picture quality on tv is poor

[BonnieW88]

I used Canopus ADVC100 to capture VCR tapes recorded at SLP - edited and converted to MPEG1 using ArcSoft Showbiz. Nice clear picture when the image is small on the PC monitor but when played full screen loses quality. On the tv it's really bad.

I converted one file to MPEG2 and burned an SVCD to see if it made a difference. Not much. I captured direct from tv and at full screen video quality was lost as well. Is there something I should be doing that I'm not?

[Tommyknocker]

Yes, if you want a quality that is watchable on a TV, you may want to look at making a DVD.

[FulciLives]

SVCD will look better than VCD. There are 3 main reasons why:

1.) Higher resolution
2.) Higher bitrate
3.) MPEG-2 instead of MPEG-1

However ... if the quality of the source is poor then it will be hard to see a BIG difference between SVCD and VCD.

Your source is SLP speed VHS video. That is a VERY poor quality source. Hence the reason you are not seeing much of a difference between the VCD and SVCD.

My only suggestion is to stick with SVCD as it WILL give you slightly better quality but you should look into FILTERS that you can use when doing the MPEG-2 encoding. VirtualDub has many filters that can be used in conjunction with the popular TMPGEnc MPEG-1/MPEG-2 encoder.

I don't know much about FILTERS but there are FILTERS that exist that can clean up the video ... to an extent. You can't make SLP spped VHS video look GREAT but with some filtering you probably can increase the quality a bit ... moreso than what you are getting now.

Again, stick with SVCD instead of VCD. If you have a DVD burner then consider using half D1 resolution. This means instead of encoding at the full D1 resolution (which is 720x480) you can use 352x480. This will allow you to use a higher bitrate and despite the lower resolution you will actually end up with better quality.

So your choices quality wise, from worst to best, are:

1.) VCD
2.) SVCD
3.) half D1 DVD

Doing full D1 DVD is a waste due to the limited resolution of the source (SLP VHS recordings).

And again, whichever method you pick, looking into FILTERS for cleaning up VHS captures. The downside to FILTERS is that they increase your MPEG-2 encoding time BIG time. But as I said using FILTERS can increase the quality a bit though you must be carefull not to overdo it or you could end up with worse quality if you FILTER too much.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

*** EDIT ***

Resolutions given above are for NTSC video. PAL video is slightly different. Here is a quick "guide":

VCD NTSC is 352x240
VCD PAL is 352x288

SVCD NTSC is 480x480
SVCD PAL is 480x576

Full D1 NTSC is 720x480 and Half D1 is 352x480
Full D1 PAL is 720x576 and Half D1 is 352x576

Although Half D1 has a slightly lower resolution than SVCD it can look better since you can use higher bitrates plus the fact that a DVD is more compatable than a SVCD. You will have fewer problems with stand alone DVD players playing a home made half D1 DVD than a SVCD CD-R disc.

[BonnieW88]

Thanks for the informative response. I'm trying to put tv episodes on DVD...there's a guide I'm following that shows how to put 10+ VCDs on one DVD. I converted my AVIs to MPEG1. TMPEnc is the next step, followed by SVCD2DVDMPG+. If I encode my AVIs to MPEG2 and want to do the Half D1 thing, where do I find that option? I won't mind getting fewer episodes if I can improve the quality. With regard to filters, I am so new, I wouldn't know where to begin, but I'll keep it in mind for when I start to get the hang of this.

[yf2001usa]

if you want quality why not convert avi to mpeg2 dvd quality you can fit about 3 40 minutes eps on a dvd i very good quality.

[FulciLives]

Thanks for the informative response. I'm trying to put tv episodes on DVD...there's a guide I'm following that shows how to put 10+ VCDs on one DVD. I converted my AVIs to MPEG1. TMPEnc is the next step, followed by SVCD2DVDMPG+. If I encode my AVIs to MPEG2 and want to do the Half D1 thing, where do I find that option? I won't mind getting fewer episodes if I can improve the quality. With regard to filters, I am so new, I wouldn't know where to begin, but I'll keep it in mind for when I start to get the hang of this.

When using the WIZARD MODE in TMPGEnc (PLUS 2.5) there is an option, towards the very end, to adjust the RESOLUTION from 720x480 to 352x480. Simply select the DVD template at the on-set.

Try using a bitrate of around 3000kbps with 224 MP2 sound. That should give you good results (quality wise) and allow you to fit approximately 3 hours on one DVD in quality that will be MUCH better than MPEG-1 VCD. Although a CBR of 3000kbps will look OK you could try 2-pass VBR with an AVG of 3000kbps and a MAX of around 4000kbps. That works well for me and of course 2-pass VBR is better than CBR but it DOES increase the encoding time. Some people claim you can get decent quality with something as low as 2500kbps (at 352x480) but I find going below 3000kbps degrades the quality to my eye.

Anyways when you are done encoding your AVI captures to MPEG files using the above settings you can then use just about any DVD Authoring Software program to create a MENU and CHAPTERS etc. then BURN to a DVD-R. These settings are DVD compliant so it should work on any DVD player that is compatable with DVD-R (or DVD+R etc.)

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[BonnieW88]

Thanks...that was really great...I'll give it a try. Thus far, I have edited my captured AVI's and then saved to MPEG. Using the method you describe, can I edit out the 15 minutes of commercials to reduce the file size, save as AVI, then use TMPEnc to convert, or is it better to encode the original captured AVI file and cut out the commercials later? I'm thinking that would reduce the processing time.

[FulciLives]

Thanks...that was really great...I'll give it a try. Thus far, I have edited my captured AVI's and then saved to MPEG. Using the method you describe, can I edit out the 15 minutes of commercials to reduce the file size, save as AVI, then use TMPEnc to convert, or is it better to encode the original captured AVI file and cut out the commercials later? I'm thinking that would reduce the processing time.

You might want to try VirtualDub. Using VirtualDub you should be able to load your DV capture ... edit ... then FRAMESERVE to TMPGEnc for your MPEG-2 encoding. This way you avoid saving the file (after editing) before getting to your ENCODING stage.

However ... if your editing consists of nothing more than deleting (cutting out commercials and trimming the star and end points) then you should not really be loosing any quality when you save it (the edit DV) back to a new DV format. Afterall that was what DV was made for (ease of editing with little to no loss in quality). But then again I'm no expert when it comes to the DV codec. So using the FRAMESERVING method *I KNOW FOR SURE* that you will not be loosing quality since there is no intermediate saving step.

So, in short, I think trying the FRAMESERVING technique is worth it

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[flaninacupboard]

if a simple cut is all you need to do, you don't even need virtual dub! simply open your .avi in TMPGenc and open the source range, select the first frame of the adverts, skip on, select the last frame of adverts, click "cut editing" and "remove current selection" and the ads will be gone, and you can output straight to DVD compliant MPEG2.