I am about to embark on archiving hundreds of hours worth of old vhs home videos to dvd. Before I start I am hoping that someone could clarify a few things and make sure I understand what I have read.
I would like to be able to put a couple of hours worth of video on each dvd, so I am guessing a bitrate of 4000-4500 (CBR or VBR does it matter) is appropriate. I will capture video from a vcr through my Digital video camera via firewire into the computer. I read that I could do a half dvd as it is a vhs source and that would help. Is that right? Would I set this when I capture or just when I encode?
Will these bitrates and half dvd setting preserve the quality ofr the most part? TIA
VHS bitrate settings
Moderator: Ken Berry
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rwindeyer
From my experience in capturing VHS, these bitrate settings would be fine. You will not see any degredation in quality.
As for when you set these settings, it's up to you. If your computer has the horsepower to do on-the-fly mpeg encoding, you may like to do it on the way in. This is especially useful if you want to do minimal or no editing to the content, and just get it onto DVD. My personal preference, and useful especially if lots of editing is required, is to save in DV format and transcode to mpeg during the burn.
As for when you set these settings, it's up to you. If your computer has the horsepower to do on-the-fly mpeg encoding, you may like to do it on the way in. This is especially useful if you want to do minimal or no editing to the content, and just get it onto DVD. My personal preference, and useful especially if lots of editing is required, is to save in DV format and transcode to mpeg during the burn.
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THoff
One thing you may want to consider is not encoding at Full D1 (720x480 / 720x576) resolution, and using Half D1 / CIF instead.
This uses one quarter of the number of pixels, and is close to the quality of standard VHS video. You could accordingly drop the bitrate.
There is a template in UVS 9 that fits the bill -- it is called "Archive 6 VCDs onto 1 DVD". Selecting this will change the resolution and bitrate settings accordingly. You can customize this template further by selecting AC3 audio, and fit about seven hours of video onto one single-layer DVD.
This uses one quarter of the number of pixels, and is close to the quality of standard VHS video. You could accordingly drop the bitrate.
There is a template in UVS 9 that fits the bill -- it is called "Archive 6 VCDs onto 1 DVD". Selecting this will change the resolution and bitrate settings accordingly. You can customize this template further by selecting AC3 audio, and fit about seven hours of video onto one single-layer DVD.
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vivid_maniac
I was thinking of using the half d1 setting as I heard it doesn't really make a difference as vhs has those settings anyways. My computer has the horsepower but I do want to clean the videos up a bit. When I capture the video I just capture at the regular dv settings as it is being passed through a dv, right? Thanks for the replies!
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vivid_maniac
I was thinking of using the half d1 setting as I heard it doesn't really make a difference as vhs has those settings anyways. My computer has the horsepower but I do want to clean the videos up a bit. When I capture the video I just capture at the regular dv settings as it is being passed through a dv, right? Thanks for the replies!
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THoff