Need help with Christmas project

[Videotechy]

Hi everyone! I am new to this forum and I need a little bit of help. My grandmother is slowly passing away and I've decided to take on the very challenging task of digitizing around 100 VHSc cassettes. This is something that I've wanted to do for a while and with Christmas around the corner I feel like this would be a perfect gift for her. I purchased a honestech capture set, it came with software and a converter. I dusted off one of my old VCRs and after about 2 weeks I'm finally finished converting all the analogue to digital. The conversions retained most of the quality with a little bit of loss, and now comes the tricky part... I need to go through about 100 hours of MPEG 2 video and make a new video comprised of all of our favourite memories. I'm not too familiar with video editing or reliable programs, but I am aware that i will be losing even more quality by editing these files. If someone could recommend me the best way to edit out clips from each and put it all together and also try to retain as much quality as possible they would be making many people very happy for Christmas. If there's extra steps to retain quality, or conversions to different codecs just bare in mind that the finished project needs to be going onto DVD!

Thanks everyone!

[redwudz]

Editing doesn't necessarily cause quality loss. The format the video is in makes a big difference. Highly compressed formats/codecs like h.264 or similar often need to be re-encoded, at least at the cut point after editing.
But you shouldn't need to re-encode the whole video, unless it is in a incompatible format to your desired output format.

But MPEG2 video should edit very easily; If it is already DVD compliant. You might take a look at the upper left on this page for 'WHAT IS' DVD. This has information for the DVD specification, format and structure of DVDs.

Some here use Windows Movie Maker.
I prefer some of the other freeware editors, such as the MPEG editors on our tools page, https://www.videohelp.com/software/sections/video-editors-mpg-dvd. I like AVIDemux, Cuttermaran and others.

After editing, then you 'author' to the DVD format. You might try AVStoDVD or GUI for dvdauthor or DVDAuthorgui.

Or other members may have better suggestions.

And welcome to our forums.

[Videotechy]

Editing doesn't necessarily cause quality loss. The format the video is in makes a big different. Highly compressed formats/codecs like h.264 or similar often need to be re-encoded, at least at the cut point after editing.
But you shouldn't need to re-encode the whole video, unless it is in a incompatible format to your desired output format.

MPEG2 video should edit very easily. If it is already DVD compatible. You might take a look at the upper left on this page for 'WHAT IS' DVD. This has information for the DVD specification, format and structure of DVDs.

Some here use Windows Movie Maker.
I prefer some of the freeware editors, such as the MPEG editors on our tools page, 'https://www.videohelp.com/software/sections/video-editors-mpg-dvd'. I like AVIDemux, Cuttermaran and others.

After editing, then you 'author' to the DVD format. You might try AVStoDVD or GUI for dvdauthor or DVDAuthorgui.

Or other members may have better suggestions.

And welcome to our forums.

Thank you for your quick and clear response! Just to confirm: the format that it's already in (MPEG2) does not need to be converted, and I won't be losing any quality by pulling clips together and editing? Also I wanted to know to run all 100 MPEG files through a program like VideoRedo just to clip off some unwanted parts (beginning, end and some scrambled parts) so that when I'm editing I have a nice clean video file to start from... I'm also aware that VideoRedo has some sort of option to go through your video and clean up some of the frames, is there any other program that I should run the video files through that would clean them up? When it's all said and done, and I have the files ready for editing my plan is to drag one file in, cut all the parts I want, repeat for all cassettes, then order all the clips and in some basic transitions... I know you mentioned some video editing softwares but know what I plan on doing I want something that will be able to do this properly!

[manono]

A free program such as MPEG2Cut2 can cut out the pieces you want to keep easily enough. Once you have all the pieces, it can also join them all together.

When you say 'clean them up', that implies reencoding if by 'clean them up' you mean denoising, sharpening, adjusting color, brightness, contrast and the like.

Transitions can be done with a smart editor that reencodes only where those transitions take place and leaves the rest alone. I don't think VideoRedo is the program for that but someone else will have to recommend one.

[johnmeyer]

If you have digitized 100 tapes, wow, that is an impressive task. Most people don't even come close to getting through that part.

I use Vegas Pro. There is a low-end version which you can get for a reasonable price. You should download the trial and check to see if it will "smart render" your MPEG-2 captures. If all you do is "cuts-only" editing, it should be able to do that, as long as you pay attention to the render settings which need to closely match the settings in the original.

Other alternatives for cutting and then smart rendering (which is the term for editing without re-encoding, which means you lose zero quality):

• VideoRedo (works perfectly for MPEG-2 editing)
• Womble (they make at least two MPEG-2 editing programs)
• ffmpeg (command line utility, but there are GUI front ends).

You may find that many other NLEs can smart render MPEG-2 files.

[Videotechy]

Thanks for all of the help! But I'm still a little confused as to what I should be using. I just want to clean up the video a little and run a denouser to get rid of the foggy sound. After that I want to use a program to edit and make a movie out of all the other movies...

[johnmeyer]

The "foggy sound" you refer to is probably due to the low frequency response of audio recorded on the linear track. If the tapes used Hi-Fi, then the audio would be clear.

I own a very expensive audio restoration tool called iZotope RX and it can do all sorts of magic with sound. However, even it cannot create audio clarity and fidelity from low frequency response audio, like that found on VHS linear audio tracks, AM radio, 78 rpm records, etc.

So, I don't think you will find any solution to that problem. My advice: just edit the video, get it onto DVDs or uploaded to a web site, and get done with the project. Anything more will take more time than you can possibly imagine, given that you have 100 tapes.

[Videotechy]

Very interesting. It's good to get an opinion from different people. There's so much to learn in this forum. I'm going to run every video through a program that will make quality cuts. Save all of the originals onto a separate HDD, then try a few different editing programs... will I lose quality when authoring the MPEG to DVD? If so is there any way around it? And any recommendations on a authoring program? If they don't make the biggest deal I could use the one that came with my capture box software...

[manono]

...will I lose quality when authoring the MPEG to DVD?

'Authoring' just means taking already DVD-compliant video and audio (and/or chapter points and subtitles) and assembling them into a proper DVD. So, the answer to that question is 'no'.

However, it's the 'just want to clean up the video a little' that requires reencoding everything touched by whatever filtering you do that will degrade the video. It might actually look better afterwards because of whatever you've done, but it requires reencoding using a lossy codec (MPEG-2) and lossy to lossy means a loss of quality. That doesn't necessarily mean you shouldn't do it, but just so you'll know. My own current project is taking a DVD and trying to clean it up to make another DVD.

And any recommendations on a authoring program?

Muxman is, bar none, the finest authoring program around. And it's free. But, from what you're saying you want far more than an authoring program. You want something that includes clean up filters, encoding for DVD, menu creation, as well as authoring. Me, I use AviSynth for clean up, CCE for encoding for DVD (although HCEnc is just as good and free to boot), Muxman for authoring and DVDAuthorGUI when I want menus. Others have their own favorites.

[johnmeyer]

Will I lose quality when authoring the MPEG to DVD? If so is there any way around it?

As already noted, "authoring" is the process of taking your finished, edited video, and then putting that onto a DVD. However, I think what you are really asking is how to do cuts-only editing (i.e., removing the deadwood, and rearranging chunks of video to play in the order you want) without introducing any degradation. The feature you are looking for is found in some, but not all, non-linear editors (NLEs). The name of the feature varies, but the most generic and widespread name is "smart rendering." All it means is that every pixel on every frame of your original video is exactly the same. Sometimes, depending on the video format, a few frames around each cut, where something has been deleted or rearranged, will be re-rendered, and this will degrade (slightly) those few frames. That is nothing to worry about.

Others will have good recommendations on what software to use. VideoRedo lets you make basic cuts and will smart render MPEG-2 files easily. Womble also works.

[Videotechy]

Will I lose quality when authoring the MPEG to DVD? If so is there any way around it?

As already noted, "authoring" is the process of taking your finished, edited video, and then putting that onto a DVD. However, I think what you are really asking is how to do cuts-only editing (i.e., removing the deadwood, and rearranging chunks of video to play in the order you want) without introducing any degradation. The feature you are looking for is found in some, but not all, non-linear editors (NLEs). The name of the feature varies, but the most generic and widespread name is "smart rendering." All it means is that every pixel on every frame of your original video is exactly the same. Sometimes, depending on the video format, a few frames around each cut, where something has been deleted or rearranged, will be re-rendered, and this will degrade (slightly) those few frames. That is nothing to worry about.

Others will have good recommendations on what software to use. VideoRedo lets you make basic cuts and will smart render MPEG-2 files easily. Womble also works.

It seems like I'm going to have to keep the videos the way they are. I might re capture in the future and clean them up the proper way. Now that that's out of the way. I've heard only good things about VideoRedo and the fact that it can "smart render" makes me want to grab it. But I might also want to add some transitions. Cutting down 100 hours to about an hour and a half means many cups and I don't think it would look presentable without transitions. Is there any freeware that can "smart render" and add in very very simple transitions?