Formats, codecs, and stuff to archive VHS to VCD and DVD

[Dumb&Dumber]

Ok, I'm so new at this I barely recognize the formats!

Basically, I wish to archive VHS cassettes I own to a format which will not degrade over time (usually allowed by copyright).

Input source: Standard VHS VCR

Input card: BFG Tech Asylum version of NVidias GeForce 4 Ti 4600

Computer: Intel PIII overclocked to 600 MHz with 512 MB RAM and ample HD space with no extra stuff eating sys resources.

Format currently desired: VCD or SVCD

Format ultimately desired: DVD

Basic description of difficulties:
I do not understand the format of the original VHS cassette with regard to resolution of video and audio formatting. I have been told that I should not attempt to capture in a higher format that what is on the VHS cassette. Also, I have been told that line signal is basically independent of format. I understand that the line signal is generated by the tape passing the read head at a certain speed and numbers are numbers to the codec reading them but, these subtleties escape me! All the capture software I have encountered ask me for a resolution, ie. how many lines do you want in each direction not what is your line signal volatage differential! If you are with me so far you understand my dumb question! What do I tell the capture program to write to my HD so that I can convert it to VCD or DVD media with the right codec without losing the original video and audio resolution. I don't want to change a thing, just preserve the original material and possibly clean-up any artifacts introduced by the preservation process.

Best regards,
Dumb&Dumber

[Don2050]

hmmm, this is a very subjective question, so I will give my opinion

I recently did the same thing, VHS to DVD and for me found out that capturing was best done in huffyuv/PCM. I preferred this lossless compression because I was going to edit the footage afterward, which is far easier in this format than if captured to MPEG1/2/4. Also, this gives you complete freedom to decide later what format to convert it too without any extra loss do to conversion. Also, I recommend capturing at a resolution you are going to be watching at ie... TV is your planned device to watch the video on, which is 720x480 for NTSC. If your processor can handle that resolution without dropping frames and you have enough hard drive space( about 30 GB/hour) I would go this route, as it is the best way to preserve quality.

If you do not plan on doing any editing to the video after capture, then I think their are far more space efficient formats to pick, ie...MPEG2/4. I do not recommend VCD as in my opinion does not provide acceptable quality for me, the only thing good about VCD is it's wide compatibility. The lowest quality format I would go with is SVCD, but I personally am very satisfied with Xvid/DivX, however if compatibility is an issue, ie...you want to be able to play this in most DVD players, then DivX/Xvid is really not an option at this point.

I guess I would try and pick a format that wont need to be re-encoded too in the future as this can cause sometimes severe degradation of quality. If you have a DVD burner or are planning on getting one soon, I think DVD complient MPEG2 is the best route to go if you do not plan on doing any editing........but that is just my opinion

[Thorn]

I agree, I've done my best work capturing with the huffyuv codec for video and pcm(uncompressed) audio. This is the ONLY way to prevent loss while you capture (many people argue that other methods are easier and loose almost no quality). The downside is that capturing at 720x480 takes about 30-40GB/hour as don2050 said. If you have the space, I highly recommend this over anything else because the more you compromise during each step of the capture/encode process, the worse your result will be.

Capturing at 720x480 is important if you are going to SVCD or DVD (you don't want to go down then up in resolution). VHS has a little higher resolution than VCD I think, but that does NOT mean you should capture at a lower resolution. Capturing at a higher resolution is always better if you can do it.

The main problem I see is that your processor may struggle to capture at 720x480. You'll have to do some tests to make sure you can handle it without dropping frames. Another option would be to capture uncompressed video but that takes 2x the space. Remember that it's worth doing some testing first because you don't want to do this all over when you figure out a better way!

For final output, remember that you can't recover quality you've lost when encoding between formats. I have several home video mpeg1/2 encodes from a few years ago and they look pretty noisy compared to the DV encodes I'm doing now when they're all put on DVD.