Care to help a VCD newbie?

[myhrik]

Hi, I'm trying to burn a VCD to play in my Samsung DVD-M205 player. I have captured video from my camcorder, edited in Premiere and exported to (huge) AVI files, which I have then encoded to MPEG in TMPGEnc, and this is probably where the first problem is...

I want to turn my 4:3 full screen source into widescreen by cutting the top and the bottom of the source, making the result 16:9. I use 352x288 pixels, and in aspect ratio I choose 16:9 625 line (PAL). In "advanced", I choose 4:3 625 line as the source aspect ratio (cause that's what the source is, right?) and "cover frame". The result is good as long as it's played within Media Player. I get a resolution of 352x288, but it is displayed in 16:9. This is the way to do it, right? Use the same numbers in the resolution, but cut the image to fill 16:9? Anyway, when playing it in my DVD player, I actually get it in "pan & scan". Only the middle of the now 16:9 image is shown, which actually means I get a ZOOMED IN version of the original 4:3 source... which I absolutely don't want. What have I done wrong?

I'm afraid that's not all. I'm not really satisfied with the original VCD bitrate of 1150, so I chose 2000 as bitrate. Nero 5.5.5.1 had no problems with taking these as valid VCD files, but when played in my DVD player, the video played in about half speed... And it lasted about 10 minutes instead of 5... Is this because the VCD bitrate CAN'T be other than 1150? Am I not supposed to be able to adjust the quality of the picture and bitrate?

Please help! I'm growing mad!

[mpack]

Is this for playing back on a widescreen tv? The advice in the next para is wrong if not.

To get widescreen from a 4:3 source I would try cropping the top and bottom parts of the source to leave a 16:9 picture, which I would then stretch vertically back to 4:3 ratio by selecting "full screen" in the advanced tab in tmpgenc! This should result in an anamorphic widescreen encoding, but you'll have to manually select widescreen mode on your tv to view it properly, as there is no facility in VCD to send the auto-switch signal.

As to the bit rate question: the only bitrate allowed in the official VCD specification is 1150kbps. Many DVD players don't enforce this, and if you encode to what they will actually *play* as opposed to what the standard says then you have xVCD. According to the DVD compatibility list on this site your DVD player supports xVCD, as well as SVCD (which you might want to try as it gives higher res) and xSVCD. I didn't read the associated comments, but you might, to find out exactly what latitude you have with the Samsung.

[myhrik]

No, I don't have a widescreen TV, I simply want to remove the top and bottom parts of the original 4:3 source, MAKING it widescreen. It's an artistic thing, I'm sure you understand.

So, VCD doesn't support "automatic screen fit" like DVD? Shame! That means I have to insert black fields at the top and bottom of the MPEG instead to make it widescreen on my 4:3 TV, doesn't it? How exactly do I do this with TMPGEnc? I've been fiddling around with the controls for days now... Any help would be appreciated!

[myhrik]

And as for the SVCD suggestion, mpack: I didn't find it appropriate to encode the 352x288 source into the higher SVCD resolution... Do you?

I HAVE tried burning SVCDs (which my DVD player supports) with Nero, but actually I get a black screen when testing it in the player... I get the menu, but none of the movies will play - just blackness.

[mpack]

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On 2001-11-24 09:21:01, myhrik wrote:
No, I don't have a widescreen TV, I simply want to remove the top and bottom parts of the original 4:3 source, MAKING it widescreen.
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Do I understand that you want to crop the source to a 16:9 ratio, then fit the 288 lines of your 352x288 frame into the reduced height? Well, if your TV isn't widescreen, does it have an anamorphic widescreen mode? If yes, the instructions I gave you before still work. If not then nothing will work - the only way to get a letterbox picture while maintaining an aspect ratio you tv would recognise would be to mask (not crop) the frame, losing many lines of available vertical resolution (however, the extra "bit budget" available for encoding the remaining visible lines may to some extent counter this) - as to how, tmpgenc has a mask filter which is quite easy to understand.

[mpack]

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On 2001-11-24 09:25:54, myhrik wrote:
And as for the SVCD suggestion, mpack: I didn't find it appropriate to encode the 352x288 source into the higher SVCD resolution... Do you?
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Well, I *was* assuming that you had the freedom to choose another resolution for capture. However, the question is interesting because the answer may not be what you assume...

Even if you capture at 352x288 you can still scale up the picture to 480x576 before (or while) encoding to SVCD. You still benefit from increased resolution (ie. reduced blockiness), and since upsampling the image is basically equivalent to running a light low pass filter on the full size image, the removal of the higher frequency edges should actually help you get better mpeg quality.

[myhrik]

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Do I understand that you want to crop the source to a 16:9 ratio, then fit the 288 lines of your 352x288 frame into the reduced height? Well, if your TV isn't widescreen, does it have an anamorphic widescreen mode? If yes, the instructions I gave you before still work. If not then nothing will work - the only way to get a letterbox picture while maintaining an aspect ratio you tv would recognise would be to mask (not crop) the frame, losing many lines of available vertical resolution (however, the extra "bit budget" available for encoding the remaining visible lines may to some extent counter this) - as to how, tmpgenc has a mask filter which is quite easy to understand.

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Thanks for making this clear! I feel much wiser now. So, I guess I'll have to MASK it then. How do I do that?

[myhrik]

One more thing: Do SVCDs support automatic zooms like I wanted my VCD to do, so that I can crop the video down to 16:9 instead of masking it, making the final quality better? If you understand my question?

[myhrik]

Forget about the masking question, I found out how just now. Well, thanks a LOT for your help, the only thing I need to know now it how to generally improve quality when you're stuck with a lousy 1150 bitrate? Is to choose "high" or "highest" under motion search accuracy a good thing? It seems to improve quality a great deal, but encodes waaay slower...

[mpack]

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On 2001-11-24 15:38:09, myhrik wrote:
the only thing I need to know now it how to generally improve quality when you're stuck with a lousy 1150 bitrate? Is to choose "high" or "highest" under motion search accuracy a good thing?
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My own experience has been that I see little difference in quality between the "high precision" and "motion estimate" settings for motion search - but its always worth trying the slow setting every now and then to be sure.

Are you sure you're stuck with 1150kbps? It seems an odd thing for your DVD player to be fussy about, especially when it supports SVCD (so it isn't that it *cant* do 2x reads from a CD-R!). I would give it another try, just be careful to copy every tmpgenc setting exactly from the VCD template (on every settings tab) except for the bitrate, which can be around 2100kbps for a player that allows 2x reads.. though I would limit the audio to 192kbps just for that extra margin of safety...

[myhrik]

Well, when thinking about the matter, it was actually Nero who fucked up the files, I think... When I inserted the 2000 bitrate MPEGs into Nero (having selected to make a Video CD, of course), they actually displayed about 10 minutes on the timeline at the bottom of the screen instead of 5! So maybe that's it? Should I use another burning program more specifically aimed at creating VCDs? Kinda strange, I thought Nero was very good...

There aren't any settings within Nero which allows me to have a higher bitrate or something..?

[mpack]

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On 2001-11-26 06:24:23, myhrik wrote:
Well, when thinking about the matter, it was actually Nero who fucked up the files, I think... When I inserted the 2000 bitrate MPEGs into Nero (having selected to make a Video CD, of course), they actually displayed about 10 minutes on the timeline at the bottom of the screen instead of 5! So maybe that's it? Should I use another burning program more specifically aimed at creating VCDs? Kinda strange, I thought Nero was very good...

There aren't any settings within Nero which allows me to have a higher bitrate or something..?
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Ah - now I understand where you saw the 5min vs 10min issue. Don't worry about that - the "time" on the Nero status line seems to be intentionally confusing! - as a playback time it is only meaningful for audio CDs, for other CD types it's just a roundabout way of telling you how much disk you've used so far. Eg. your total disk capacity is 70 (or 80) minutes, Nero says you've used 7 mins so far, which actually means you've used 10% of a 70min disk - it doesn't mean that playback will take 7 minutes. All complaints about this to Ahead, not me!

I use Nero 5.5.5.1 myself for making VCDs, and they work fine. I assume you understand that you have to use the VideoCD wizard, you can't just stick the MPEG file on a data CD?

If you do everything right, then Nero will complain that your 2kbps MPEG is not compliant with VCD - it will offer to turn compliance off and write the VCD anyway, and that is what you should do.

[Macros746]

Also make sure that you aren't making an SVCD and then trying to burn it as a VCD in Nero...which it sort of sounds like you did....


Mark

[myhrik]

Oops, I think I may have confused you guys too much... Actually, the 5 vs 10 min issue was visible BOTH in Nero, AND when playing the VCD in the DVD player. It really DID play in half speed when I used 2000 bitrate. And Nero didn't complain to those files like you say it should, it accepted them without questions... (when previewing the files pressing "play" within Nero, the time was right, though). And I really AM burning it as a Video CD, though not in the wizard, but in "standard" mode.

And when trying to burn a SVCD, I used the SVCD mode in Nero, not VCD. So I still really don't know what I'm doing wrong in either of these cases.

[myhrik]

I think I'm getting somewhere now!

I found a setting in TMPGEnc I've not noticed before. In configuration, under "system", and "stream type", I've always used "MPEG-1 Video-CD". It sounds kinda logical that if I want my DVD player to accept a higher bitrate than 1150, I should go for "MPEG-1 Video-CD NON-STANDARD", doesn't it?

Haven't tested it on a VCD yet, don't want to waste too many CDRs... This is Norway, you see, and things aren't THAT cheap...