3x VCD ---> VCD

[hamidi]

hi all

i've an mpeg file with bitrate 3 times a VCD, ie. 3.45 Mbps. i had to capture in higher bitrate in order to get a good quality, then convert it to VCD. my card, ATI AIW 128 Pro, produces a very bad quality when i capture with VCD bitrate. also it produces a wrong-colored mpeg when i capture with 352x288 resolution. my signal is PAL, but i have to change the resolution to 352x240.
by using this methos i get a reasonable quality and color. i use TMPGEnc to convert it to a 1.15 Mbps 352x288 PAL mpeg. now my questions:

1. is using TMPGEnc the best method for conversion? i want to minimize the lose of quality and originality.
2. the major problem is that video and audio get mismatched after conversion. it's not so many, just a few seconds. and it belongs to the whole of the resulting mpeg file. why is that? and what can i do to resolve it?

thank u

[Mr.Radar]

I have a AiW Rage128 Pro and it's MPEG captures are CRAP. Get VirtualVCR and capture to AVI instead, then convert using TMPEGEnc. That will get you the best quality. I don't know why, but TMPEGEnc doesn't like the MPEGs made by this card.

[hamidi]

now i found sth new
when i capture i set it to PAL 352x240

1. may be this caused the out of sync problem?

2. when i demux'ed the video by using TMPGEnc the video got 48:47 and the audio got 48:54! the original video is played well. why this happened?

thx

[Soapm]

If you are really shooting for quality why not make a SVCD with TMPGE? This way you can boost the bitrate as high as you like and completely fill up the disc. It will also give you 480X480 which is better to look at.

[hamidi]

because my CD Player can't play SVCD's!
indeed i'm going to make a VCD with quality of VCD. it's enough. but the card, ATI AIW 128 Pro's VCD capture gives a quality less than a regular VCD's quality. i have to capture in higher bitrate and down it to VCD by software. i think it doesn't use more complicated steps like quantize matrix not to lose frames.
this is what i have to do. but this is my question:

• for a regular mpeg file which is played correctly (video/audio are sync) what's wrong that when is demux'ed video gets 48:47 and audio gets 48:54?

if u may answer just this question u've helped me a lot
thx

[vivisimonvi]

I have two different ATI capture cards in two different computers. From my experiences, the capture programs suck with them.

I have been using your method of capturing VCD's for years with an AIW PRO128 (this is on my old computer). Try finding the MMC 7.1 version from their website and try it out, I never had out of sync experiences with this one. In fact, you might find yourself trying out other MMC versions to fit your needs.

On my newer VAIO computer, I have a Radeon AIW. Somehow TMPGEnc doesn't like the MPEGS or AVI's made from MMC 8... so I use 7.7 with no audio issues. I has taken me many months to resolve this issue.

If you really want to go for quality and less headaches, try out VirtualDUB, they have many options for capturing to AVI, I recommend the Huffyuv codec that you can find in Tools section of this website (this method is MUCH MUCH better than re-encoding an ALREADY encoded MPEG file, your VCD's will look noticeably better). There's an option to lock the video stream to the audio stream so no synch is lost (even if you lose some frames here and there).

I also bought an external USB 2.0 harddrive to keep uncompressed AVI files, you can capture an uncompressed 2 to 1 ratio AVI without lossing frames through a USB 2.0 connection. Huffyuv (with the best settings) keeps the ratio above 2 so you'll have little worries of dropping frames to any drive.

[hamidi]

thx 4 reply
but i want just the answer of this question, not anything else:
for a regular mpeg file which is played correctly (video/audio are sync) what's wrong that when is demux'ed video gets 48:47 and audio gets 48:54?
when this is happened and how to avoid/fix it?!
thank u