TMPGEnc. optimum settings, please help.

[Polzovatel]

I am new at this an trying to convert some VHS to VCD. I chose VCD because of its compatibility. Now I captured my videos on AVI's with AVerTV USB. I did them compressed b/c uncompressed are simply enormous and would not fit on H/D.
Still the AVI's a re too big for a CD, so I want to convert them into MPG.
The first tries were atrocious. I have a PII-450 with probably 128MB RAM.
Now I'm trying to improve quality by hiking that variable that has to do with motion which results in EXTREMELY long processing, about an hour per minute of video. I also chose Constant Quality bitrate.
My settings look like this:
MPEG-1 640x480 30fps CQ 50, Layer-2 44100Hz 192kbps

Some questions that I have - is the res. going to prevent me from doing something? I saw different resolution used over and over and it ain't 640x480. What's the best method for bitrate? How to properly use the bitrate calculator? Should I use the templates? Please respond, cause I'm lost in all the possible transmutations of the settings.

[Polzovatel]

Another question - what about framerate.
Also I have a distinct impression that mouse-pointer help for TMPGEnc was not written by an English native speaker. is it a Japanese program?

[Polzovatel]

Ok, so I've got back an MPG that I can use, sorta. But the questions remain. What resolution should I set, what bitrate, what frames per second? Also the file came out about twice the size I expected - 420MB for 20 min movie. Can that be controlled?

[Vejita-sama]

OK, from the top:

VCD standard resolution is 352x240 NTSC (or 352x288 for PAL). NTSC is the standard in the US, Canada and Japan. PAL is the standard in Europe.

PAL only has one framerate, 25fps. NTSC has two: 29.97fps (aka 30fps) and 23.976fps (24fps). Without going into the history your TV displays a 30fps interlace source, and movies are shot at 24fps progressive. To get a 24fps movie to play on TV they have to convert it to 30fps (this is known as telecine aka 3:2 pulldown).

If you want to make a standard VCD in TMPGenc, click on load in the bottom right and choose the VCD Template. This will 'lock' the resolution to 352x240, video bitrate=1150kbit/s and audio=224kbit/s.

The standard template works out to 1min=10MB. x(S)VCDs data is saved as mode 2. Again, long story short than means an 74min CDR holds 74min/740MB and an 80min CDR holds 80min/800MB of VCD data (at the standard bitrates).

The size of your MPEG is 100% dependant on the bitrate. The resolution and size of the source does not matter. If you decide to change the bitrate (or resolution) to make an xVCD [which by the way is what you've been doing] you can choose the best bitrates using a bitrate calculator. Click on Tools and try the vcdhelp.com one (choose either xVCD or SVCD it doesn't matter).

As for capturing, you want to capture in the highest possible quaility you can (even thou you [might] plan to lower the resolution and bitrate latter).

I assume you're capturing at 640x480. This is fine. The NTSC standard is 720x480, but VHS is lower than this (i forget what). But to make a standard VCD you'll want to resize to 352x240 (this would also solve any interlacing problems).

As for speed, well with a P2-450 it's going to take a long time For best quaility you might want to try either 2pass VBR or CQ_VBR, which will take even longer.