I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I'm trying to copy our Family home movies from VHS and Hi-8 to DVD. I purchased the Pinnacle Studio MovieBox Ultimate Collection, which is Studio 14 last Christmas, and due to illness I'm just getting around to figure this out. I think I have the basics figured out about importing and a little on the editing. I'm wanting to get the best transfer that I can, not wanting to loose any quality from my old tapes. I've watch the tutorials, but I thinking with a program like this, I may be missing something that I can do to give me a better transfer. Does anyone know of a DVD or something I could purchase that would teach me the things I may be missing. Or is there anyone that would like to give me some pointers. As I said, I only have the basics down. I know how to import, and I can make it to DVD. I'm not trying to get into the fancy stuff, just want to get the most quality that I can. Thanks.... 

Before getting into detail, are you unhappy with the quality of transfer you are getting at the moment? If you capture successfully using the highest quality mpeg-2 settings and can burn a DVD with a duration of an hour using the best quality settings, then you are probably getting the best transfer possible. Bear in mind that VHS in particular is a fairly poor medium compared to DVD.

If you are getting out of sync sound or video that stutters or drops out, then there is a technical issue, but if you are just disappointed with the clarity of the pictures then it may just be that the source material looks like that! Remeber that although you can make minor subjectic improvements, the fundamental rule of Garbage In, Garbage Out still applies.

....and welcome to the forum 

Welcome to the forum

One thing I would like to point out is that when I have imported from VHS etc then I have always had the least amount of systems operating on the PC and not moving the mouse etc during import. (Could you fill in your system specs to help the forum users help you?) Shut off any powersaving options, remove the clock from the taskbar and anything else that is not needed.

Make sure you have a hard drive that is defragmented before sending your video to it preferably not the same hard drive that Windows is on.

As jjn has said you cannot improve the video from VHS but you can tweak colour brightness etc to 'enhance' it.

Let us know how you do

I've updated my profile on my system. I'm not importing with the setting on mpeg-2. I have it set to DV. From what I have read so for I thought that would be the setting for getting the highest quality. Do I need to change that? For the video I'm using a high quality S-VHS cable, not a RCA/yellow cable. When I burn to disc/make movie, all is set at highest quality. But when you compare the disc next to the original VHS tape there is quite a difference. I'm just wondering is there something I'm missing? Something I can do to enhance the video, or a setting I should be choosing.  

   I am getting about 200 dropped frames out of 1 hour of video. I think they are occurring when there is a clinch on the tape. That's when I see the dropped frame counter go up. When I'm importing or making movie, all else is closed and I use the computer for nothing until it is finished. Thanks for any help....

GlennJL:

I've updated my profile on my system. I'm not importing with the setting on mpeg-2. I have it set to DV. From what I have read so for I thought that would be the setting for getting the highest quality. Do I need to change that? For the video I'm using a high quality S-VHS cable, not a RCA/yellow cable. When I burn to disc/make movie, all is set at highest quality. But when you compare the disc next to the original VHS tape there is quite a difference. I'm just wondering is there something I'm missing? Something I can do to enhance the video, or a setting I should be choosing.  

   I am getting about 200 dropped frames out of 1 hour of video. I think they are occurring when there is a clinch on the tape. That's when I see the dropped frame counter go up. When I'm importing or making movie, all else is closed and I use the computer for nothing until it is finished. Thanks for any help....

"Quality" is an extremely subjective issue.

 

From your posts I would say up to the point where you have the material on the PC you are doing everything 100% right - ie - Moviebox capturing via S-cable to DV codec. So lets start there:

 

Are you happy with the "quality" of the material you have captured on the PC before you actually make a DVD? (Play the capture file with eg Media Player Classic Home Cinema)

 

FWIW - in my experience the Moviebox you have (USB710 version?) is able to produce lovely analogue captures. The dropped frames are quite normal with analogue captures on bad patches/locations on the tape

I've never (since all the way back to Studio 9) had luck making good quality DVDs with Pinnacle, but I love the program and its editing capabilities.

I would suggest capturing your footage through Studio, and then using another software package to make your actual DVDs. If I make a DVD with Studio and make a DVD with the dedicated DVD software I currently use and play them both, there's a huge difference in quality.

Just my two cents.

I have already burned to a DVD disk, and that outcome is what I am not happy with. These are just test disk, and I'm not happy with it comparing it to my master VHS tape. Is there something I can do in the import or editing that would enhance the quality?? Are in the setting to make movie?? I would think if there's anything it would be somewhere in the capture/import or the editing.  Thanks,

How much are you putting onto a DVD at one time, to get full quality only 1 hour will fit, although, you will be hard press to see any quality degradation up to 90 minutes of video on a DVD, after that the quality goes down hill fairly fast.

GlennJL:

. . . . .When I burn to disc/make movie, all is set at highest quality. But when you compare the disc next to the original VHS tape there is quite a difference. . . . . . .

 You state that you are comparing the burned disc to the VHS tape but are you looking at the DV video to see how it looks compared to the tape? They should be virtually identical. If not, that's where you need to change things. If the DV video looks good then I would agree with imaref about using different software to burn the disc. From the day I started using Studio back in 2004 I always used 3rd party software for burning.Usually Nero but the last few years almost exclusively Imgburn.

When you create your files before burning use the manual setting. Put no more than one hour on a dvd and set the bitrate to 8000. That should give you the best quality you can get from the mpeg-2 video on the dvd and still be compatible with older dvd players.

Just my 2¢ worth 

Joe

GlennJL:

I have already burned to a DVD disk, and that outcome is what I am not happy with. These are just test disk, and I'm not happy with it comparing it to my master VHS tape. Is there something I can do in the import or editing that would enhance the quality?? Are in the setting to make movie?? I would think if there's anything it would be somewhere in the capture/import or the editing.  Thanks,

Can I ask if you are comparing like for like? You can't look at the VHS directly on the the TV and compare it with the DVD playing on your computer - you have to look at the DVD playing on the same TV.

The computer display isn't interlaced, and has a much higher resolution than a TV playing a SD VHS.

If there is a significant difference then you need to track down if it is the capture or DVD creation that is the issue.

Dropped frames

I have transferred many a VHS, some with crinkles in the tape or bad editing in the days when I only had stop start on two machines!

I did find however that whenever there was a crinkle in the tape or bad edit point I would need to stop Pinnacle from importing, save that section as VHS tape 1 and then import the next section and save that as VHS tape 2 ( or some other names you would like to use) Then in Pinnacle import those files and edit the bad bits.

Sometimes you have to sit with the imports to make sure all is well, that's what I would with some of the dropped frame problems.

Ok all, I want to thank everyone for their input and help on this. To answer some of yall questions, I am comparing my master VHS tape to the DVD disk that I burned by playing at looking at them on the TV. I use the highest settings to make the disk, which is 1 hour of video to the disk. I'm burning it at a low speed, I think 8X. Question: I see some of yall said that I should use mpeg-2. I am importing with the setting on DV. Should I be using mpeg-2 ????

I never thought about using Nero to burn and make the disk.

Thanks,

 

GlennJL:

Ok all, I want to thank everyone for their input and help on this. To answer some of yall questions, I am comparing my master VHS tape to the DVD disk that I burned by playing at looking at them on the TV. I use the highest settings to make the disk, which is 1 hour of video to the disk. I'm burning it at a low speed, I think 8X. Question: I see some of yall said that I should use mpeg-2. I am importing with the setting on DV. Should I be using mpeg-2 ????

I never thought about using Nero to burn and make the disk.

Thanks,

 

You should not be capturing as mpeg-2. DV-Avi is correct. I asked the question are you comparing the VHS tape to the DV-Avi video? It's not likely, but it's possible the capture is not the best you can get. DV video captures at about 13GB per hour of video. So 30 minutes should be about 6.5GB for example. If your file sizes are significantly less than that, then there may be an issue there. Again, it's not likely but it's possible. 

Even if you set it to the "highest" setting of one hour, it's possible it's still not the highest bitrate available which should be about 8000kbps. There are higher bitrates but using anything above 8000 might cause problems on older players. 

When the dvd is finally burned that will be an mpeg-2 file because that's the standard for a SD dvd.

Joe

 

Ok, up to now by what everyone is telling me I'm pretty much doing what I should for the best video quality. Thanks you everyone. But after making several test disc I'm still seeing quite a bit of difference compared to my VHS. So I started thinking maybe I have a cable problem. The video cable. Again after doing  several more test, with the identical video content I've come to the conclusion that my expensive at one time Monster SVHS cable was part of the problem. After using a couple of different SVHS cables, and a couple of different composite cables, I'm getting the best results by using a RCA/composite video cable. I've also used Nero for testing, but I really didn't see any difference making movie with it versus Pinnacle. Joe, the bitrate I noticed was 8500 kbits/sec: Question: looking at the different setting, what is Progressive encoding?? and what is always re-code entire movie? I have not used either, just curious.

Question: since VHS has only around 250 lines of resolution, would I get better results if I was coping to BluRay, or HD?? To me it wouldn't seem so since a DVD is already in the high 400's.. Again curious. I still thinking there's a setting somewhere that I'm not using to give me better results????? Thanks to all.

Days later and you are still at exactly the same place you started because you don't want to respond to the basics.

 

 

 

GlennJL:

I've updated my profile on my system. I'm not importing with the setting on mpeg-2. I have it set to DV. From what I have read so for I thought that would be the setting for getting the highest quality. Do I need to change that? For the video I'm using a high quality S-VHS cable, not a RCA/yellow cable. When I burn to disc/make movie, all is set at highest quality. But when you compare the disc next to the original VHS tape there is quite a difference. I'm just wondering is there something I'm missing? Something I can do to enhance the video, or a setting I should be choosing.  

   I am getting about 200 dropped frames out of 1 hour of video. I think they are occurring when there is a clinch on the tape. That's when I see the dropped frame counter go up. When I'm importing or making movie, all else is closed and I use the computer for nothing until it is finished. Thanks for any help....

"Quality" is an extremely subjective issue.

 

From your posts I would say up to the point where you have the material on the PC you are doing everything 100% right - ie - Moviebox capturing via S-cable to DV codec. So lets start there:

 

Are you happy with the "quality" of the material you have captured on the PC before you actually make a DVD? (Play the capture file with eg Media Player Classic Home Cinema)

 

FWIW - in my experience the Moviebox you have (USB710 version?) is able to produce lovely analogue captures. The dropped frames are quite normal with analogue captures on bad patches/locations on the tape

GlennJL:

Ok, up to now by what everyone is telling me I'm pretty much doing what I should for the best video quality. Thanks you everyone. But after making several test disc I'm still seeing quite a bit of difference compared to my VHS. So I started thinking maybe I have a cable problem. The video cable. Again after doing  several more test, with the identical video content I've come to the conclusion that my expensive at one time Monster SVHS cable was part of the problem. After using a couple of different SVHS cables, and a couple of different composite cables, I'm getting the best results by using a RCA/composite video cable. I've also used Nero for testing, but I really didn't see any difference making movie with it versus Pinnacle. Joe, the bitrate I noticed was 8500 kbits/sec: Question: looking at the different setting, what is Progressive encoding?? and what is always re-code entire movie? I have not used either, just curious.

Question: since VHS has only around 250 lines of resolution, would I get better results if I was coping to BluRay, or HD?? To me it wouldn't seem so since a DVD is already in the high 400's.. Again curious. I still thinking there's a setting somewhere that I'm not using to give me better results????? Thanks to all.

So there was an issue with the original capture quality after all. Every little bit helps. 

Your resolution will not be better than the original VHS because, quite simply, it's not possible to add data where it doesn't exist. That's why you need to squeeze every ounce of data you can from that VHS tape. You can maybe do color corrections, maybe some sharpening, and stuff like that but your options are limited. Blu-ray or HD won't improve it either.

The bitrate of 8500 is okay, that's just the maximum it will go. The actual bitrate will vary depending on movement in the various scenes since Studio uses VBR, or Variable Bit Rate encoding. Older versions gave you the option to choose VBR or CBR (constant bit rate). 

Progressive vs interlaced, don't worry about it. But you can google for info if you really want to know about it. Re-encode entire movie, I never used it either.

As far as dropped frames goes, I haven't done a VHS transfer recently but I always used a very small, simple program called WinDV for my captures. I never had an issue with OOS because of dropped frames because WinDV kept everything in sync regardless. Also, it has the option to set the length of each video capture. For example, a one hour video I could set it to capture in 10 or 15 minute increments. In some situations the OOS could get worse as the video played but by breaking it down to shorter pieces, it seemed to reset things like it was a whole new video and OOS never came in to play. When you're editing on the timeline, the fact that there are shorter segments instead of one long video makes absolutely no difference as far as Studio is concerned.

Joe

 

If you capture DV-AVI and make a DVD, it will always re-encode the entire movie (unless you have added some effects with background rendering turned on) as the DV-AVI has to be encoded to Mpeg-2 anyway. If you capture to mpeg-2 you may get a faster disc creation as it just does a straight file copy - Smart render/direct stream copy. So, if you aren't doing any significant editing, it is debateable whether capturing to DV-AVI will result in a better final product.

BTW, using the maximum bitrate may cause your DVDs to skip or stutter with some discs and players. If you are interested, you might want to test the difference between 8500 and 6000 - I doubt if you will see a difference on VHS source material.

I don't know how S-Video connectors are wired up in the USA to VHS players, but in Europe the Scart output can give a distorted S-Video signal if you don't also set the VHS player specifically to S-Video output.

GlennJL:

Question: since VHS has only around 250 lines of resolution, would I get better results if I was coping to BluRay, or HD?? To me it wouldn't seem so since a DVD is already in the high 400's.. Again curious. I still thinking there's a setting somewhere that I'm not using to give me better results????? Thanks to all.

The VHS horizontal resolution is the equivalent of 240 lines and S-Video (and Hi8 from a camera) is about 400 lines.  Digital (DV from a D8 camera or other DV source) is 500 lines of horizontal resolution.

If your material is VHS (240 line horizontal resolution), capturing via a S-Video cable will not improve the resolution.  I am doing this type of old tape capture using my old Sony D8 camera as a pass through device to convert the VHS signal from my analogue VCR player to digital (DV) and do not see any resolution improvement due to the capture method (yellow composite from VCR to D8 camera and Firewire from D8 camera to computer).

ADDED: You can "improve" the captured material by minimizing the losses due to bad cables or connections (or bad conversion codecs), but you can't create pixels that aren't there.  In other words, you can try to make the captured signal as close to the original as possible, but not any better.

Lawrence, I've downloaded the Movie Classic as you asked. Looking at what I've imported I can see quality difference compared to my original VHS tape viewing it on the monitor. As I had said earlier, I think the SVHS cable I was using in the beginning was some of the problem. Now that I've gone to a quality RCA composite cable it is a little better. Seeing the big difference is when I compare what I've imported from the VHS tape is seen after I've made the movie to DVD and view it on the TV. Play the disc, stop and play the tape. Tape is about 15 to 20% better. Mostly in the clarity. VE7AXO, what is  (or bad conversion codecs),  I have burned 5 test disc trying to figure out what I need to change. If I could just clear it up some. I tried to use the sharpen tool, but that really didn't make things look better. Thanks for all of the help and input, and HAPPY THANKSGIVING To All.. I will keep playing with it......

GlennJL:

Lawrence, I've downloaded the Movie Classic as you asked. Looking at what I've imported I can see quality difference compared to my original VHS tape viewing it on the monitor. As I had said earlier, I think the SVHS cable I was using in the beginning was some of the problem. Now that I've gone to a quality RCA composite cable it is a little better. Seeing the big difference is when I compare what I've imported from the VHS tape is seen after I've made the movie to DVD and view it on the TV. Play the disc, stop and play the tape. Tape is about 15 to 20% better. Mostly in the clarity. VE7AXO, what is  (or bad conversion codecs),  I have burned 5 test disc trying to figure out what I need to change. If I could just clear it up some. I tried to use the sharpen tool, but that really didn't make things look better. Thanks for all of the help and input, and HAPPY THANKSGIVING To All.. I will keep playing with it......

General comments:

1. If you have only a VHS source tape, you will not gain anything ito resolution because the resolution is defined by the source material ................. true - however, depending on cable quality and length of runs, you will more often than not find that if you play the VHS tape on a proper S-VHS deck and use the S-video connections to transfer video to the USB710  that the material captured would be slightly better ito colour fidelity/smearing etc ............ especially on longer cable runs.

2. Quasi S-VHS decks (read in effect only a REAL VHS deck with a S-video conversion built in) are notorious for producing garbage video material via the S-video outputs.

3. If you want to compare apples with apples you need view the material on exactly the same viewing instrument with exactly the same settings - in particular - VHS is interlaced so your DVD product should be interlaced as well - as others already commented, DVDs (4.5G space) was intended to only carry about an hour's worth of material at optimum quality - I have been playing with the USBxxx many years now and have been able to produce excellent quality DVDs from analogue material captured via the USBxxx boxes as long as the source material on the tapes were of good quality - I have also produced real rubbish looking stuff from less than optimum source material

4. You are using a tape deck and DVD player to view and compare the supposed same content on 2 different transfer sources - while the tape deck has possibly no picture quality adjustments, the DVD player may have a horde of those and may be set-up to eg display interlaced material as progressive (something that may explain your perceived quality issue on the DVD products)

5.  If you are supplying grainy or bad quality (read not perfect VHS tape) content to the USBxxx box, chances are that you will and must experience a loss in quality -not only on capture but also during the conversion of the picture content to mpeg2 DVD format  - iso the converter codec spending bandwidth on encoding good quality pixels containing relevant picture information, it may be struggling to interpret the snow and low contrast/quality pixels ........................ in these cases I have often found that playing around with the analogue capture picture quality sliders in Studio I could set-up the capture to at least produce close to acceptable results even on DVD.

6. Despite all of the above its pretty simple to remove the capture process from the DVD making process in order to evaluate the DVD production process' ability to produce good quality DVDs - Start a new project in Studio and just dump a lot of photos on the TL - make a DVD with interlaced active and leave the quality setting on auto - go view and evaluate that DVD's quality and see if you are happy with that ................. if you are, then you know you have to look elsewhere for the major loss on your captures

 

As I said - quality is extremely subjective .......................... " Tape is about 15 to 20% better. Mostly in the clarity" simply does not gel with my experiences with both the equipment and software when the source material is of good quality - that's why I said to start at the very beginning with only measurable parameters - from my experiences I would say I have been able to create DVDs from analogue material with close to 0% loss (my subjective take on it and I am the grand-daddy of all things anal wrt quality video) when properly compared on the same viewing instrument

 

Why don't you grab a frame from your typical source material in Studio and host/post it here to show the "quality" of the material you are trying to convert - perhaps post a short captured bit too (say 10 seconds worth).

 

FWIW - there is software available (eg Elecard's StreamEye Tools) to objectively compare the mpeg2 stream the DVD making process produces with the already captured material stream - iow an accusing finger can immediately be pointed at the correct source of the "perceived reduced quality" problem.

GlennJL:

VE7AXO, what is  (or bad conversion codecs),

I capture the old tapes into Liquid because my Studio version is quite old (as is Liquid now, but my Studio DV is even older).  I use the DV (AVI) codec preset as that is the output that I want.  Studio has similar codecs, but the main thing is to use one that does not transcode between input and output (i.e. use the same input as output presets).  That will minimize the generation loss, although starting with VHS quality, you won't see much deterioration in visible quality if you do transcode.

ADDED: Using the free Windows Media Encoder will give you a selection of good codec presets, but Studio probably already has similar ones built in.  In your case, I would stay with DV as the input/output codec.

A friend of mine just showed me his capture device that he has with a older version which is Pinnacle Studio 9. If anyone is familiar with this capture device you have to plug it in/ac to power it. It looks to be very well built compared to the cheap looking device I got with Studio 14. So my question is CAN you use this device that came with Studio 9 with Studio 14 software?? If so, do you think it may possibly do a better job on the importing/capture?? Thanks,

GlennJL:

A friend of mine just showed me his capture device that he has with a older version which is Pinnacle Studio 9. If anyone is familiar with this capture device you have to plug it in/ac to power it. It looks to be very well built compared to the cheap looking device I got with Studio 14. So my question is CAN you use this device that came with Studio 9 with Studio 14 software?? If so, do you think it may possibly do a better job on the importing/capture?? Thanks,

You don't need an external device for "importing", which is how you get file-based media (AVCHD) into a computer.  You only need a USB cable.

For "capturing" analogue media, you need a A/D converter (Analogue to Digital) which uses a codec (coder/decoder) for the conversion process.  The difference is that the capture process is a continuously flowing stream, while the importing is simply transferring a file as you would any other computer file.  It can be interrupted due to other tasks that the CPU needs to do and then continue with the import without dropping frames.  Interrupting the analogue stream will definitely drop frames.

The capture device which you are referring to is exactly that, a converter from analogue to digital.  I would think that the biggest quality issue is in the quality and type of the actual connectors on the device.  The codecs for consumer applications are pretty well standard across the board, from what I have read.  Perhaps others can chime in with more information.

GlennJL:

A friend of mine just showed me his capture device that he has with a older version which is Pinnacle Studio 9. If anyone is familiar with this capture device you have to plug it in/ac to power it. It looks to be very well built compared to the cheap looking device I got with Studio 14. So my question is CAN you use this device that came with Studio 9 with Studio 14 software?? If so, do you think it may possibly do a better job on the importing/capture?? Thanks,

I got Studio 9 in 2004. Actually, I bought a capture device and S9 was the software that was bundled with it. That device was a MovieBox USB. It only captured in mpeg-2 format. I used it for awhile, mainly to re-do a family video. As time went on I learned a few things about the right way to capture. A few years later, 2006 or 2007, I had a job to convert some old martial arts tutorial VHS tapes to dvd. . . . . .

Before I did that job I ran some tests with it. I captured some tape with the MovieBox USB then captured the same video using a Sony camcorder with pass-thru to capture as DV. After outputting dvd files from S9 the difference in quality was very noticeable. That's when I put the MovieBox away and never used it again. You'll never convince me that there isn't an advantage to starting out with the best quality capture you can get.

btw, a few years after that job, I completely re-did the family video. Where the film had been put directly to VHS tape by my brother, I got the original film and had it converted to uncompressed avi files. From that I re-did it in S9. My brother was stunned by the difference in quality. Things that were unreadable in his tape were clear as a bell on my dvd.

Attached is a picture of what I bought. If it's the same one, my advice is don't waste your time with it.

Joe 

Attached is a picture of what I bought. If it's the same one, my advice is don't waste your time with it.

 

 

 

 

That is the infamous Moviebox USB (mpeg capture only) ................... totally different to the USB5xx and USB7xx range of products that can do DV, mpeg2 or MJpeg and that I was referring to before.

Dont think S14 was ever sold with the Moviebox USB at all, and the OP already said he could capture using the DV codec so don't think that's the animal he is using