lighten the load on the processor(s). But if fancy fades/wipes/dissolves/brightness aren't needed and just trimming is desired than h264 SHOULD be suitable for that.

Again correct me if I'm wrong but I think lossless cutting for h264 is possible without reencoding.

You can cut at GOP (I frame) with 0.5 sec edit accuracy for camcorder/broadcast h.264. Download GOPs can be much longer. The typical NLE will re-encode the whole timeline.

[PuzZLeR]

Yes, cutting H.264 can be "lossless" and simple such as it would be with MPEG using an MPEG dedicated tool except without 100% frame accuracy AFAIK. Tools like MKVMerge or AviDemux, etc, do the cuts easily, without rendering the rest of the video, but they only cut on key frames (similarly to the +/-0.5 interval that edDV mentions).

If it wasn't for this, or the fact that I don't really want to wait a couple more years for the editing software/hardware to mature I too would fully recommend H.264 as arguably the best format to capture to.

[donkey33]

When using MPEG-2, at 720x480, (720x576 in your part of the world) I use very similar file sizes to yours to capture VHS to get satisfactory results (to my eyes). You are on par. I would highly suggest not using anything less than 8mbps as you will get noticeable quality loss for most captures, especially more so if you're capturing live sports events (motion, interlacing, etc).

If I wanted to squeeze more quality per file size I'd look into another codec, but that invites other issues like editing, compatibility, problems with interlacing, PC resources, software, etc. for maybe a percentage of added compression when MPEG-2 is fully established in many areas despite maybe more bitrate demands.

Personally...meh... I wouldn't bother. I will bet these are precious memories for you too so why bother complicating things when, as you similarly notice, hard drive space just keeps getting more and more cheaper per GB?

What's funny is that some people here may say you should use even more file sizes, like using DV (as mentioned) or even lossless formats.

But if compression is your thing for relatively high quality with VHS, you're doing just fine using high-bitrate MPEG-2.

Thank you. I guess I was after confirmation that I was kind of doing the right thing.

As you and I said, GB per dollar are cheap so storage is ok. By uncompressed, do you mean capture to AVI? PowerDirector allows MPEG-1 MPEG-2 and AVI capture but I noticed under the AVI capture settings, you can select a compression technique or leave it as uncompressed.

A single 1 minute clip captured using HQ MPEG-2 is 60MB in size but AVI uncompressed for the same 1 minute of footage came in at 850MB. Fairly sizeable difference but after watching both, I prefer the MPEG-2 capture anyway so forget the AVI stuff.

[donkey33]

Just noticed you're doing some cropping - unlike trimming/joining, this needs a re-encode, and a loss of quality with any lossy format like MPEG-2.

Does P/D do the cropping during the capture? If so, then high-bitrate MPEG-2 is still a good option IMO as I explained in my last post, but if you need to re-encode the final result once more to MPEG-2, then you may want to consider capturing, if possible with P/D, to a lossless format first instead - then re-encode to high bitrate MPEG-2 in the end (maybe even with a better MPEG-2 encoder than what P/D might offer).

Regardless, in the end, if compression is what you want, high bitrate MPEG-2 is still the best option IMO.

Yeah, because I'm capturing the entire tape, after it's done, I'm using PowerDirector to trim out what I don't need and am then saving the file again as an MPEG-2 file with the same settings.

PowerDirector has this SVRT3 feature where if you want the file with the same settings as the capture, seems it just trims it and that's it. An hour long trim using SVRT3 takes about 40 seconds to save so I doubt it's re-encoding the file again. Or is it?

I'd much prefer to not lose any quality from the capture but I wasn't sure how to trim/crop parts from the original capture.

[Cornucopia]

Sounds like SOME of your clips are going to end up on DVD for the relatives, etc. so it would make the most sense to leave as MPEG2 (or start w/ DV-AVI and then final encode to MPEG2 or h264 after editing).

Scott

[donkey33]

They'll actually only be used on a HTPC in one place so DVD considerations are not too important to me but I guess that still means MPEG-2 is a good idea because if one day they need doing, they'll be in the format already.

[PuzZLeR]

By uncompressed, do you mean capture to AVI? PowerDirector allows MPEG-1 MPEG-2 and AVI capture but I noticed under the AVI capture settings, you can select a compression technique or leave it as uncompressed.

A single 1 minute clip captured using HQ MPEG-2 is 60MB in size but AVI uncompressed for the same 1 minute of footage came in at 850MB. Fairly sizeable difference but after watching both, I prefer the MPEG-2 capture anyway so forget the AVI stuff.

AVI is just a container. It's what's in it that counts.

Yes, if it's a lossless codec inside, then the huge file size is about right. Another format used alot for capture is DV, which would be about ~215MB/min - it's a more compressed format than lossless but seems to capture a bit more quality according to some purists than MPEG-2 and is loved by many who edit. Another would be DivX/Xvid, with comparably smaller file sizes than MPEG-2 as another option (but capturing and editing with it is another science).

I still say that if you want high quality in a high compression scheme then high-bitrate MPEG-2 (>8mbps) is still my recommendation since it's still high quality, compatible, less demanding, handles interlacing well and is relatively easy to edit and plays on DvD (and even BD). And it's not really that massive in file size IMO.

Yeah, because I'm capturing the entire tape, after it's done, I'm using PowerDirector to trim out what I don't need and am then saving the file again as an MPEG-2 file with the same settings.

PowerDirector has this SVRT3 feature where if you want the file with the same settings as the capture, seems it just trims it and that's it. An hour long trim using SVRT3 takes about 40 seconds to save so I doubt it's re-encoding the file again. Or is it?

I'd much prefer to not lose any quality from the capture but I wasn't sure how to trim/crop parts from the original capture.

Yeah, I too just dump the whole tape on my hard drive and edit later instead of that cuing crap I so always hated with tape formats.

If you're only cutting or joining segments I don't see a problem assuming P/D can handle MPEG. Personally for such chores I use a dedicated, and proven, MPEG editor like Womble, VideoReDo or TMPGEnc MPEG Editor, which re-encodes only a few frames where cuts/joins/fades are, and recalculates the GOPs accordingly (where relevant) and doesn't touch the rest of the stream.

I'm hoping that P/D does that too. If it does have a "smart render" type of feature (which I assume SVRT3 is), hopefully it outputs a stable stream - test it on VLC or WMP and see if it plays/navigates properly. MPEG can be tricky sometimes. (Then again, if not, there are methods to fix this.)

I don't use P/D so I wouldn't know. Is there a free trial for it? I'm always looking to try new editors.

But what concerns me is if you crop (such as maybe wanting to remove the "tracking fuzz" at the bottom) - this, unlike cuts/joins, needs a complete re-encode for the whole segment. If P/D has a cropping feature during the capture then you should be fine (but use a mod8 or, better, a mod16 pixel count for interlaced sources and maybe an overlay mask). But if you crop after your capture and edits, even enabling SVTR3 won't prevent a re-encode and a loss of quality.

Yes, 40s for a render of 1hr shouldn't be a re-encode, but did you try this test with crops?

If you like, you can upload a small capture sample from the same part of the tape of, both, a straight capture and the same one with crops. We can tell you for sure if there's loss between them.

[donkey33]

Thanks PuzZLeR. You've been very helpful.

This is what I used but I only have version 8. Version 9 is the new one but I assume most of the functions are the same. Trial at link.

http://www.cyberlink.com/downloads/trials/powerdirector/download_en_US.html

The SVRT on screen is Smart Video Rendering Technology. Bit of info here.

http://www.cyberlink.com/stat/product-tutorial/enu/technologies/video-technologies-editing.jsp

I'm actually not cropping anything. Just trimming. I don't care about the small fuzz line on the bottom of the clip. I just want to split the VHS into segments as in, the first 45 minutes are from the beach so I'd like to cut that so it is a file by itself. After the beach is 20 minutes of backyard cricket, etc. Cut that to have that as a separate file.

That's all. From what I've read and see on SVRT, it does just that. No encoding of the segment and when I watch the MPEG-2 full capture and then the trimmed segments, I can't notice any difference so looks like it's working fine.

On compression and capturing with lossless formats, it might be too advanced for me to worry about. The AVI capture within PowerDirector only capturs at 640x480 and capturing lossless results in huge file sizes and to be honest, looks much worse than the MPEG-2 capture.

I can't upload some captures due to no crops. The only direct comparison would be from the full capture (not uploading 12GB, lol) in comparison to the trimmed segment.

[RabidDog]

Despite what you think, you may not really have the option of recording in anything other than mpeg2. As you state your device has an hardware encoder. If you set your Powerdirector to capture/record in h264 it will simply take the incoming mpeg2 stream and re-encode it to x264. That will entail some quality loss. As these are coming from VHS you want to retain as much quality as possible and that would mean capturing/recording in as high a bitrate as possible. Bit juicy on Gb's but disks are cheap. Also mpeg2 is universally compatible, so should be able to played anywhere.
The svrt on PD will only re-encode the "joints" where you have cut out commercials, I use that software and it works pretty good.
Sorry to hear about your crops, The rains *will* come, stick in there!