Pinnacle Studio Mpeg Quality

[gdmail]

I recently purchased Pinnacle Studio and have discovered that the quality of the MPEG conversion is very poor when compared with TMPGEnc when using the default SVCD settings. I am seeing a significant amount of pixelization. Does any one have any suggestions for any settings in Studio that will improve the quality. Presently the program is completely unacceptable. :(

[bryanL]

Try going into the 'Make mpeg settings' and select 'Custom' preset.

- Then select 640x480 in mpeg2, pre-filter on.
- I then run the data rate as high as possible.
My burns come out clean as a whistle.

I'm not sure how Studio 7 can make 640x480 and 720x480 mpeg2s, as these resolutions don't appear on the list of recognized ones, but it does.....

[gdmail]

Thanks,
I will give that a try however, I have had problems in the past with my DVD player playing anything that was not a standard VCD or SVCD. I am using the Apex 3201.

[bryanL]

I agree.
But like I said, I'm not sure where the 640 and 720 frame sizes came from. So they may not be compatible with some DVD players.
I have to admit my dvd doesn't recognize svcd, so I haven't been able to test them. They work great on my PC though....

Bryan

[rkr1958]

I have an Apex 1500 DVD player and Pinnacle Studio DV. I've found that MPEG-2 movies created in Studio DV using bit rates of 4500 kbs or less play quite well. I can get roughly 20-minutes on a CD-R at 4500 kbs. The quality is quite well.

[David M]

I have exactly the same experience with poor quality SVCD - very disappointing. I asked how to resolve, and a couple of suggestions made were to use Tmpenc.

Suggestion was to first Make Movie in Studio in AVI format, and to then convert to MPEG2 with Tmpenc and finally to burn the SVCD with Nero.

I'm in the middle of trying this. Desperate to clean up my disk as it's full of Studio files and my kids have no room to download their gigs of games and movie clips.

[scatman]

I usually use TMPGEnc to create SVCD's, but since now my 30 days trial is out, I can't use TMPGEnc anymore for that purpose (or is it anyway to get around this???).

With the proposed Studio7 SVCD settings above, is the result comparable with TMPGnc?

Or, does it exist any other good SVCD tool freeware?

[David M]

I've tried 3 ways of creating the MPEG2 files and the best was by using TMPGEnc. It was a lot better than creating MPEG2 directly from Studio with normal settings. I also tried the Custom override with much higher settings than was suggested earlier in this thread (the latter took ages to create even for a very short test clip) and it produced an MPEG2 with lots of interference.

But it still is a lot poorer quality than original DV which I can't get to work.

David