Any tips for best DV->SVCD in Ulead VideoStudio 6?

[dryduck]

My firewire card came with Ulead VideoStudio 6 DVD SE. I used this to make a test VCD and SVCD from some home movies (DV camcorder). The VCD looked lousy, the SVCD significantly better but not as good as I'd hoped ("ghosting" around moving objects, and light objects were too bright, almost seeming to glow).

Since I had spent a little time already (converting downloaded video files to SVCD) with TMPGenc, VCDEasy etc, I exported a clip of the movie (in AVI format) from VS, and used TMPGenc (default SVCD settings, 29.97fps NTSC) to convert to MPEG2, and VCDEasy to put it on a svcd, and the quality was much better. I figure I can even further improve the quality of the TMPGenc output by tweaking some of the settings.

However, it was also much more time and disk-space consuming, since I had to export the edited movie into AVI (which seems to take just as long as rendering the MPEG2 and took 3 GB of space for less than 2 minutes of footage), then do the TMPGenc on it, then either use VCDEasy, or use the VS SVCD plug-in (which is nice because I can create menus etc easily with it). It's a lot simpler and quicker to just use VS for the whole process. If I was going to do a longer clip I would have to use some kind of compression on the intermediate AVI or else get a second hard drive. And then there's the added expense of buying TMPGenc.

What I'm getting at is... I wonder if anyone has any hints to improve the quality of the MPEG2 rendering in VS6. I couldn't find any settings regarding things like VBR/CBR, but maybe they are there somewhere? Should I be doing something other than the default when I initially capture the video? Do I want to de-interlace on capture? (I'll be viewing this on a TV so I think the answer is no).

I realize I could spend some money to get better results, I'm just interested in maximizing the results I can get with what I have. Later on I'll probably add a DVD writer, but for now I'm fine with SVCD's.

[Tommyknocker]

I also have VS6, as part of my bundled software with my ADS IDVD. I really like those 702 x 480 MPEG-2 captures, but I shove those puppies right into TMPGEnc for final processing, because I really cannot get enough of its filters, bells, and whistles.

[troyvcd1]

I think that you can get the ligos mpeg encoder plug in for videostudio 6. I have the ligos encoder in ulead mediastudio 6.5 and I have found it to be on par with cce or tmpgenc. I still think these svcds are never gonna be as good as I need and Im going to go dvd soon

[Mavrick]

I’m not an expert at this. I can tell you some of the things that I have learned and save me time. I make XSVCD’s only, as I’m converting home videos to CD. I have managed over time to get it down to 4 easy steps.


Step 1: Capture the video as uncompressed AVI (this gives you the best quality to work with) as close to the final output resolution as you can. This will save encoding time if it does not have to resize it. In my case 480x480 or 640x480

Step 2: Edit the captured video. I use Media Studio Pro 6.5DC for this.

Step 3: Save the edited video in Media Studio as an MPEG2 480x480 with a VBR of 4000. Field order B first. (make sure your player can play this).

Step 4: Burn the MPEG file(s) to CD with DVD Movie Factory. Make your menus etc…

That’s it!!

You can download a trial copy of Media Studio Pro from
http://www.ulead.com/msp/runme.htm

They also offer upgrade offers from other editing software – so you can get it as cheep as $129.00 for the DC version.

Works every time and I get video as good as the original… I would say its DVD quality. The down side is I can only get 20-30min per CD with a bit rate that high… but with this quality, I’ll take it!

[dryduck]

Hm. I don't know if I can capture at 480x480 (with or without capturing to mpeg-2), but this would definitely be a time and space saver. Not a good idea if I want to save back to DV tape though. I might try it and see what it does for quality.

I don't see the option to specify capture resolution in the VS manual. I'm probably stuck with the actual DV resolution.

[Mavrick]

With DV and Firewire you are stuck will pulling it into your computer at that resolution. You can convert it after you edit. Capturing at other resolutions if for analog only (VHS/Hi-8).

[dryduck]

A little trick I just found out.... in the "finish" step if you create a video file and choose "Custom" for the format, you can change lots of the mpeg parameters such as bitrate. I'm going to try a high-bitrate xsvcd this way.

[Mavrick]

let me know how it works...

[troyvcd1]

what dvd player will play 4000 bps. my pioneer maxes out at 2600.

[Mavrick]

I have tested the RCA 5240P ($99.00) with rates at 4500 and it playes them great! You can get them at Sears, Target, Radio Shack...

[dryduck]

4000bps worked great (and looked significantly better than the default) for me. Go-Video DVP-950.

I also made a CVD (352x480?, default bitrate) and that played too, but it didn't look as good (the theory is that the lower resolution doesn't make much of a negative difference, but at the same bitrate it lets the encoder use more data per pixel).

[Mavrick]

dryduck,

I'm glad you got it to work! Have fun and be sure to share your new found knowledge in here...

If you need anything else... just drop a line....


Mavrick

[dryduck]

Argh. I just spent a half hour typing in a long story only to lose it.

Basically after a week of trial and lots of error I have found several things that do not work as I expected.

problem 1: I have basically a single 30 minute DV capture, that VS6 automatically split into 4G chunks. TMPGenc would only read 2G of each chunk. Argh. I had to go back into VS6 and split it into <2G chunks which took a long time.

Problem 2: Could not get TMPGenc to produce decent-looking output. The diagonal edges were jagged as if the resolution was off or the interlacing was wrong. Could not correct this problem (gave up). The conversions from the 4G AVI files looked fine -- they were just too short! So I don't know what I screwed up. I tried changing the interlace settings on the input file and tried different bitrate modes all to no avail.

Problem 3: I ended up using VS6 to export to a custom mpeg. Chose the SVCD settings and bumped the quality up to the max and it was great. The problem is that it's tedious; there are no settings you can change when you choose "create SVCD". You have to export to a custom mpeg and then author the SVCD separately.

Problem 3: it appears that when I use Ulead DVD Movie Factory to author the SVCD's from the resulting good mpeg file, the audio is out of sync when played on a standalone player. I can't figure this out. Used VCDEasy to burn a small clip that I converted in exactly the same way, and it was in sync. Did not try VCDEasy on the full-length file yet.

How can the authoring software turn a perfectly-good mpeg file into one where the audio is out of sync? Argh. I wanted to use DVD movie factory because it lets me easily create menus, save my work on the menus (which is going to take a long time) and use background music in the menus (which at this point I'm not using, so I know it's not a factor). This is the first time I've used DVD movie factory; previously I just used the svcd plugin in VS6, which did not have this trouble.

Argh. Time to look for patches and info from Ulead on that one.

For my current project I'll probably use VCDeasy, skip the menus, and just do the scene markers (whatever the term is) so that I can skip ahead. But eventually I want the menus to work!

[dryduck]

Hm, there IS a patch for DVD movie factory that says it fixes some audio/video sync problems. Wish I could test it right now!