I'm stupid. What's the framerate of VHS?

[anticowboyism]

Doing the usual VHS->DVD conversion. What framerate settings should I be using during capture, IVTC, and compression?

[Don2050]

As far as I know you should be able to stick with the standards depending on what your source and target are: (I put the 3 most common framerates in bold)

frame_rate integer(optional) An integer with values
1 = 23.976 frames/sec: NTSC encapsulated film rate
2 = 24 frames/sec: standard film rate
3 = 25 frames/sec: PAL video frame rate
4 = 29.97 frames/sec: NTSC video frame rate
5 = 30 frames/sec: NTSC drop frame video rate (the default)
6 = 50 frames/sec: double frame rate/progressive PAL
7 = 59.94 frames/sec: double frame rate NTSC
8 = 60 frames/sec: double frame rate NTSC

As far as compression, I guess it depends on if you plan on doing any editing after capture. If you do, then somekind of uncompressed/lossless compression (ie...Huffyuv,MJPEG,etc... ) is usually recommended, as lossy compression(MPEG1/2,Xvid/DivX) is not easy to edit. I personally use Huffyuv compression with PCM WAV audio, so I can edit the file and then encode to MPEG2 later and burn to DVD. This method gives you the best quality option too if that is a concern to you and will better maintain that quality when you encode to MPEG2. This of course also depends on the hardrive space you have available and the proccessor you have.

Hope this helps

[anticowboyism]

P4 2.4 & 180Gigs

I see you've marked the 3 most common rates. But which do I use and when? I'm assuming capture at 29.97, IVTC if it's a film, deinterlace if it's a camcorder, leave it as is if it's TV show. Or should I just leave it alone always since I am going to play the DVD on the TV and will need it to remain in Telecine or Interlaced?

[Don2050]

ok, for VHS or TV captures 29.97 should be fine if your source is NTSC.
What software and hardware are you using to capture with ?

You should be able to leave the interlace alone, if you are going to watch it on TV it being interlaced is ok, if you want to watch on you PC then de-interlace. Also when you encode it will ask you to set the source and output modes. Which I guess leads me to another question, what are you going to use to encode with ?

As far as camcorders I am not certain on that as I do not have one, maybe someone who does could answer that one ?

[Nelson37]

Love the title.

You had it right, always cap at native framerate, IVTC if necessary. If it is normally interlaced or camera footage, and you intend to view it on TV, just leave it interlaced. De-interlacing may help smooth and lessen some shooting/encoding errors, though.

So you cap at 29, IVTC, enocde as 24 progressive, apply pulldown, then it is still 24 but tells the player to make it 29 on playback.

[anticowboyism]

So you cap at 29, IVTC, enocde as 24 progressive, apply pulldown, then it is still 24 but tells the player to make it 29 on playback.

Just when I thought I was starting to understand something...
So wait, is that for any type of TV or VHS source, or only for films which originated in 24fps? And you're saying that it has better quality to go through all those conversions just to end up back at 29, rather than just leaving it alone?

Let me clarify my setup for you. Using the Canopus ADVC-50 over firewire to capture VHS. I'm not sure the original form of these movies, they are long scenic shots of different countries and landscapes. Probably shot on a high end analog magnetic tape camera (Hi8, sVHS, BetaCam). These types of cameras shoot at 30fps pure interlaced correct?

Capturing DV with Premiere or Studio DV, encoding with TMPGEnc.

[Nelson37]

Yes, you only IVTC if the original source was 24. Look for a frame pattern of 3 progressive, 2 interlaced.

The reason for this is to increase quality with the same bitrate, or decrease filesize with the same quality using a lower bitrate. You would be encoding 24 Frames instead of 29. Allowing the player to do the TeleCine conversion frees you from encoding those extra 5 unnecessary frames.

I find 99% of all Cable movies can use IVTC, few series episodes, with the exception of most cartoons.

[anticowboyism]

thanks. that makes sense.

does anybody know what framerate decent handhelds shoot at? I guess if I'm not seeing the 3p2i pattern, then it was shot at 30? Or one of the PAL formats? What pattern do I look for in a PAL film or camcorder to NTSC video conversion?