6 hours VHS tape to DVD ?

[mutrax]

First : is it possible ?
I have a G450 eTV (PC is an Athlon 1.4 GHz running Win2K Pro) and depending on the purpose of the capture I use Vid-Tools (PCVCR) to capture directly to MPEG-2 and AVI_IO to capture to AVI.
I'd like to capture several old 6-hour VHS tapes to DVD and add some very simple menus. (I already have a "light" version of Ulead's DVD Factory).
The main question is : which format should I use to capture ? Some guides say 352x480 and encode to 1.6 Mbps... is it right ?
Given the source, I don't expect "DVD" quality, but at least something that isn't worst than the source.
Thanks !
Christian.

[Dr Mordrid]

352x240 with MPEG audio at 48khz would work, is DVD legal and doesn't look that bad.

Dr. Mordrid

[mmp121]

Doc,

At roughly what bit-rate should the video be done at? I am also looking to do several (8-9) of these VHS home video's to DVD. Am I to presume that you feel that 1.6Mbps of MPEG-2 video at a resolution of 352x240 would allow the quality to remain no worse than the source?

[Brian Ellis]

I have done full frame 3 hr DVDs from VHS. I forget what bitrate I used, but I have 2800 VBR in the back of my mind, but don't swear to it. The quality was noticeably poorer than the VHS direct on fast movements, but acceptable. It was OK on static scenes. I wouldn't wish to do 6 hr.

[Dr Mordrid]

I've used as low as 1450 kbps MPEG-2 with 48k MPEG audio at 160 kbps and had decent results, but only with high quality sources.

You will get higher quality capturing Matrox MJPeg, PICVideo MJPeg at quality 20 or HuffYUV then encoding to MPEG-2 using DVD MovieFactories built in MainConcept encoder. Set the Customize menu to a 352x240 frame size with MPEG audio at 160 kbps and the quality slider cranked up to about 45.

IF you happen to have the version of DVDMF2 that comes with MSPro then by all means substitute the MPEG audio for AC3 for better DVD compatability.

Do a short test disk first (one more reason for having a few +/-RW's around) and see if the quality is OK with 1450 kbps. If not then cut your losses and use the higher bitrate Brian suggested and more disks.

Dr. Mordrid

[Debbie]

Drifting a little from the subject. Whenever I capture using software codec, eg. PicVideo, DivX, or other, via AVI_IO at quality 19, full frame (704x576) PAL, I get the out of buffers error (50/50).

Beside lowering the quality level, is there an other solution to keep quality 19 or 20 ?

MOBO Asus PS4533-E
512 Mb DDRAM
Audio Audigy 1
2 Maxtor 80Gb 7200
Marvel G400-TV
OS. WinXP

Debbie