I need better VCD quality

[ronnald]

Hi guys, I'm new at capturing video with my ATI card, but so far I love it. I like coming home and being able to watch recorded TV from my computer.

Here is the problem. I have a 2.8 Athlon (really 2.08GHz) with a ATI AIW 9000. Currently, I'm capture at VCD format in real time. I like the small file size, but feel the quality could improve if I tinker with the settings. The problem is I not sure what settings to change, if any. Also, would I get better quality if I capture in AVI and than convert to VCD format? Would it be worth the additional effort?

BTW, I also use TMPGenc to remove the commercials.

PS, I have tried to capture in SVCD format in real time, but severe frame drops, is this normal when capturing in SVCD in real time, or should my computer be able to handle it?

Thanks!!

[Cecilio]

what size hard drive do you have thats what it all goes down to

[Cecilio]

and yes if you capture to avi you will get much much better quality than capturing to vcd or svcd. try to capture as avi using Huffyuv. and then you convert to vcd or svcd or cvd or xvcd or xsvcd or kvcd or dvd or kdvd whatever suits your needs.

[fmctm1sw]

what size hard drive do you have thats what it all goes down to

Yes. What about capturing AVI and converting to VCD with the TMPG you already have?

[ronnald]

what size hard drive do you have thats what it all goes down to

Yes. What about capturing AVI and converting to VCD with the TMPG you already have?

Yes, that is what I was thinking, but does it matter? I capture in VCD format now and wondering if capturing in AVI and than converting is any better?

I have two hard drives, one for the OS and programs which is 7200rpm 120 gigs the other drive is a 7200rpm 160gig I use for my captures and video files. They are not in any RAID configuration. The interface is ATA 133.

[Cecilio]

and yes if you capture to avi you will get much much better quality than capturing to vcd or svcd. try to capture as avi using Huffyuv. and then you convert to vcd or svcd or cvd or xvcd or xsvcd or kvcd or dvd or kdvd whatever suits your needs.

[Umen Pich]

Hi guys, I'm new at capturing video with my ATI card, but so far I love it. I like coming home and being able to watch recorded TV from my computer.

After all, why do you capture to VCD while you are watching them on the computer ???
VCD is not the best choice for this purpose. Both the resolution and the bitrate are quite low and on a computer screen it looks quite worse then on TV.

[ronnald]

and yes if you capture to avi you will get much much better quality than capturing to vcd or svcd. try to capture as avi using Huffyuv. and then you convert to vcd or svcd or cvd or xvcd or xsvcd or kvcd or dvd or kdvd whatever suits your needs.

Thanks Cecilio!!

This might be a stupid question, but where can I get the Huffyuv codec? The link to it in the "how to" guide doesn't work, it takes you to some empty math department page.

[ronnald]

Hi guys, I'm new at capturing video with my ATI card, but so far I love it. I like coming home and being able to watch recorded TV from my computer.

After all, why do you capture to VCD while you are watching them on the computer ???
VCD is not the best choice for this purpose. Both the resolution and the bitrate are quite low and on a computer screen it looks quite worse then on TV.

Agree, however VCD will work with almost any dvd player, so if I ever want to watch my shows on a DVD player I don't have to do any conversions, just make a VCD.

Also, the file size is small, I can record a Seinfeld show, and after taking out the commericials the size is around 200megs.

[Cecilio]

here is a link to download huffyuv http://shelob.mordor.net/dgraft/www.math.berkeley.edu/benrg/huffyuv.html

just click on the c++ thing.

[Cecilio]

well ronnald i hope i helped, but i g2g for several days, so im pretty sure you can find good responses if you still need help from alot of people ok catch ya laterz.

[neomaine]

ronnald,

There's no way you should be dropping frames with that system when capturing at SVCD or even full D1 (mpeg2, 720x480, 3500avg 6000max, 48k audio). I'm doing so with a AIW Radeon and an AMD 1800XP. With your hard drive config, one for OS/Progs and another for capture you're setup is just fine. Actually, more than fine.

Here's what you do:

- Make sure your hard drives have DMA set and other system tweaks. There's a number of very good threads already setup for this. Check them out.

- Have your ATI capture drive set to the same drive as your destination folder. Eliminates alot of overhead when the capture is done.

- If your happy with VCD resoltion, I HIGHLY recommend you capture to full D1 or 1/2 D1. That's 352 vs 720 with the same specs. Perhaps go to 2500avg/4000max to save some file size. I simply modified the default DVD capture settings to create my own.

- Others have suggested that you go to AVI first. I gave that up when ATI came out with MMC 8.1 (newest is 8.5?). I capture to the above specs a end up with a 1.3-1.5 gig file for most hour-long captures in perfect sync. I use TMPGenc (going to try Womble at other's suggestion) to cut commercials, not perfect but OK, and finish with anything from 500-800 meg.

Well, that's enough to play with now.

[ronnald]

well ronnald i hope i helped, but i g2g for several days, so im pretty sure you can find good responses if you still need help from alot of people ok catch ya laterz.

Cecilio, thanks for the quick replies! I'll give it a try at home tonight. It looks like I'll have to get virtualdub, as according to the Huffyuv page, ATI MMC cannot use external codecs.

Thanks again!

[stephenland]

I have a similar sytem to Ronnald's (Athlon XP2000+) with 240Gb RAID disks and an AIW 8500 128Mb card and SoundBlaster Live! 5.1 and WinXP Pro SP1. Whenever I attempt to capture to an AVI file using either the AIW TV capture program or VirtualDub, the sound is always distorted (somewhat garbled) and there is significant frame dropping. I have tried both the PicVideo and Huffyuv codecs with no difference. Capturing to MPEG-2, everything works like a charm (except editing MPEG-2 files tends to reduce their quality). I usually try to capture at 640x480 or higher with 44kHz stereo. I gone through a bunch of these guide and it looks like I shouldn't be having these problems. Is there something obvious I'm overlooking to get the audio clear and no dropped frames?

[ronnald]

I might also want to ask, if I use virtualdub to capture, can I assume that I cannot use the ATI to change channels and start the recording? Basically I want to try and record every Seinfeld episode on while I'm at work. What can I do?

[stephenland]

Ronnald,

In the VirtualDub capture settings you can respecify what channel you want to play and capture. I believe it's under the Capture Source preferences.

[mtgoat]

I get outstanding results when capturing to AVI and encoding to VCD with TMPGEnc. For capturing in AVI, figure about 13 gigs/hr. of footage. In the past, I always captured directly to VCD format, but wasn't satisfied with the quality. If you plan on doing this a lot, I think it would be a good idea to purchase an extra hard drive that would be dedicated for capturing.

[ronnald]

Ronnald,

In the VirtualDub capture settings you can respecify what channel you want to play and capture. I believe it's under the Capture Source preferences.

Thank you, I'll give that a try tonight.

[ronnald]

I get outstanding results when capturing to AVI and encoding to VCD with TMPGEnc. For capturing in AVI, figure about 13 gigs/hr. of footage. In the past, I always captured directly to VCD format, but wasn't satisfied with the quality. If you plan on doing this a lot, I think it would be a good idea to purchase an extra hard drive that would be dedicated for capturing.

Yes, that's why I bought the 160gig Maxtor drive for (only paid $100, after $70 rebate)....

BTW, I'm also wondering if it would have been better for me to get a Pentium 4, since it seems VirtualDB can take advantage of SSE2. Does it make encoding much faster?

[ronnald]

neomaine,

Great, that's for all the help, I'm on my home computer now, so I'm going to give that a try and see how it does. I'm going to have to find out how to set my hd to DMA...I downloaded the latest drivers from ATI so I assume I have the 8.5, but I'm not sure. To be honest, the ATI software seems dated and not very well integrated, but more on that later I guess.

Thanks for the help neomaine.

[neomaine]

ronnald,

ATIs capture software can use any codec you want. Using Huffyuv or and mjpeg codec will work just fine....

[sracer]

I have a cheapo I/OMagic PC PVR TV card. It came with Cyberlink's PowerVCR. It did the job, but on-the-fly VideoCD-compliant recording was terrible. I ended up having to capture at SVCD and re-encode down to VCD to get acceptable results.

I got the latest copy of WinDVR and I have to tell you that it makes a significant difference! Using the same TV card, I can capture on-the-fly VideoCD-compliant MPEG files and burn them to VideoCD without any modifications and they look surprisingly good! I tried capturing at DVD quality mode and re-encoding to VCD, but there was little if any noticeable difference.

I tried capturing at DVD quality and burning a DVD+RW... and the quality was even better!

There's a demo/trialware version of WinDVR to try-before-you-buy. I'm a big fan of on-the-fly capturing (it greatly reduces the post-capture time required to create discs) and IMO, WinDVR is worth the money.