Just last weekend, I realized that I have a large box full of Old 8mm/D8 home videos. I decided to embark the mission of converting them to DVD to save space, and to watch them easily(w/o hooking up the camcorder). I am using the program Ulead DVD MovieFactory 4. So I popped in a tape on my D8 Sony Camcorder, hooked it up to my Computer through firewire, and began.
The first time I set the settings to SP, the program said it can hold 2 hours in that setting, which is the length of my tape. Once it was all said and done, I played it on my DVD player, and the quality was simply horrible. I could see huge pixels that never existed on tape.
The second try, I set it at the highest quality possible with the program(DVD HQ). At this mode it could only fit about 1 hour on the disc. I played this and it looked much better than the other one. But i did side by side comparison with the tape, and the tape was far better. There were still some small pixels that were visible.
Now here's my question: why? I always thought DVD was far better quality than tape. It doesn't seem to be that way when I burn them though.
hey dvdrips
this isnt the section for you to post this question ...so maye thats why you havent gotten any responses ...ive never done the conversion your talking about but i do know that the lack of quality isnt because dvd cant match the quality of the tape
the quality is being lost in the conversion process (and if your only putting 1-2 hours of video on the dvd you can (should) get superb quality) ..i dunno how the video is stored on the tape but it has to be converted to MPEG-2 befor it can go on a dvd ...hopefully a mod will move this to somewhere where ppl can help you cause again i have no experience in the tape -> dvd conversion area
ive alway found videohelp.com to be a great resource in any video related problem ive had ...check out the guides section first, cause thers proly already one to tell you step by step the way to go about the thing
But here are the tech specs. on the format i have been using:
DVD HQ - This is the best quality setting on the program. There is no time specification for this one though.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
MPEG-2 files
24 Bits, 720 x 480, 29.97 fps
(DVD-NTSC), 4:3
Video data rate: Variable (Max. 7000 kbps)
Audio data rate: 256 kbps
Dolby Digital Audio, 48 KHz, 2/0(L,R)
SP - This says it can hold 2 hrs. on a 4.7 gig disc.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
MPEG-2 files
24 Bits, 720 x 480, 29.97 fps
(DVD-NTSC), 4:3
Video data rate: Variable (Max. 2500 kbps)
LPCM Audio, 48000 Hz, Stereo
Now, looking at the video bitrate, why is HQ(1 hr+) almost 3 times the video bitrate of SP(2 hrs)? If its only twice the length?
dont worry about the section thing (i looked at the options and maybe this is the best place ?) ...i just dunno if im the best person to help you with this (since ive never done (exactly) this b4), but im willing to try!
so about these settings 2500 and 7000 are only the max possible bitrates so dont necessarily have anything to do with the length of the video. having said that i dunno how MovieFactory encodes the mpeg-2. if it uses CBR(constant bitate) then all it does to encode the video is take the length of the video and plug it into a simple calculator to figure the bitrate that every frame will be encoded at ...this is a very bad way to encode video ie if MovieFactory decides the bitrate to be 3000kps a completely black frame will take up 3000k and a picture of you will take up 3000k ...so 2500k from that black frame could have been used to increase the quality of the frame of you. but again i dunno if thats how MovieFactory does it ?but thats my theory. i say that because in VBR(varible birate) an average bitrate of 7000 is excellent quality but 7000 CBR should give you the similar results (this is because 9000kbps is the highest accepted my most dvd players so the best quality frame could only be 2000k better than any given frame in CBR) but CBR will take up more space (for this reason i suggest option 2 or 3 ...ull know what i mean afetr you read more)
the way I see it you have 3 options, the first and easiest is to find out if the encoding settings are configurable in MovieFactory, either read the documentation or ask around in software section.
2nd would be to try (I wouldn?t go out and just start buyin stuff ?most have trails) different software for it ?either with configurable encoding settings or just better options
3rd and hardest is to encode the video separately and author (in the since of adding menus and formatting the video for a dvd player) in MovieFactory
If you choose 2 I suggest tmpgenc its a popular software suite (i dunno how its bundled but i know you can try the encoder for 30days) with lots of guides and help available at videohelp.com (hope I dun get banned for these links :-> ):
http://www.videohelp.com/guides.php?tools=1&madeby=&formatconvers...
thing is youll have to get the video from the camera to the computer and I cant help you with that, sorry!
but then you can use something like tmpgenc (just the encoder this time) ?theres a guide above that uses this method (but its for PAL which wont work on NTSC (dvd players in the US) so youd have to change options pertaining to that) or an all in one tool like avi2dvd (very easy but buggy) but most all in ones wont allow you to use MovieFactory to make menus
here are some links to different tools you can use but I suggest you search the guides section to see how hard the software you choose wil be:
all in ones:
http://www.videohelp.com/tools?s=35#35
ahh that?s a lot of typing ?sorry to make you read so much but i suggested option 2 or 3 because if at its highest quality you get poor quality then MovieFactory may simply use a shoddy encoder
?I dunno if all that info was necessary but when i decided to convert all these movies/cartoons hoggin up my hd I did tons of research and decided to go the hardest way which give me great quality dvds ?and just like anything else it doesn?t seem so hard after you learn what your doin.
Thanks for all your info, but unfortunately I chose option #1.
Ah, i messed arround with the settings, and I figured out that Dolby Digital audio is compressed, and thus alot smaller than PCM audio. I can hold 2 hrs at a video bitrate of about 4000(max) VBR and 256 kbps audio.
So now here is my question, right now, the conversion from tape to mpeg is done on-the-fly, meaning it encodes directly to MPEG as a capture. If I capture as raw AVI uncompressed video, and then later convert it, do you think i might get better results? I know this way will take ALOT longer though.
although i cant say for sure my guess is no, because the on-the-fly process is most likely storing the raw avi in a buffer in memory and encoding from that anyway, but trying never hurt :->
on the other hand if your not doing encoding on-the-fly then maybe MovieFactory would let you do multi-pass encoding which would give better quality (but its like it sounds its gonna do the encoding process mutiple times ...so now you talkin 3-4 times longer than on the fly with one-pass encoding) ...if you hav any avi's already on your comp see if you have any options like that, that werent there b4
