I hope I am not asking something repeative, but I have a Dazzle (USB) DVC. I am not happy with the captured image. I have made VCD's using NERO5.0.0.3, and have played them back on a Pioneer ELITE DVL-91. I was hoping to get something better at an affordable price ($250.00). I am going to be copying VHS tapes with a SONY SLV-R1000 VCR connected to an HP PII 466 with 192MB RAM. The tapes were recorded over 15 years ago. Some tapes have a great picture, some do not. I am not tring to improve the picture, but I do not want to degrade them either. I also must add that there is over 40hrs worth of video. Not that speed in converting is real important, but something I might want to consider. I was very intrested in using the Pinnacle StudioDC10+ $139.95 capture card. This is cheaper then the Dazzle, but I have read it is better and has better res. I have been evaluating several encoders for the MPEG-1 conversion and I was wondering if if SVCD was something that I should look in to. I realize that it will use up much more space than MPEG-1 and feel I might be wasting my time with MPEG-2. Any input or advice would be wonderful. Thanks in advance.

-- Brandon (thxext@earthlink.net), May 07, 2000

Answers

I have had very good luck with the Matrox Marvel G400 TV. It's $289 at www.outpost.com, no tax and free overnight shipping. I capture at 704x480 then encode to VCD 352x240 using the Panasoinc encoder. 50 minutes of video takes about 7 gigs, at the least compressed M-JPEG settings.

The results are amazing. Also, the Matrox is a very good 3D card and plays Quake 3 great. Just a bonus. This is a great card in the sub $300 range. The software encoding looks as good as when I do real time encoding with my $4000 Optibase MovieMaker Plus card.

Hope this helps.

-- Michael S. Gilmore (mgilmore@san.rr.com), May 07, 2000.

Basically speaking, you are either going to have to spend time or money to get a decent result. If you want something cheap, you can either keep what you have, encode at a high rate and then software encode back down to VCD (using Panasonic), or get something much higher end such as the Broadway, RT6, etc. and do the encoding real- time. With your CPU speed, it is not likely you are going to get a fabulous MPEG2 capture with a cheap card anyway (or a good card for that matter!)

As an aside, you might also want to look at getting an M-Filter. That will help you tremendously when going from VHS. It will slightly soften (blur) the picture but will pretty much eliminate most pixelation. I find it invaluable when converting from older VHS (esp. at EP or SLP). Again, you are looking at dropping $400-$500, but I've been extremely happy with it.

-- M2K (m2krosters@hotmail.com), May 08, 2000.

Insted of droping money on a M-filter, you can capture at a higher rate and use a 1p radius gausian blur, or other appropriate filter. As for better res. Mabye, get any good bt898 card and you should be able to do full res.

Software ususally makes the big diffrence. Also to do quality encoding you will need as much disk space as possible. I record all segments at ~8gb/hr. I wish I could go bigger, but I can't blow another $200 on a 30-40gb drive. Also remember that consumer level sound cards do not nail the bitrate all the time, so get software that can compinsate ( vdub / avi_io ). There is nothing more annoying that caping 1 hr of video only to find out that your sound card was capturing at 44087 not 44100.

Personaly I think that VCD is OK for perserving VHS, but SVCD is better. It all depends on your source. The good ones you may want to get in SVCD.

-- eric (eric@snowmoon.com), May 08, 2000.

i have the dazzle usb so try this. Well for one DO NOT use the vcd template as it looks like sh*t. i capture at movie quality at a bitrate of 2900 (make sure you have a fan blowing on the back/vents of the unit, this helps). I then take this and use the panasonic encoder to trasnfer it either to a highrate or normal vcd and if you do have this, make sure you set the "video filter" ONLY to adpative and strong and your stuff will look quite nice.

-- Doug (mazinz@aol.com), May 08, 2000.

I have to agree with most of these guys on their advices. One question still remain to be answer. You are thinking that SVCD will improve you quality? Is this why you are considering mpeg2? The Dazzle DVC USB is a decent mpeg1 encoder for the price tag on it. So use Doug's method to improve the VCD quality, you'll be happy with it then. However, you'll be trading quality for time spent encoding (1 hour = 4 to 8 hours encoding depending on CPU type and speed). If you must absolutely see what SVCD quality is like, then ATI AIW128 32Mb or 16Mb AGP or PCI will do that for you at the price tag you're looking at (169.00[16Mb] 279.00[32Mb]). If you are looking at Mpeg2, then the 32Mb is a better choice, but the 16Mb is not as bad either (I've both). Personally, SVCD vs XVCD is not that much different in quality (SVCD standard VBR using Mpeg2 @ 2600kb/s max....XVCD non- standard CBR using Mpeg1 @ 2000kb/s-2600kb/s max). Alternative, you can do the AVI route with Matrox card. I've heard good thing about it, but tends to shy away due to a lot of limitations with this technique. Either way you'll have to spend time encoding anyway to get quality. VHS to VCD is not an easy task when it comes to quality. You either spend the time to encode or spend the money to buy high end equipment.

-- lnguyen (wingstarzz@hotmail.com), May 08, 2000.

Wow, thanks for all the replies. I think I will try the Matrox Marvel G400 TV. I was wondering were do I get the Panasonic Encoder? I have been unable to locate a web site for it. Also, is my PII 466 really too slow? I have never had a problem with performace before. One more question. Where do I find filters, I am have not located those either. Thanks in advance for any help.

Brandon

-- Brandon (thxext@eathlink.net), May 09, 2000.

G400 TV is not a good card for capturing video it only capture video in Mjpeg and uncompressed video. I suggest you to buy any TV tuner card which can capture in SIF 352X240 NTSC and 352X288 PAL resolution, and intel indeo video 5.11 for compressing video at 100% quality after this for mpg use Panasonic mpeg 1 encoder, your final mpg can beat any commercial VCD in quality. I used to do the same but this method is very time consuming but now I am looking for best hardware encoder board in the price range of US $700 can anyone advise me which one is the best did anyone used, tried or heard about VideoONE Recorder (Real-time mpeg 1 encoder board) tell me about the video quality which it encodes in real-time for VCD format.

-- Bilal Ahmad (bilal7_99@yahoo.com), May 29, 2000.