vhsc/8mm capture resolution???

[disastermaster]

Hi, I`ve got some old video footage on Vhsc tape and 8mm tape, I`m capturing to avi and then encoding to mpeg1 or/and mpeg2. Then I was going to burn them to Dvd as an xdvd. But what res do I do the initial capture? What is the actual res of vhsc/8mm and is it a waste of time capturing above that res.?
Cheers.

BTW I`m in PAL country

ps if I was capturing Live tv thru a tv card and going to put that onto dvd as above what would be the best res for that?

[Dr Mordrid]

Most full frame capture devices capture at either 704x576 or 720x576 in PAL. These are prefereable if you're encoding for DVD or miniDVD, but if capturing for VCD or SVCD capturing at 352x576 will save you some disk space with no quality loss.

Dr. Mordrid

[az]

AFAIK VHS (VHS-c IS VHS) doesn't use the full resolution...

AZ

[Brian Ellis]

I half-agree with Doc. Theoretically, he is right: in practice there is usually a slight improvement by capturing to the 7xx x 576 res. The best way of finding out what's OK for you is to find a few minutes of tape in VHS and 8, where the image is as good as you can get, capturing it at 7xx x 576, then capturing the same clips at 3xx x 576, going all the way to your DVD and comparing the results. If you really cannot see any difference with a critical regard, then choose the lower res. If you can see a difference, then choose the higher res. At the best, the difference will be small and it will depend on the quality of your tape playback device, especially for VHS-C. Some better camcorders were able to record about 400-450 horizontal pixels but few VHS players are able to resolve it, especially those with more than two heads, because of head alignment tolerances and noise reduction circuits. You may be lucky.

[Dr Mordrid]

It does make for higher quality compositing of effects though. Add some detailed animations, rolling titles etc. and you'll see the difference. I always edit in full width for that reason.

If no effects/titles/overlays etc. are to be used then I go with 352 wide but at full interlace vertical rez (480 for NTSC/576 for PAL).

Dr. Mordrid

[Brian Ellis]

I fully agree with you there, Doc