Best codec to playback onto a VHS?

[greyfalco]

Hey Guys,

Sorry if this question has been asked a million times, but I'm a bit of a stickler.. I'm making my demo reel of animation and such and I'm pretty much done and would like to put it to tape. There are many formats, sizes, etc, which I could play around with, but I'm wondering with your experience which would be the best?

My current video is at 640 x 480 and I'm wondering if I should scale it down to enhance playback. I've tried encoding it as DivX, but the fast/flashy parts have alot of artifacting which shows up easily on tape.

I have the Mjpeg option in after effects, but when I try to render it I get an error message, no clue why.. even if I could get it to work, would the playback be smooth enough?

Anyhow, thanks in advance for any comments, I've got the relevant specs of my system below:

Pentium 866
265 Megs RAM
40 gig 7200 rpm HD
Matrox G 450 eTV
(running Win2K)

I just got the Matrox and it hasn't given me too many problems (in comparison to my crappy ATI) I know it's not the best for high quality output stuff, but it was the best I could do on a budget... any help would be great. Thx.

-GeF.

[Christrati]

greyfalco,

Tough question to answer, since I've run into some major problems outputting to VHS tape. I would suggest PICVideo as an MJPEG codec for great quality and good compression. Of course, this depends on the program you're using when you try and render your animation. From what I've been told from Matrox, if you use DVDMax it output at 720x480 resolution (NTSC).

Here's some possible problems you might encounter when outputting to VHS tape:

1. Cropped edges of your animation
2. Choppy playback
3. Lower video quality if you use DivX G400 in order to fix the cropped edges.

Here's a link to the PICVideo MJPEG codec:

http://www.jpg.com/video/mjpeg.htm

Hope this helps!

Chris

[wkulecz]

I easily get my best VHS tapes from DV played back thru the camcorder.

G200 Marvel dmb1 MJPEG played back thru the BOB was good but I had color shift problems and needed a Sima SCC to fix, this is moot now that the Marvels are dead for W2K and beyond.

DV played back thru G450 DVDmax feature is good but not as good as the same file output thru the camcorder over 1394.

So my first choice would be to create a 720x480 DV output file, send it to a DV cam via 1394, and record the analog out on VHS.

--wally.

[AndrewDV]

Hi,

What program are you using for animation? Is it purely animation or is there video layered in as well?

Try to stay away from MJPEG or any compression for outputing animations. Even at the highest quality settings, you'll get some fuzziness around drawn edges. The effect is worse when layering video into the view. If you can, an uncompressed AVI is the best quality for animation dumped to tape.

You also want to try to get the highest res possible. This is contigent on the animation program you are using. In general, try to keep the minimum res to the settings for your drawing layer.

[prr]

3. Lower video quality if you use DivX G400 in order to fix the cropped edges.

There is no change in quality using DivXG400.

[Christrati]

Originally posted by prr
3. Lower video quality if you use DivX G400 in order to fix the cropped edges.

There is no change in quality using DivXG400.

Really? I see a big difference in quality if I use DivxG 400 in order to fix the cropped edges. My main settings are only "overscan" = 2%. Looks AWSOME, but the image is cropped. If I change any other settings, the picture becomes fuzzy or you see black borders beginning to appear.

Chris

[prr]

Really? I see a big difference in quality if I use DivxG 400 in order to fix the cropped edges. My main settings are only "overscan" = 2%. Looks AWSOME, but the image is cropped. If I change any other settings, the picture becomes fuzzy or you see black borders beginning to appear.

DivXG400 does not change image in any way except cuts it or adds black borders. There is no difference if You create a clip with some width and ask DivXG400 add black borders to it, or You create a clip that has already black borders and play it without DivXG400.

Some users have reported a problematic image on G450 TV-out if image width gets bigger than 720. But it does not matter whether the clip is produced by DivXG400 or it is original.

BTW, is the image bad on TV only or on monitor also?

[Brian Ellis]

Hey, guys, let's not be more royalist than the king. VHS is NOT high quality TV and virtually any codec, even MPEG-1, will be more than adequate to do what GEF is asking for and it would be difficult to discern any difference. My advice, though, is to capture at 704 or 728 frame width x whatever lines your system uses: there will be a marginal improvement over 1/2 this in both directions.

[Christrati]

I don't mean to disagree, but VCD for animation is terrible! If you're short on diskspace, I would urge you to use MJPEG or MPEG2 at 352x480 if you're really short. You'll notice minimal quality loss on the transfer loss compared to the already devistating loss with VCD or SVCD. From my experience, you would have to bump up the bitrate on SVCD to about 3500k before you notice a nice clean picture throughout the film.

As for a VHS equivalent on digital, using MPEG2, 352x480 at 4000kps does the job nicely. When you start dropping the bitrate it becomes more noticable only during fast motion.

Back to the DivX G400, the only time the image quality is effected is on the TV, Divx G400 does nothing to the monitor except add black lines. But, there is still a significant quality loss if you use DivX G400 to eliminate the black borders. Test it for yourself, if you don't see a difference let me send you a VHS tape--it's a big enough difference you even see it on VHS!!

Chris

[Karen St Martin]

I have had a lot of luck in creating VHS tapes by first encoding my video into MPEG-1 at 640x480 and then creating a VCD. I play the VCD on my JVC DVD player and record the VHS tape from that. It looks great! Clear, crisp, all I could ask for!!

Karen