VHS Tapes to DVD

This is the procedure I use. Process the AVI file with TMPGENC 3.0 XPRess with Dolby AC-3 plugin and using VBR (variable bitrate) encoding and AC-3 audio format. On my 2.6 GHz dual Xeon it takes 8 hours to produce the mpg file. (With one processor it will take up to 16 hours.) Then use TMPGEnc DVD Author to produce the DVD image directory and burn the DVD.

 

if you don"t want to wait 8 to 16 hours to encode your Movie I suggest maybe useing a Faster encoder Like the "MainConcept Encoder" ,On my system it take about 2.5 hours to encode a 2 hour movie with the same or better quality as you would get useing Tmpgenc...I use CCE SP 2.67 to encode to Mpeg2 for DVD and a 2 Hour movie takes less than One Hour to encode with the Highest Quality ,It can also encode up to 9 pass VBR encodeing but that is a Little Overkill...I do advice that you use Dolby AC3 as your audio format on the DVD but if not Dolby AC3 then use Mpeg1 Layer 2 audio and try to avoid useing LPCM(WAV) Audio....

 

I see that tmpg has a bunch of settings and I'm not sure what I need.

What are settings for those 2 programs ? It's an 8mm camcorder tape as my source.

Thanks once again. Minion and his minions rock.

Succorso

 

Succorso: Sorry but I don"t understand your Question...Can you please explain your Question in More detail so I can then help you with your Problems...Cheers

 

Sorry.

For instance, in tmpg what should the "rate control mode" be ? and how about "encode mode" interlaced or non-interlaced ? and YUV format ?

I don't mind it taking 8 hours as I just let it run while I am at work but I would like to get it right the 1st time so it doesn't take several days.

Succorso

 

Well the "Encode Mode" setting would be set to what your Source AVI file is, If your Source File is Progressive then you would set it to "Non-Interlace" and if it is Interlaced then you set it to "Interlaced" You generally do not have to touch those settings at all Cuz Tmpgenc will have them set to the Correct setting for your Source File 95% of the Time...The "YUV" format setting MUST allways be set to 4:2:0..The "Motion Search Precition" should be set to either "Normal" or "High Quality" and never choose "Highest Quality" because it doesn"t really produce any better quality as "High Quality" does accept it makes the encodeing Take Twice as Long...
The "Rate Controll Mode" setting is for Chooseing what type of encodeing you want to do...If you choose "Constant Bit Rate(CBR)" then the Bitrate will stay the Same through the whole File, This is the Least efficient Encodeing Method...The "Constant Quality(CQ)" method is Probably the Best Method ,With it you just select the Max and Min Bitrate and use the Quality slider to increase the Quality, If you are Encodeing to DVD then setting the Minimum bitrate to 2500kbs and the Max Bitrate to 7000kbs and the Quality slider up to 75% will Produce a Very good Quality file while Keeping the File size as Low as Possible...The only Drawback to use this Type of encodeing method is that it is allmost impossible to estimate the Size of the Encoded Mpeg file...
The "Manual VBR" and "Automatic VBR" are just variations of the Constant Quality Mode...The 2 Pass Mode is considered to be the Best quality Encodeing Method but in reality with most source Files Constant Quality will Produce just as Good of Quality..In 2 Pass Mode the encoder scans the Whole file in the First Pass and then it encodeing the File in Pass 2 useing the Information it collected in the First Pass to distribute the Bitrate, this Method takes Twice as Long to encode as the Other Methods.....

Well I hope this Helps a Bit....Cheers

 

Wow. It finally worked, almost. The picture and sound are excellent but the sound is off by about 2 seconds which is pretty annoying.

Any idea why this happened or what I can do to fix it ? I used the setting Minion suggested in the previous post.

Succorso

 

When you have out-of-sync audio, it can not be corrected by your transcode software. You need a hardware device that "locks" the sound to the audio. When I convert VHS tapes to DVD, I use the Canopus ADVC-100 Digital Video Converter. I connect the output of my VHS player to the ADVC-100 and run a Firewire (1394) cable from the ADVC-100 to my computer. I use Pinnacle Studio 9 to capture the digital data on my computer hard drive.

I have just finished converting "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo", and ended up with a 33 GB AVI file. When I read this file with Windows Media Player, I have perfect audio to video sync from the beginning of the file to the end.

 

Is the Audio out of Sync by 2 seconds from beginning to end??? Or does it start out in sync but gradually goes out of Sync as the Movie Progresses and at the end of the Movie it is out by 2 seconds???

If the Audio is out of Sync the same ammount from beginning to end you can try fixing it by useing the Multiplexor in "Mpeg2VCR" it has a Feature were you can advance the audio or the Video so you can try to sync it up, It takes some trial and error but it usually works But only if the File is the same ammount out of Sync for the Whole File....

If the File is In sync at the Beginning but out of Sync at the end then this is because the audio and Video files are different Lengths and the audio and ending before or after the Video is...To fix this you must De-Mux the Mpeg file and then find out the :Exact" length of the Video file and write it down...
Now you use a program Like "Goldwave" which is an Audio editor which has a Feature called "Time Warp" which can shrink of stretch the audio file to a Different Length, So you just load the audio file into Goldwave and go to the "time Warp" feature and then you Put in the New length which is the Length of the Video which you wrote down and then it will change the length of the File to the new Length..
Now you render the Audio file and encode it to the Correct format and then Multiplex it back with the Video file and they should be back in sync...

I know it might sound a Bit confuseing but it does work and it isn"t really that hard....cheers

 

Minion I will give that a try. After watching the entire 2 hours video I noticed that it starts out off by 2 seconds but gets better toward the end. Very weird.

I'm going to try another video and see if it happens on that one as well.

Thanks for all the help. I wouldn't have been able to get this far without the help of you and this forum.

Succorso

 

confusion reigns. All I want to do is put my old tapes of the kids growing up onto DVD so I don't end up losing all the memories. I just don't seem to ab able to find out the basic requirements.

SYSTEM
AMD Athlon 2.4
Sony DVDRW
1GB memory
2 x 200GB hd
17"lcd

 

I think I finally figured this stuff out. It's been a long haul and it's incredibly confusing and a real pain in the butt. Here is what I have done to get my home movies from the non digital video camera to a dvd.

Buy a capture card/tv card. I bought the Leadtek Winfast Extreme (about $50 on the net).

Then you need to spend the next 5 lifetimes studying this thread, the other forums, the net and god.

Here is what I did:

1. Ulead DVD studio - to capture movie from camera to a .avi file format

2. Tmpg - you will also need to find something called the Huffy codec and install it. To convert the .avi file to a giant (50 gig for 2 hours) mpeg 2 file.

3. Tmpgenc - To convert the mpeg2 file to a dvd style format in the video_ts directory with the vob yada yada yada . I also think this needed another codec to read the mpeg2 file but I forget at this moment.

4. Roxio DVD burner - To actually burn the dvd.

About 10 hours from start to finish for a 2 hour video and a case of beer to keep me from throwing everything out the window.

Does this sound about right to all of you experienced folk ?

Succorso

 

Succorso:

That seem like an awful lot of work.

I input from tape, edit, and burn my DVDs all in Ulead VideoStudio 7. If I need more compression than that allows, I load Ulead DVD MovieFactory 3, which allows me to get 4 movies on one DVD, with menus.

Load time: Running time of movie(s)
Edit and Title Time(Commercial Tapes): <1hr
Edit and Title Time(TV and Home Video): 1-4 hrs

Burn time: About twice as long as Runtime.

*MY* Time: ~15 Minutes + Edit Time

Output Quality? Excellent!

bob

 

Bog,

Is that from a NON-digital camera ?

Succorso

 

Succorso, this is the procedure I use.
Instead of a video capture card, I use the Canopus ADVC100 to convert the analog output from the VCR to digitized form. Although there is a cheaper version of the ADVC100, this particular box can also be used to convert digital to analog in case you ever want to create an analog tape from a digital file on your computer.
The ADVC100 is connected to the Firewire (1394) port on my computer, and Pinnacle Studio 9 is used to capture the digital signal and store it as a very large AVI file (about 32 GB for a 2-hour tape).

Process the AVI file with TMPGEnc 3.0 XPRess with Dolby AC-3 plugin and using VBR (variable bitrate) encoding and AC-3 audio format. On my 2.6 GHz dual Xeon it can take up to 8 hours to produce the mpg file. (With one processor it will take longer.)
Use TMPGEnc DVD Author to produce the DVD image directory and burn the DVD.

 

You could also just use a different Mpeg encoder that is faster than Tmpgenc...On my P-4 2.53ghz CPU It only takes me a little over an hour to encode a 2 hour movie useing CCE SP 2.67 with better quality than Tmpgenc and with the MainConcept encoder I can encode a 2 hour movie in about 2 hours....

 

Hey Minion,
I just hit the link to CCE, and the trial version says:
This is the trial version. It is limited in the following ways:
1. A logo will be inserted in the encoded stream.
2. Encoder control list cannot be saved or loaded.
3. Framewise setting is not available for Quality setting.

How bir or obstructive is that logo? and is framewise setting, (not available), the way one sets quality, bit rates, etc; in other words, is what's not available ok, or is that the essential settings we need for compresing/getting up to 4 hrs on DVD, like others just said?
Thanks
Now that I have received the ACEDVio card and am capturing video .avi, and starting to edit, i am now looking ahead indeed to encoding to MPEG2, then creatingthe VOB files, and then burning it/authoring.

 

I said:

Succorso Asked:

I forgot to answer:

I am using my Sony digital camcorder as a conversion device--but any input digitizer will work. I plug the NTSC (or S-video) output from one of my cheapie VCRs into the A/V input of my Camcorder--which plugs into my computers firewire port--and control the recording from VideoStudio 7.

If I know what compression I want for output, I input at that same compression, saving *scads* of rendering time. I output to *.iso files, so I can burn multiple DVDs on another computer if I want. I burn my first copy onto a DVD+RW, and if that tests out fine, I make copies on the cheapest +/-R media I can find--usually about 35-cents a pop.

Just to optimize speed, I have dual 160 GB external drives--one USB 2.0 for saving input video and output files (because my camera is firewire) and a firewire one for projects, editing, and scratchpad. I still use an internal E:\ drive for temp files (just upgraded from 40 to 200 Gb).

I inuitively figured that if all of my data streams were using completely separate databusses, it would help the throughput--and it seems to.

bob

 

Videobob,

You have it easy. My old camcorder does not even have svideo out. Just RCA jacks and my new digital camcorder doesn't have rca jacks.

Succorso

 

MINION,
Thank you for your advice. I bought the ADVC-100 and i captured superbe DV-avi's from VHS. I would like to ask you something, maybe you can help me again:

- what is the best dv-avi to mpeg2 converter? i have tried a lot of software (procoder, cce, mainconcept, heuris) but i'm not an expert so maybe i got the settings wrong. If you tell me, from your experience, what software is the best, i will search for guides for it.

I have to mention i am NOT interested in VBR, only CBR, because i want the MAXIMUM QUALITY possible. And i want the final MPEG2 to be interlaced (for quality, i don't want to drop fields).

THANX!