Best results in video quality: Re-encode or re-capture?

[DieselsDen]

Long story short, I created MPEG2 files (about 90 minutes per video)converted from AVI files at 25Mbps captured from VHS material, which much to my disappointment, are too large to fit onto a single DVD (thanks to Sonic MyDVD's tendency to encode audio to PCM, but that is another topic altogether...).

I don't want to split the MPEG2 files onto two separate DVDs. But now I am wondering if I should re-capture the original VHS videos altogether and encode them (using TMPGenc) at a lower bit-rate (after properly using a bit-rate calculator, of course), or if I should take the current "too big" MPEG2 files and re-encode them at a lower bit-rate (and not start the process all over again with re-capturing).

Which would yield better video quality? A file which has a CBR of 6.0 Mbps converted down to, say, 5.0 Mbps...or a re-captured AVI file captured at 25 Mbps and encoded down to MPEG2 at 5.0 Mbps...

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated...

Diesel

[bugster]

Perhaps your best bet, if possible, would be to author to DVD using something other than Dvdit. Most other authoring packages allow you to keep the audio as mp2 so your files won't increase in size.

Note though, if you are in NTSC land there is a chance that your DVD player won't support mp2 audio.

[SaSi]

It may be faster to download ULEAD DVD Workshop trial version. It allows you to use encoded audio, even down to 64kbps, which is very handy with large video streams.

The trial version is fully functional and works for 30 days.

[dilligaf]

I can think of 2 ways you may do this without recapture.

1.Strip out the video & audio with vobedit, then convert the wav to mp2 with wav2mp2 (link below), then reauthor with ifoedit
http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/downloads/wav2mp.html

2.Run your existing project through dvd2one and see if it gives you reasonable quality.

Option 1 would be probably give the better result visually

[DieselsDen]

Thanks for the replies. However, I guess the general question is whether there is a significant loss in video quality going through two encoding processes (from 25Mbps to 6.0 Mpbs to 5.0 Mbps) as opposed to going straight from 25 Mbps to 5.0 Mbps).

Has anyone encoded more than once and saw a big drop in quality?

Diesel

[SaSi]

Thanks for the replies. However, I guess the general question is whether there is a significant loss in video quality going through two encoding processes (from 25Mbps to 6.0 Mpbs to 5.0 Mbps) as opposed to going straight from 25 Mbps to 5.0 Mbps).

Has anyone encoded more than once and saw a big drop in quality?

Diesel

In general, if you decent selection of encoding parameters, you won't see a serious degradation. I have converted SVCDs into DivX and then back to the same SVCD compression (to correct GOPs and audio) to author them onto DVD. It's more the time and effort it takes than the loss in quality (although smooth gradient areas suffer a bit).