Capture specs question (VCD/SVCD)

[LSchafroth]

I know this has been asked a thousand times but I have very little experiment time and lots of tapes to convert. I'm going to use your expertese to help me instead.

I have a lot of VHS tapes and 8mm footage to convert to CD. All of it is home movies, birthdays and etc. The VHS tape are all recorded on a 4-head high quality recorder. It says nothing about S-VHS. The 8mm is an older Sony analog 8mm camcorder with mono sound. I also have several Beta tapes with home videos on them. the Beta player I have access to will be a standard TV cord fed into the PCTV tuner I use. The 8mm and VHS will be composite inputs.

Now for the questions:

I use IuVCR to capture since VD will nto work with the WDM drivers. I use teh Pinnacle PCTV card with XP Pro.

I also want to use VD and TMPGEnc Plus or even VCDEasy. My goal is to create VCD or SVCD's with Menus. I want it to display a breif VCD animated intro then a basic Menu with Chapters where they can see a small thumbnail of each small video and select the one they want to watch. For example, one CD could have all the birthdays for one child and a Chpater for each year.

I asume I need to capture to Huffy at 780x40 or 352x480?
What settings do I need to use? Should I use VCD because of the source quality or do SVCD?

I've read all the debates about capture resolution, CBR, VBR, Deinterlace, resize, filters. I'm more confused now then ever.

I want a CD that will play in most DVD players and have the best quality for the source quality I have.

The goal is a CD that will be played in a DVD player on a standard TV and the occasional HDTV.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I know this is such a loaded question with so many opinions.

Thanks!

Lannie

PS I'm looking for capture rez, convertion settings and fitlers needed, guides for creating simple Menus, create multiple MPG's for each chapter? etc.

[fmctm1sw]

I know this has been asked a thousand times but I have very little experiment time and lots of tapes to convert. I'm going to use your expertese to help me instead.

I have a lot of VHS tapes and 8mm footage to convert to CD. All of it is home movies, birthdays and etc. The VHS tape are all recorded on a 4-head high quality recorder. It says nothing about S-VHS. The 8mm is an older Sony analog 8mm camcorder with mono sound. I also have several Beta tapes with home videos on them. the Beta player I have access to will be a standard TV cord fed into the PCTV tuner I use. The 8mm and VHS will be composite inputs.

Now for the questions:

I use IuVCR to capture since VD will nto work with the WDM drivers. I use teh Pinnacle PCTV card with XP Pro.

I also want to use VD and TMPGEnc Plus or even VCDEasy. My goal is to create VCD or SVCD's with Menus. I want it to display a breif VCD animated intro then a basic Menu with Chapters where they can see a small thumbnail of each small video and select the one they want to watch. For example, one CD could have all the birthdays for one child and a Chpater for each year.

I asume I need to capture to Huffy at 780x40 or 352x480?
What settings do I need to use? Should I use VCD because of the source quality or do SVCD?

I've read all the debates about capture resolution, CBR, VBR, Deinterlace, resize, filters. I'm more confused now then ever.

I want a CD that will play in most DVD players and have the best quality for the source quality I have.

The goal is a CD that will be played in a DVD player on a standard TV and the occasional HDTV.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I know this is such a loaded question with so many opinions.

Thanks!

Lannie

PS I'm looking for capture rez, convertion settings and fitlers needed, guides for creating simple Menus, create multiple MPG's for each chapter? etc.

You're going to get a lot of opiniated answers here I think but let me try to help...

1] Virtualdub WILL work with WDM drivers if you have the wrapper (under "tools" now).

2] I know Nero will let you make a menu and someone told me how to get a animation to play as a background but I can't remember where I heard it. I don't know about the thumbnails though.

3] You'll start a war about capture resolutions. Some say capture as high as you can, some say it isn't much different if you capture at you final product resolution. But I think they'll all agree the less compression the better.

4] As for CBR/VBR, it will depend what you player can play. VCD and SVCD (standard ones) are a CBR. Deinterlacing is probably only a must if you want to view you final product on a progressive display like your monitor. Resizing can take place automatically in the conversion process. Just try not to resize up though. Like don't capture at 160x120 and try to make a 480x480 SVCD out of it.

5] As for compatibility, it's all a matter of what your DVD player will handle. I'd start with that factor. No point making SVCDs if you can't play them....

sorry, I'm in a rush....

[LSchafroth]

Thanks for the feedback.

I'm just going to capture at standard resolution and burn to VCD's for now to get the project done. Maybe someday I will have time to experiement.

Thanks!

Lannie