Before you begin:
First you will need a
good Video capture card, I suggest Winnov's Videum 1000 Plus found
HERE on Winnov's web site (www.winnov.com). I have an older
version of this card and it works great, it also come with a hardware
CoDec that is VERY fast.
I have found if you process
one file you loose the ability to skip chapter by chapter
through the movie. This may be ok for you, and it makes it a lot
easier to convert your VHS to VCD, but I would suggest taking the time to process
the video into chapters so
you can skip through the VCD by chapter.
The five steps to
making a VCD from a VHS tape or other analog source:
-
Capturing The Video
-
Processing The Video
-
Rendering The Video to
Mpeg format
-
Burning your VCD
-
Resizing your
MPEG files to fit on one VCD
Capturing The Video:
Start AVI_IO and set it
to capture at 640x480 and 30 Fps (frames per second) using the
hardware CoDec if you have a Winnov card or the Huff CoDec if you have
another card that does not have a hardware CoDec. You want to use the
Huff CoDec because it is a Lossless format. Capture the Audio using
PCM format and set at 44,100 kHz 16-bit stereo at 172 kb/second. Once
you are done capturing your video you will have several 2 Gig files
that should be 15 minutes each.
Processing The Video:
Open these video files
in VirtualDub by opening the first file and each additional file with
the Append AVI segment. Use the Mark-in and Mark-out tool
to mark any video you want to
remove (like commercials) and hit your delete key. You can either save
the file as a full video or use the mark tool
to mark chapters and save each
one. Save them using the same video/audio setting used to capture.
Rendering The Video to
Mpeg format:
Open TMPGEen, when the
Project wizard runs pick NTSC under VCD and click next.
Click the brows button
and pick your first file, Click next.
Click one the Other
Settings button.
Pull down the Motion
search precision and click on Highest Quality and click OK and click
next.
Pull down the media
selector and pick your output medium, normally this would be CD-R
80min. Click next.
Pick your Output file
and click ok and your file will be processed. Once you finish all your
files continue by burning your files.
Burning
your VCD:
Start Nero and pick VCD from the
scrolling menu on the left like so:
Click on the "New" button and you will
be read to drag your movies over, one at a time in the proper order
drag you video files over from the right to the left windows watching
the meter at the bottom of your screen, if you go above the 700Mb
limit, delete the last file on the left screen you dragged over. Once
you have your files dragged over and you are below the 700Meg limit
press the "write CD dialog button"
.
You should see the following screen,
click the "Write" button and your first VCD will be burned.
That's it for burning the DVD to VCD.
Resizing your
MPEG files to fit on one VCD:
This is a tricky thing
to do. You have to balance the size of the file and the quality of the
video/audio. This is also hard to do if your not up on your math. You
may want to search some of the other sites for an easier way of doing
this, but, here is how I do it.
Once you have your
files converted to MPEG format you will have to figure out what your
video bit rate need to be processed down to so the video will fit on a
700Meg CD.
Lets say we have
1400Megs of video, you may think cutting the video bit rate in half
will do it, but, since you have audio, and it has to stay the same for
the VCD to work in set-top DVD players you must only adjust the video
bit rate.
The standard for VCD
is: Video=1150 kbits/sec Audio=224 kbits/sec But, the Video can be as
low as 650 kbits/sec. This may not look very good, so some
experimentation will be needed. Using the TMPGEnc program will allow
you to see the projected file size is, so you can play with the bit
rate till you get the file size where you need it. Once you figure out
your settings on one file, use the same setting to process all your
files.
