Those Darned pixel squares!

[boardmanDJ]

I've seen some really sharp looking VCD's of peoples own video. When I try to convert mine, I end up with lots of ugly pixels (little squares) all over the playback on my TV.
Is there some way to clear this problem up?

Scenario:
Standard VHS tape (football archive footage)
AMD Athlon 1333 with 256Meg ram & 80GB of HD space
ATI all in wonder Raedon (with TV) card

I'm just starting, so I'm not tied to a specific encoding program. I have the 30 day trial of Ulead Video Studio and just downloded TempEncodes trial version.

This is for realistic playback on a TV set with a DVD player capable of VCD and SVCD. I know it's video and it has noise. I'm not expecting a miracle, jsut the best possible steps from capture to final burn that will give me a smooth production.

[Mirror_Image]

When you set up to capture the video from the tapes, what are your resolution/bitrate settings?

Are you capturing at a higher resolution and bitrate than your VCD/SVCD end product, then converting down to the resolution and bitrate of the VCD/SVCD, or are you attempting to save time and just capturing straight to VCD/SVCD specs?

[boardmanDJ]

I've tried both methods. the "VCD" setting, and then a customized AVI setting, 720x480 I believe. Then I converted it down, but still got lots of little squares.

[sbeegun]

I am getting the same results. I am going from DV to avi, then creating vcd, but get a ton of squares. Please explain what settings are the most important.

[garbman1]

First, if you are capturing from VHS your res is limited by the source (320x240 or 352x240) I think. What I do is capture using 352X240 2250 kbs mpeg1 with ATI AIW 128. Then I run it through TMPEnc mpeg merge\cut tools (seems to make it work better in my DVD). The resulting video has no blocks but, is what I call grainy. It is quick and not bad quality.

For DV I use fire wire and Studio 7 to capture to full res AVI. Then encode as 352x480 mpeg2 3600kbs 2 pass VBR using TMPEnc. This takes lots of time (12+ hrs) but qulity is super. When in a hurry I do similar to above (but mpeg2 and higher bitrate)with ATI AIW even with DV.

In either case lots of bits equal lots of CDs