Frustrated old Geezer trying to put the DV footage ontoSVCD!

[pwygant]

I am getting frustrated and I hope you younger folks here can help me along. i have posted two other questions in this forum and you have always helped me. Maybe you can help me with this?

Goal: Take my DV footage and burn SVCD to view on DVD player (USA) and send copies to my family.

Setup: Canon DV camera, 512 MB Rimms, 1.4G Dell P4m, Geforce 4, OEM Firewire card, Pinnacle studio SE or Adobe Premiere (Have both), TMPGE, Ulead DVD movie factory...

Background: I have been capturing footage into Pinnacle studio and Premiere. Edited all footage and finally created final .AVI file for output. (Don't use MPEG2 output in Pinnacle - Terrible) Use TMPGE to convert the footage NTSC: 1:1 conversion: Output to MPEG2 done. (first test 9minutes) Burnned and authored menu using DVD movie studio.

Problem: I thought the quality of my original DV footage was excellent. When the final 1.4 gig .AVI file was completed it was still good quality. (even though it looks a litlle jumpy in quicktime) When it finally reached the MPEG2 stage, I am having all kinds of problems. The audio is out of sync and the picture is jerky, blocky, and honestly, I am not very happy.

Querstion: I am not converting long movies here, only home movie clips. I am just so fed up with all the quality problems I have had that I am turning here for help. Will I get better results if I just burn a VCD from the AVI? Is there another program I should use that is better.

Whatever happened to buying your $1300 mini DV camera and capture the footage to your harddrive through a simple Firewire card and you are done? SVCD is the best quality you can get?!!!! I have several SVCD movies and they are excellent. I am looking for any direction that would help me.

[baker]

I must admit I know little to nothing about digital cameras but tought that the good thing about them was that they allowed direct camera-pc transfer of the film data thus losing no quailty. So try and do this.

Anyway when you have your dv/avi file or whatever simply load it inot the superb cce. Use the following settings:

complex/flat settings at 25
avg bitrate-1600
passes-3+vaf

now buen to svcd and tell the diference between it and th original!!

Baker

[pwygant]

Cinema Craft encoder? Which version.. Any?

[Malcom]

For handheld DV you need a bitrate of about 4-6k minimum to have good results. I speak from experience here as I have been down the same path already.. I eventually got a DVD recorder and now I am finally happy that my footage is usually 90% of the DV quality.

The problem is that MPEG2 compression is somewhat helpless in trying to compress the video, since the whole frame keeps moving about as your hand shakes, etc. Plus, your home videos are likely to be casually shot -- not perfectly lit, some video noise from the gain on the camera, etc. Video noise/grain also does not play well w/ MPEG2 because the whole frame is changing as the random noise changes, and so MPEG2 cannot compress "just the changes" like it needs to. This leads to trying to compress the whole frame all the time, and w/ a low bitrate that leads to blockyness and artifacts.

So you need a higher bitrate, or you need to use a tripod. There's no way around it. If you use a tripod you can probably get away with a lower bitrate.

Your DV footage is compressed at 25Mbit CBR DV format. That is a lot more to work with than you're expecting your SVCD to do.

Basically you are expecting too much from SVCD/VCD. Your best hope is DVD-R, at VBR of 500/6000/8000 or 500/6000/9300 if you're using AC3 sound.

Another alternative is to letterbox your footage to a widescreen aspect ratio, thereby reducing the amount of picture information that each frame contains. A really really wide ratio like "The Matrix" (2.35:1) will seriously reduce the amount of data that you need to save, and help you get away w/ less. But you are basically throwing away picture here...

I second the CCE SP recommendation.

[ktnwin]

I have a digital camcorder and I capture DV video using Pinnacle Studio DV software. No quality loss here.
Next, I encode the captured AVI file with TMPGenc to SVCD.
I use CQ_VBR (85), max bitrate 2500.
This setting always give me very decent SVCD (40 min per CD-R).
I never had problem with SVCD quality from my DV source. My friends and relatives thought I made DVD discs !

[thxkid]

1st of remember very few DVD pakyers out there will play SVCD, unless all your family has bought APEX. 2nd I use SVCD all the time with HI8mm, granded its not 500 lines like DV but it is 400 and I get great results at 2520 CBR using TMPGE, I get fantastic results if I use 3500 to 6000 bitrate, but then again you have to have a DVD player that will play 6000 as a SVCD 704x480, the Daewoo 5700 or 5800 does, most DVD players will play 3000 or 3500 no problem and there is a large improvment over 2520. But, in fast movement at the lower bitrates I do get some blockiness, also make sure your steady cam switch is on with a cannon it should be opitcal prisim like the Sony's and not crappy electronic like most of the other brands. I also get a very good videos when I use VCD but at the higher 2520 bitrate, higher bitrate really makes a difference.

[Feuerwehr]

You certainly have all of the hardware and software to make excellent SVCD’s. It is hard to say exactly where your problems originate. I have approximately the same setup as you (mine not as good as yours) and consistently get great quality SVCD’s from my DV Camcorder movies.
My setup: Dell P4 1.4G with GeForce2 Ultra, 256Mb 800 Mhz RIMM. Sony TRV900 camcorder, Pinnacle Studio 7, TmpGEnc 2.54, and Nero 5.58.
I use Studio 7 to produce an edited AVI file, encode with TmpGEnc, and burn with Nero.
You say your edited AVI files look fine (they should be as good as your original) but your”MPEG2 files are blocky”. The most likely problem is with TmpGEnc. What settings are you using? I use the “standard” SCVD template. Under “Settings” I usually choose “2-pass VBR” or “CQ.” Motion Search Precision should be set at “highest quality (very slow).”
If you are encoding with TmpGEnc using the standard SCVD template your audio should not be out of sync. Are you sure your DVD player is SCVD compatible? Have you tried playing your MPEG2 files with a PC software player?
I don’t know what else to suggest. Maybe someone else has some other ideas. I can honestly say my SCVD’s look better on my 61” Sony TV than the same video recorded on SVHS. Good Luck!
Jim

[pwygant]

This is great info so far. I realli appreciate it. Let me tell what I have learned so far and also my settings.

My pioneer plays all SVCD and is a pretty good one

I use the NTSC SVCD template. (Not film) I use interlace (bottom...) & 1:1 VGA aspect ratio. (I don't think that would make a difference to just use 4:3 704x480 - will it?)

I will try this:

1) I noticed that "I" always use CBR setting when most of you use the CQ VBR (automatic) at a highre bitrate.

2) I will set the motion search precision to highest quality.

I hope this works! For the guy using the Pinnacle studio DV, what codec do you use to make the AVI in the program? There are so many to choose from? If there is anything else you can think about with these answers, post them!

[liquid217]

what is the audio sample rate of your avi? my dv camera produces 48Khz audio feeds, but TMPGenc has a problem resampling them, that may be your problem. My personal fix to this problem is to demux the audio and use sf sound forge to downsample the audio, then pump the new audio and the dv avi into tmpgenc

[Nelson37]

Crank your bitrate up to 3000 or 3500 and see if it still looks bad, assuming your player will handle it. (2-pass VBR) This will point you to other problems. I strongly endorse the tripod option, for 30 bucks the quality improvement is dramatic, image stabilisation does NOT substitute for this!

[pwygant]

I can't change the bitrate over 2520. What am I doing wrong?

I have tried every setting available but I can't change the bitrate in any of the above options to higher than 2520. Is there an option I am missing?

[Feuerwehr]

Leave your bitrate at 2520 for now. DO NOT change your bitrates from "standard" until after you burn a couple of "sucessful" SCVD's. You can always experiment later if you are not satisfied with the quality, and you are sure your player handles higher video and audio bitrates.
I use the Pinnacle's default "DV Video Encoder" codec. It works just fine with TmpGenc.

[pwygant]

Thanks for everyones help. I have corrected the audio sync issue thanks to you. Yes, my DV camcorder records at 48000khz and TMPGE conmverts it into 44100. I output the avi in 44100 and now the audio is in sync.

The next issue was the output from Pinnacle studio. I used the indeo 5.1 codec and it worked best for me. In TMPGE i set the setting for 2 pass VBR and highest quality encoding (motion search)

Any other hints or issues I am listening..

Old computer geezer thanks you..

[mrbass]

I plan to try these settings with CCE once I get a replacement 80GB hd which crashed on me 3 days after using it. Anyway..CCE 4 pass vbr. Bottom field first (field B). Turn off progressive, linear quantizer, zigzag. Image quality priority 10. Anti noise filter off. Intra DC precision 8. Bilinear resize...well maybe bicubic. I think this should give great results...based on reading manuals, etc. I may tweak them a tad but I believe these will look good for miniDV source.

[baker]

LISTEN TO ME!!!

Get the program dvd2svcd and configure it to use your avi file, it WILL create better results then tmpegenc at low bitrates.

Baker

[kitty]

You're almost there. You want your AVI from Studio 7 to be the best quality for TMPGenc. Indeo 5.1 is ok, make sure quality is near 100%. You could also try Huffyuv encoding (free codec, info on this site) which is lossless. Like someone said, double check the TMPGenc settings, there might be something not checked even though a template was loaded.

Not that I advocate it but after upgrading to Studio 7 and being disappointed I got Ulead Media Studio 6.5 and hope to do some real editing as it will edit in DV and MPEG, not just avi.

Good luck! Da Kitty

[spidey]

I second the Huffyuv export. If you truly want to not lose anything from the original use that.

Also if you have the DV audio codec installed you should be able to convert oout the 48 khz audio to 44.1 in Virtual Dub as a wav file, then encode the 2 streams together. (see DivX to VCD guide for info - CONVERT)

[pwygant]

Huffy Codec apparently doesn't work in Pinnacle studio. I just get a bunch of lines across it with sound. I tried different settings but still doesn't seem to work.

[baker]

Please listen try cce.

Baker