8mm Video Capture Bitrate

[Victor P]

I'm confused about what bit rate I should use to digitize my 8mm family videos. Hauppauge (maker of my WinTV-PVR-150) tells me to use "DVD Standary Play" at (8.0Mb/s, 720x480, 48 kHz stereo). Ulead, however, suggests 1.0Mb/s is adequate for 8mm and VHS film (http://www.ulead.com/learning/video2/page2.htm). The resulting difference in file size is, of course, HUGE! I want the BEST POSSIBLE result from 8mm film without unecessarily clogging my hard drive. Internet just confuses the issue as everyone seems to have a different opinion. I guess I would LIKE to learn that a bitrate somewhere between 5 and 6Mb/s is the right answer as that would allow a 2-hour tape to fit on a single DVD. But I don't want to sacrafice quality for file size. Can anyone give me any direction? I'm told cable company broadcasts of digital standard definition signal (e.g. CBS/ABC/NBC not in HD) have an MPEG2 bitrate of 3.5-4.5 Mbps.

[phd]

That Ulead statement has to be a typo.

If you are comfortable with the capture quality and want to fit 2 hours per DVD, go with that. Try test captures with your equipment at 3, 4, 5, and 6 Mbps and see what looks OK to you. You may be willing to sacrifice a bit of quality for more time per DVD.

[Anonymous]

I have been digitizing my collection of old 8 mm family videos (so far 52 tapes, since 1987) with an ATI all in wonder card on 2.4 Mhz pentium computer. My very old tapes from 1987-1988 with my father and my mother in law, both passed away, gone somehow damaged (humidity? Bad quality tape batch?, who knows!) and I was very disappointed; they show screen jumps and horizontal distortions from time to time, and after tryed to capture several times, but looks the same, so I have to keep them as they are. All of the other tapes came out with excellent quality. I recommend you to back up your tapes in DVD as soon as you can!

For 2 hours (one whole tape) I am capturing at 4 mbps at Half D1 resolution and looks great, like the original tape. I tried before to capture with 720 x 480 but I got too many "artifacts" (pixellation areas) and looked terrible. I read somewhere that 8 mm and VCR tapes have a resolution close to VCD standard, lower than 1/2 DVD.
Here are the resolution info from "dvdhelp.com"
Good luck!

NTSC (NTSC Film)
Video:
Up to 9.8 Mbps* (9800 kbps*) MPEG2 video
Up to 1.856 Mbps (1856 kbps) MPEG1 video
720 x 480 pixels MPEG2 (Called Full-D1)
704 x 480 pixels MPEG2
352 x 480 pixels MPEG2 (Called Half-D1, same as the CVD Standard)
352 x 240 pixels MPEG2
352 x 240 pixels MPEG1 (Same as the VCD Standard)
29,97 fps*
23,976 fps with 3:2 pulldown = 29,97 playback fps (NTSC Film, this is only supported by MPEG2 video)
16:9 Anamorphic (only supported by 720x480)

[DanR]

How are you transferring the 8mm in the first place?