Mpeg vs AVI - general question

C

ColorBalance

Active member
I am digitizing old family VHS Tapes. I am very temped to capture them in AVI form; however, just wondering if Mpeg compression will make in visible quality deterioration given the footage is VHS / SVHS quality.
 
MPG/MPEG and AVI are containers, not codecs. You can have MPEG-2/MPEG-4 compression inside an AVI if you want.
 
AVI is a container, not a compression scheme. So AVI could stem from completely lossless, to cartoonish levels of compression. Mpeg could as well depending on the bitrates chosen. Either one could easily capture enough quality to preserve the details of your VHS/SVHS tapes.

What are you planning to do with these once digitized? How will they be stored? How do you plan to play them back later? These are pertinent questions to allow someone to give you an intelligent answer.
 
i just started my own family project last week and I'm 4 tapes in out of like 25!

I'll share my workflow with you, here it is...

I'm capturing everything from VCR to MiviDV on my HVX200A and then I'm capturing AVI into my NLE via FireWire and Burning into DVD after touching up a little color correction and some minor editing.
 
I was going to buy this ASUS card

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815293002&Tpk=pe9400

which has a hardware Mpeg2 decoder built in. The plan is to capture the video (50+ tapes) and keep the files on HDD's. Then burn DVD's. also. I am very skeptical about DVD's when it comes to archiving. I made many DVD's about 4-5 years ago, and half of them are unwatchable!

Storage cost not being an obstacle, the idea is to preserve the data in the optimum form (without getting carried away; after all, these are low res VHS tapes).

I do have this USB device http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ..._re=video_capture_card-_-15-100-112-_-Product which I used to conver into the Mpeg format (and it looks decent). I can also use my miniDV camera's SVideo pass through. But, somehow I feel that a better capture device will give a better output. May be I am wrong as I don't know a whole lot on this issue.

I assume 720x480 will be a good resolution.
 
Cranky said:
Does this meant that the HVX does not offer pass-through A/D conversion?
Click to expand...

I would love pass-through but I have never seen the option in any menu.
I'll have to check the manual and see if it does exist in there somewhere.
I need it! I need it!
 
My only concern is - it will take a lot of time and effort to digitize all those important tapes, and it will be done only once. So, I want to make sure that, within limits, I get the best possible capture. OK if I have to spend a few dollars.

Pass through is an option I've known for a long time (and have used it). Not sure how quality is related to all these options (pass through vs USB capture vs a PCI card mentioned in my earlier post).
 
I am currently archiving off old VHS/SVHS tapes for archival purposes at my office. I am using my DVX100 to do this. Quality has been just fine.

Workflow:

Mitsubishi SVHS > DVX > DV Capture in Sony Vegas (.avi) > Trim front & back >Tweak color/sound levels > Render to Jpeg2000 encoded .mov files > Archive to optical media.

I've been pleased with the workflow and results thus far.
 
ColorBalance said:
Pass through is an option I've known for a long time (and have used it). Not sure how quality is related to all these options (pass through vs USB capture vs a PCI card mentioned in my earlier post).
Click to expand...
With passthrough you are getting 25 Mbit/s DV, which is better than 10 Mbit/s MPEG-2. Well, MPEG-2 can be really good on DVDs, but you won't get such a quality from consumer-grade capture hardware/software.

David Jimerson said:
MPEG is actually both a container and a codec.
Click to expand...
MPEG is a working group ;-) And a set of standards. MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 are video codecs. MPEG/MPG file extension is usually assigned to files that contain MPEG-2 program stream (not to be confused with transport stream).
 
Cranky said:
MPEG is a working group ;-) And a set of standards. MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 are video codecs. MPEG/MPG file extension is usually assigned to files that contain MPEG-2 program stream (not to be confused with transport stream).
Click to expand...

Which is what I said. :beer:
 
pass thru is when the signal passes through the camera. as it passes throught it gets converted from Analog to Digital. That's the (A/D conversion)
I finally had time and tried it yesterday and it worked well. so what I did was connect the yellow red and white RCA cables to my HVX200,
and connected from the camera the firewire to my laptop.
Fired up vegas and launched the capture screen and caputured directly into vegas and it was instantly ready for edit. Loved it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top