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| darby |
| Posted: Sep 24 2002, 06:36 PM |
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I have a dozen old family films on VHS tapes, that were originally copied from 8mm film to VHS by Kodak labs. These tapes are ~20yrs old and I want to transfer the films to a digital format.
I've been using virtualdub, tmpgenc, and VCDeasy on two machines one using a DC10+ and the other an ASUS V7700 to capture the films. But after 3 days of trying different combinations I still haven't been able to get the quality of the svcd to match the original VHS.
So far my best combo seams to be the V7700 @ 640x480 using the huffyuv codec then using TMPGEnc to convert to svcd using CQ and slowest motion detection.
These films are very important to my family and I would greatly appreciate any suggestions. |
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| fccHandler |
| Posted: Sep 24 2002, 07:29 PM |
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Administrator n00b
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I also spend a lot of my time trying to digitize my ancient (but precious) VHS tapes, so I understand where you're coming from.
It sounds like you are doing everything right, though I would recommend capturing at 480 x 480 (SVCD resolution) instead of 640 x 480. It might help us to figure out what your problem is if you explained exactly why you feel the "quality" of the SVCD is inferior to the VHS. For example, is it blurry, jumpy, blocky, ringing, stuttering, banded, dark, washed out, etc.
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May the FOURCC be with you... |
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| darby |
| Posted: Sep 24 2002, 08:54 PM |
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fccHandler thanks for the reply. My largest complaint with the finished svcd is the color, peoples faces appear to be only comprised of 6 or 7 colors. An additional minor complaint is that you can see pixelization (is that a word?) in sections that have lots of movement.
I will try your suggestion to capture @ 480x480.
Since every time I capture these tapes I risk damaging them, in your opinion is it possible to create a svcd that is equal to the original tape, or am I better off waiting for improvements in the technology.
Thanks
dave |
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| fccHandler |
| Posted: Sep 24 2002, 10:02 PM |
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Technology is always improving, but VCD/SVCD technology has pretty much stabilized. Meanwhile your VHS tapes are slowly disintegrating; even if you don't play them, the materials in the tape ribbon will eventually corrode. If you decide to wait for technology to improve, at a minimum you should at least copy your old tapes onto new VHS tapes.
The Huffyuv AVIs you're capturing are perfectly lossless digital representations of your movies, as close to the original tapes as you can get. Your only problem is to compress them to a reasonable size, since storing those massive Huffyuv captures isn't practical.
Your color problem could be caused by a color space conversion. (My TMPGEnc turns ugly when I feed it YUY2.) Start VirtualDub, Select Video->Compression, highlight Huffyuv, and push the "Configure" button. Place a check in the box that says "Always suggest RGB format for output." Next time you encode, let me know if this helps your color problem.
The "pixelization" you describe sounds to me like "blocking", a notorious artifact of MPEG compression, particularly VCD/SVCD because the bitrate must be kept constant. It's rarely seen in DVDs, because the encoder is allowed to vary the bitrate to compensate for high motion scenes. Unfortunately, DVD burners are not cheap (U.S. $400+) and from what I hear, DVD authoring software for the PC tends to be buggy and stupid.
It could also be argued that such extravagance would be wasted on twenty-year old VHS source which itself came from 8mm film. In other words, consider that the "quality" of your source is not that great to begin with. Have you tried VCD 352 x 240? Many people swear that VCD is every bit as good as VHS.
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May the FOURCC be with you... |
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| darby |
| Posted: Sep 24 2002, 10:55 PM |
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| QUOTE (fccHandler @ Sep 24 2002, 04:02 PM) | | Technology is always improving, but VCD/SVCD technology has pretty much stabilized. Meanwhile your VHS tapes are slowly disintegrating; even if you don't play them, the materials in the tape ribbon will eventually corrode. If you decide to wait for technology to improve, at a minimum you should at least copy your old tapes onto new VHS tapes. |
Understood and agreed.
I've improved my color problem by using 24-bit RGB with no compression (Even with Huffyuv set to best I was getting color degradation.) But as soon as I run the .avi through TMPGEnc I get that "16 color jpeg" look again. I have the bit-rate set to QC (Constant quality) which I believe allows for a variable bit-rate similar to DVD. I also set motion detection to the highest setting hoping that would help with the blocking.
I agree with you that the VCD resolution (352x240) should be sufficient for these grainy 8mm films, but my thinking was the MPEG-2 would give me better compression with similar color performance as MPEG-1.
As to DVD, it was my intention to digitize these videos for the future. So once a DVD format is settled on, I could burn them to DVD. After all DVD players are more abundant than VCD/SVCD players.
Do you consider the digital copies you have made of your own VHS tapes to be of equal quality?
Thanks
dave
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| fccHandler |
| Posted: Sep 25 2002, 12:12 AM |
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| QUOTE (darby @ Sep 24 2002, 06:55 PM) | Do you consider the digital copies you have made of your own VHS tapes to be of equal quality?
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Sometimes. But my situation is probably very different from yours. I have an old ATI All-In-Wonder 128 and I watch TV (and everything else) on a 19-inch computer monitor. (In fact, I don't even own a television anymore.) My codec of choice right now is DivX 5.0.2 (MPEG-4). If you play with the settings you can achieve perfect VHS quality at very reasonable bitrates.
But it sounds like you want to produce something you can watch on TV with your family, so your only option is a VCD, SVCD, or DVD disc that you can pop into your DVD player.
Yes, CQ = variable bitrate, but with the SVCD template TMPGEnc enforces a maximum bitrate of 2520 (try to increase it; it won't let you). The result is the same as with CBR, if a high motion scene comes along the bitrate is still clamped at 2520 and you get blocking.
If you fix your color problem, you can burn your videos to DVD right now if you invest in a DVD burner. (I recommend DVD+R over DVD-R, but do your own research and decide for yourself.) You'd still do everything the same way, but you would capture at 720 x 480 and use TMPGEnc's DVD template. You'll still need authoring software, and you'll need to convert the audio to Dolby Digital (AC-3) or LPCM. The DVD format doesn't support an MPEG audio stream by itself.
So, PC DVD authoring is possible right now, but it can turn into a big investment. Here's another idea: You said Kodak originally transferred your 8mm films to VHS. You could try searching the Web for a lab that will transfer your VHS to DVD.
Oh, about the color problem: It sounds like your capture format is set for RGB. If possible, set it to YUY2. If your capture device doesn't present YUY2 as an option, try using VirtualDub's "Video->Set custom format" menu to force YUY2. If you can't get YUY2, try YUYV or UYVY. If you can get any of these formats to work, then select Huffyuv as the compressor, and force it to output RGB (as I described in an earlier post). Let me know if this helps.
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