On the DVD burning "encoder settings" screen, you'll be able to adjust the bitrate. Crank it up to 6000kb/sec or so to see if that makes a difference ("burn" to the image recorder so you don't waste discs). Also wind up the quality to High Quality/Slow encode time. You'll get less time on the disk, but you should get better quality. The DVD process should give you "about" what you see from the original on the timeline. Remember though that things always look better on the small computer/MEP monitor screens than they will on a big TV.

@Mike-Gannon

Hi

In addition to @AAProds comment, do bear in mind that the resolution of VHS is less than that of standard DVD:

• PAL VHS resolution is approximately 335×576 pixels
• NTSC VHS resolution is approximately 333×480 pixels
• DVD is 720x576px (PAL) or 720x480 (NTSC).

John EB

Thanks for the replies. To clarify, I am copying a VHS tape playing on a Sony player, using the Composite cables supplied with the software. I used S-Video rather than Scart - does this make a difference, positive or negative?

The copy on my HP laptop is reasonable. But it drops significantly when copying to DVD.

I fully appreciate that the original is going to be poor, but expected the DVD result to be as good. Perhaps this was false hope. I am viewing the DVD on a TV, and comparing that to the computer copy, also viewed on a TV.

I will try the setting changes suggested to see if that solves it.

Your DVD shouldn't look worse than your VHS copy. What type of file is your VHS copy, it's image size and bitrate?

@Mike-Gannon

I used S-Video rather than Scart - does this make a difference, positive or negative?

Absolutely use the S-video output from your player. VHS is terrible to work with; you need as much going for you as possible.

Stepping back to the recording step, choose MXV User Defined, then on the Configuration button, choose Coding Quality to Best. You need to get that bitrate up so when you bring it to the timeline, it's as close as possible to the original. Then you can let MEP reduce the quality a bit when you finally render it.

FYI, I'm capturing some VHS tapes now. I'm using Virtual Dub and recording at 60mb/sec ( ~10x DVD quality). The recorded quality almost matches the original. That bitrate seems insane but when I render out with MEP to MP4 after editing it, the result is great (well, as good as the original, which for some of my tapes is pretty @#$%^ average; I wish I'd known about generation loss way back then...).

@Mike-Gannon

I agree with @AAProds Do not capture direct to MPEG2 DVD quality. Use a higher resolution and bitrate format and do some cleaning up in MEP first, perhaps even using Vitual DUB VHS filters, then export down to DVD quality. The noise and glitches in old VHS tapes can play havoc with the MPEG2 encoder on the fly.

Peter

Thanks @AAProds and Scenestealer, very helpful. Pardon my ignorance, but what is MEP, and MZV User Defined? I am using "Rescue your video Tapes" and this is not clear. Not sure there were many options when recording the VHS to computer. I see options when copying from Computer to DVD, where I can increase the bit rate.

@Mike-Gannon

Hi Mike.

In that case you have posted to the wrong forum but in this case it may be useful you got it wrong.

MEP (Movie Edit Pro) is the forum you have posted to. It is a complete video editing package including importing and exporting from and to various methods of capture and export.

People here would have been replying as if you were using that program so some of the answers may not be pertinent to your program.

Ray.

Just tried again, and got same poor result at the "Finish Movie" copy stage when saving to the computer in MP4.

Options available are:

Format: MPEG-4, MPEG2, Windows Media Player

Quality: DVD, HD, Full HD.

If I select anything other than DVD I get a warning message:

"The set export quality is higher than the quality of the source video. Improvement to the quality of the image material will not be achieved by saving. To avoid unnecessarily large files, reset the quality settings to a lower level".

So I went with DVD format and MPEG-4, and the quality of the MP4 is noticeably inferior to the MVY.

Am I doing something wrong, or is this a limitation of the software and hardware?

Thanks again for any advice.. Driving me crazy, and wasting so much time!!

Thanks CubeAce. Just noticed the drop down options.

Apologies for wasting time everyone. My bad.

@Mike-Gannon

Not a problem Mike.

Happens all the time. Mainly from people using phones to connect to forums that often don't display well on mobile devices. Other times people are just not used to navigating a different site.

I also don't think you are time wasting beyond finding out your program may not be as flexible but you may get better advice now people know which program you are using.

Ray.

Would be happy to receive any advice from the Rescue Your VideoTapes community.

@Mike-Gannon

I suspect the Rescue Your Video Tapes community may actually be very few users, at least of those who actively post here!

However, re-reading one of your recent posts I noted this:

I went with DVD format and MPEG-4

"DVD format" is MPEG-2, not MPEG-4. I think you should test the output again, but using the correct codec (MPEG-2). Please let us (me) know if this change does affect the quality in a positive manner!

Jeff

Thanks Jeff. I will try that. As you can tell I am very inexperienced at this, and have just been selecting the defaults. The software did not suggest changed to MPEG-2 for DVD quality.

Failing that I may have to look at alternative software, as I have already spent way too much time on what I thought was a pretty basic process.

Any recommendations for software (assuming you can answer such a question on this forum)? I am trying to capture our wedding video of 33 years ago, on the one and only VHS tape, so as you can imagine I do not want to lose it!

@Mike-Gannon

I'll be very interested to hear what the finished product looks like when using the MPEG-2 codec!

As for alternative software - I'm not going to recommend any non-Magix product since I have no experience of using any other manufacturer's offering, certainly in the last 10 years or so - so the immediate suggestion to make is Magix Movie Edit Pro. I have used it, and its big brother, Video Pro X, over a number of years to successfully create DVDs from clients' VHS, Video 8, VHS-C, 8mm video, etc., etc, (almost the only format I can't handle is Betamax). I do have a specialist "professional" internal card in my computer for the actual digitisation of the analogue video but both MEP and VPX have a range of editing tools which allow for considerable quality enhancement of a format which, as @johnebaker stated previously, is inherently "low" quality.

If you do decide to move up to MEP, the advice here is always to go for the Premium version, although if oyu are wanting only to capture the footage of your wedding, and are almost certain to never need the software again (???) then one of the lesser versions, Basic or Plus, may well be sufficient for you. Currently the Premium version is cheaper than the Plus version!!!

HTH

Jeff

Hi @emmrecs

Thanks again for your advice. I changed to MPEG2 on the laptop I was using, and it did seem to improve but still not great. So I decided to revert to an older laptop which had built in DVD, to take out one more cable with an external DVD. Combined with MPEG2 format, this is now giving me a reasonable quality. Still no as good as watching the original VHS, but it will have to do. Many hours spent, but I now have a DVD that will suffice.

Are there updated drivers or software for this? I tried installing the software on on my Windows 10 machine and it doesn't load.