Compressing VHS Capture With Handbrake

[TazDave]

I'm using Power Director to capture PAL 4:3 VHS tapes as MPEG-4 as cyberlink recommended those settings.

A Tape just over 2 hrs will be create a 6gb mp4 which is of course to big to fit on a standard DVD.

I then use dvdstyler to create the DVD which of course fits the video on DVD but I'm losing quality.

I read that handbrake can compress the footage without losing any noticeable quality & I've done a couple of tests & it does not seem that significant but my old eyes could be failing.

I did notice a drop in audio quality which I then changed to mp3 192 and it sounds much better.

I've been reading for hours the pros and cons & the for and against is just confusing me even more so I thought I would ask the experts should I use handbrake for compression?

Thank you

[JVRaines]

You will have a better result capturing in a lossless codec and then compressing to an MP4 of appropriate size.

[bennyutzer]

i have been working with handbrake and h265 as well as with digitalizing vhs extensively, and my experience is this:

vhs, when digitalized, offer a very poor video quality as well as a generally very grainy, noisy picture, not to mention artifacts, deinterlacing etc. improving the quality of such a video on the pc, with whatever program or codec, is a nightmare.

in general it is true, that handbrake (utilizing the new h265 codec) can reduce the filesize of a video dramatically without significant quality loss, but that goes only for high quality input material, such as dvd or blurays. they usually are very lowly compressed, which leaves converter programs a big wiggle room. i myself encode bluray movies to 1/20 of the original size with good image quality using handbrake.

the key for vhs is the process of digitalizing. the average vhs recorder, especially when being several decades old, is by no means able to get any proper quality out of a tape, which is not such a great medium to begin with. if you have a chance, compare the vhs and dvd of the same material, and you will see the difference. the resolution should be the same, but the general image quality differs by miles. moving from analog media (vhs) to digital media (dvds) was a giant leap, much more so than from dvd to bluray, in my opinion.

you could invest big money in acquiring a top notch video recorder (which are ever harder to find), to get a few percent better video quality out of your tapes when digitalizing, but thats hardly worth it in most cases (dont believe any adds that offer vhs cleaning or repair, be it software or hardware, its usually BS). if that is not an option, you could use codec parameters such as denoising, which are present in handbrake, to smoothen the image and thereby save filesize, but will again reduce image quality.

if your vhs tapes are recorded tv shows or movies, i would try to find better source material. if your tapes are homevideos or other unique materials, i am afraid that what you have is the best you are likely to get, in image quality as well as in filesize.

the easiest and least painfull way probably is splitting the material over two dvds.

greetings
benny

[bennyutzer]

adding to clarify:

video codecs save most filesize on pictures that are largely uniform, such as large spaces in the same color, or very still pictures that dont move very much over time.

saving such images can be done efficiently, but due to the mentioned properties of digitalized vhs, those mechanisms can not perform efficiently, which is why even the best codecs cant achieve great results.

[TazDave]

Thank you for your replies. I understand what your saying but since they are home movies is there really the need to split over 2 DVD's or just reduce the file size with handbrake to fit the 2-4 hours of recordings on each VHS tape to one DVD or even multiple tapes to one DVD?

Thank you

[JVRaines]

With VHS, you can usually get away with encoding to half-D1 resolution. That would be 352 × 576 for 25 fps video. Now you can fit twice as much material at the same bitrate.

[_Al_]

That goes for making DVD, but that other part using MP4,
there is no need to store MP4 to DVD. I do not get that part.
You can use USB thumbdrive and just keep whatever that power director captures directly.

[jagabo]

since they are home movies is there really the need to split over 2 DVD's...?

So your home movies aren't worth a pair of 20 cent discs?

[bendixG15]

In my house, the most I want to put on one disk is around 100 minutes, with 120 being the absolute max.
I also believe that home VHS video should look like VHS, wether its on tape or disk.

[TazDave]

PowerDirector does DVD SP 352 x 576 50i whatever that means as mpeg-2. Will I still retain the same quality as capturing at their suggested mpeg-4 or should I just capture at mpeg-2?