Making good quality Home Videos

[peterwinston]

Hi All,

Although I'm a newbie I've done quite a bit of research and "trying things out" based on what I've learned on this site. At this point I'm feeling fairly comfortable with TMPGEnc for example. Here is my problem.

I'm not happy with any of the results I'm getting. For example I took some video with my Mini-DV camera (Canon ZR45). I then dubbed it onto old style VHS (I even used SLP). I played that back and noted the quality of the playback on my TV. For me, that is the baseline. As I create VCD, SVCD or even DVD if I can't get it to even be as good as dubbing to VHS then I'm not going to be happy.

Am I expecting too much?

Here is what I'm doing so far and the results:

1. "Copied" my Video to the computer us IEEE 1394 (Firewire) Card. At the moment I'm using ULead SE Basic to do this (came for free with the Card). It puts it into AVI (720x480 I think don't have it in front of me). 10 minutes of vid takes up like 3 gb or so on my Hard Drive.
2. Used TMPG Enc to encode this to MPEG using various settings as per information I've gotten from this newsgroup. This includes:
- Standard VCD (1150 CBR etc.)
- XVCD (As per another article I read here - don't have the settings handy, but this way 720x480 or so(?) and 2500 CBR. I tried this with a trick I saw to make it playable on my Panasonic RV31.
- "DVD" (MPEG2, VBR Low = 2000, Avg = 6000, High = 8000)
3. I haven't been using Noise reduction features as this takes incredibly long for my computer to do. And it didn't seem to me there would be a lot of noise coming from the source. Didn't do any funky stuff with GOP or anything either.
4. When I play either the VCD or the XVCD on my TV in both cases there is a significant amount of blockiness. It is most obvious around the edges of people - especially when they are moving. It is quite distracting to watch.
5. At the moment I can't test the DVD one as I don't have a DVD burner yet. I don't want to invest in one till I can determine whether the quality will be at least as good as dubbing to analog VHS. However when I play the "DVD" MPEG (6000 VBR) this has some blockiness as well (less than the others though).
6. I've noticed that even the original AVI has a little blockiness as well when played full screen on my computer using WinDVD.

Can anyone out there who is doing the same thing point me in the right direction? Am I expecting something I'm not going to be able to do?

Is there a way I can get my DVD Player to think that a CD is a DVD and play the "DVD" MPEG to test the quality on my TV?

Thanks for any advise - I applaud you for following this long email.

Regards,

Peter

[Digitizer]

Using VHS is bad enough, bud SLP? Dude! Capture directly from camera if possible.

[peterwinston]

I DO Capture directly from the camera using a DLink Firewire card!!!

I dubbed from the camera to SLP VHS ONLY to use as a baseline to compare the quality of what I get with the digital vs what I could get with dubbing to analog. My point was that based on what I've tried so far I get far better results just by dubbing to VHS. My goal is to do as well with capturing to the computer and creating VCD or XVCD or DVDs.

Sorry for the confusion. If you read the whole message I think you'll see that I am doing direct from the camera first.

Thanks for the reply,

Peter

[Malcom]

DVD has over twice the resolution of VHS -- 720x480 vs. 352x240. However, MPEG noise is not like VHS noise. In VHS, the noise may be easier for some to "see through," since it is mostly random static-like effects or shimmering. Analog noise, basically. With MPEG, the artifacts can have hard edges, making them painfully obvious.

That said, I still prefer the DVDs resoluting from my DV footage. The VHS version has the illusion of being cleaner, but it is also much more low-resolution. In fact, a lot of the poor lighting grain that I get sometimes doesn't even show up in the VHS version because it doesn't have enough resolution (think BLUR filter on your DV source).

If your DVD authoring software is capable of AC3 encoding, you can use a higher maximum bitrate such as 9500. That should make a noticeable difference. And of course, setting the average bitrate higher always yields better results.

Your DV footage is hardware encoded DV at 25Mbit -- it is a bit unreasonable to expect your software <10Mbit MPEG encode to look identical, but, it CAN look VERY good.

Also, put in one of your hollywood DVDs and study it as carefully as you're studying your own work. Chances are you will find PLENTY of artifacts in them as well (try some dark scenes with reddish lighting and shadows).

It may not look perfect, but it looks damn good, has higher resolution so small details are more visible, and it WILL NOT WEAR OUT with playback! =)

Hope that helps.

[peterwinston]

Thanks Malcom,

Very helpful.

Being very new to this I'm just trying everything I can before commiting lots of money to this. So I don't have a sophisticated DVD Authoring tool yet - nor do I have a DVD burner.

If I can get the quality up then I will invest in these as I would like to be able to do editing, menus and all that stuff.

Do you know of a way to test the DVD type MPEG by burning it onto a CD? I haven't seen anything like that on the forums so far.

You also mentioned AC3 and DVD authoring software. Would this be in place of TMPGEnc or after running it through TMPGEnc? Is that 9500 you mentioned CBR or VBR? Any recommendations for DVD Authoring software?

Thanks and Regards,

Peter