Firewire & VCD/SVCD

[ubaddala]

Hi All,
I must confess that I am on the verge of giving up the whole VCD/SVCD creation stuff. Here is my current configuartion & tools that I used:
Dell Dimension 4200, 1.6Mhz, 512 MB, 40GB, WinXP HE, AIW Radeon,
Sony Hi8 XR handycam (S-Video), VirtualDub 1.4.8, TMPGEnc 12a/2.52,
VisualStudio 5.0/6.0, Nero 5.8. (VisualStudio 6.0 is a trail version)

The PC has been formatted "n" number of times with all the latest
patches applied (I never had any problems capturing at any given frame
rate/resolution) and has been tuned very well.

With this kind of setup, I read everything that's available on this
site (till date for the last 9 months !) and started making VCD/SVCDs.
I was trying to convert my Hi8 homevideo to VCD/SVCDs (I am bent upon maintaining standards). Anything off the standards is not welcome to me. The source is home shot video. I've never played back the 8mm cassette more than once, ever since it was recorded (means there was no quality drop). I just made sure the quality is good.

In every attempt that I made, the video looked very crappy. It has
so many macro blocks, in both the VCD/SVCD. I tried every resolution, compression etal.

While I was discussing this with a friend of mine, he was suggesting
me to switch over to Sony Digital Camera and start capturing with the
Firewire/IEEE 1394 (or whatever the number is).

My question is : Is it true that when I capture thro' the firewire
the capture will be "as good as" DVD source ? (assuming the homevideo is shot well). I've seen a clip on the TMPGEnc site where the source was taken from the DVD and the quality of the VCD is amazing ! If someone can preferably give first hand information, then I am ready to throw away my ATI card and my Sony Hi8. I am also more inclined towards DV camera as it records in the digital format and the quality of the digital format should be good.

Any help is greatly appreciated and sorry for the lengthy post.

Uday.

[PhArAoH]

First of all, you don't actually capture from Firewire. The video is transferred to your PC in digital format at full resolution. The quality of the transferred video is equal to the source. Once you have a copy of the video on your PC you can then edit, add effects and transitions or filters to the video then convert it to (S)VCD, divX or other format. The video transferred on your PC from Camcorder/Firewire is called DV video and this video format is uncompressed. That's why one hour of DV video takes over 13GB of hard disk space.

Because you have 8mm and HI8 tapes I strongly recommend buying a SONY D8 digital camcorder with analog inputs and abilities to play old 8mm tapes. This will make it possible to use it as a digitizer for your old tapes and analog video source. I have a Sony TRV320 and it was the best purchase i made in years. I have so far made about 200 VCD's and the quality is very very good, most of the time better then VHS (depending on the source, of course). I use TMPGenc as AVI2VCD encoder.

[Chips144]

I have just converted about 22 hours of HI8 home video to svcd. I ahve tried this several times and the results were always non-accaptable. Macro blocks, sync, grainy, etc. in other words lousey. I gave up. I figured I would get a new digital camcorder and from this point forward, my home movies could easily be converted to SVCD. I only do SVCD because the quality of VCD, assuming you stick to the standards, can't compare to the increased resolution of SVCD. But then I got really pissed off one day and decided that I would solve the problem or ditch my capture card and my camcorder. After creating about 2 dozen coasters, I finally got the results I was looking for. My burned SVCD's look great, even when played on my 65-inch projection TV. NO BLOCKS. NO GRAIN. NO SYNC PROBLEMS. GREAT RESOLUTION. I dare to say they look as good as the original tapes (my opinion).

I have read many posts on this subject and some of the settings I use are claimed to be a waste of time, but for me, the end results is that it works. I hope some of this will be useful to you.

Here is what I do.

1. Obviously video tape the scene. If you have "steady-shot", make sure it is active. When you are high action scenes, try to minimize panning. If indoors, make sure you have adequate light. I'm sure if you are an avid videographer you arre already aware of the above.
2. Using the video (s- if you have it) and audio outputs as inputs to your computer capture card (my card if the default card that comes with my Sony Vaio). Use the highest capture bit rate that is available.
3. Export the resultant file in avi format, essentially preserving the information. NOTE: these files will get to be very large.
4. Use the avi file as both the audio and video input files to TMPGEnc. I am using ver 2.53. I have written my own template for TMPGEnc. If you want, e-mail me at chipsnet@aol.com and I will send it to you. Or use the NTSF template, not the NTSF Film template that comes with TMPGEnc and experiment with the bit rate and motion precision settings. When you run TMPGEnc use the range feature to select (cut the sections you want) and convert each section individually. Use batch mode. After all the cuts have been converted merge them into one file in the mpeg tools section. If the resultant file is going to be too large for a single cd-r, then use simple demux in the tools section to demux the file then remux and cut to fit using bbMPEG.
5. Finally burn the output files as compliant SVCD. I use the SVCD burn option in NTI CD-Maker Pro.

GOOD LUCK

[fmg]

Hi Gents,

I seem to have the same problem capturing from a DV Camcorder (SONY-TRV110). Even watching at the raw AVI (transferred by IEEE1394), it shows some grainy edges, and when I transform it to SVCD, the scenes look as lousy as you describe (especially block noise, macro blocks etc.).

I use TMPGEnc 2.53, and I tried many, many different setting. Macro blocks persist independently of the mode I chose ...

Thus, if anybody has some good advice how to overcome this, I'd be really glad!

So long, Frank

[Rich927]

Go to Ulead.com and download the Videostudio 6 trial. It is fully functional. Try it with that. The program does it all. Capture, edit, convert and burn DVD, VCD, SVCD. Good program for the money. Once you are successful, go thru the steps, look at the settings and use that info to try to do it with other programs. Good source of information.

[rrhea]

I also have an ATI Radeon, and I find that it does not do a good job of capturing video. The software that comes with it is terrible ... all sorts of video quality and audio sync problems.

I will echo the comments about Ulead VideoStudio 6 and Sony Digital 8. This is what I use. I have old 8mm analog tapes from 10 years ago, and I have converted them all to (X)SVCD with near-DVD-quality results. I put the old tapes into my Sony Digital 8 camcorder, connect the camcorder to my PC using Firewire, and use VideoStudio 6 as the capture and editing software. The camcorder automatically converts the analog tapes to digital.

If you cannot afford a new camcorder, try using Ulead as your software for capturing video off your ATI card, rather than the ATI software or any free software.

HOWEVER ... do NOT use Ulead to convert to MPEG. After editing, ave the file in Ulead as a "DV AVI". (You will need a lot of disk space!) Then take the AVI file and convert it to MPEG using TmpgEnc. TmpgEnc is a far superior encoder and will give you much better results.

I would avoid standard VCD and SVCD if you can. Check out the "DVD Players" section at this site, and look up your model of DVD player. If it can play SVCDs at a higher bitrate, then set TmpegEnc for the higher bitrate. You will be much happier with the results. Standard VCD is going to look bad, as the bitrate is only 1150 kbps. Standard SVCD is OK, about the same quality as a VHS tape. For my Apex AD-1500, I set TmpgEnc for MPEG-2, CQ, 4000 kbps, 720x480. then I use Nero to burn a non-standard SVCD. The result is near-DVD quality.

[vhelp]

ubaddala,

in short, you need to learn more about ivtc/32pulldn/invers32.
Once you figure out how to utilize these, you'll have way much
better video quality (VCD/SVCD) and no more macro blocks.
But, that also depends on HOW you video'd w/ your 8mm cam!! ie...
* it's currently state of health (8mm tapes)
* how you held your cam while you shot footage
* was their a stabilizer
* did you zoom often, and while you panned/moved
* sudden jerks
* low light or bad lighte source or lighting.

yes, it'l look good in your viewfinder, and maybe even on your
TV screen. But the more you play it, the worse it will get.

Some tips to improve quality are:
* use good filtering, but not to highe a value, ie Temperal Smoother
* once you learn the proper steps of ivtc/32pulldn/inverse32, load
the standard*** SVCD template and encode/burn/play

Well, there are a mess of other factors but I'm washed out w/ all
my projects and its getting late, and I can't think too straight.

There is so much information here and on other website about the
above tips. Just do a search and lots of reading - if you're serious
about quality, but don't just give up too easily.

Good luck!
-vhelp

*** since you said you want to stay within standards.

[TOMMO]

Firewire and DV is the way to go if you want to improve upon your capture and encoding.

I recently changed from 8mm camcorder and DC30Plus to a Sony TVR120 and a Pyro Firewire card.

You will need abig drive for capturing.

To be honest, although converting the captures to VCD standard were good, they were not as good as I expected, but when converted to SVCD they were superb.

I don't know what is meant by

Anything off the standards is not welcome to me

but you may have to tinker a bit to achieve the best results on you DVD player. i had with mine and the Philips 711 DVD player.

Bear in mind, that your end result can never be better than the original source.