Re: [Hampshire] Video compression

I agree with Peter

Mpeg4 is a good codec to use. Its far more effecient than Mpeg2.
Indeed I captured quite a lot of old VHS tapes using an old bttv capture
card to a lossless format called Huffuv ( only for easy editing if
required ) then converted that capture file to H264 ( mpeg4/quicktime )
and I achieved fairly good results around 400Mb per 60 mins. I was quite
happy with the results considering how rubbish VHS is.

Kev

Bond, Peter wrote:
> Vic wrote -
>
>> Analogue artefacts are generally not very noticeable to the human eye
> -
>> but they usually end up being *very* expensive to encode digitally.
>> Filtering the picture will often give a good increase in
> compressibility
>> without noticeable difference of the image.
>
> ...and VHS is extremely noisy. Especially as a source for a codec.
> What are you using to digitise it?
>
> IIRC VHS is approximately QVGA in resolution? 320x240? *And* it'll be
> interlaced (which I have come to loathe utterly), so you'll probably
> want to deinterlace to frames rather than fields prior to encoding. I
> think VirtualDub does that?
>
> At least if it is encoded as MPEG 2 it'll be in a format accepted by
> most DVD players. If it's just resulting file size that is important,
> I'd look at MPEG 4 (although Dirac is looking quite interesting).
> Overall file size is dependant upon bitrate (constant or variable?!) -
> and performance-wise, 4 beats 2. Generally. Movement will
> automatically need higher bitrates - if you crank the rates down low
> then yes, that little white blob against the green is going to get
> averaged out!
>
> Oh - do remember that commercial VHS will probably have Macrovision
> protection on it that knackers the sync.
>
> HTH a bit.
>
> Peter