Question: HOW CAN I GET THE BEST DVD PICTURE QUALITY FROM A STANDARD VHS VIDEO TAPE?

If your transfering Super VHS tapes to dvd always use the S-Video Input on the recorder.

If your transfering "Regular" VHS tapes but are planning to play them back on a Super VHS VCR you will have to check the Picture Quality yourself because some people have found that there really isn't that much difference & some people have found that by using the Composite Video (Yellow) Input they have gotten a better picture because of the recorder's built-In TBC & other circuits that help clean up a VHS picture when dubbing because they only work on the Composite Input & not the S-Video Input.

As always, the cleaner the tapes the better the picture.

Using s-video input with a SVHS machine may or may not provide better quality transfer. I have 5 SVHS machines and 4 VHS machines and the VHS machines provide better transfers of VHS material to DVD than any of the SVHS machines ( or they did...these machines are rarely used these days).

Use the highest quality setting on the DVD recorder. It is a common newbie myth that since it is VHS quality...that you can lower the quality of the DVD setting. It doesn't work that way...use HQ or whatever is the highest setting otherwise artifacts will be introduced into your transfers.

There have been reports of a circuit in Panasonic DVD recorders that improves the quality of VHS to DVD dubs. Allegedly, the circuit in question knows about and understands what recording onto VHS tape does to a video signal, and it does a good job in compensating for that. This has never been definitively proven, and I have no personal experience to support the claim. Some people here have stated that the improvement is only present if composite, not S-Video is used.

As has already been written, you need to test your specific VCR and DVD Recorder combination to ascertain which of the two outputs of your VCR, the S-Video or the composite output, will yield the best results.

And most importantly, if your after the highest quality disc recording, do exactly what Star56 has written about recording speed/bitrate. Use the HQ/XP setting of 10 Mbps. That speed only provides 1 hour per disc but results in the highest quality and should still be used even for VHS tapes.

Believing that low bitrates/recording speeds are appropriate for low quality (VHS) tapes is a mis-understanding of how MPEG-2 encoding works.


nx211

Be careful with ultra high bitrates-- DVD max spec is 9.8mbps ( http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#3.4 ) which INCLUDES audio. You can go higher but players may not like it. So if you're using PCM audio (1.5mbps) that has to be kept in mind as well.

I tend to set my Toshiba to around 6.8-7.0mbps video bitrate with PCM audio for important conversions (to leave a little headroom) and am quite pleased with the results.

But yes, set it to as high as you're willing to go (for the recording space/quality tradeoffs). Setting it low "because it's just VHS" will yield a much lower quality recording. Also, many DVD recorders have various filters that will clean up sources, including VHS recordings. I don't know specifically about the Panasonic, since it just seems like rumours float around about specific circuitry. If anything, it probably has a very rudimentary time base corrector (as do most of the higher-end DVD recorders) and an "always-on" Y/C filter, which will really help.

I have tried and tested a wide variety of standard VHS>DVD recording.

I find that nothing beats the picture quality of the transfers I've done on a Panasonic DMR-EH75 combo unit. Having the hard drive option is a definite bonus! It's also a more convenient option than using two machines and it eliminates potential interference issues that can be introduced by interconnect cables.

If you're concerned with picture quality, this is the way to go!

This model is discontinued and getting hard to find, so don't hesitate!

I've been using SVHS units, as well as VHS, since 1989, and still operate two. For me at least, I have always gotten a noticably better picture from standard VHS, when playing back on an SVHS machine, using the S-Vid outs. This is what I have used to make satisfactory dubs to DVD, using my Pio 640. I did use some color adjustments on the 640, to improve the dubs. If your DVDR does have a TBC on the composite inputs, that may be better than using S-Vid transfers, but otherwise, you will almost certainly get a better dub using the SVHS machine, and its S-Vid outs, even for VHS.