Hybrid Settings for converting Mini DV and VHS AVIs to MP4

[jharmon203]

I would greatly appreciate help in what settings to use to convert all the MiniDV tapes I captured via WinDV and VHS tapes via Virtual Dub. I plan to keep the originals in archives, but I wanted to create copies for family members to be able to access via an android media player or through a TV interface.

Here is a link to the screenshots of the different settings:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1VXe_jo2I2tTDXrN22X9aFsvDS6lBxlpb

I also see there is a Queue in there. Hopefully I can use this to create a batch to covert several overnight.

I want to emphasize quality so I do not care how long the compression takes.

Thanks so much!

[LigH.de]

I won't claim to know the optimum for your specific needs, just a few thoughts...

The x264 encoder is a good choice. You may select a "slow" preset and possibly a "film" tuning (or none). To emphasize quality, do not use a target bitrate and 2-pass encoding, but rather a constant quality mode with a CRF value, possibly in a range 15 (picky) to 18 (convenient); smaller CRF = better quality preserving = larger size.

Using a deinterlacer (even though QTGMC is a high quality choice) is not generally recommendable, and whether you use one or preserve the interlacing, you need to know your material, first of all the field order. DV will almost certainly use BFF, a VHS capture of TV cameras possibly rather TFF, and commercially produced VHS of cinematic movies might already have progressive content ... or Telecine if you live in NTSC land, here you would need IVTC instead of deinterlacing. The better you analyze your material, the lower the risk of selecting the wrong method. Preserving the interlacing is the safer strategy in any case, x264 is quite smart and uses interlaced encoding with MBAFF only where it is an advantage.

[jharmon203]

Thanks so much for your reply. I am just a bit overwhlemd by the software so just looking to make sure I am selecting all the right settings for my particular application.

I also have adobe premiere media encoder cc, but I heard hybrid might be a bit better.