[Meta] Interesting and useful encoding considerations from a different site

NegativeKarmaForever | 13 points | Sep 23 2017 18:11:45

[Meta] Interesting and useful encoding considerations from a different site | Megalinks MegaDB [Meta] Interesting and useful encoding considerations from a different site

collection keeps that sweet nostalgia content safe from degradation of the magnetic tape, which starts to go downhill within 10 to 25 years. He's capturing them in HD using a 1080p upscaler, at a full 50fps frame rate by converting to HDMI before grabbing -- a higher frame rate than many standard commercial digitizing devices that capture at 30fps -- so that no frames are missed.

Why?

VHS only has about 333x480 (NTSC) or 335x576 (PAL) resolution in luminosity, much lower color resolution. There is no point capturing it at higher resolution - you're just wasting storage space with duplicated or made-up pixels.

The framerate thing I can sorta understand - both NTSC and PAL were interlaced. So for example, the actual resolution of NTSC VHS was 333x240 @ 60 fps interlaced, which when deinterlaced (the alternate lines of video interpolated) created 333x480 frames @ 60 fps. While modern computer video formats do support interlacing, I've noticed annoying artifacts when they're converted badly (you'll see horizontal lines during quick panning or quick horizontal movement). So I can understand.capturing at 333x480 @ 60 fps when it only contains 333x240 @ 60 fps of information.

Maybe if he had access to the original Betacam tapes I could understand capturing in HD. Those had 720x480 or 720x576 resolution with 10-bit 4:2:2 chroma compression. But if your source media is plain VHS...

[-] [deleted] | 8 points | Sep 23 2017 18:50:19

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[-] NegativeKarmaForever | 3 points | Sep 23 2017 19:25:17

When you have a low-res source, upscaling is just a waste of disk space (plus you'll have to deal with annoying artifacts), no matter what modern codec you'll be using.

[-] [deleted] | 3 points | Sep 23 2017 19:31:28

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[-] NegativeKarmaForever | 2 points | Sep 23 2017 19:48:38

It should be, but we've all seen encodings where people do this - not the releasers, mind you, but enthusiasts who don't really understand the technicalities and go for the max settings in their program, without considering the source.

[-] Senorbubbz | 3 points | Sep 23 2017 23:04:43

I'm seeing this a lot in the Charmed encode I downloaded here. Makes it almost unwatchable tbh.

[-] TreyWait | 2 points | Sep 23 2017 21:06:15

Who's encoding VHS tapes and why?

[-] rednight39 | 3 points | Sep 24 2017 00:08:18

For example, I acquired first-gen copies of Conan's Late Night show, starting a few weeks after he did in '93. No one else may have a copy.

[-] [deleted] | 3 points | Sep 24 2017 01:27:54

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[-] rednight39 | 6 points | Sep 24 2017 02:08:18

Working on it. I have 83 weeks or so.

[-] Himechi | 1 points | Sep 24 2017 18:16:30

I've done a few. In some cases, it's content that only broadcast on tv and never saw a home media release. For other things, it's content that had a dvd release but I haven't picked one up and, in case I never do pick it up, I don't want to lose what I paid for.