Better quality VCD, surely??

[theMitch]

Hi

I am pretty new to all this, but, I thought by recording movies on to VCD they would be better quality than VHS. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but my 10minute VCD looks very poor!

I am using Pinnacle Studio 7 to take my movie from my JVC Digital Camcorder, then I am saving it to VCD format (PAL) and using Nero5.5 to save it to a CDR. When I watch this VCD on my Hitachi DVD player it looks rubbish!

I downloaded TMPGEnc, but haven't used it yet as it looked quite complicated and low level.

I realise CDs can only hold 650MB of data but if I am storing just a 10min video on there, can I not increase the quality somewhere???

Is there something I am doing wrong to get such disappointing quality from my VCDs??

Sorry if this is a basic question.

Thanks in advance

Martin

[Shabubu]

If your going from a digital camera and only have 10mins then it would be a waste on VCD, try SVCD, or if your only playing on the computer make and MPEG 2 in CCE that's DVD compliant. Alternatively you can use Divx (thru Nandub). Go to doom9.org, or the guides here for more info (doom9.org is a bit more in depth)

[theMitch]

Thanks for the reply, Shabubu, however, I tried to play SVCD on my DVD player and it didn't want to know. So I was hoping I could improve the VCD quality.

[Baldrick]

Use TMPGEnc to improve the VCD quality, Pinnacle Studio is far as good as tmpgenc. And it is not that hard to use, open the avi, select the VideoCD template and convert.

[mikewg]

Also make sure you're capturing directly to an AVI file then convert that AVI file to an MPG. I know when I capture directly from my source to MPG, it doesn't look so hot. Also, when you convert from AVI to MPG, make sure you convert your AVI directly to a VCD compliant MPG using TMPGEnc as Baldrick described.

[Lula2001]

Hi,

Baldrick. Could you tell us specific settings on TMPGEnc , in order to improve VCD quality.
I have made a XVCD. My source is quicktime (mov) 640 x 480.
My XVCD is 640 x 480 , video bitrate 2400 and audio 128.
Completely off the specs, I know. Have burned it with Nero as non compliant VCD . Quality improved much and it plays OK on Panasonic RV-31 and Pioneer DV-333. On Pioneer a small black vertical stripe appears at the right of the screen. Do you know why ?
Will this XVCD be compatible with most DVD players ?

theMitch : This was the only way I have found up to now, to improve quality and still be playable on DVD players I could test.

[DVD Master]

Lula2001: Look at this.

http://rilanparty.com/vbb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7291

I have great results.

[Lula2001]

Hi DVD Master,

Much discussion contrary opinions on that post. Can you e-mail the template to me ? And also, how exactly do you demux and mux (with TMPG ? ) ? Details would be welcome.
Have you tested it on many DVD players for compatibility ?

Baldrick : I would like to hear your opinion .
Thank's

[DVD Master]

Lula2001: You should post your e-mail in Doom9s because I don't have original template. I am not register in that forum( I just change settings from instructions taken from post). To demux and mux, after opening TMPG just go to TOOLS in File. About contrary opinions, there is a newbie in VCDhelp and Doom's forum that is talking a lot of garbage. I think that is better to ignore him.

[Kdiddy]

Mitch: In order to help you a little better, we would need to know you whole process. From capturing to the end. Because from info you have given, most people are going to tell you the GIGO rule, garbage in = garbage out. TMPG is a VERY good encoder , a littel on the slow side, but none the less, very good. So it would leave me to believe that you doing some of your settings wrong.

Lula2001: "Much discussion contrary opinions on that post" Actually it is fact vs. opinion, you will notice that Antonio S has yet to pull any facts from his claims and also thinks he cant get 100 min movie at 1717 total bitrate on a 80 min CD. So I would take his claims with a grain of salt. IMO, your res of 640x480 is waay yo high, and this where your quality loss is. Mpeg1 was not design for a res that high res. If you want, tell me what bitrate you want to use, I will make/email a TMPG template for you to try out to see what you think.

DVD Master: " About contrary opinions, there is a newbie in VCDhelp and Doom's forum that is talking a lot of garbage. I think that is better to ignore him." and that would be whom?? Say his name so that we all know whom we should ignore?

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Kdiddy on 2001-10-24 18:28:19 ]</font>

[Lula2001]

Hi Kdiddy,

As I said my original source is quicktime (mov) file.
Resolution 640 x 480
My goal is to have it on CD with the best quality possible.
File size (compression) is not a problem since duration is pretty small.
Also Compatibility is very important.
The new DVD players around here accept CD-R, but older ones don't. And some oof the new ones don't support SVCD.
That's why I am doing XVCD. The VCD specs do not give me good quality.
So if you can please e-mail me a TMPG template, that would be nice.
Keep in mind : quality and compatibility.
I did it with video bitrate 2400 and audio 128.
Played OK on DVD Panasonic RV-31 and showed a small vertical black stripe at right side on Pioneer DV-333.
But quality was pretty reasonable.

Thank's

DVDMaster : I did not receive e-mail from Doom9 to activate my registration.

[Antonio S.]

Lula2001: Post your E-mail and I will send you my "Template"

[Kdiddy]

ummmm idiot if you look under his name, he has hyperlink to his email address...tisk tisk, again, your credence level falls further and further.

Lula: I do my audio seperately, so it woont have that in it, but assume thats not a big deal since you really more concern with video quality, plus you activate the audio if you want.
Also, are dealing with an interlaced or non-interlaced??
what is the fps of the source??

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Kdiddy on 2001-10-24 19:32:37 ]</font>

[kidkurrupt]

antonio s, can you send your template to me? i tried it myself but it didn't work, try to make it work and send it to me. baudoman@yahoo.com

thanks!

[Lula2001]

Hi,

Antonio S : my e-mail : luizcp@openlink.com.br

Kdiddy : The file I was just working now is 720 x 540 . But I can have it 640 x 480 if necessary. Interlaced or not ? I don't know. It comes from a video producer : he shoots with cinema camera, film is transformed into BETA analogic tape, which then goes onto a Macintosh platform, where he generates the quicktime file, on the resolution I ask.

Premiere reports it's properties as :

*******************
File path: C:\TMPG\perdas4_10.mov
File size: 87,10M bytes
Total duration: 30.43 seconds
Average data rate: 2,86M per second
Image size: 720 x 540
Pixel depth: 24 bits
Frame rate: 30.00 fps

Audio: 48Khz - 16 bit - Mono

QuickTime Details:
Movie contains 1 video track(s), 1 audio track(s) and 0 timecode track(s).

Video:

There are 912 frames with a duration of 1/30th.

Video track 1:
Duration is 0;02;32;04
Average frame rate is 29,97 fps

Video track 1 contains 1 type(s) of video data:

Video data block #1:
Frame Size = 720 x 540
Compressor = Photo - JPEG
Quality = High (4,00)

Audio:

Audio track 1 contains 1 type(s) of audio data:

Audio data block #1:
Format = 16 bit - Mono
Rate = 48000,0000 Hz
Compressor = 16-bit Big Endian (uncompressed)
*****************************

If you need any more info let me know.
Thank's

[holistic]

Well again i wake up to more humour.


The kdiddy -= V =- Antonio S. fight has been moved from Doom9 to a new venue.

Stay tuned

[Kdiddy]

whats the odds, I need to place some bets..LOL

[theMitch]

Ok, so this is what I did ....

I used Pinnacle Studio 7 to capture my video to AVI. I thought I will try out the various different methods on a small snippet of film.

25seconds of movie take up 93mb in AVI. Once I have my AVI file, I opened TMPGEnc and placed that filename in Video source and Audio source.

I then changed the size to 352 x 288, left the aspect ration to 4:3 625 lines (PAL) and Frame rate as 25fps.

Rate control mode is Constant Bitrate (CBR) and I upped the bitrate to 2250 (don't ask why, I just thought it would improve things).

Eveything else was left as default values.

So I generated my 25 second MPEG-1 file, which took approx 5 or 6 minutes and produced a 7Mb MPG file.

I then went in to Nero5.5 and told it to burn me a VCD. It looked at the file and said "it's not standard/compliant" do I want to re-render it, or ignore it?

First I let Nero re-render it. This produced a better VCD quality picture than Studio 7's VCD file, but still not brilliant.

Then I told it to ignore the fact it wasn't compliant. This produced a much better picture quality when I played it back on my Hitachi DVD player, but the sound was kind of in slow motion?!?! Surreal.

So, how can I tweak TMPGEnc to get better results???

Thanks.

[Kdiddy]

Im not up on the capturing aspect. from what Ive read, some have said capture to the highest resolution as possible, others have said, that IF possible, capture to the same resolution tha you will be encoding in as to not have to go through the "resize" process....like I said, since I don't do that, you will have to find out whats best for you....added with that, does the capturing do any interlacing or not?...in either case you, it may better to match the source to output...in other words, if you source is interlaced, then try interlaced on your out & vice versa for non-interlaced...becuase I think the default for TMPG is a non-interlaced output.

In TMPG try these other settings to see if works any better

Setting->GOP Structure, have only "detect scene change" checked.
Setting->Quantize Matrix, set to MPEG standard, everything checked EXCEPT "Out YUV data...." and on Soft Block oise try 45 & 45.

Never ever re-encode with Nero, always do ignore & burn anyway. As far as your sound, I would recommend not using TMPG, or using an external plugin like toolame.

Hope that helps some. no gaurantees.