What mpeg format is closest to VHS tape SP speed quality?

[tluxon]

Is there a VCD format that has PQ close to the quality of VHS tape recorded at SP speed?

If so, what are the settings?

How many minutes of that quality can I get on a CD-R?

Thanks,

Tim

[snowmoon]

CVD is the closest. It can be DVD compatible if your audio is 48khz or SVCD compatible if your audio is 44.1khz.

You can probably squeeze between 45-60 minutes of good quality video on one 80 minute disc.

[SingSing]

VHS has about 100 lines of real resolution.
VCD has 240, and SVCD has 480 lines.

Most people think VCD is slightly worst than VHS,
because of the constant and slow bit rate of VCD.

If you are capturing VHS, try SVCD or VCD with 2000 kpbs( thus XVCD ).

SVCD and XVCD hold about 40 mitues per CD.

VCD hold about 80 minutes.

Use the calculator in the tool section.

[supercrew]

I record a lot of video from VHS, and I create XVCD with

Video = 1672kbs CBR
Audio = 128kbs
240 X 352 Resolution

this normally gives me 60 minutes of good quality on an 80min cd-r.

The best thing about this format is that if you use TMPGenc Merge&Cut tool, and select Videocd Standard. You get a file that will play in just about any DVD player that can play a normal VCD.

[snowmoon]

[double post]

[snowmoon]

SingSing: Not to down you, but your numbers are WAYYY off, you are also mixing "lines of resolution" with "scanlines" and "horizontal reoslution".

I will speak of analog resolution as "lines of horozontal resolution" this is the number of alternating black and white vertical stripes that can be seen before it becomes grey. You count both the white and black lines.

In the digital world I will speak of pixels. Remeber that you need more pixels to represent an analog signal than you might think. To research more you can look up the "Kell Factor".

NTSC has 480 scanlines per frame.

VHS gets ~230 "lines of horozontal resolution" and less than half that for it's "color resolution". VHS IS full frame 480 scanlines per frame.

VCD has a resolution of 352 pixels and 240 scanlines. It makes up the other 240 by duplicating the same video frame twice. So to start VCD has half the video data that VHS does.

CVD has a reolution of 352 and a full 480 scanlines. This is by far the best mpeg resolution to perserve VHS since it does not half the video data before encoding.

SVCD has 480 pixels and 480 scalines. This is a good resolution to perserve good analog broadcasts, and would be overkill for VHS.

[epo]

SVCD has 480 pixels and 480 scalines. This is a good resolution to perserve good analog broadcasts, and would be overkill for VHS.

And DVD is for what?
There is nothing out there that will beat 36MHz wide analog broadcast. (I mean consumer formats ofc)

[SingSing]

I am refer to "real" resolution, not scan lines.
I am refering to VCR datasheet, VHS is stated about 100 lines.
SVHS is stated about 240 lines.

Scan lines can be produce by line doubling, 3:2 pull down, ..
all kind of scheme, but the "real" vertical resoltion is
what eyes used to judge quality.

[snowmoon]

And DVD is for what?
There is nothing out there that will beat 36MHz wide analog broadcast. (I mean consumer formats ofc)

In the US the broadcast channels are 6mhz. Generally you get 80 LOR for every 1mhz ( in analog NTSC systems ).

DVD's full resolution of 720 pixels by 480 scanlines is best for pristine transferes from film that can really take advantage of the resolution and color accuracy. It is also good for modern camcorders that record digitally at 720x480 leaging to little or no degridation of the signal before encoding.

[Thorn]

Umm... Back to the original question: VCD is typically considered to be capable of being comparable to VHS quality, but that doesn't mean that it's your optimal format if you're capturing from VHS. One reason is that when you capture a noisy source from VHS and encode to VCD, a bit of the bandwidth is taken up with the noise so the picture can look worse than the VHS. While SVCD and other formats may be overkill, for some sources they are the only ways to keep more of the quality.

On the other hand, SVCD holds less per disc (40-60 rather than 80 minutes) and a few DVD players won't play SVCD but will play VCD. You should probably do some tests to see what looks acceptable to you and meets your requirements.

[epo]

It may really be different in US Checked it a bit and found no wide-beam analog broadcasts to compare with RAI, TVE or RTP, pushing full 36 MHz channel from HotBird-s with HQ PAL. Their digital channels are of visibly lower quality, but still excellent.

[tluxon]

Most of what I want to save are from mpegs from my ReplayTV 4080. A small amount is from 8mm Camcorder recordings. Even less is captured video using my ATi AIW Radeon.

It seems like there are a lot of different methods, and I've yet to try any of them. I just thought I would get a head start asking others what they recommend.

I'm figuring I need at least 352 x 240 at 2Mbit/sec. Would I notice a huge difference at 6Mbit/sec? Would that still be considered a standard VCD? What are considered the standard settings for SVCD?

Thanks,

Tim

[snowmoon]

VCD is only spec at 1150kbps.

If you want to go with higher bitrate you should really look into SVCD/CVD disks.

[tluxon]

Aren't there some VCD formats that are higher bitrates than that? 1150 kbps doesn't seem like it would give you very good quality.

I plan on getting another very shortly. Looking at the Panasonic RP82, CP72 and Toshiba SD4800. Those players seem to play a lot of formats and have the built-in DD/DTS decoder that I need.

Unfortunately, I don't know if my present DVD player will play anything more than VCD from a CD-R. I have a Toshiba SD3109 - Anybody know the best it will play?

Thanks,

Tim

[SatStorm]

If you have a pro VHS or a good SVHS, then CVD is the way to go.
For anything else you go VCD (for compatibility) or xSVCD with 1/4 D1 CCIR-601 Res.

My test show me that an interlaced xSVCD 352 X 288 @ 700min-1400aver-2100max are identical VHS in quality. You have to de-interlace (with adaption) your source and interlace the output to make it so.
This is totally -X- but somehow it works if you burn it on DVD-Rs in general (on the standalones I tested at least). If you keep the GOP in the DVD spefications, it is also acceptable from some DVD authoring progs (unlead for example).
Also, this gonna play on standalones which support xSVCDs

With CVD and a bad VHS source, kiss goodbuy the quality on standard CVD bitrates. You have to go -X- also: There are situations that even a 3100 average won't give the quality of the VHS source. If you try to encode @ 2520 CBR which is the top of CVD, there blocks, fussion and other ungle things in the picture.

[Nelson37]

Yes, you can make a disk that is MPEG-1, 352x240, with a bitrate higher than 1150. BUT, it is NOT a VCD, it is a MPEG-1, 352x240, with a bitrate higher than 1150. It is not a specific format, that is what the X means.

It is invalid to state that a given player supports an X format unless specific parameters are given, since the X does NOT tell you what it IS, only what it is NOT. Since many are confused on this point; an example -
take a 352x240, 1400 bitrate MPEG-1 file, and then a similar file with a bitrate of 1800. A specific player may play one and not the other, even though both are X. Therefore the X designation is worse than useless, as it gives the impression of uniformity when none exists.

CVD 352x480 at approx 2Mbit/s should give a good copy of VHS tapes, but you must try the various formats to see what is acceptable to YOU, and works on your DVD.

[snowmoon]

VCD standard goves a close representation of VHS.

CVD at standard bitrates is a great format, dont be fooled into thinking you need to up the bitrate. Both CVD and SVCD produce excellent resuts at their standard bitrates.

Try the standards first, only after you have exhausted those options should you go to using non standard formats and bitrates.

[energy80s]

I suppose it all depends on just what you want to do. Yes, VCD is close to (and in some cases better than) VHS quality ... BUT ... this is from a professional source. If you plan of copying VHS to anything you have to remember that it is a VERY noisy signal that varies over the whole picture. This is fine for the human eye to view but deadly for MPEG encoders! The ONLY way to get a virtual clone of a VHS signal is to copy it to a much higher resolution format. Therefore VCD (at any bitrate) is not the way to go. The only 2 acceptable formats/frame sizes would be CVD at 5mbps or DVD at 9.8mbps (ie. half frame is half the bitrate of full frame).

Most people will say this is overkill, but to get a virtual clone of the VHS source that's what's required.

And another poster said about 36MHz video channels being used in Europe. This is correct. The BBC (where I work) use 36 meg channels to distribute their feeds around the regions. The feed to digital satellite is 7mpbs (although this is reduced for actual sat broadcast) and Digital Terrestrial is 5mbps.

[mpb]

The CVD format has given me the best results for good tapes in terms of video quality and not wasting space on data that isn't there. CVD is Mpeg 2, 352x480, and generally I capture at 48khz sound so that I can encode to 44.1khz (for CVD on CD-R) or leave it at 48khz (for DVD or to put on CD-ROMs to play in my Apex DVD player). Especially for videotapes that are in fairly decent condition, I think CVD is the way to go. Best of all, you can capture at an irregular resolution like 640x480, which is not correct for any video format, but which your PC will LOVE because it's easy on the processor. You then encode down to 352x480 and you won't be losing data during the encode, resulting in a very clean final file.

For compatibility's sake, if the video is non-essential or if the quality of the picture is not crucial to your enjoyment of it, just do VCD standard. Encoding on "high quality" or "really high quality" motion precision in TMPGenc will give you better results than you might expect from 1150. You can even crank it to 1800 and be within DVD spec if you want to make XVCDs or mess around - for me, with an Apex, this is possible, but if you want to maximize compatibility, just stay with 1150. I encode stuff like Futurama, Simpsons, 24, Sopranos, SNL, El Clon (that show is for my roommate, she's Portuguese) and so forth in VCD because they'll eventually be out on DVD anyway, and they'll look a lot better than a homebrew would. And in the meanwhile you get to use twenty cent CDRs and almost everybody can play 'em in their DVD player. And on top of that they encode quickly and easily. It's hard not to like VCD. On videotapes that don't have too much damage, and given that VHS has such inherent limitations to its interpretable resolution, VCD is sufficient a great deal of the time.

I have shied away from SVCD entirely because it is not upward-compatible to DVD. If you had SVCD video you want to burn to a DVD-R, you would need to transcode DOWN the video (from 480x480 to 352x480) and then upsample the audio from 44.1 to 48khz, and this means you're introducing a new compression/decompression stage to each, and quality tends to suffer as a result. It's hard to work around that.

I hope this helped!!!

[thxkid]

on XVCD I have used nothing but 1800 to 3000 bitrate and its played on any DVD players I have tried it on, plus CVD is no as compatable as VCD or even XVCD, my daewoos won't do CVD higher than 352x240 and too many factors to get it play on other DVD players also, and I have had better luck with my SVCD's on other friends DVD players than getting DVD-R's to play on theirs, plus I have seen a lot more problems with SVCD if you use any nero to burn them higher than 5.5.6.4.
I use my own template I made in TMPGE for XVCD at 2520 bitrate and not had a failure yet on any DVD player made to play VCD's.

[energy80s]

MPEG1 or MPEG2?

[SingSing]

Same question and like to get some number too.

Does mpeg 1-VCD at 2520 look as good as mpeg-2 SVCD at 2520 ?
How many minutes of video can high bit rate XVCD hold on 800mb disc ?

[Nelson37]

SingSing - There is no such thing as Mpeg-1 VCD @ 2520.

If you mean does Mpeg-1 look the same as Mpeg-2 at the same resolution and bitrate, yes, provided they are progressive as Mpeg-1 does not support interlacing. If you mean does Mpeg-1 at 352x240 look as good as Mpeg-2 at 480x480 with the same bitrate, no, provided the bitrate is high enough to prevent macroblocking.

Minutes on disk depends completely on bitrate. From your question, all I can answer is "less than a low-bitrate XVCD".