[adone36]

I have a bunch of SVHS videos I plan on transferring to DVD.


I know I can simply copy them to Replay and transfer, edit and burn. I want to get the best quality I can. My VCR is the top JVC (time base correction, digital filters, etc). JVC's manual says to turn of the filters when duping.


I was thinking of transferring the files using the Plextor capture unit with built in encoder chip.


Once the mpeg is created what is the best way to eliminate tape noise and artifacts after/during editing, before burning the final DVD?


I was thinking the software equivalent of the digital filtering high end tv sets use where the noise blip is in 1 frame but not the next, so it is eliminated.

 

[Jeff D]

My "best" technique is to caputre on a PC in uncompressed format (HuffYUV, not 100% lossless, but close). These files are large, but this is a middle step. From there I use any/many of the AVISynth filters to clean up noise and other stuff. There are some great filters out there, some specific for VHS captures and some work pretty well.


The "noise blip" you speak of would be done with a filter like a 3d convolution filter where the frames are checked against neighboring frames and if there's noise the other frames are used to get an fix.


The other thing is that these frames are then going to be compressed with a good mpeg encoder, a good mpeg encoder works way better than a bad encoder. My choice (at the moment) is still Cinemacraft's encoder. They have a home version for $30-50 last I checked.

 

[adone36]

Jeff

What are you using for the initial capture? I was thinking about the Plextor unit because I figured it's encoder would be better than the Replays.


So you capture to HuffyUV, apply the appropriate filter then use a software encoder? The Cinemacraft "basic" is $58 now. How fast is the encoding process. I run mostly 3200 Athlons with SCSI drives so I guess it wouldn't be that slow.

 

[Jeff D]

Sorry tony, my point was I do everything on the PC. I don't use the replayTV. The replayTV does a fine job if you don't really want to do anything else to the source when it's encoded. For me the replay loses sync with the VCR at times, like segements were there's nothing recorded or recordings start/stop, so the replay wasn't a good option for me.


The problem is that you sound like you want to clean up your captures and I'd suggest not using the replay for that. Sure you can use the captures and pipe those through something like AVISynth for the filtering, but the problem is that you are going to have lots of mpeg artifacting and loss of quality because of all the stages involved.


vcr->replay (encode 1)->move to PC and filter->PC encode (encode 2) the results might be disappointing. Regardless they should be better than VHS tape quality, but since you source is VHS I really have no idea if the output would be acceptable.


The encoding with cinemacraft is slow for me because I do high quailty encodings with 3 passes. I believe the timing for single pass is about 1hr/hr of recording on a 2.4GHz P4. I try to test encode single pass and have always thought it wasn't that bad. 3 pass can add almost 8x the time to the encoding process, but for me the results are worth it.


I use techinques for things like moving star wars laserdiscs to DVD and other such crap that involves a lot of filtering and post capture processing. I'm sure you encodings will be much faster than mine.


BTW, I don't know what the plextor unit is, do you have a link? Is it PC based? If PC then I'd sugges that and use something like virtualdub to capture with the huffyuv codec (btw you need the "correct" codec there are many flavors of this out there some way worse than others. I think doom9.org has the good one linked in the download area. And while there snoop around the forums for good advice on what you are wanting to do. There's lots of AVISynth/VirtualDub chatter there as that's where the developers hang out when they have time.)

 

[adone36]

The plextor captures svideo, has a hardware encoder and outputs mpegs via USB 2.0.

http://www.plextor.com/english/products/ConvertX2.htm


I was thinking of it as a quick and dirty method, figuring the encoder would be better than the Replay's. Of course, it would also mean not being able to clean up the input before encoding. Canopus makes similar, more expensive units.


What do you use to perform the initial capture?


Do you have any sync problems on long recordings?


Quick and dirty would be using the Canopus or Plextor and feeding a laptop via USB. Otherwise I guess I'd have to drag the tape unit over to the main computers. Just debating whether it would be worth it considering the source material quality (SVHS edits of VHS recordings).

 

[Jeff D]

I don't have sync issues, because I use vdub, it's got the sync stuff pretty well tamed.


I use an ATI All In Wonder card, but I hear the leadtek card is pretty good, but I don't know which one or the price.


It all depends on how important the stuff you want to capture is. Since I have a pretty defined system I just use that and tweak as needed. There are some guys that go nuts with this stuff. Some here even in the replayTV group... generally the ones who go to town with this stuff do so with things like Star Wars conversions from laser disc to DVD. Really, check doom9.org because there's lots over there in the forums about VHS captures.