My magic, high-quality SVCD settings (Apex 660)

[mojo]

After months of learning and practicing and reading a LOT of posts here, I have finally made my best-quality SVCD ever. I thought I'd share my settings and results with all of you!

I pretty much encode TV shows, so the SVCD in question is 44 minutes long (an hour show minus commercials).

I capped the show myself right out of the cable box to DV using the Dazzle DV Hollywood Bridge.

In TMPEGenc, I use 2 pass VBR. It takes forever, but it really does win the quality battle. The trick I learned recently that made a HUGE difference was setting the maximum bitrate OVER the SVCD limit. The avergae bitrate should still be within spec and calculated to fit your program on the disc, but the higher maximum lets the encoder spike to high levels when it needs to (most players should be able to handle quick spikes of higher bitrates - sustained over the limit rates will choke a lot of players and result in choppy playback).

I'm also using 90 minute blanks, which let you squeeze on quite a bit of extra data (in theory you can even go to 99 minutes, but I keep to 90 to insure compatability).

So here's what I came up with to fit 44 minutes of SVCD onto a 90 minute CD:

2 PASS VBR

MAX BITRATE: 2800
AVERAGE: 2400 (2200 for 80 min CD)
MIN: 0
AUDIO: 192
MOTION EST: Slow

This is designed to play back on my Apex 660 - dropping the audio to 192 was a necessary tradeoff to gain the bitrate peaks of 2800. With normal 224 audio, the Apex choked and skipped. Lowering it to 192 resulted in perfect playback (therefore I assume that this encoding scheme pretty much represents a bitrate ceiling for the Apex 660).

All other values are the default for SVCD.

I'm sure I could monkey with other settings, but these numbers resulted in an SVCD that was indistinguishable from the original broadcast - even in high motion scenes. So why bother?

Hopes this helps someone!


Mojo

[Nicmare]

thanx a lot mojo, i will try it as soon as my tmpgenc wouldnt crash arrrg hehe
Nicmare

[zizou108]

I also am encoding TV shows (about 44 minutes) to SVCD, and just a couple of days ago tried doing 2-pass VBR in TMPGEnc for the first time. Quality was excellent! However, I set the max bitrate to 3300, and my player (Pioneer DV-333) got choppy during high-action scenes. Have you ever tried mucking with the "VBV Buffer Size" setting in TMPGEnc? I know 112 is the standard for SVCD, but perhaps settting it higher would allow player to get through high-bitrate scenes without choppiness?

My settings:

2 PASS VBR

MAX BITRATE: 3300
AVERAGE: 2300 (to fit 44 min on 80 min CD)
MIN: 1300 (not 0: some standalone players don't like very low bitrates)
AUDIO: 128 (sounds good enough)
MOTION EST: Slow

Thanks,

zizou

[mojo]

I have no idea what the VBV buffer size does, so I can't help you with that.

However, consider if you really need to up the max bitrate so high. By allocating so much data for high motion scenes, you're eating up bandwidth for the rest. You want your normal scenes to look good too, you know!

Higher is always better, but if you have to make your audio even lower and you're getting choppy playback, I'd stick with a lower max rate.

On my Apex, the usual max rate of 2500 still gave me some artifacts in high motion... but the jump to 2800 cleared it all up (I initially tried 3000 as a nice, round number but the machine couldn't play it smoothly).

I'm guessing that somewhere between 2500 and 3000 is a nice sweet spot.


Mojo

[zizou108]

I had been encoding at constant bitrate of 2300, or using TMPGEnc's CQ setting at 70, max bitrate of 2400. These looked good, but visibly not as good as the 2-pass VBR. For much of the show, I could not distinguish this SVCD from a DVD - very impressive what you can do on one CD!

I will have to experiment with the max bitrate until I find what my player can handle. I might also thry upping the VBV Buffer Size, see if it helps. And some other threads here seem to indicate that remuxing with bbmpeg fixes some chopiness problems - worth a try...

zizou

[Hunting]

I can´t set the maximum bitrate over 2520 in TMPEGEnc. Why????

[kitty]

After loading the SVCD template load the unlock template - it is in a subdirectory. Then you can change the bitrate

[Hunting]

Thank you kitty. It worked.
But I didn't see much different between the maximum at 2520 (avg. 2250) and the maximum at 2800 (avg. 2250).

But thanks anyway for sharing this information with us.

[mojo]

I saw a difference in fast motion scenes. The normal stuff will probably look the same, but the extra peak bitrate took care of edges that artifacted when they were moving quickly.

Not all of them, but most.


Mojo

[Uplate22]

Hey guys, I've got on APEX-1200, and I've toyed around with about over 200 cds now, each svcd, vcd, etc. My max bitrate I've achieved for SVCD was 4500, ha. The quality is outstanding, but then again, I only use 4500 when encoding my favorite music videos, and putting multiple videos on one 80 minute disc. I must say the quality and smoothness is outstanding, however, anywhere over 4800 and itll get choppy, just thought I'd share, later