vcr old home movies to dvd... best way to accomplish

[arktype]

i am using a hauppauge usb 2.0 device between the vcr and computer and have the hauppauge wintv usb 2.0 plugin installed (software is ulead dvd movie factory disc creator 3.5).

can someone tell me what project setting i should change in the dmf 3.5 software in order to achieve a captured video which requires little correction (thereby, hopefully saving quality) ?
also, i am not sure what audio setting to use; i think pcm was the only one available.
if i create chapter points during the editing session, will the picture quality degrade upon completion ?
we plan to play these dvd's on the dvd player attached to the television and they will be burned on dvd-r discs.



the properties for the captured video are as follows:
file
file format: ntsc dvd
file size: 2,747,344 kb
duration: 7499.633 seconds

video
video type: mpeg-2 video, upper field first
total frames: 224,764 frames
attributes: 24 bits, 720 x 480, 4.3
frame rate: 29.970 frames/sec
data rate: variable bit rate (max. 3750 kbs)

audio
audio type: mpeg audio layer 2 files
total samples: 359,982,382 samples
attributes: 48000 hz, 16 bit stereo
layer: 2
bit rate: 224 kbps

********

my project settings are as follows:
mpeg properties for file conversion
mpeg files
24 bis, 720 x 480, 29.97 fps
dvd-ntsc, 4.3
video data rate: variable (max. 7000 kbps)
lpcm audio, 48000 hz, stereo

do not convert compliant mpeg files is checked
treat mpeg audio as non-dvd compliant is not checked.

this is my first post; if any more info is needed i will attempt to locate it and append.

thanks for your help,

ark

[nyco_ork]

Your settings look good to me. Please post how things work out. I'm interested in that Hauppauge USB 2 capture device -- I'm having capture problems with my built-in card and am looking for alternatives.

Richard

[tyamada]

If you want very good quality your bitrate should be around 6000, check the settings on your Hauppauge device, I have a Happauge PVR 250 and caputure at 4400 bitrate.

What ever bitrate you capture at your project setting should match when you save your video.

The best way to do this is set your capture to the same settings all the time.

When you craete a disk make sure your setting match.

If your project settings don't match your video, it will get re-rendered and you will lose quality.

[DVDDoug]

Higher bitrate = higher quality. With tyamada's recommendation of 6000, you can get about 90 minutes of video and AC3 audio a DVD.

treat mpeg audio as non-dvd compliant is not checked.

Check that box! You do need to convert your MPEG-2 audio to AC3 (or uncompressed LPCM) because NTSC players are not required to play MPEG audio. (Mine can, but sometimes I make DVDs for other people, or loan them to other people.)

[arktype]

a late thanks for the replies, guys (i've been out watching university and AA baseball....haven't been on the computer much).

the capture plugin must set some properties as they should be, eg. the upper field field first is automatically set.
capture mode is 'fixed duration' and i set the time myself
format is optional....dvd-hq, dvd-gq, dvd-sp, dvdl-p, svcd-hq, svcd-gq and mpeg; depending on how much time allowed for each recorded dvd.

the only thing i can't seem to change with the plugin is the audio. the only selection available is pcm at varying frequencies-8,000khz at 8bit mono, 7kb/sec all the way to 48,000 khz at 16 bit stereo, 187 kb/sec. i'm not sure what type of audio comes out of a mitsubishi videocassete recorder.

DVDDoug-i'll check the box you recommended.

nyco_ork-when i try to record tv programs i have some problem initially with the spoken word and the mouth movement not quite syncing. i have made a profile (per the black viper page) that allows me to start xp with some of the services not running. i have not fine tuned this yet, but when i do, hopefully this will allow more cpu power to go into the ulead software for recording to the hard drive and thereby (?) alleviate the initial out of sync problem. it appears that recording from home videos will be better now since i know my settings are correct and i will not have to re-render like i have done in the past. i like the external 2.0 usb device better than the internal wintv card i used before.

ark

[nyco_ork]

nyco_ork-when i try to record tv programs i have some problem initially with the spoken word and the mouth movement not quite syncing. i have made a profile (per the black viper page) that allows me to start xp with some of the services not running. i have not fine tuned this yet, but when i do, hopefully this will allow more cpu power to go into the ulead software for recording to the hard drive and thereby (?) alleviate the initial out of sync problem. it appears that recording from home videos will be better now since i know my settings are correct and i will not have to re-render like i have done in the past. i like the external 2.0 usb device better than the internal wintv card i used before.

ark

I looked at some reviews of the USB2 card and decided to pass on it. Main reason is that I don't have USB2 ports on the motherboard; I have to use a PCMCIA card/hub to get USB2, and people report problems with the card if it's not on a motherboard port.

I finally solved my capture and synch problems the pricey way -- I bought a Pioneer PRV 9200 standalone DVD recorder. It has 32 different bitrate settings, set for five-minute increments, so you can fine-tune the bitrate you're capturing at. The results are stunning. I'm redoing every DVD I captured with MyDVD, whether it was authored in MyDVD or in Movie Factory. There are now no digital artifacts, no synch problems, nada. I import the TS files into MF4, which saves them as an Mpeg capture, edit in VideoReDo, and author in MF4. Takes only a few minutes more. Let the computer do what it does best -- the editing and authoring, and let a real recording machine do the capturing (it is not good for editing or authoring). After months of tearing my hair out, that's my new motto, and I am now happily cranking out beautiful DVDs.

P.S. The sound of the standalone is also better than the computer capture, because it has more headroom (more tolerance of peaks in the volume). It does the highest quality (Fine) mode in PCM; the other modes are all captured directly in Dolby Digital, so there's no need to convert Mpeg audio.

For anyone who's having problems similar to mine with capture, I highly recommend this route.

R

[url]

yeah, I tried that too and it involved more as the dvd's would not play in everyones player!!!
Regards.

[nyco_ork]

Depends on what brand recorder you use. Panasonic, for instance, uses a 704x480 frame, which is nonstandard. In any case, if you're importing the files to the computer and authoring the DVDs in MF, it's the authoring that matters, not the capture machine.

R

[arktype]

your panasonic looks like a pretty good system based on the specs i saw.
i bought a toshiba dvr RD-XS32 about 3 years ago. it does a great job of recording but all editing is done on the remote keypad and that ain't easy.
at first, i used the toshiba to capture the vcr movies the family made to dvd-rw disks and edited the disk with the computer and ulead software. the re-rendering degraded the quality too much. if the toshiba had a wireless keyboard or ethernet card it would be a nice system all the way around.

[nyco_ork]

My recorder is a Pioneer, not a Panasonic. The trick is to avoid re-rendering by setting the capture bitrate to correspond to the rate desired for the final DVD. For instance, today I captured a 2.5 hour program from tape at the player's MN 23 setting, which is good for 1 hr 35 minutes on a DVD. My plan is to split the program into 2 discs. (I determine ahead of time where the split point will be; I use a bitrate that works for the longer half, so both halves will look the same; I also leave a little extra space to allow for menus and authoring.) In this case the split point would be at 1 hr 10 min. Then I split the catpure file into two files, and copied each file to a separate DVD. When I import those to the computer and do the authoring, no re-rendering is necessary. The quality is great. I do no authoring or editing at all on the Pioneer, except for a final menu that it requires I accept before it will burn the DVD. That way I have a clean file for the computer.

But this won't work well with recorders that only have the basic settings of HQ, SP, and EP. Pioneer makes two recorders with the 32 bit rate options. Copying a program to a DVD takes about 6 minutes per DVD, and it takes only 1 minute to finalize. That gives me a DVD with the TS files I need for importing into Ulead.

You're right that the re-rendering is ugly. I avoid it at all costs.

R

[sjj1805]

Although I am able to capture from my Hauppauge card using VS9 / MF4 and MF5 (VS10 refuses to play) I prefer to use the purpose built software for the Hauppauge card WinTV2000.

Having captured the video I then use the Ulead programs for creating the DVD. I have written a tutorial here:
http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic.php?t=11379

[arktype]

My recorder is a Pioneer, not a Panasonic.

oops, my bad.
i copy and pasted your info for specs then typed Panasonic.

thanks to you guys i may get some decent quality dvd's out of these vcr tapes.
i did not realize how important it is to set the property settings the same for the initial recording and the final project.

[romilar]

Guess that depends on what you want to accomplish: for my VHS tapes, initially, I had a Panny set top DVD recorder, so using the Firewire input on the Recorder, and my MiniDV camera, I just fed the output to the Panny's internal Hard drive. In some cases, I burned DVD-r's, in others, I saved to DVD-RAM, then pulled the VRO files from them on my PC, and used DVD Workshop to edit/ do menus, etc. However, when I looked at some ot the resultant DVD's a year or two later, I wanted to do some more editing, and as has been stated many times on this and other forums: editing MPEG2 files is not easy, and the results will vary.

So, I bit the bullet, and purchased the Canopus ADVC 55 Analog to Digital Converter. I hooked up my VCR , and recaptured my VHS tapes as AVI files, which are much easler to edit accurately than MPEG2 files. The bonus is that I can feed the ADVC55 analog material from just about any source, from my MiniDV camera, to my old Hi8 camera.

A warning: the files captured from this device are large (about 20GB per hour), so be sure to have enough hard drive space. Once I am done editing, I archive the original AVI capture to DVD-RAM, to clear a bit of space on my Hard Drives.

BTW, if you have a MiniDV camera (SD), your camera will most probably output directly to your PC if your PC is equipt with a firewire port, using WinDV (free) software or Scenealyzer(pay) to do the capture. Check out the specs on your MiniDV camcorder to see if you can use it as your analog to digital converter. Personally, I wouldn't want to stress my camcorder that much, but for doing Analog to Digital VHS tape captures on the cheap, its the method to start with.
Either way you end up with (large) AVI files that are more easily edited than are MPEG2 video files. Also, I would rather archive my precious memories in AVI format, than in MPEG2 format.

jock