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Video capture from VHS: Part II (1 Viewer)

John_Berger

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I asked this in another thread that I started a while ago about the best method to VHS-based DVDs in. For VHS tapes I use half-D1 MPEG-2 and the resulting quality is gorgeous -- well, as gorgeous as VHS can be.

Here's the twist.

I've been starting to change my focus to recording favorite shows to DVD after recording them on VHS. The reason why I do this is because the majority of these shows come from digital cable and there is no digital cable box in the room where my video capture system resides. Digital cable uses MPEG-1, not MPEG-2. The issue that was brought up before was that of interlacing and why half-D1 MPEG-2 is better than MPEG-1 when recording from VHS.

Since MPEG-1 has a maximum resolution of 352x240, would it make sense to halve the amount of material that can fit on the DVD for half-D1 MPEG-2? Is there something about the way that digital cable transmits that would make it better to use that method as opposed to creating a maximum-bitrate MPEG-1 DVD?

It just seems to me that the real source material, regardless of being recorded on VHS, is MPEG-1, so it might not make any sense to make an MPEG-2 DVD from that material. The other part of me says that making an MPEG-1 DVD while capturing material from a VHS tape over an analog-to-digital bridge (meaning capture files of 720x480 resolution) could result in further compression artifacts on the final product, thus suggesting that half-D1 MPEG-2 might be the better way to go at the expense of only holding 1/2 the amount of material.

Suggestions on which route (pronounced "root", not "rout" :D) is best? Anyone? Anyone? Beuller?
 

Ken Chan

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Ken
Digital cable uses MPEG-1, not MPEG-2
How do know that? MPEG-1 is (supposedly, generally, usually, yada yada) progressive only. One of the reasons for MPEG-2 is support for interlaced sources. While reports of "digital cable" quality varies, if it really is 240 lines, then it would have to be crap everywhere.

You could easily verify this by capturing a few frames of horizontal motion to determine whether they're using 240 or 480 lines. If it is 240 then (a) my condolences and (b) there's no point in upscaling to 480. If it's 480, then obviously you're better off keeping it at 480, instead of throwing out half the data.

//Ken
 

John_Berger

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Nov 1, 2001
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How do know that?
Argh! I know that I saw it on HTF. I wonder if it got archived by now. It was an old thread. And even if I'm wrong, it wasn't the first and won't be the last time. ;)

In a way it doesn't really matter since the bit rate on digital cable sucks anyway, depending on the channel. I'll probably just leave it at half-D1 MPEG-2 for the stuff that I really like and uber-high MPEG-1 for the stuff that I watch occasionally.
 

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