ATI all in wonder radeon newbie help...

[helper]

Hi all,

I have been using my ati all in wonder for a while now, but I am not sure if the results are all that good. I have been trying to capture video with mpeg to make a vcd and the output was blocky and not what I was hoping for. For vcd I have it set to 1.15 mpbs and fix rate, with quality up around 99. Which comes out blocky when playing it back from a cd or even the computer.

I then went to mpeg2 capture to make a svcd. The output is better, but not what I was expecting. I thought it would be better then video tape. As well as not being able to put that much on a cd, at least I think I can't. I am using VCDEASY, and still learning to use it. For svcd I have it set to 2.56 mbps with a variable rate to it and quality up to 100. Which looks pretty good.

Basically, what I want to do is to take all racing videos and put them on cd's as well as to put old cartoons on a cd as well. I want to be able to play them on the computer as well as a stand alone dvd player if possible. What would be the best way to capture and edit this videos to add titles and have the video look great.. I can burn them with VCDEasy so, that is no problem, but I want to get the best possible quality on the picture and sound. I have tried using the ulead video 5.5 that comes with it but the sound is off on that program. It will sound like the sound is in slow motion and the video plays normally. I tried that with a 480x480 mpeg2 for a svcd and it comes out that way. I am really new to this and any advice would be of help....

Thanks..

Andrew

[Macros746]

Andrew,
you are running into a limitation of ATI's software. It is possible to make
amazing captures with MMC, but not in SVCD or VCD standard. The BEST method for capturing if you care about quality is to capture using VirtualDub and MJEG (quality set to 18) or Huffy. Huffy requires ENORMOUS amounts of HD space but is the best thing going. MJEG, my codec of choice takes up less space but at a slight loss of quality. So, in short, you are going to capture using VirtualDub at a resolution of 352 x 480 (I am assuming NTSC and not PAl here....) I don't know how fast your processor is but this will give you great fast results with no frame drops. Then you are going to edit out the commercials in VD using the slide bar and the home and end keys (mark-in, mark-out) then you will frameserve to TMPGenc using either it's SVCD template or it's VCD template depending on what you are trying to accomplish and then you'll encode it to a very nice disc which should (90 percent of the time) be equal to or better than VHS quality. (of course if you are capturing from VHS it won't be better than the source...just ain't possible) Since you are a newbie this might all sound overwhelming but trust me when I say...it sin't all that complicated. It isn't as bad as it sounds. All the software you need is available here and the guides here and at doom9.org should be able to steer you most of the way through it. If you need any help feel free to email me. Good luck and happy capturing.

macros

[Sulik]

You will not see a major improvement going from MMC to tmpgenc at VCD or SVCD bitrates.

The biggest impact on quality is the ratio: bitrate / (fps*resolution).

Since you're doing VCD/SVCD, you're pretty much stuck with a low bitrates, so here are 3 tips for increasing the quality with MMC 7.5:

1. Do your SVCD captures at 352x480 (at the same bitrate, it will look better than 480x480)

2. If you're capturing film to NTSC VCD, use the "Inverse 3:2 Pulldown" option (inverse telecine) in MMC -> this is equivalent to a 20% bitrate boost.

3. Always make sure that the motion estimation quality is set to 100%

[helper]

Hi again....

What is the proper bitrate for SVCD and for VCD. I had set mine I think too high, but I again was shooting for better quality, as I don't really even have a dvd player, other then what is on the computer now, but in the future, I may want to play the cd on a stand alone dvd player...

Thanks for the additional information...

Andrew

You will not see a major improvement going from MMC to tmpgenc at VCD or SVCD bitrates.

The biggest impact on quality is the ratio: bitrate / (fps*resolution).

Since you're doing VCD/SVCD, you're pretty much stuck with a low bitrates, so here are 3 tips for increasing the quality with MMC 7.5:

1. Do your SVCD captures at 352x480 (at the same bitrate, it will look better than 480x480)

2. If you're capturing film to NTSC VCD, use the "Inverse 3:2 Pulldown" option (inverse telecine) in MMC -> this is equivalent to a 20% bitrate boost.

3. Always make sure that the motion estimation quality is set to 100%