What's better? Mpeg-1 or mpeg-2?

[Fuzzmuncher]

I want to transfer old home movies from vhs to my computer. All I have is an AIW 8500dv & don't know what settings to use.

I was thinking about using mpeg-2 ?

 

[xts3]

MPEG-2 is better but it highly depends on the resulotion and quality of the video capture, MPEG-1 can look just as good as MPEG-2 on a TV, if you plan to watch them on a PC however its a little different. Realize that MPEG1/2 is just a compression standard MPEG2 is higher quality then MPEG1 but the files are also bigger. Where do you want to watch these old home movies? and do you want them to fit on a single CD? Do you want to be able to play it back in your DVD/SVCD player or any other DVD/SVCD player? SuperVideo CD uses MPEG1 I believe and it looks pretty good.

If you have any doubts get a copy of Nero Burning rom (latest ultra edition) and drag a test capture of about 5 minutes or so of raw uncompressed MPEG captured data when you tell nero you're making a new Supervideo CD, then burn the Supervideo CD to a Nero NRG file and mount it with Nero image drive (it's a "drive emulator" so you wouldn't have to burn a cd to test, not sure if you could do it to a CDRW, that might work too). Then play it with DVD/SVCD playback software and check if the end quality result is to your liking.

 

[elkinm]

xts3 is pretty much right.

Mpeg-2 is much better quality and has higher resolutions (DVD). With lower resolutions they are about the same with mpeg-2 being slightly better. Even with a cheep TV I can easily see how bad SVCD quality is compared to DVD or even VHS (no sharpness) so I would not recommend encoding in MPEG1 but maybe in DVD format if possible. Or if you do not plan on using a TV you should encode to DIVX/XVID as they provide by far the best quality/size ratio.

 

[zephyrprime]

Realize that MPEG1/2 is just a compression standard MPEG2 is higher quality then MPEG1 but the files are also bigger.

Mpeg 2 is not bigger than Mpeg 1 for a given quality level. It's smaller. That's the whole point of mpeg2.

 

[monzie]

SuperVideo CD uses MPEG1 I believe and it looks pretty good.q]


You had a 50/50 chance of that being correct...................doh.........SVCD is MPEG2

 

[xts3]

Mpeg 2 is not bigger than Mpeg 1 for a given quality level. It's smaller. That's the whole point of mpeg2.

Only if they are the exact same resolution. I was thinking they would be larger because standard resolution on MPEG2 is 480/480 and up (for SVCD/DVD anyway) usually.

 

[xts3]

You got me monzie! VCD is MPEG1, SVCD is MPEG2 I stand corrected!