Converting VHS -> DVD: what's most important for good capture quality.

I'm converting some VHS tapes to DVD, with very little editing
necessary.

I'd like opinions on what the most important factors are in the quality
of the captured footage.

I currently use:

JVC S-VHS -> Canopus ADVC-100 -> Firewire -> PC -> Vegas 4.0

My PC is 256MB DDR SDRAM, 266MHz, with an integrated Intel 3D AGP
graphics card.

For better quality captures (in terms of picture quality), should I
start by upgrading my VCR? My video card? Something else? What's going
to give me the best bang for my buck if I had $500 to spend? Or $1000?
Thanks in advance for your help.

 

Well, remember that VHS tape isn't very good to begin with.
Your capture setup is fine and I think the only way you can really
improve the capture quality further would be to get a time base
corrector to put between the VHS deck and the ADVC-100.

 

How many do you have? If you want the least hassle, just take em to
Walgreens. I think they will do a basic transfer for about $10. Or, buy a
DVD recorder and just output your vcr to your dvd recorder.

These methods are the very leastest hassle if you just want to do straight
up copies.

The geek factor is rather low unfortunatly, and its dosen't give you as many
toys to play with.

 

I have a number of videos. I want to do some menu-based DVDs with
these, so unless Walgreens can just give me a good-looking AVI or MPEG
output that I can take home an edit/author, I'm not sure that's what I
am looking for.

Thanks for the help, though.

 

The DVD recorders these days will let you put in some menus.

If you want to transfer to your PC, there are several cards that seem to be
recommended over and over. I think the Hauppage card is one. Capture it to
you PC, use a basic editor, render, bring into authoring app and create DVD
structure.

If you bought the capture card, it would probably include lite versions of
an editor and authoring probgram. If transfer of a pile of VHS to DVD is
your goal, this is probably enough toys.

If you want to really start playing with the video editing as a full time
hobby. Well then, I'm sorry to say that you could never have enough toys.

 

Replace the ADVC-100 with an ADVC-300. Capture will be shaper, and will
not have the slight noise
that the ADVC-100 adds. Color quality is excellent, and Stabilization
works well except
on very badly worn or damaged vhs tapes.

YF

 

I am making three assumptions: first that the JVC S-VHS vcr is one
that contains a time-base corrector, second, that you are not doing
extensive editing on your captured video, and third, that you really
are not using a 266 MHz computer!!!

For high-end video editing I use a lot of expensive equipment and
software. However, to convert VHS to DVD I've found that you really
don't have to do much to preserve what little quality VHS recordings
possess. Some people swear they jump through all kinds of hoops to
"preserve" the VHS quality, and that they use multiple filters to
"improve" the image quality, but I just don't find it necessary or
desirable at all to do much "quality improvement" during the editing
process. The time you want to worry about quality is getting your
video from the video tape to the computer. THAT is where you will
either make or break the VHS-DVD conversion.

I think all you need is the following.

1: Start with a very good quality S-Video vcr with a TBC. If
the vcr doesn't have a TBC, you can put one in the video stream
between the vcr and coding unit, but you NEVER seem able to get the
same quality as using an S-Video vcr and doing the TB correcting
inside the vcr.

So, for me, I would put any funds you want to get rid of into the
very best hi-end S-Video vcr you can still find! (If your tapes are
real junk, you might also want to add a hi-qualty proc-amp, but you
have to be very careful not to over-process your signal.) If you
don't start with the best VHS signal possible, then NO amount of
post-processing will make up for it! Remember, ANY filters, etc. that
you use to "clean-up" your video file during editing are very likely
to add more noise than they remove. You can do a small amount of
filtering during editing, but I would never use a dozen filters as
some people on the group suggest.

2: Code the video to DV with something like your ADVC 100. I
actually use a Canopus ACEDVio card since it seems to do a better
encoding job and you can adjust your hue, saturation, and brightness
more effectively.

3: Then I use Pinnacle Studio 9 to capture the converted DV
stream "on the fly" as an MPG2 file at the bit rate I need for the
program length and material (more motion needs more bit-rate). I just
don't see any quality improvement with VHS material in capturing as
DV, editing in DV, then transcoding to MPG2.

Going VHS analog - DV - MPG2 actually appears to give better results
than the $2000 analog capture card I used to use to capture as MJPEG
AVI for pro work. Maybe it is just me, but I think the DV codec is
simply marvelous!

Normally I set my capture rate to put two hours on a DVD (about 3800
bps, depending upon how you are handling the audio).

4: Then I chop out the commercials, add a menu and titles if
needed, and let Studio burn the DVD.

End of process. Ninty-eight percent of the time the DVD actually
"looks" better than the original VHS tape.

My feeling is that VHS doesn't have enough quality to warrant going
overboard, and most of the stuff we have on all those old tapes is
all that important.

BUT, if I am dealing with S-VHS or Hi8 or DV or very important
original material (birth, death, marriage, etc.), then I code to DV
and stay there until I'm ready to transcode to MPG2 for the DVD.

Hope this helps,

Susan