VHS to VCD ... good idea ?

[manub]

Hi all,

I bought myself a VIVO card (Ati All-In-Wonder 8500DV). I've used to record a lot of volley matches on VHS, but now I want to convert them into VCD format. I thought of this because VCD format is playable by almost all DVD players (even if I hadn't one). My question is about the quality ... will I lose something ? I tried to play VCD-compliant MPEG (352x288 @ 25fps for PAL) on my TV-OUT and I noticed good quality, almost equal to VHS. My idea is to capture VHS directly in MPEG-1 VCD compliant format then burn it with Nero. Any suggestions ?

Thanks a lot and keep up the good work

[asdf]

i dont think you'll lose alot of noticible quality

[hwoodwar]

Usually capturing directly to mpeg format produces a much lesser quality VCD or SVCD than capturing to avi and re-encoding in TMPGenc. Plus (in my opinion) the VCD "standard" does not allow for a high quality video. Due to those two reasons I do not think you will like the final quality produced by the method you mentioned.

However I realize that quality is very subjective and what I think of as poor quality you may think of as good quality. That being said, I strongly encourage you to get a few CD-RW disks, make a few short captures and do some tests to see if you like the quality with the procedures you outlined.

[depeche101_Brazil]

Hi.
I still don't have a DVD player, and I make many tests with VCD here. The quality of them when you watch on your computer is a litle bad with macroblocks... But when I had a chance of testing my VCD's on a standalone player, I noticed that the quality is much better than I expected. I don't think that VCD is that bad as a lot of people say.
Of course it will depend on what you're expecting from them. But it seems to me you want something simple, so I think you'll like the quality.
Capturing an mpg in realtime will depend (surely) on the computer you have, but nowadays you can do it easily. I still didn't compare the methods of realtime encoding and the traditional one, but I don't think it has a big difference. Many people say on this forum they didn't see any difference between them.

[manub]

I used to capture real-time MPEG-1 with my board and NO problems (no quality problems and no frame losing problems). Also if I capture at 720x576. And I've noticed too quality difference between seeing Video CD on a monitor and on a TV (I tried with my TV-OUT, as I haven't got a DVD player). Will VIDEOCD quality on stand alone DVD player will be the same as played on a PC with TV OUT ? I hoped of this as my source isn't a DVD but a VHS ... I don't think VHS quality is higher than VCD, isn't it ?

Thanks for your answers ! (however, I'll try also it with CD-RW !)

[Thorn]

I think VCDs (and probably analog material too) look better on TV than on the computer because TVs have various filters, and also the lack of crispness helps soften macroblocks. You see more blockiness on your computer because it is higher definition and has no filters (and if you're like me you're usually a foot from the screen... hopefully you don't watch TV that way).

Basically, if you're happy with the results on the TV then don't worry about people who complain about VCD quality. If you want to try to improve the quality, for comparison I've always captured raw (huffyuv) to 720x480 and compressed to mpeg1-VCD with TMPGenc. I also used filters in Virtualdub sometimes. I personally felt that this made a bit of a difference, but of course it takes a lot more time and resources. If you're doing a lot of encodes, just constantly experiment. A lot of people start encoding one way and are satisfied, but constantly evolve their encoding procedure to improve it over time.

[manub]

Yes ... I will make some experiments ... what's RAW format? I can only capture with ATI application in ATI VCR, AVI (with various codecs), MPEG-1 and WINDOWS MEDIA format. It will be better than capture directly into MPEG-1 format ? Thanks for your answers ... I'm a novice

P.S. I thought of VCD because I think that quality difference between VHS it won't be larger ....

[Thorn]

By raw I meant that no encoding was done to the video as it was captured. This is a little more complicated so you don't need to worry about it yet if you don't want. Essentially, these are the two capture sequeces we're talking about:
1. Capture directly to mpeg (or other format). The quality of the video depends on the encoder software and your CPU.
2. Capture the video losslessly (ati's software can't do this; you must use virtualdub or similar) at a high resolution. Then encode this (very large uncompressed) file into mpeg using software such as TMPGenc.

Both can end up with VCD compliant mpeg files, but the first method gave me bad results (especially back when I had an AIW 128 on a 300MHz machine). The second method is favored by many of the more experienced cappers who have the hard drive space to spare (30-40GB per hour for 720x480). There are also other methods, of course...

I'm not quite sure what your last statement meant, but VCD is typically similar to VHS in quality. You often loose something in capturing the VHS (which is analog) to digital formats like VCD, but you won't necessarily notice it.

[manub]

I noticed good quality when capturing directly into MPEG, I've got an ATI AIW 8500 DV on an Athlon XP1800+. I can't capture into uncompressed format as I haven't got 30-40 GB free on my drive Do you think there are other good methods ?

In my last statements I said that I think that VHS and VCD quality are almost the same ... not the same as DVD-VCD. Is it true ?