Poor Quality DVD Home Movie - Need Help

[jupita]

Hi

I have just created my first home movie DVD and although it has nice menus etc. the video output looks awful on my TV when compared to watching the original 8mm tapes. Any idea n what I could have done wrong.

Heres what I did.

Captured from analogue source direct to MPEG2 (Max 8000, Stereo, 720 x 576 25fps) using Ulead Videostudio 7 and my ATI Radeon 7200 VIVO.

Authored transitions etc. in VS7 and saved my full length video as MPEG2 (MAX 6000, LPCM audio).

Pulled into DVD workshop 2.0 for menus etc. DVD disc template matched the source exactly. ie. Max 6000 VBR, LPCM audio. Note that I had convert to dist template unchecked anyway. Hence no transcoding will have taken place.

Any help here is appreciated. At the moment I'm thinking that my original capture to MPEG2 (in VS7) probably resulted in lots of dropped frames. What should I have done instead for good results?

[bugster]

Heres what I did.

Captured from analogue source direct to MPEG2

Thats what you did wrong.

If you want best quality, capture to avi using a lossless (huffyuv) codec or a low loss codec (Mjpeg). Edit the avi and add transitions. Filter if required. Then encode to mpeg with a quality standalone encoder (TmpGenc, CCE, Mainconcept, Canopus procoder) before authoring and burning.

[jupita]

OK.

I guess thats what I expected. Unfortunately I sold my analogue cam and have no way of getting the tapes read in again unless I buy another cam. I do however have a new digital camcorder that has analogue in and dv in/out.

Would it be sensible to borrow an analogue camcorder and copy my tapes using the features of my digital camcorder by taping the analogue output onto mini-DV tape. Would I lose anythng this way when compared to direct capture using something like virtualvcr(huffyuv) from the analogue camcorder through my VIVO capture card.

I have heard people say that I can use my digital camcorder to wrap the analogue stuff in DV headers without needing to record first. Is there any difference between doing this and taping first onto mini-DV before capture. I guess putting this question another way, is the recording lossless with DV?

-Darren

[bugster]

Would it be sensible to borrow an analogue camcorder and copy my tapes using the features of my digital camcorder by taping the analogue output onto mini-DV tape. Would I lose anythng this way when compared to direct capture using something like virtualvcr(huffyuv) from the analogue camcorder through my VIVO capture card.

Its certainly worth trying if you can borrow a suitable CAM off a friend.

I have heard people say that I can use my digital camcorder to wrap the analogue stuff in DV headers without needing to record first. Is there any difference between doing this and taping first onto mini-DV before capture. I guess putting this question another way, is the recording lossless with DV?

This is commonly referred to as 'pass through'. The final result should be digitally identical either way (DV tape first or straight to PC). The advantage of passthrough is speed, missing out the initial capture to tape.

[awhitney]

I have had GREAT results capturing to mpeg2. I only capture to avi if I want to edit the movie and then encode to mpeg2

I mostly capture to mpeg2 because it takes so much DAMN time to encode to mpeg2 from an avi file.

Espeically when you have over 100 tapes.

[jupita]

Hmmm. I get the feeling there are serious differences in quality if you have a hardware mpeg2 encoder on you card compared to software encoding directly into VS7.

[awhitney]

actually yeah, I have the Canopus mpeg pro mvr that does hardware mpeg2 encoding and they look FANTASTIC!

[jupita]

The big issue here is the time required to compress and 720x576 25fps feed in MPEG2 without losing the next frame. In software this becomes quite difficult. In hardware, it depends on whats doing it but this will always be better.

Its worth pointing out however that MPEG2 is not lossless, so if you end up transcoding it again later to make it fit etc. , your video will be worse than doing a lossless capture.

[musotechy]

Don't use Ulead to do the actual encoding, the included encoder within Ulead is poor quality. I usually convert the file in a 3rd party piece of software and then use Ulead for menu's and transistions. Make sure that "Do not convert compliant files is ticked" Not sure if this option is available in studio 7 though.


Thanks


muso

[jupita]

Hi

Sorry if this is repeated but I now need some different advice based on whats been said in this thread.

I actually have a Philips DVD recorder which if I set it to M1, will record at 9.7MBPS and 384 Kbit. This is 60 mins per disk. I think thats right

I also have a dv camcorder which I can use to read my analogue tapes in, using passthrough.

Which is likely to give me the best results considering I will be doing my transitions in VideoStudio and needing to ultimately produce DVD files which have about 1.5 hours per disk.

I'm sure the dvd recorder will produce good results. I'm worried about any loss when I transcode this high quality mpeg file to about 6mbps (1.5 hours). I'm also unsure of what to use to transcode down (not VS7 - as I'm told the results won't be good). I know tmpgenc will take an avi source and turn it into mpge. I don't know if it will take a high quality mpeg and do the same.

Any help is appreciated

-Darren

[bugster]

I am getting a littel confused as to what you actually want/need to do

If I understand your needs correctly my advice is this. Use your DV camcorder with pass through to get your material on to your PC. Capture it in DV-Avi format, type-2 if you can. Use DVIO or WINDV for this. Make sure you have enough HD space. DV Avi is ~13Gb per hour.

Take this DV Avi and edit. Add transitions etc. Now depending on your editing app you either have to re-save to a new avi, rendering the transitions etc, requireing another 13Gb per hour and a potentially long render period, or you may be able to 'frameserve' to an external mpeg encoder, cutting out this stage. I suggest TmpGenc or Mainconcept for this stage. Now we come to the Mpeg encoder settings. Simplest thisng is to use the highest possible bitrate and high motion search precision settings. Other settings depend too much on the chosen encoder and source material type to cover in any detail at the moment.

Of course if my initial assumption is incorrect this is all a load of rubbish!

Hope this helps.

[jupita]

My main question was that will I ultimately end up with worse video if I use a dvd recorder which produces mpeg2 files at 9.8MBPS or use my Dv camcorder to read in and put into avi files using huffyuv.

Essentially I would take the mpeg2 files from my dvd recorder and turn them into avi in huffyuv (using VS7) anyway.

Hence its either

1. Analogue Cam -> Dvd recorder -> Huffyuv (VS7) or
2. Analogue Cam -> DV Camcorder -> Huffyuv (VS7)

Hence I will have the same files. Whats likely to be the better quality.

-Darren

[bugster]

Hence its either

1. Analogue Cam -> Dvd recorder -> Huffyuv (VS7) or
2. Analogue Cam -> DV Camcorder -> Huffyuv (VS7)

-Darren

Neither. Do

Analogue Cam -> DV Camcorder -> DV-Avi (VS7)

No need for huffy with a DV solution.

Using the DVD recorder then re-encoding to avi is not a good idea. Mpeg-2 at 9.8Mbps is much more compressed than DV at 25Mbps. So converting mpeg-2 to avi, editing and recompressing is not a good way to achieve quality output.