Please help!! Bad Quality VHS TO VCD

[gavron]

Hi guys,
I have gone back few heaps of posts and can't seem to find my problem i think. I am trying to capture vhs to vcd, I have 800mhtz 384 meg mem,nivida mmx 400 video,60 gig hdrive 7200rpm.

Using Virtualdub or Pixelview to capture.Capture avi
Nero to burn.To VCD
Capture format
352*288,24bit rgb,audio 44100Hz;16bit;stereo,frame rate 25.000, Huffyuc codec.

My problem is the video has good quality playing on the tv but when i capture it and put it onto vcd i get a few lines accross the tv screen occaisional pauses, and bad pixels on the tv for want of a better word.

I have tried a lot of filters but to no avail very fustrating.
Can anybody help me all coments would really help..

[Triffid]

Is the problem in your captured .avi file, or only in the resulting VCD?

If it is in the VCD (and not in the AVI) it could be:

a) your choice of VCD as a format (try something with higher bitrate x(S)VCD)
b)your choice of encoder. (Try something like TMPGEnc, BBMPEG etc rather than Nero)

If it's in the AVI, that's more difficult to make sugestions about. Assuming you are dropping no frames, there seems (from the info given) no good reason for your capture to be worse than the input video. Having said that, I have had trouble capturing using the nVidia WDM capture drivers and vfwwdm mapper, but not as you have decribed. (Anyway if you have a vfw cature driver for your card, give that a try and see if it's any better)

Good luck.

[Fred©]

Hi,

Try capturing at 352x576 interlaced mode (both fields) using PICVideo MJPEG compressor if you have it... I can capture interlaced... I dont know if huffy codec can capture interlaced mode, if yes, it is ok...

Then frameserve the AVI into TMPGEnc with Deinterlace, resize - to 352x288 - (and a third party VHS Flaxen - search virtualdub HP) filter added...

The encode will be very longer, but the result will be better.

Advice, if you have VirtualDub 1.4.10, there is an issue when frameserving... you will need an special DLL to make the .vdr file to be accepted into TMPGEnc... look this forum for MSVCRT70.DLL or MSVCR70.DLL ( I dont remember the correct name)...

BTW, all my VHS captures has interferences at bottom borders due to VCR heads allignement. I have to cropp them (or mask, when encoding).

Fred©

[Mr Walker]

BTW, all my VHS captures has interferences at bottom borders due to VCR heads allignement. I have to cropp them (or mask, when encoding).

When you crop something in the bottom you must crop the sides too or else the AR will get wrong. If's only a few lines maybe you won't notice any different but keep this in mind.

My VHS-captures also get inteference at the bottom, but after encoding to vcd and played on a standalone they get "out of picture" because of the tv-overscan.

[Triffid]

(For what it's worth) I think, if you are dealing with an interlaced source, you should not crop anything vertical....you could really mess it up. Instead, mask it as Fred© has suggested (eg with the appropriate filter in TMPGEnc). But this probably only applies if your going to leave it interlaced (eg SVCD or DVD).

In fact, there is an area all aroung the picture that will always be out of the veiwing range on a TV, and it can be a good idea to mask that anyway, as it wastes less bits (why encode stuff you can't see!). For VCD I mask vertical (top and bottom) 12, horizontal (both sides) 16. I scale these up if I'm using higher resolution source.

If you feel the need to over 'capture, deinterlace and resize' (for noise reduction???) make sure you use something like the smart deinterlace filter, or you will end up with some very blurry bits when there is movement.

The agree that flaxen VHS filter is great, but as with all thing, go gently, you can end up with some interesting effects otherwise (I learned the hard way!)

[Fred©]

My VHS-captures also get inteference at the bottom, but after encoding to vcd and played on a standalone they get "out of picture" because of the tv-overscan.

You mean that I dont need the worry about the bottom interference, because when played on TV it will not be visible? Gee, if that is true, i am losing many hours in encoding procedures, because resizing slow the procedure a lot...

Fred©

[Mr Walker]

Works like that for me, try it once too see how it work on your TV. I use to crop the bottom but one time i simple forgot to do it, then when i played it i noticed that i didn't notice it anyway.

[ktnwin]

VHS to VCD is much tricker than from digital source.

1) verify capture quality by playing the captured AVI on the PC. Make sure it plays smoothly (video and sound), with good quality.
If it does not then there is a capture issue.

2) encode AVI to VCD using TMPGEnc (standard template), play the MPEG file on PC first and check for quality again.

3) burn MPEG file as VCD, play it on the TV. The only factor that can affect quality here is the quality of the CD-R media itself.

In step 2, you can also encode to XVCD (higher bitrate VCD) but you nêd to make sure your DVD player can support it. This will yield much higher quality VCD.

I have done quite a few of these and found that VHS to VCD, XVCD, SVCD still give much poorer quality than the original ones. I lost about 30% quality (please note this is a very subjective number) with VBR XVCD. My wife is still happy with the quality (that's all that count I guess) but I am not impressed.

So lucky I got a digital camcorder.

[M1dnight]

yup i agree... i jsut did my starwars tapes [ the refurbished versions from 97]
and the result was well....... disappointing im afraid.

Advice, if you have VirtualDub 1.4.10, there is an issue when frameserving... you will need an special DLL

i would suggest jsut de-installing the frameserve handler from v1.4.10

and jsut get vdub 1.4.9 and install the frameserve handler that comes with that.
this is what i did.....works like a charm, u can evern get the handler from .9 to work with vdub .10
just my 2cents

[supercrew]

I currently try to make SVCD's out of all my important VHS tapes.

I do the following:

1. Capture 480X480 NTCS using Virtual Dub
using multi files, this is enough resolution for any VHS TAPE.
PICVIDEO set at 20.

2. I then usually edit the by doing crop of 12 lines from the bottom then and bands of 6 lines at top & bottom in Vdub. With the output going to multiple files.

3. Then run the files thru CCE using a multipass VBR ~1652 kbps video,
audio 128kb.
NOTE: If you drag the first file of the AVI sequence to CCE then
edit the selection, you can then add the rest of the avi files and
CCE will create one(1) mpg file from multiple avi files.

These settings give me ~60 minutes of slighty better that VHS quality mpeg2 video on an 80min cdr.

I create .bin using EasyVCD to add chapters.
Burn cue + bin using NERO.

[gavron]

Thank you everyone,
I will give it all a try and let you no how i go...