Getting best the quality capture from VHS

Discussion in 'Video capturing from analog sources' started by DaveO1959, Dec 8, 2004.

  1. DaveO1959

    DaveO1959 Member

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    Hello,

    This is my first post to the forum and I hope someone will be bale to help.

    I have read many of the messages on here regarding capturing VHS but none address my problem hence the new thread on the subject.

    I have managed to capture a VHS tape,convert to MPEG2 and author a DVD from it that plays on my DVD player.

    The trouble is the quality is worse than the original VHS tape by quite a degree and I suspect this may be down to capturing problems. I encoded to MPeg2 using TMPGenc and create the vob files with another ultility before using Nero to author the DVD.

    I am using a Pinnacle Linx USP Plus capture device with Pinnacle Studio 8.12 software. On reading the forum I see this is classed as prety useless but contrary to what I have read in some messages you can select different codecs if you go to the custom capture option and select a check box. You can then select any of the codecs installed on the machine.

    The reason I think capture is the problem is that I have read elsewhere that capturing at 352x288 (which is what I did) is not good enough because the video is interlaced and that means you are effectivly getting only half the available resolution. I have read you should capture at 640x280 at least and then deinterlace the result using VirtualDub.

    Does this make sense?

    If it does, what codec should I use to capture the Video?

    The other possibility is the MPEG2 compression is ruining it so are there alternatives to TMPGenc?

    Thanks in advance,

    Dave
     
  2. stardust

    stardust Regular member

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    I had a common problem when capturing with VirtualDub, it restricted capture resolution to 352x288. Then I installed WDM Capture Driver (http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/) to Win2K. However, later I uninstalled it and re-installed original drivers to my Hauppauge PVR (PCI) card . After that realized, that I can still capture even full reso (768x568) with Vdub...

    When capturing from VHS, I use Vdub version called VirtualDub1493VCR+SYNC with Huffyuv or PICvideo MJPEG codec (compression adjusted to 19 or 20) and it produces a good quality AVI. Then 'TMPGEnc Xpress' for converting to mpeg-2 (VBR, high) and final job is authorizing to DVD format with 'TMPGEnc DVD Author' and the result is better than good for my needs.
     
    Last edited: Dec 8, 2004

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