Alludo USER to USER Web Board

Hi,

I've just purchased a uLead so that I can transfer my VHS tapes to a digitised format.

After initial attempts, I need a bit of advice on which codec to use for compressions.

The tapes I'm converting are primarily sport features. I tried the ffd codecs but the quality was too blocky to be used.

The Xvid codec seems to give a reasonable quality although (when sound is captured too) the file sizes seems quite large.

Ideally, I'm looking for something similar to the quality of a torrent you could download for a TV programme. Around 350meg for a 22 minute show and double that for a 43 minute show.

Can someone tell me the best options to select for what I'm trying to achieve?

Also, on occasion during the tests I've done so far, the play back has been "Jittery" both in the preview and once the file has been recorded.

I've still to get to the bottom of this but could it be because I had "show preview" or similar box checked in the options?

Hi Laudrup1

Welcome to the forum
More information is required in order for a meaningful reply.

Can you read the 'Announcement' at the top of the forum.

Also fill in your pc spec¡¦ from your profile, this will show from the ¡¥system¡¦ icon within the post, can be useful.
Giving your location, just whether your Pal or Ntsc will help

Giving more details to your problem will certainly help in the replies you get.

How are you connecting the VHS player. Capture card/external capture device.
Usb, firewire,
What properties have you used for the capture process.

What is your intended finished product, to make a dvd or just view on internet .etc

As for size-------- WMV may be about 5 M per minute for top quality, Mpeg2 for a dvd is 4.3 Gb per hour top quality.??????????

What are you actually trying to achieve.

Some general comments......

The following is true with any given compression format (it does not apply when you compare MPEG-2 to MPEG-4, etc.).

DVDdoug wrote:Higher bitrate = higher quality = bigger file size = lower compression = less playing time.

Lower bitrate = lower quality = smaller file size = higher compression = more playing time.

You can estimate file size (in any format) with the following fomula:
File Size in MB = (Bitrate in kbps x Playing Time in minutes) / 140

The bitrate in the formula is the combined audio & video bitrate.

(Your requirement of 22 minutes in 350MB works-out to a bitrate of about 2250kbps.)

MPEG-4 (i.e. DivX) is more efficient than MPEG-2 (i.e. DVD). That is, you can get equal quality with a smaller file. So, one of the MPEG-4 variations is a good choice if you need a small file.

MPEG-2 is more efficient than DV (13GB per hour from a MiniDV camera).

The more compressed formats (more efficient formats) are more difficult to edit, and more difficult to convert/transcode to another format. (DV is the best format for editing.)

All of these video compression schemes use lossy compression... Data is thrown-away during the compression process. So, whenever you compress or convert from one lossy format to another lossy format, you will loose some video quality The quality loss may, or may not be, noticeable depending on many factors (mainly the bitrate).

trevor andrew wrote:Hi Laudrup1

Welcome to the forum
More information is required in order for a meaningful reply.

Can you read the 'Announcement' at the top of the forum.

Also fill in your pc spec¡¦ from your profile, this will show from the ¡¥system¡¦ icon within the post, can be useful.
Giving your location, just whether your Pal or Ntsc will help

Giving more details to your problem will certainly help in the replies you get.

How are you connecting the VHS player. Capture card/external capture device.
Usb, firewire,
What properties have you used for the capture process.

What is your intended finished product, to make a dvd or just view on internet .etc

As for size-------- WMV may be about 5 M per minute for top quality, Mpeg2 for a dvd is 4.3 Gb per hour top quality.??????????

What are you actually trying to achieve.

Hi trevor.

apologies for not reading the announcment. That must bug the life out of you guys!

Anyway, profile is now updated.

I'm using an Easy Cap video adapter. It's a USB stick that has composite ends connected to my video input composite connections.

I'm aiming just to get the files onto the PC for viewing there first. Ultimately, they may be used for burning onto DVD for TV viewing. That's more likely going to be their use than for internet viewing.



Thanks also to DVDDoug for his info. That's quite helpful to get me an idea of what I'm looking at.

Hi

I don¡¦t use Easy Cap but assume it can capture Pal DVD.

From the capture window select the DVD Format option.

Select the ¡¥options cogwheel¡¦ and Video Capture Properties
Select ¡¥Advanced¡¦
Template should be DVD PAL (720x576)

I would use:-

MPEG Files
24 Bits, 720 x 576, 25.00 fps
Upper Field First (for analogue capture)
(DVD-PAL), 4:3
Video data rate: 6000 kbps (constant) (this will give 90 minutes per disc)
Audio data rate: 256 kbps
Dolby Digital Audio, 48.0 KHz, Stereo

These settings are compatible for burning a DVD.

See my guide for mpeg capture from the link below

thanks very much mate.

What's the reason for using mpeg over .avi?

For some reason I have a preference to .avi files (most likely because that's what everything I download is)


I'll give those settings a bash and see how I get on. Thanks again.

Hi

Nothing wrong with AVI, in fact its probably better to edit Avi than Mpeg 2

There¡¦s lots of different formats of AVI, AVI is just a container for the video.

But you indicated using small file sizes, and wanting to create a DVD
DV-Avi is 13gb per hour.
See the list produced by DVDDoug earlier.

If you are capturing from analogue source then the captured video has to be re-coded during capture irrespective of the format used.
My preference would be to try Mpeg 2 (dvd format) as this is the format you require to burn a DVD.
Assuming there is little editing to do the, mpeg 2 should be ok.

DV-Avi is a digital source video, Usually MiniDV type camcorder, captured via firewire.
The video is not re-coded during capture but transferred from the camera.

Whatever format you choose, you have to set the capture properties. But get that right.

Capture to uncompressed AVI and its 65 GB per hour. And that¡¦s a lot.

Keep an eye on dropped frames counter during capture, no dropped frames is good.

If you are downloading avi files from the Internet they are probably DivX or Xvid files, which are notoriously difficult to edit because of their high compression.

Black Lab, I'll be doing very little editing. It's basically a straight capture from the VHS to a digitized format I'm looking at.

trevor, I'll look at using mpeg-2 and see how I get on.

Thanks for all the advice guys.