Need help w/fuzzy images w/VirtualDub and high movement

[dsatchell67]

I'm using VDub for my captures and I've got it to the point that I'm getting really good captures.

I'm converting my wifes aerobics tapes to DVD. The people in the foreground have great resolution and so does the background. My problem is that people that are in the background have very blurry faces.

I'm using an ATI 8500DV with the latest drivers with VDUB.
I'm capturing at 352x480 @29.97fps. I've tried the flaxen(sp?) VHS filter, the smartdelacer filter, and the TV filter but I still get blurry faces. I'm using TMPGEnc for the encoder and I set it for slow encoding with either CQ (constant quality) or CQ_VBR. What else can I do??????

Also if I'm transferring VHS to DVD, with detail as good as the original VHS, should I deinterlace at all? Should I deinterlace in VDUB and then should I reduce the frame size from 352x480 to 352x240? Or should I deinterlace in TMPGEnc? What motion filters should I use?

All of my transfer stuff will either be home movies (high movement by nature) or exercise tapes, all of which have high movement.

Thanx for the help, Dave.

[BJ_M]

i would say dont de-interlace at all (remember its going to look like crap on the pc but good on your tv) .. de-interlacing , no mater if you use bob or merge or 1 field will always cause either blury or lose some detail. unless you do a really good job of it and some ghost reduction .. but its still not great as just leaving it alone.

i assume you are using VHS as the source - you will most for sure want to use some noise reduction but to much will also reduce detail and cause smear. but proper preproccessing noise reduction will help a lot.

remember also that VHS has only around 270 lines of resolution ... you cant make true dvd quality from VHS ..

remember to use very high quality video cables.

you didnt say in what format you are caping in - but use a lossless format like huffyuv .. DV is a compressed format. I dont anything about the ati capturing so i dont know if you can do that .

i never got good results with Cq_VBR .. but with CQ - yes ... set at 81 or 71 as the lowest will yield good results.. CQ @ 100 is basicly CBR

since you are going to dvd .. you might as well go to CBR @ ~7000 (or VBR 2 Pass at 9000max, 1000min ,6000 avg) if you have the space on your dvd-r disk ..

since you are going to dvd .. dont reduce the frame size -- keep it at 1/2 D1