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Question

preserving high definition on DVD

Nov 15, 2014 12:42PM PST

I'm capturing about 27 gb (1 1/2 hours) of video and then using Adobe PE12 to edit it and burn to a 4.7 gb DVD..... I feel I lose a tremendous amount of image quality this way. What is the best way to have a above average video image on DVD for playback on typical HD DVD players?
Is it even possible to have the playback image I see when playing my MP4 files from my hard drive?

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Blu-Ray
Nov 15, 2014 1:47PM PST

Not quite clear on what you mean by HD DVD player. I have a standard DVD player and a Blu-Ray player. Obviously the standard player will only play mpeg-2 DVDs The Blu-Ray player will play AVCHD as well as Blu-Ray. You can burn an AVCHD DVD on a standard burner. i.e. You don't need a BR burner.

I use Corel VideoStudio Pro X7. I use the AVC/H.264 option to render the edited files, this creates an AVCHD .m2t file. This file can then be burnt to a standard DVD disk or (as I do) stored on a SD card which will then play in my BR player. This is the best you can get without a Blu-Ray burner.

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preserving (nearly) high definition on DVD
Nov 16, 2014 12:23AM PST

I guess where I am going with this is, I have very good, nearly high definition videos on my PC hard drive taken with my Canon HF G30 camcorder....but burning them to DVD causes the file to be compressed to 4.7 gb. The loss in picture quality is obvious. Is there something to be done that allows me to make a higher quality DVD from these files?
I'm learning of a duel layer DVD and that may be the way to go..... ??

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Change to AVCHD
Nov 16, 2014 12:48AM PST

You need to change to render to AVCHD. Just changing to a duel layer DVD will not improve the quality of a mpeg-2 file.

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Change to AVCHD
Nov 16, 2014 7:59AM PST

If I change the file to AVCHD it will no longer play on conventional DVD players will it? I took a piece of said video and burned it AVCHD... It was not readable by my fairly new DVD player/burner...or did I make a mistake in the process.?

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I think you're catching on
Nov 16, 2014 8:16AM PST

The thing is, "Video DVD" is pretty low quality. You may end up with two versions. One that will produce HD on BluRay players and another for old players.
Bob

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AVCHD
Nov 16, 2014 8:53AM PST

Yes. AVCHD will only read on a Blu-Ray player. When you render, you choose what quality you want, SD DVD or AVCHD or Blu-Ray. Creating a larger storage space will make no difference to the quality.

Your best compromise (and possibly first step) is to buy a Blu-Ray player. (My Panasonic has a SD card slot as well as the DVD tray, I now download on to SD card with my AVCHD files.). Then burn your DVD in AVCHD format. (as you have done) This is the next stage to improve quality. Finally a Blu-Ray burner to create the best DVDs from HD video.

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Change to AVCHD
Nov 16, 2014 12:37PM PST

So that's the trick.... My source material is MP4 but everything sent to DVD gets converted to mpeg-2? So if I had a 2 gb MP4 video which would easily fit on a DVD uncompressed and I burned it to DVD, the quality would still be low....because it got converted to Mpeg-2.....

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You've got it!
Nov 16, 2014 3:37PM PST

Clearly you have a HD camcorder. In AVCHD mode this will produce AVCHD MTS files which are basically MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 standard. (best the camera can produce) You are converting these to MPEG-2 standard for SD DVDs - hence the loss in quality.

Unfortunately to play at the original quality you need a player (your PC will work if you can connect it directly to your HD TV) that can play MPEG-4 files. This is where the Blu-Ray player comes in.

For full Blu-Ray you need a Blu-Ray burner for your PC and BR disks. (not cheap) But there is this intermediate stage where you can burn files rendered to the AVC/H.264 standard on to normal DVD disks. These will only play on a Blu-Ray player but the picture quality is much better than a normal DVD. Fortunately BR players have come down in price and can be picked up very reasonably.

My Panasonic DMP-BDT130 BR player has an SD card slot, so, instead of recording to a DVD disk I download exactly the same files to a SD card. (which has a much greater storage capacity than a DVD) and use that to play my videos back.
You will not improve the quality with standard DVDs in a standard player but you can get a much better quality via the BR player route. I suggest you take your AVCHD disk to a decent dealer, ask if you can view the disk on one of their BR players and judge whether the outlay on a shiny new Blu-Ray player is worth the cash!!

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You've got it!
Nov 16, 2014 7:57PM PST

I very much appreciate your help...and I know this much be excruciatingly painful but I had no idea my files would be any less quality when I got into the whole digital home movies thing. I am, however slowly, beginning to understand. My original goal was to make "home movies" of the grandkids sporting events etc, for personal archive and to distribute to affected friends and family . ....and without having to buy them all a Blu-ray player. However they all have nice PC's.....LOL

I think I will look out for 'ol number one and invest in the Blu-Ray player with the best interface available (or a faster laptop) and archive my video in AVCHD. I can convert to DVD anything I am send out into the world... Happy

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Sorted?
Nov 17, 2014 3:47AM PST
My original goal was to make "home movies" of the grandkids sporting events etc, for personal archive and to distribute to affected friends and family
This is what its all about. I do very much the same. Where I live, we have a number of tourist miniature railways "The Great Little Trains of Wales". My grandson is crazy about anything mechanical so I have miles of video recorded with him on train rides. I render two copies, one as a SD DVD and an AVCHD version for myself.
Good luck.
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I am back...VHS to DVD o AVCHD
Jan 6, 2015 10:12AM PST

Hello,
Well I have installed a BR drive/burner and have been converting my AVCHD and MP4 video from my camcorder to BR...... Awesome!!......And I do understand the issue of converting HD video down to DVD/MPEG2 ... But I am still not clear on the DVD/MPEG2 thing when it coms to VHS . I have had conflicting reports in my research. I have some reasonably good quality VHS tapes that I burned to DVD with a VHS/DVD player/burner. The player turns the VHS to .VOB files on the DVD. It may be my imagination but I think the DVD is lower quality than the original VHS. That is 2 hours of VHS to one single layer DVD...I have been told that if I set the VHS to copy only one hour of video to the DVD there is more data per disc and therefore a better picture..is this true? Otherwise, what method do I use to copy those VHS tapes for the very best direct transfer quality? Something out there that lets me copy straight to my PC for instance?

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Simply yes. What it's called is
Jan 6, 2015 10:31AM PST

"Generational Loss." There are now decades of paper on why it's not as good as the VHS. I'll pause on that.

Straight to the PC? Sure. TV/capture cards.
Bob

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generational loss?
Jan 6, 2015 9:37PM PST

Swooosh................

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digital is sampling at a frequency or rate
Jan 8, 2015 12:38AM PST

So you only get diced up cuts from the analog, which the greater the sample rate the greater it's imitation. Generational loss is when you further digitalize it, so you end up with sample of sample of sample and therefore loss builds. It's like dots or pixels on a page. As you reduce file size the number of pixels are reduced and the representative quality of the original suffers for it too. If you look at a painting in magnifying glass, it's appearance is different than the highest digital picture of it. The smaller the file size, the lower sampling rate used, the less than the original it becomes. You can do this on a test. Take a digital picture, open in a browser, do a screen capture, save as file. Open that file and do the same again, until you've completed the process 10-20 times. What you will have at the end is not even close to the quality of the original, nor even the first screen capture from it.

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Diced up
Jan 8, 2015 9:36AM PST

I get he copy of a copy of a copy. Thanks... I need the best original capture method so I start with at least the best possible copy. somehow copy to DVD (MPEG) just does not seem like my only option... so the capture cards might be better???? what file format do they create? IF VHS DVD is 4 gb of data then VHS at 8-9-10 gb is even better. So I want all the original data I can get.... best option for that?

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sound and video
Jan 8, 2015 12:11PM PST

You use the highest quality recording for the sound, which is usually "CD quality". You use the highest pixel and frame rate for the video when digitizing. Unfortunately you can end up with huge files that won't fit on a single DVD, so you then have a choice of lowering the quality of recording to fit the single DVD, or splitting the file across 2 or more DVD.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_recording

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_capture

Using a TV tuner card you can send the analog video from the VCR into the TV card and have it record digitally on your computer at the quality you prefer. My daughter has such in her computer and can also record TV shows direct to her hard drive, burn DVD's from a VCR, use it like TIVO, do screen captures, or cut clips of video out of them.

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Ok .. ..VHS to best available media
Jan 7, 2015 8:32AM PST

I have VHS tapes. I need to make them best available digital files without any loss of original quality. How do I do this?

I'm told MPEG2 (DVD) is better than VHS so there would be no loss there but my VHS to DVD machine created DVD is not as good as the original VHS...

If I use a video capture card and save to my PC, what file system does it convert my VHS signal too?

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There is going to be loss.
Jan 7, 2015 8:45AM PST

Even the best gear is still digitizing the analog signal so it's going to lose something. The best capture device in my stable are DVD recorders. I can't explain why those and devices like a Philips DVDR3576H give me the best results.

Can you share what gear you tried so far?
Bob

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Loss
Jan 7, 2015 8:59AM PST

Yes Sir I can.... I used a Toshiba DVR620 to convert VHS to DVD. I thing the already marginal color was bleeding out on the DVD copies.... the tape was better than that..

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That sounds like the old tracking problem.
Jan 7, 2015 9:04AM PST

Try one of the Honestech products. On amazon prime members can return such if it doesn't meet your needs.

There is another issue. Some VHS players are worse than others or don't play well with some digitizers. You learn to have more than one of each thing to get the best result. In short, those new to this think there is a best digitizer. Sorry, having a few players and recorders is par for the game.
Bob

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VCR players vs recorders
Jan 8, 2015 12:40AM PST

for some reason, VCR player only units seem to have worse display of VCR than those which both record and play VCR. I don't know why, other than maybe cheaper internal parts?

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There is going to be loss
Jan 7, 2015 9:07AM PST

My problem is getting from VHS to good quality digital files.... I have the BR burner and Adobe PE12 to do whatever else I want to do with the video.... I just cant get a good copy of the original VHS ... which I think should be at a minium....MP4 files?????

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I doubt at the moment it's the encoding.
Jan 7, 2015 9:12AM PST

I find the capture step to be the most work. Since you don't have a lot of gear to work with, that's going to be problematic. Some players, recorders, digitizers work better than others and some won't work so well together. I guess those new to this think there is some magic but the magic is collecting enough of such things to tinker and find your best without breaking the bank.
Bob

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Answer
Worth asking. Are you putting these on a big screen TV?
Jan 7, 2015 9:09AM PST

If so, one of the issues folk complain about is how bad old videos look on 55 inch screens. All this digitizing, compressing and more can really mess all this up. I can't guess what settings you used on Adobe but forget DVD. Just put your 27GB AVHCD or such file through a light compressor and produce a 9 ish GB file and put that on your double sided DVD as a file. You have your archive and my PS3 can play that along with many other players (like a WDTV.)
Bob

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Quality intact
Jan 7, 2015 10:09AM PST

I just want to get eh VHS to digital with original video quality intact.........

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As long as you want that, nothing ever did that.
Jan 7, 2015 11:14AM PST

I've yet to see capture without some loss. Let's see what others have to offer.
Bob

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It's a matter of shades
Jan 8, 2015 2:29AM PST

It sometimes boils down to who can offer the better transfer to DVD from VHS. Better equipment and experience can sometimes lead to a better result. Not one for one like the original VHS of course, but the pros can often do it better. And if you don't have a lot of time/experience, this is why looking for a reliable commercial service comes into play, especially for the more important/cherished home movies. I sent a neighbor with the same issue to a local business specializing in such data transfer services. Heck, they even found a groupon to use Wink

Worth looking into IMNSHO.

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Ok, it's been a long time since I did these kind of stuff.
Jan 8, 2015 7:58AM PST

Unless technology has changed a lot, I think most capturing device will capture vhs to MEPG2 format. I am guessing that will give you the best quality...but you must capture it at the highest bit-rate possible (bit-rate is very important).

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Correct
Jan 9, 2015 2:27AM PST

I think it maxed out at something close to 8MB/s for 720x480 content(?) It has been awhile for me too Wink

cheers

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MB/s
Jan 9, 2015 8:31AM PST

Well I don't think I had a settings choice on this VHS to DVD burner so I am investing in a good capture card. I will pull the highest density data I can get from the VHS and take what I get....

Thanks for all the responses and patience............I will let ya'll know how it works out for p[posterity.