Please offer suggestions for 352x240 mpg...dvd is pixelated...

[AshleyQuick]

I've tried using the MSU Smart Deblocking filter in VDub and haven't noticed an increase in quality. I would like it optimized for a widescreen tv. I realize this size is not ideal (being so small) but there has to be something I can try with VDub? I don't mind placing black boxes around the movie to avoid a lot of stretching. Is there a happy medium? Some upscaling with some black boxing?

The attached screenshot will show the file info.

I have:

VDub
VDubMod
The MSU Filter
The Huffyuv Filter

[poisondeathray]

I doubt there is much you can do to improve the quality as your avg. bitrate is ~1150kbps for MPEG-1 @ 352x240. This is very very poor quality. Garbage in => Garbage out.

If you deblock or smooth it out, it will look very blurry - even worse since you are attempting to scale from 352x240 to widescreen TV resolutions.

[redwudz]

Is 352X240 MPEG-1 the original format? If so I would just convert the audio to 48Khz and leave the video alone if it started as a VCD. I don't think you are going to improve it much if it has pixelation to start with. It sounds like you are doing several re-encodes, which will only lose more quality.

Can you post a sample of maybe 5 - 10 seconds showing the pixelation? Someone may have some ideas.

[lordsmurf]

Not all VCD MPEG-1 was DVD-compliant, don't forget that. Sometimes re-encoding is unavoidable.