Help with 8mm capture

[Gtechman]

I'm capturing 8mm home movies through S-video connection using Virtual Dub with Huffy YUY2. I plan on converting to VCD or SVCD. Will I have to de-interlace the file before I convert?? Oh yeah, this is for play on an Apex DVD player.

Thanks!!

[ubaddala]

I too do my capturing from Hi8 @352x480 using Huffy codec. When I encode I leave it to TMPGnc to deinterlace or whatsoever. The resulting video is as good as the source.

[Gtechman]

That's what I'm looking for. Say I cap at 352X480 w/ Huffy YUY2. Ok, then I encode with TMPeg. What settings do I choose?? I want a full screen VCD with same quality as source. What do you use? I think I can get better quality than just using the standard VCD NTSC template.

Thanks!!

[ubaddala]

Honestly, I've read so many posts on this forum about "great VCD quality" but with my home video i could never get the so called "great quality". (my sincere appologies to one and all, if I hurt anyone) I guess, that the so called quality is possible when ripping from a DVD which I've not tried.

I tried each and every one's template and the result could not be better. Then I learned the hard way : if you have to stick to the STANDARD VCD (1150 KBPS) you will always get crap and nothing but crap. B'cos 1150 Kbps is very limiting in each and every aspect. I've made 50 CDR-coasters !

Since, my goal is archive my home video (sometimes the video is as brilliant as a DVD and sometimes as poor as a rented VHS, well that's what is home video is ! ) I've decided to bump up the bitrate to 1500 KBPS. This I did b'cos now-a-days every DVD player (99% I guess) is capable of player with this bitrate. I've checked around 20-30 DVD players. This way I can comfortably fit 60 min. of video on a single 700MB CD.

My take on the VCD/SVCD business is : with home shot video I've found that the 1500 VCD is THE DVD QUALITY and not even SVCD (or even any variant of this) can be better than this VCD.

This is what I do for my VCD (1500 KBPS) creation:
1. Capture video with VDub @352x480 with Huffy. Do whatever it takes to ensure that there are no dropped frames. Capture with CD quality sound preset. I also enable the NOISE REDUCTION to avoid using this feature in TMPGnc which will take hell lot of time to finish encoding.
2. Trim the video, if necessary.
3. Frameserve with DIRECT STREAM COPY for both Video and Audio. (this is important if you've made any editing in VDub. Otherwise you will have to save the edited AVI. The extra time taken by frameserving --> encoding will be compensated while saving the new AVI file !).
4. Load TMPGnc and modify the standard NTSC VCD template and change the video bitrate (only) to 1500. And on the Advanced tab choose FULL SCREEN KEEP ASPECT RATIO (2) and choose HIGH QUALITY (SLOW).

With these settings I've tested MY DVD (actually xVCD) on EVERY of my friends standalone DVD players and sofar had no problems.

Once again this is what I do and feel. I am not here to fool/contradict anyone.

[Gtechman]

Thanks, I'll try that. I've been tinkering with Kwag's templates and trying to adapt them. Isn't the VCD template 352x240. Do you bump it up to 352x480? Under Advanced tab, do you set Video Source Type to Interlace or Non. Huffy is interlaced I believe so I would assume you choose interlace. If interlaced, does Field Order (A or B) matter? There is also a DeInterlace filter. Ever tinkered with that??

I was burning a lot of coasters myself. Now I use two RWs and compare those and keep the best and go to new settings.

Thanks for the help. If you know of a site with more info, please let me know. It seems most of the sites I see are more geared for ripping DVDs.

[ubaddala]

You capture at 352x480 so as to not to throw away one of the fields. By capturing x480 you have a better source to feed the encoder. Anyway, the VCD must have 352x240. Also, anything that's captured at 480 and above is always interlaced. If you d'interlace then you are throwing away some information even before sending it to the encoder. Also, creating a VCD (technically xVCD, in this case) with 352x480 MPEG-1 will not have any gains over 352x240 MPEG-1 execpt that the file size is bigger and I fear that the VCD playing capable DVD players might not be able to play these. Correct me if I am wrong on this.

Regarding the field order : I capture with ATI AIW Radeon, S-Video, Sony Hi8 NTSC. I leave it to TMPGnc to detect the correct field order and belive me it has never gone wrong (proof : if the final movie is not jittery then field order is right, else wrong). For me, TMPGEnc always reported that the field order is FIELD A, Interlaced. I did not try the deinterlace filter either in VDub or TMPGnc again for the fear of losing one of the fields.

Forgot to mention in my last post. I use toolame to encode the audio. This is giving "better" audio than the TMPGEnc built-in audio encoder. Also, there is not much of a processing time involved. Typically, for 1 hour of video toolame takes about ~1.5 min (on an Intel 1.6, 512 MB machine)

[Gtechman]

Thanks. That worked much better. Tinkering with Kwag's template and getting pretty good quality and much smaller file size too. Probably will try variable bitrate with a higher max. That way, I can get better quality and conserve space.

Thanks again.