SVCD's, let's just cut to the chase.

[FredSnerk]

Ok People,

I've tried dozens of different programs and dozens of different templates and I'm confused, annoyed and I think I want to cry

Perhaps the easiest way for someone to help solve my dilemma is for me to explain what I need and for someone to tell me what to do!

It's this simple, I edit my DV in Premiere 6, export the timeline as a DV AVI. I want to create the highest quality compatible SVCD known to man, I don't care about file size as I'm encoding short films of 5 - 10 minutes to CD.

I'm looking for a steaming hot TMPGEnc template that allows me to encode an SVCD MPEG2 from the AVI and then burn it in Nero 5.5.

Is this too much to ask? Oh God please help me!!

Regards

Fred Snerk

[adam]

Well if your clips are that short then settings are kinda irrellavant. Just encode in cbr 2.6mbits. You will be able to fit alot more than 10 mins per cd but you CANT go higher anyway because that is the limit for svcd. If you dvd player supports higher bitrates then go for it otherwise just use the standard settings. Use either 480x480 for ntsc or 480x576 for pal.

Just load the ntsc or pal svcd template...not some custom made one just use the one that comes with TMPGenc. Then load the unlock template and set bitrate to cbr 2.6mbits.

If possible always do an inverse telecine, that gains an extra %20 quality. Other than that you are pretty much limited by the standard and by the quality of your source.

[FredSnerk]

Adam, thank you very much for your help!

To date I've really only read peoples posts on how much you can squeeze on a CD and never what's the best quality possible with out worrying about storage.

I took your advice and encoded a short film I made with a bitrate set to cbr 2.6mbits. The results were pretty good.

I tried encoding with "inverse telecine" checked in the Advanced tab of TMPGEnc but it gave me an error message of "The specified level cannot handle frame rates above 30fps" when I hit encode.

I changed the frame rate from the default 60fps to 24fps and the movie encoded really quickly and only played back a black screen with the audio. Any ideas?

Finally, allow me to ask which TMPGEnc encodes the best MPEG2 file? I have been using 12a as this is what I have read... can you confirm this?

Thanks

Fred Snerk

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: FredSnerk on 2001-07-07 00:32:01 ]</font>

[adam]

heh theres definitely more to performing an inverse telecine than that. Trust me its alot harder than that. To do an inverse telecine your source had to start out as film (24fps) and it had to have been properly telecined to 29.97fps. If this is not the case then an ivtc is impossible. But if so... double click on that inverse telecine tab. you have to configure it. Try using the automatic function if you want, it takes a while but doing it manually can be a real pain. If you want more info on this check out http://www.doom9.net, theres a whole lot you need to know to perform one of these well. But if you do perform a proper ivtc it literally removes (well sort of) %20 of your frames which means you get a boost of %20 in quality. And dont forget to check 3:2 pulldown on the video tab if your making a svcd ...This is a MUST.

I used version 12a for a long time... every version after that had serious problems with its mpeg2 vbr encoding. But now the latest version h appears to have fixed alot of those problems. I havent had a chance to really test it out but I have been encoding with it and I have been happy with the results so far. 12a is definitely a good one to use, but I think it finally might be worthwhile to upgrade.

[FredSnerk]

Once again Adam, thanks. I'll look into the matter of doing an inverse telecine over at doom9.

Can I ask you this... what is your opinion of Cinema Craft Encoder Lite? I have found it's encoding of MPEG2's to be much better than TMPGEnc. I just haven't been able to figure out how to make a compliant SVCD.

I don't want to open up a whole new can of worms with this seeing as though you've solved my TMPGEnc problem but if you or anyone else has knowledge on how to convert a DV AVI to a compliant SVCD in CCE, it would be great for me to try it and compare the two.

After all, I'm after greatest quality possible with out worrying about disc capacity and if CCE can achieve this then great!

Thoughts? Comments?

Regards,

Fred Snerk.