?? How to improve SVCD quality ??

[Scar]

Hi

First of all : I'm new to the forum here, but i've bin following VCDhelp and this forum for quite some time now, it's bin a great help for me to capture my old VHS tapes and converting them to VCD and SVCD......thanks for that guys, keep up the good work.

But my problem with the quality improvement, i can't seem to solve myself, i've bin looking for topics for this but can't find them.

My system specs ;
Win XP
Ahtlon 1200
Asus V7700 Ti DeLuxe (used for capturing and calibrated in VDub)
Maxtor 40 Gig 7200 Rpm

Capturing with VirtualDub @ 352x288
Compression during capping Huffyuv, with hardly any frame loss.
I can capture up to 720x576 with minimum frame loss

Converting to MPEG2 with TMPGEnc, CBR (tried all setting, with the unlock template but this gives best result)

My goal is to play the SVCD's on my standalone DVD player and with the Header trick i can play SVCD cd's on my Sony DVP-NS305, which isn't SVCD compatible according to specs.

Well my problem is that the endresult looks like a copy of a copy of a copy from an VHS tape, and the source tapes aren't that bad.
It's my understanding that SVCD could look great, nearly lossless if i'm not mistaken.
Capturing in higher resolution gave no improvement, the interlaced image is visible on th PC but gives a smooth video, but on the standalone DVD player it gives blockiness and stutter, no matter if i change fields (top&bottom) and de-interlacing gives just about the same result as capping in 352x288.
VBR encoding gives audio out of sync with the DVD player.......etc etc

Can't think of anything more to try, hoping for some help here

in advance.........thx

Scar

Ps : I had to do some cheap copy and paste work, since i posted this already on the Capture thread.......my mistake...sorry....

Scar

[double7007]

Hey sup. I'm not exactly sure that I can help you out, but I will try.
First of all, remember that in North America we use NTSC, not PAL. PAL is for Europe and some other countries. Some DVD-Players here can't play things that are in PAL, meaning they stutter, their picture is off balance, things like that. So, make sure you are encoding in NTSC.

Second, make sure you captured in higher resolution. I read somewhere in your post that that didn't help, but it also depends on what you capture with. Personally, I recommend Dazzle DVC MovieStar for the newbie, and MGI Videowave for the more experienced user. Dazzle products are cheap (at least, the last time I checked) and you can probably get them at a retail store for a lot less. I recommend capturing in AVI because it is great quality. You should capture in AVI and encode to MPEG2 (remember, its MPEG2 for SVCD, and MPEG1 for VCD!) in TMPGENC. And if you are using the project wizard, the last step will show you the estimated file size and this little "timeline". Don't mess with it, just hit next and start encoding. If you try to make the blue bar on the timeline smaller, it will affect the quality greatly. So leave it as it is.

I hope that goes quite a way in solving your problem, but if not, sorry. Good luck and have fun!

[Scar]

Ops, i looked on the map, and yesss Holland is still in Europe....u gave me a scare there.......

That means i did the correct thing.....which is working in Pal, i can't imagine that i bought a DVD player here in Holland that is NTSC compatible.

I always cap with Huffyuv to AVI, no matter the resolution i cap in, i loose a minimum of frames, no problems there whatsoever.
The AVI looks pretty good (bare in mind that it's just a analogue source)

The problem is that when i capture in ie 480x576 (SVCD standard but IMO not necesarry for VHS) i get the interlaced video.

Converting the AVI to MPEG2 with TMPGenc keeping the same aspect ratio and no de-interlacing, and some filters tagged, gives a pretty smooth looking SVCD Mpeg on the PC, but still interlaced.


After burning to VCD (need to do that, but after header trick i still got the SVCD) i get a distorted video, lot's of blockiness and stutter IMO cuzz of the interlaced video, when i do the same trick but now with de-interlacing i get just about the same result as capturing in 352x288 and that is acceptable, but not more then that, i can defenitly see a 20% downgrade in quality from the original tape to the (S)VCD

IF capturing in higher resolution would offer some improvement, i would do so but as described above it isn't working (yet)

The software suggested by u, is there a demo available ??

Thx.................Scar

[double7007]

try www.dazzledvc.com or www.dazzle.com
You can find more software for free or demos at www.techtv.com i know they are great at this stuff.
hope it helps see ya