Question / Help Video Quality Question!

[kevinf2020]

First I do want to say that this software is much better than the software that came with my capture device from MSI and has resolved issues I won't get into. So i'm very pleased..... my only issue is that i'd say i'm at about 80% of what i was looking for quality wise. It's just a bit blurry and more noticeable compression when video is paused. Kind of reminds me of wmv to be honest... I did try MP4 at 6000 with libx264, and I also tried MPEG-2 ... I tried H.264 but the file literally outputs at .H264 and o no audio plays.

I realize taking videos from VHS to my PC is analogue to digital so it won't be 100% but i know years back i could get a slightly better result using the program it came with itself - mind you a 45 minute show would be about 3-4 gbs.....when I increased the rate fro 2500 to 6000 I can't say i noticed much difference....any thoughts?

 

[koala]

There is a huge amount of written knowledge about analog to digital capture from 10 years ago, because that's the time frame where digitizing VHS was mainly done.

I try to get some info that is still in my head. To get good results and profit from the huge knowledge base, you need to research in the web yourself.

• If you really try to digitize real VHS tape recordings, keep in mind that VHS recordings don't contain the full resolution of 720x576 (PAL) or 720x480 (NTSC). Due to frequency constraints with the tape recording, the horizontal resolution (scan lines visible) is down to about 300.
• the vertical scan lines (576 or 480) are blurred as well due to to analog frequency constraints of the tape recording
• to reduce noise and grain, scale down from 720x576 to 352x288 (this is the VCD resolution)
• deinterlace before rescaling, and experiment with noise filters and other filters before and after rescaling

My recommendation for a digitizing workflow:

• record raw footage with 720x576@50Hz (PAL) or 720x480@60Hz (NTSC) with a quality based preset such as CRF (x264), CQP (Nvenc) or ICQ (Quicksync). Choose a CRF/CQP/ICQ value of 18. Or simply use simple output mode of OBS and choose "indistinguishable quality" as quality setting. Don't use CBR as encoding method!
• postprocess the raw footage with a video editor, not with OBS.
• in postprocessing, scale down to 352x288 (PAL) or 352x240 (NTSC)
• in postprocessing, try multiple videos with deinterlace before rescaling and filters before and after deinterlacing (noise, color...). Descaling only makes sense before rescaling. But experiment with different rescaling algorithms.

The advantage of postprocessing is that you can play with scaling, filtering and deinterlacing without the need to re-digitize the tape every time. If you record with the settings I gave, you have raw footage that resembles the original as much as it can. But with rescaling and perhaps some filtering you can produce even better results from the raw footage.
You have to play with this. There is a learning curve. If you try to digitize everything with one step through OBS (filtering, rescaling, deinterlacing), you will find after several days of digitizing, you have to redo the first recordings because you found out better settings in some step. If you do everything in postprocessing, you only need to postprocess again. The raw recording doesn't need to be redone if you did it right the first time.