VHS to DVD looking pixulated

[richmondfloyd]

Hi,

I may be expecting miracles here, but I have followed the following process and the end product is not as good as I expected.

1. Use elgato to convert a VHS to H.264 - which strangely comes out as a MP4...?

2. Use toast to convert to DVD dual layer.

On a 42' LCD TV, the picture looks very pixulated. The resolution appears to be 640 x 480. I guess this is standard VHS resolution? I cannot try on a smaller CRT TV unfortunately.

For info, I also used compressor to create the MPEG-2. Worked fine on a small short VHS (30 mins) but keeps crashing DVD Pro now I have tried with a larger almost 3 hour (down to 8.7 GB with bit rate of 5.0)

Any suggestions welcome.

 

[milksac]

From Elgato's site:

Video resolution: 640×480 (4:3) or 640×360 (16:9)
Video format: H.264 at 1.4 MBit/sec or MPEG-4 at 2.4 MBit/sec
Audio: AAC, 48kHZ, 128 kBit/sec

Source: http://www.elgato.com/elgato/na/mainmenu/products/Video-Capture/product3.en.html

Your source is a low quality format (VHS), you're compressing it using a low data rate, recompressing the data again for DVD and you're viewing it on a large widescreen display.
And your surprised that it looks pixelated?

 

[richmondfloyd]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply.

I was going to use a VHS to DVD recorder, but I thought that a VHS to DVD recorder wouldn't go to dual layer DVD (or one would cost me a fortune if so).

How do I go straight from my VHS to prores? I take it I would bypass elgato and go straight into FCP? Not sure how to do this?

Always a great help, thanks.

PS- the picture quality is OK, maybe a little soft and pixulated, but OK. Will buying a professional VHS to DVD recorder improve the image noticeably? I.e. Is it worth the money?

 

[Bruce Watson]

The resolution appears to be 640 x 480. I guess this is standard VHS resolution?

Nope. VHS in NTSC land (North America) was worth something like 330 x 480 at its best. It's unlikely that a VHS tape would actually give that high a resolution though due to the condition of the player (ever hear of anyone cleaning the heads in a VHS box?), and the variable quality of the tapes.

This is one of the reasons that DVDs took off the way they did -- even with standard def. TV, VHS wasn't feeding the TV all it could handle. DVD on the other hand, pretty much did, and looked considerably better as a result.

Good luck with your conversion. Just don't get your hopes too high.

 

[milksac]

How do I go straight from my VHS to prores?

If you have a FCP setup with a KONA LHi card you can capture from the VHS directly to uncompressed or ProRes. This would reduce the number of compression passes and improve the DVD. If you already have the necessary hardware on hand this would be the best approach. Considering that your source material is VHS I wouldn't spend any money on incremental improvments. It's probably 'good enough' as they say.