Movies on DVD: Best VHS to PC quality settings?

ayric wrote on 2/11/2012, 4:27 PM

Hi!

I bought Grabby which included Magix Movies on DVD (TerraTex Edition). I have a PAL VCR, using S-video.

What are the recommended settings for getting best possible quality files for PC viewing? I am not going to export to DVD, and DVD transfer seems to be what most guides are for.

Please comment on whatever makes no sense:

I am not doing advanced editing (just basic cutting), so I understand that straight to MPEG-2 is then preferable(?)

So after Recording - Analog Video I pick these settings (skipping what I leave as standard):
Video Driver: Terratec Grabby
Audio Driver: Terretec Grabby
Input: S-Video
Recording Quality: MPEG: User defined - and then:
MPEG type: MPEG-2
Video format: PAL
Interlace mode: Progressive
Video bit rate: 4000 ?
Video encode quality: 15 ?
Resolution: I don't understand this one. According to this guide http://www.digitalfaq.com/guides/video/introduction-record-capture.htm: it says VHS resolution is 352x480 which is not even an option in Magix. The corresponding bitrate is mentioned as 4000 max. What is the best resolution?
Bit rate type: Variable bitrate
Noise sensitivity: 7
Audio: 48000, stereo, 224 kbps

Thank you!

Comments

johnebaker wrote on 2/11/2012, 4:37 PM

The VHS resolutio is as you have found, however for standard DVD you require 720 * 576 for recording,set the recording option to MPG:DVD this will use the standard settings for DVD and should be OK for recording and make burning a DVD quicker..

Do not expect to gain any significant improvement in the quality of the original recording, carry out any editting you need to do and then finally apply some sharpening to improve the appearance on playback on a DVD player/TV.

Note playback on a computer will look bad!

John

ayric wrote on 2/11/2012, 5:21 PM

Hi John!

Appreciated, but to specify, I do not intend to burn any DVDs. I want to keep a digital archive on my PC, for PC viewing only. My problem with finding good guidelines is that most are meant for DVD conversion.

I have now found a suggestion to use lossless as archive format and convert as needed from there. If that is correct, is MXV user defined with 720x576 and 75% a good choice?

Thanks!

johnebaker wrote on 2/12/2012, 4:39 AM

I would still use the MPG:DVD or another standard video file format, with the initial poor playing quality of digitised tape on a PC, the loss due to compression will be minimal, just keep the quality and bitrate settings as high as possible. The reason being that the mxv format can only be played using MEP, where as MPG/AVI etc can be played anywhere.

Using your computer to store digital archives requires you to have good backups of the all your data that you wish to preserve and not risk losing. From experience I keep multiple backups on three external hard drives and also for the data I really do not wish to lose also on DVD's.

John

ayric wrote on 2/12/2012, 4:59 AM

Good stuff, John. :-) And when you say "as high as possible", does that mean maximum or is there a rule of thumb for understanding where to stop? I understand this has to do with the source quality so it probably does not make sense to say a specific setting... The source quality is not great, regular camcorder video.

- Video bit rate was defaulted to 4500 in this setting but can be raised to 9500.

- Video encoder quality was defaulted to 4 but can be raised to 15.

- Also, Interlace mode was defaulted to "Interlaced (Top field first)". Should I change this to Progressive?

Thanks again!