Finally think I have an acceptable work flow!
 

I have been reading this site for many years, and have made many attempts to convert my nearly 150 family videos, with no luck. Either because I run out of time, or out of patience! I have plenty of hardware. Have a capture pc with windows XP, 7500 AIW capture card and all the software recommended on this site. Needless to say, I think I have a set up that at least for me is acceptable.

GOAL- to capture the tapes to DVD (back up# 1), then burn the DVD's to a hard drive (back up # 2), then save the files to a synology NAS DS xxxxx (waiting on 2014 models before I decide), and stream to TV and other devices.

PROCESS FLOW- JVC HR-S9900u > TBC 1000 > Signvideo Proc Amp > Berhinger Xenyx 1002 > lite on 5005 DVD recorder (using 1 hr setting)

I am using the proc amp to apply mild adjustments to the luminance black, gain (brightness) and color saturation. I am using the mixer to remove (hide) hiss, or any other noise that I can hear. Basically I am making minor adjustments.

I am reviewing the DVD, on my Samsung 7500 60" hi def TV, and so far I am very happy with the results. They are more then expectable, considering up till now the tapes have been sitting in a closet (some as far back as 1985 (so many aunts & uncles no longer around).

I do have some concerns and questions. The DVD recorder is acting up. The door does not always close. It closes, then opens back up. I have to sometimes give the door a nudge to close it good. Also some times I have to open and close the door so that the drive can initialize or prepare the disk to record. I might have to open and close the drive a few times before it accepts it. Should I just continue to use the drive as is, and hope it can get the the "project" or do I take it to a service location (I am in the metro Detroit area).

Also, my captures do not have chapters. Can I add them once I save the files to a pc? Is it difficult?

Thanks in advance,

Rappy

I do something similar.
(1) Backup to discs
(2) ISO on HDD, connected to WDTV Live.
(3) ISO on HDD, archived off-site.

Same brand HDD. Reason for off-site dupes is related to local disaster plan, not drive failure.

Your workflow looks fine to me. :congrats:

- good JVC VCR (with dynamic drum), part of 9600-9900 lineage
- good TBC
- good proc amp
- good mixer
- DVD recorder not *the best* (JVC) but still a good LSI unit

When using a proc amp, make sure the TV or computer monitor is calibrated. The Premium Member forum has some tools for that.

When it comes to DVD equipment, I just use it as long as possible. It may run fine for dozens, hundreds, or even thousands more discs -- just with a nuisance in/out issue. It's up to you. The drive may need replacing eventually is all. You've not describing any other problem, so the unit should be fine.

Is Detroit A ghost town these days? Did it really lose 50% of its population?

Chapters are made during authoring. The DVD recorder, of course, authors when finalized. When you dump to PC and edit, then re-author that's where you do it. Yes, it's easy. I use TMPGEnc Authoring Works for menu-less discs. It can make decent Blu-ray menus (and probably DVD menus) these days. It's not as bad as the old TMPGEnc DVD Author days.

I have a question. If I want to edit a file (DVD), I would use TMPGEnc Authoring Works then re-author. I think I understand that. If I only want to save the DVD's created by the DVD recorder onto my PC (as is), what is the best SW to do that? This is where I am a bit confused. Can I use image burn? Or is DVD Decrypter still a good tool? The goal is to save a copy of the DVD to a hard drive that will eventually be in a multi media NAS that I can stream to a TV or tablet. I'd like it to be simple, yet does not "degrade" the file or compress it any more then it might already be.

While I am slowly making progress in capturing the tapes from VCR to DVD recorder, I'd like to start saving the DVD's to my pc. I am going to install a fresh copy of windows 7 onto a SSD with a fresh WD red drive as the "archive" drive. Intel I7 processor, 16GB of RAM (if that makes a difference).

Thx

Use DVD Decrypter to decompile it, yes. Decrypter takes the badly-authored DVD recorder discs back to raw MPEG-2 files. (Understand that all DVD recorders are terrible at the authoring.)

Then you can use the MPEG2s to reauthor a nice disc, as well as seamless remove content. For example, to remove commercials, or the recorded junk before/after the video. Use Womble or another no-reencode MPEG editor.

I also author less these days, storing to MPEGs as data on networked hard drive, and using the DVD backup as data only. Though some items still need to be authored with nice menus!

I still have some questions (just want to get it right) regarding final output of all the tapes I am capturing. As mentioned earlier, one of my main goals is to have an end product that I can easily view and share. I plan on doing this by purchasing a Synology NAS. It has the functionality of a "video station" and " media server". It looks like one of the formats that it can use is MP4 (H.264). Womble DVD 5.0 looks to have the ability to convert to MP4. Will I see any additional "loss of image quality" by this conversion? Is their a better program to convert to MP4? So do I have this correct? I:

1. DVD Decrypter to decompile to MPEG-2 file (save to archive Hard Drive)
2. Use (copy of #1) the decompiled MPEG-2 files with Womble to either re author/ edit files and then convert to mp4 or skip the
reauthor and go direct to mp4 conversion and save to another hard drive for NAS.

Does this sound right?

Thx

We'll I am at nearly 100 DVD's so far, and have about 30 more VHS tapes to go. I am happy so far with the progress. I have not done anything with them. I am waiting to purchase my NAS to make sure I convert to the correct file type (MP4 I think will be the final outcome) that the NAS will play.

For the most part, I will be happy with the basic hardware adjustments I have already made, but for some tapes I might want to do some more software adjustments. I realize I loose some flexibility with the capture method I have chosen, but what are my options to do some minor software restoration? What is the proper work flow and software options?

Thanks again!

You can easily share mp4 videos with others who have BluRay players capable of playing mp4. Non-mp4 players and those who don't own BD players will be out of luck.

Yes.

Not really. Re-encoding is lossy, period.

Decompile to MPEG2? DVD is MPEG2.

It seems that capturing is done to lossy formats to begin with. Or do I mis-read your procedures? For additional editing (cut/join, etc.) you could at least use smart-rendering editors like TMPGEnc Smart Renderer, which handles mpeg and many h264 formats. Once you add filters and that sort of thing, you're into re-encoding as well as colorspace transitions, so no smart-renderer will help there.

With a couple of hundred tapes at stake, it's unlikely you'll be able to make quick work of additional enhancements. Re-encoding alone will consume time and effort. Best advice: gather the tapes you value most and keep them a while longer. Later, you'll be glad you still have them.

:wink2:

EDIT: :o

Oops, a small sentence somehow didn't get into my previous post. I hate laptop touchpads. Love the way they'll select entire paragraphs and delete them when you hit any key!

I'll add my own question into that reply: are you talking about decrypting retail DVD's for archiving? Home-made DVD's don't need decryption.

Sorry if I am using the incorrect terminology. They are all family home videos - nothing retail. Just trying to figure out what is the best way to get the DVD's (recorded from a JVC DR-M10) from disk to hard drive, and be able to "stream" from a Synology NAS to TV or tablet ect. (see post # 4).

thanks,

Rappy

A video programmed as a movie on DVD disk such as you mention does not have to be decrypted (there is no copy protection on home made DVD's). It is copied to another device. If these DVD's were recorded to your JVC DVD recorder and finalized to DVD disc, you can copy in one of two ways: (a) directly copy the entire VIDEO_TS folder and all of its contents to a drive storage unit, with each movie in its own titled folder. Or (b) you can combine the separate .VOB video files of a DVD disc into a single MPEG movie file (you will lose menus, subtitles, etc.) using a freebie such as VOB2MPG (http://www.videohelp.com/tools/VOB2MPG). Someone familiar with your NAS and the formats it can handle can advise which method would work for you.

You also mentioned using TMPGenc Authoring Works as an editor. TAW does has some simple cut/join smart-rendering available, but it's very limited and is not really an "editor". It's primarily an authoring program. There are any number of editors around; the freebies have only a few features and are mostly non-smart rendering. Most quality smart renderers are not free. I don't really know what you mean by "editing", but if you mean filtering and other complex work, there are no smart-rendering editors or processors that can do such processing without re-encoding your videos.

Home-made tapes have a lot of typical problems, regardless of the quality of the player (dropouts, rainbows, head-switching noise along the bottom of the frame, various types of stains and discoloration from tape aging, etc). If you're of a mind to repair those defects, it will take more than just an "editor" to do it, and such repairs require re-encoding. However it's too late to change the basic capture method, and most people wouldn't take that much trouble anyway. What you have captured to lossy DVD is as good as those captures will ever look without serious work. For some users, that falls short of possibilities. But for many others, it will do. It depends on your expectations.

Video compression isn't the same thing as running a video through WinZIP or RAR. Video encoding is entirely different.

Yes, there is better. Womble is not really a company known for its encoding/re-encoding quality. Womble is mostly good at editing, and it has some rudimentary authoring functions. When I used payware, I use MainConcept. When I use freeware, I use either AVI Demux or x264vfw inside of VirtualDub. So I'd suggest one of those methods.

You can restore from MPEG-2, but only for certain errors. It really depends. For example, both MPEG and AVI are fine for source, if you're using Avisynth to align chroma over luma. By contrast, MPEG is not good to further do NR, as MPEG can add it's own artifacts with MPEG -- especially the lower DVD-Video spec MPEG-2.

No, don't do that! :eek:

VOB files are more than just MPEG, especially from DVD recorders. All VOBs, really. There can be all kinds of nasty side effects when you don't properly extract the video with an IFO tool like DVD Decrypter. Common ones are audio sync issues, problems at the VOB merge, and rejections by latter software that tries to (mid)read the VOB. Again, VOB is not MPEG. You can't just copy it. I wish it were this easy, but it's not.

... and the needs of the tape/video. It depends on the errors, more than anything else. Some can be fixed, even after multiple generations (analog or digital).

Trivia: Huffyuv is based on the same principles as zip. :wink2:

Yes, I understand what you're saying and I agree. The idea I tried to convey is that the contents of a home-made DVD disk can be copied to a hard drive as storage, and re-burned later as-is if needed. How NAS devices handle those copies it is up to the NAS, which is why I have zero confidence in them. As far as I know, VOB2MPG hasn't displayed problems -- I used it on two occasions without complaint, but it seemed like more trouble than just burning a dupe of the original DVD or reburning from HDD copies of entire VIDEO_TS folders. I have more faith in TMPGenc's video editors, which I've used countless times to extract VOB's recorded on DVD-R's. I'd suggest that the owner take your advice and expertise on the matter.

Frankly, I don't see the point in expecting all "sharing" parties to fiddle with NAS setups. I wouldn't dare try it with grandma.

True. ZIP, RAR, huffyuv, Lagarith, etc., are similar (I'd wager that the latter two are faster, but give bigger files). My point is that those compressors are essentially lossless. What I tried to convey is that MPEG is not lossless. Thanks for checking and clarifying.
:salute:

I prefer ISOs on normal hard drives -- even shared drives on a local router.

I hate NAS, and only care for SAN on true cloud hosting. Most consumer SAN/NAS is not very good. It just adds another layer of "stuff" to the drive setup, and every thing you do is another point of possible failure.

The WDTV Live is awesome for watching ISOs -- something I was doing at breakfast. :)

i understand that a NAS can add complexity or not work very well, but I have heard pretty good feedback for Synology products. My intent at a minimum is to "back up" the videos onto the NAS. I will have a copy of my brothers family videos/pictures on my NAS, and he will have my vids/pics on his NAS. I will also have the original DVD's I made from the JVC recorder (stored), and I also plan to save a copy on a bare hard drive and stored someplace off site. Another good feature of the NAS, is being able to create your "own personal cloud" to store mostly pics and video from a smart phone.

I plan on purchasing the NAS in the next month or two. Once I have it, I will then experiment on what will be the best option. I don't want to waste time and effort converting/saving 100+ DVD's only to find out it will not work with my set up.

What I meant by "sharing" is a little less complicated then how I described it. Really, I just want the ability to view the videos from by TV, quickly and easily. That is the #1 priority as far as playback. I can definitely use a WDTV Live (or Apple TV) to stream the content from the NAS. Just want to make sure I save all the DVD's in the proper format.

Thanks for all the help!

I also prefer ISOs for archive, but my new setup with XBMC works best with MKVs. Its nicer to skip menus than to have to fiddle, and MakeMKV has never given me grief.

The only two reasons I would maintain ISO for playback are 1 - menus if desired and 2 - closed captions. You cannot extract CCs as a file (not to be confused with subtitles) and it can be a pain to rip them from a disc, so maintaining the ISO maintains the CCs.

Ok- things I think are going good. I have "captured" about 50 VHS tapes (= nearly 100 DVD's but not all @ 1 hr), with about 10 more to go. These are the important tapes. I have about 50 more that are a little less important that I will capture as well.

I also have approximately 30 or so miniDV tapes that were captured with a Canon HV 20. I want to capture these next. I think I have a few options. Some equipment I have are:

Canopus ADVC300
Canopus let's edit RT+ card
Windows 7 (64 bit), with SSD drive
XP rig (with 7500 AIW vid card)
JVC DR-M10 DVD recorder

Just like the VHS tapes, I just want a basic capture. Should I just add a FireWire card to the Windows 7 pc, and capture with WINDV, or use one of my other hardware equipment and use different software? Will the WINDV capture in HD, or should I use something else, or not worry about it? Or should I capture straight to the JVC, and follow the same transfer flow I have for the VHS tapes to my "media drive"?

As with the rest of this project. The goal is to Create a "archive" file (DVD and hard drive), then a "media" file that I can use and watch daily to my flat screen or media player.

Thanks as always!

for the mini-dv just use the camcorder to transfer the video directly to a pc via the firewire cable
the video is already digital so there is no need to use the canopus device or a capture card
you could also probably use the DV input on the DR-M10 - ive never tried that so not sure how good it works

Thanks volksjager. Will I need to use any SW like WINDV, or something already in W7?

If WinDV works, that'd be my first choice. :congrats:

I've had issues with WinDV as well as a few other free apps recommended on this site. Not sure what the issue is, but I can't play or capture. I get an error.....that escapes me right now. But to be honest it's been a while since I tried capturing. I've been away from home for the last 10 weeks "down south" for work, and now I have a bum knee which makes it difficult to get around and connect/disconnect my equipment. But I do want to get back at it soon. I made such progress with the VHS tapes, that I want to get these mini DV tapes captured as well. Stay tuned!

Hello, I apologize for jumping on this thread. But, I sort of understand what's been said and I want to ask some questions. I've been here before, about a year ago and read a ton and asked a lot of questions. Just like everyone else, I have a bunch of vhs home movies to convert. I understand some of it but the language just gets so industry specific and often I just don't know what it means. but, here's where I am. I want these tapes converted in order to preserve them. It's not something we will watch often. I want them very good, possible better than they are if that's doable. They do not have to be the level that you guys would do. I don't have the time or money to get that deeply into this. Same old song, right? That being said, I bought a used Panasonic 1980 locally (have no clue if it's in great shape. It works but nothing to compare to). I have the ATI wonder thing and a TBC 8710. I believe I start with the player, connect with svideo cable to tbc, then svideo to ATI and into something else. That's where I get a little hung up. I know it can go to a dvd recorder or a pc. I think I want to capture as mpeg for broadcast or just mpeg2 for dvd? So here's where I don't know where to go. What I want as a result is a file that I can do a little editing on and I want to be able to add a title screen with some location/date info. Then just burn a dvd that can be played on the tv. So, my question is, if I capture to a dvd burner, is that still raw data that I can, then, load into my pc and edit with adobe or sony or something and then render and burn to dvd? Or do I have to capture to laptop (which I do have and do not have a dvd burner) and just save to an external drive? Then I could pull into edit/authoring software and make my dvd? I know that's a lot of questions. Thanks so much for the time you take to help.

Right.

And you've been reading " a ton" for a year? Okay, the AG-1980 tis a great start, assuming it works the way it's supposed to. What's with the AVT-8710 tbc? Are your home made tapes copy protected?

You know incorrectly. The ATI capture device connects to a pc. You have to install ATI's capture drivers and software. You can capture to the PC with ATI's MPEG capture (OK at very high birates), or use VirtualDub to capture to lossless media for the best results. You'll see a similar discussion about this in the videohelp forum: http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/3...=1#post2350210.

Looking at the rest of your post, and judging from the beginning, maybe you want to slow down a bit. At this point there are some basics that you really need to get a handle on. Take it easy and start here:
http://www.digitalfaq.com/guides/vid...-workflows.htm
http://www.digitalfaq.com/guides/vid...rd-capture.htm
http://www.digitalfaq.com/guides/vid...nd-sources.htm

DVD is MPEG2. DVD can't be anything else. MPEG2 is a codec. "MPEG" is a container for MPEG1 or MPEG2 codecs. The lingo on the street is "DVD" and "MPEG" for the same thing, roughly.

What do you mean by "broadcast"? If you mean web posting, consider this -- Video captured from VHS is interlaced or telecined, as are most DVD's and BluRay discs. Web video is almost always progressive. The best and cleanest way to go from interlaced/telecined source to web video is to properly deinterlace or inverse telecine with tools like Avisynth (best) or VirtualDub (mmm, okay, but stick with Avisynth). The very worst way to get progressive web video is to use the typical budget NLE from Adobe or SONY or, even worse, Pinnacle (gasp!). If you capture to DV, note that DV was deigned for PC-only or thru-camera display. It'll have to be re-encoded for any other output or playback device.

I don't know what you mean by "raw video", and chances are, you don't know either. MPEG2 is encoded video, it's not raw. If you want raw, capture to losslessl AVI using huffyuv or Lagarith lossless compression with your USB Wonder. There's nothing in between -- You capture to lossless or capture to lossy (MPEG, h264, DV, etc).

Laptop + video processing is (shudder) a very difficult way to go through life. Lots of people do it. The results are often depressing to watch.

Sorry there's not more answers to give you in a single post. Problem here is that you're still in the very basic stages. If you want to get going in a hurry with at least viewable results without inflicting too much damage on your captures, record (ahem, I mean capture) to DV on your PC. Not the best way, not the worst. Use something decent like SONY Movie Studio Platinum to handle the grunt work from edit to encoding to authoring and DVD. SONY gets at least decent results, and does it all without requiring you to know very much about what you're doing. Caution, though: you really do have to get into the documentation and user guides, no matter which way you go. Or you'll get some rather unpleasant surprises.

I truly appreciate your help and I will do more reading and trying to come up to speed. But, I think it's apparent I don't know what I'm doing and I don't need anyone to mock me or point it out. I'm an idiot in this world but pretty darn smart in my world.

Nobody's mocking you. :)

... at least they'd better not be. That's not something that happens on this site, as it does on others.

I've been unable to reply to posts for a few weeks now (dealing with medical issues again, temporary minor setback), but will be at it again very soon. I'll look your question over, and see if I can help you better.

No, no mocking here, but we do have to save time and angst by getting to the point. Sorry if it I came off a little forward, didn't mean to. Saying that you don't have a good handle on this subject doesn't mean you're stupid and isn't a personal comment. Everyone here and in similar forums had to start somewhere.

Tell ya about my very first DVD. Spent a week gathering all the equipment and software, spent 2 days working on a 15-minute capture off cable TV. Finally authored and burned the DVD, then eagerly jumped over to my DVD player and inserted the DVD disc. My player thought about it for maybe 15 seconds, then spit the disc right back out at me. To say I was set back ain't half of it.

The guides I posted links to are where I ended up the next day. And, yeah, I started all over again. The guides might be a bit dated as far as hardware goes, though not entirely, and it took a weekend of study to get me fired up again. When I started posting samples, I got a pretty good chewing out by a few people, but most were good teachers and kept me going. I still make some booboos (and sometimes catch the devil for it from lordsmuf), but that comes with the territory, just like any endeavor.

Anyway, good luck.

Thanks to you both. This is important to me. I am so willing to buy what I need and learn what I need to learn. But, there isn't enough years left in my life for me to get to your level. I've read almost everything on these forums trying to understand. The biggest problem is that it's all disjointed and uses terminology that is unknown to me. I'm extremely computer literate and have done a lot of video work in Pinnacle over the years. So, even though that is elementary to you, I'm not completely starting from scratch.

Here's where I am now. I ordered a jvc 7800. I have the ATI TBC which I had understood from reading that it was necessary. I also have the USB600 to capture with. And early on (before the usb600), I had purchased the Canopus 110. At this point, I think I can play on the jvc, using the tbc?, and capture to pc with the usb. I have virtual dub downloaded. Have not tried to use it, but surely I can. I will also buy Sony editing software. Capture as Mpeg? Then edit (only identifying information and combining clips) and burn?

I have also considered and would like to know if I need to purchase....the Processor Amp and the Detailer and put those into my string from vcr to pc.

I've read the definiting of "authoring." Is it the equivalent of "rendering," which is the term I'm familiar with.

Okay, I've done some reading on "authoring." It seems that it's just the entire process from editing to burning final dvd?

Here's one quote from Lord Smurf regarding the TBC. There are many other places I've read about this. That's why I bought it.

99%+ of the time, it's fact -- TBC is needed for analog video.

Read more: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/myth...#ixzz3FZKjTwRl

Tell me about it, LOL! I still have about 200 hours of VHS to go. As for levels, well.....it all depends on what you expect and how much you're willing to put into it. If you're limited, and your goals aren't perfectionist (I wish I could be less picky!), you can still get pretty good results that will have friends nodding approval.

I've used Pinnacle myself and auditioned several versions since good old version 8. It's really for low-tier stuff, as you'll see from comments from other members. It would do, I guess, but I'd say Movie Studio Platinum can give better results with more features and about the same effort. That's not the way advanced users would do it, but I think you're correct: no sense getting into heavy duty processing if you don't have the time for it -- and it does take time.

The 7800 is OK. I've used it in the past until it died, and its cousin the 7600. You could do better when it comes to 6-hour tapes, as its better with 2-hour and retail stuff. But you can always augment with a good used Panasonic later. Take it from experience, used VCR's can choke at a moment's notice, which is why many members here have more than one VCR.

The 7800 has a built-in line level tbc for in-frame line sync errors. Those errors produce wiggling lines and edges and subtle but visible and annoying horizontal "ripples" during playback, along with bent borders, especially on old tapes. The AVT 8710 is a frame level tbc, does nothing for line sync errors, but many use a frame tbc all the time to help with overall frame sync smoothness and audio sync, not to mention defeating copy protection.

So if you have two capture cards, both are used to capture VHS to a PC. There are differences. Most would say that the image quality and color from the 110 is not as clean as with the 600. The 110 can give you somewhat compressed DV AVI and (I think) MPEG2 or possibly some other compressed format. You use that card's software for the capture. The 600 won't do DV-AVI, but it will give you a pretty good MPEG at high bitrates and can be used with VirtualDUb to capture to lossless AVI using huffyuv or Lagarith lossless compression. Huffyuv is faster. Many use huffyuv for capture, then use Lagarith to make slightly smaller intermediate working files. This is what you would use if you were working with lossless video. I don't think you will, for several reasons. Although VHS to lossless is the best way to get the cleanest editable archive for cleanup and other work, a 90-minute huffyuv capture would be about 35GB. SONY's software can work with lossless AVI. Lossless means what it says -- what comes into the capture device is what you get in the capture, with no additional compression, color changes, compression artifacts, etc. Lossless capture can be uncompressed, which can be 3 times the size I just quoted, which is why lossless compressors like huffyuv and Lagarith are recommended to save some working space.

Now, why would anyone in their right mind work with these big lossless files? Well, if you ever see a real capture from VHS you're going to see lots of noise, both analog playback defects and plain old tape noise (floating, dancing, horizontal grain and vague horizontal "stripes"). You'll also see spots, dots, rips, dropouts, chroma noise, chroma shift and bleeding colors, rainbows, edge stains, edge halos, and whatnot. Once those defects get encoded to compressed formats like MPEG or DV-AVI, you'd have to be an advanced user to clean them up and some of it is futile. Digital encoders don't like noise, which becomes artifacts rather than "just noise". Both MPEG and DV-AVI tend to encode this grainy stuff as mosquito noise on edges or sometimes bright tiny "sparkles" that twitter and dance on playback. You can clean it up in something like Avisynth with filters like DeComb and others, but they have after-effects, notably loss of clarity that has to be restored with some very sophisticated sharpeners and masking techniques. That's a lot to handle if you expect to get quick results. Lossless capture tends to avoid some of this, doesn't have compression artifacts, and is easier to clean up. That kind of cleanup, even with lossless media, is not a feature of consumer NLE's. So that's why I recommended that you'd probably be happier with DV, which does need some cleanup but is not so inimical to editing with smart-rendering editors like the SONY stuff.

Capping to MPEG is another story. It's difficult to edit without smart-rendering. If you decide to modify color, impose subtitles, do some denoising, there is no smart-rendering for MPEG (or for DV for that matter) if you get into more complicated processing. Each time you modify in lossy formats in that way, you go to another lossy re-encode, so you lose even more data and get more compression artifacts. Simple cuts and joins involve re-encoding only for a few groups of frames in the area of the cut (smart rendering).

Authoring for DVD isn't an encoding step. It's a reorganization of the encoded video into a file structure that can be read by DVD players. For standard DVD the file has to be previously encoded as MPEG2. Some NLE's refer to encoding as "rendering", some call it encoding. Some NLE's use "render" to refer to just about anything, including joining, cuttiing, re-encoding, and authoring. With lossless video, changes involve "rendering" (processing the requesting modifications) to a new output file, but not re-encoding. Encoding a lossless file to the final output format is the only encoding step involved with lossless media.

To greatly simplify matters, encoding for DVD involves the following: a lossless AVI (AVI is a container, not an encoding codec) is usually a completely decoded video file. Every frame in that file is a complete, full-sized image. An encoder takes that video and breaks it into GOP's (Groups of Pictures), usually groups of 12 to 18 frames. The first frame in that GOP is a complete image, known as an index or "I" frame or "key" frame. The other frames in the GOP are P and B frames, which are not complete images. P and B frames contain only the data that has changed since the previous key frame. That's how encoded video files get a whole lot smaller than the original, decoded file -- only a small percentage of the images in lossy encoded video are complete images. Another size reduction occurs with further compression of the GOPs -- something like JPG compression, but in this case 100% of the data isn't there. How much of the data remains depends on bitrate. Some data bits are dropped if you specify a low bitrate. Specify a lower bitrate, and more data about details and motion changes gets dropped. Specify a higher bitrate, and more data is retained. If you retain more data bits, then changes between those I, P, and B frames have more clarity and cleaner motion and details. If you specify more compression (lower bitrates), you start losing data bits. Some areas show show up with blocky edges in 8x8 blocks, color banding, smeared motion, lost detail, and other artifacts. Once those data bits are gone, they don't come back. Each subsequent re-encode loses more of them. This principle of lossy compression and GOP structure applies to DVD, BluRay, AVCHD, and to a somewhat lesser extent with DV. Ultimately lossy DV has to be lossy re-encoded if you want to get standard playing formats with it.

Still trying to keep this simple, imagine what happens if you have an MPEG encoded as GOP's, and you want to cut out some frames. Some of those "frames" are not complete images. The software rendering engine has to re-create new GOPs with new key frames and new P and B frames, which means lossy re-encoding. A smart-rendering app reworks only the immediate GOPs involved and leaves the rest unchanged. If you make a major mod such as changing the color balance, whether its lossy MPEG or DV, every frame has to be re-encoded. This isn't a problem with lossless video, in which every frame is a complete, decoded image -- i.e, in lossless video there are no key frames, or another way of looking at is that all frames in a lossless video can be thought of as key frames.

Using a proc amp and/or detailer with VHS capture is usually not a good idea. At best, it's a frustrating experience because VHS changes luma and chroma properties from minute to minute. What works with one scene won't work with other scenes. You can sharpen VHS details if you want, but you're also sharpening noise and defects, making it more visible and more difficult to clean up if not impossible.

If you want to capture to MPEG and your edits are just simple cuts and joins and adding a few MPEG2 titles, keep your bitrates high enough for just a 90-minute limit on a DVD disc, which is about 5500 to 6200 variable bitrate. A smart-rendering NLE such as the SONY product with a decent smart-rendering engine is what you should use. I've never cared for Pinnacle's lack of talent in that area. Note, too, that if you apply a transition effect such as a dissolve or fade, the entire duration of the transition has to be re-encoded.

Once you actually see a capture from VHS, regardless of how you do it, you'll see these problems more clearly.

Thanks for such a long and thought out response. I'm printing it out to read and absorb. I'll be back with more questions, I'm sure.