[MEncoder-users] Codec for Home Movies

[Rich Felker]

On Sat, Jun 24, 2006 at 07:59:31AM +0000, BAsh Bash wrote:
> I have an ancient handycam from Sony and a box full of tapes. What I want 
> to do is convert them to digital in a format that can be later be reencoded 
> again if needed and burnt onto DVD. These tapes are irreplaceable and as 
> such I wanted a lossless codec for both audio and video. I have a BT878 
> capture card and using streamer I have dumped the data onto disk, at 
> something like a 1 GB per 15mins its not very efficent. Due to the PAL 
> format between the computer and the camera, they are interlaced as well.

If you're using BT878, the most important place you need to be aware
of loss is the _DRIVERS_. The bttv v4l driver completely butchers the
content when capturing in YUV 4:2:0 mode. You really need to use 4:2:2
mode or RGB and then optionally convert (in a correct way that does
not destroy interlaced content!!) to 4:2:0 if you want to use
mpeg-type codecs.

> What I want to do is convert the avi file into something more managable 
> without lossing much data and also to deinterlace them. The -vf 
> pullup,pp=md option dosn't provide great video so I'll need something 

This is also HORRIBLY destructive and absolutely incorrect. Pullup is
for telecined films, not home video which is pure interlaced.

Moreover you must not deinterlace, otherwise any loss from the codec
is trivial compared to the 50% data loss from deinterlacing.

If you don't understand this stuff totally I would highly recommend
either just keeping your videos in VHS form or finding someone
_extremely_ competent in video processing and hiring them to do it for
you. Novice use of mencoder is sure to ruin the content.

If you do want to do it all yourself, be prepared to spend a month
learning about video.

Rich