How can I do a decent DV AVI to XVCD conversion with TMPGEnc

[colbeck]

I am fairly new to this but have been trying to convert some of my home movies for playback on my DVD player. My DVD player (Toshiba SD5700) seems to support VCD and XVCD but not SVCD. I want to get high quality conversion (compression amount is not so important to me) of my home DV clips. I want the quality to be good enough that I can overwrite the DV tapes and not be concerned that I am losing my original "masters". I am using Videostudio4 (came with my firewire card) to do the original capture to DV AVI, and then TMPGEnc to do the conversion.

By XVCD I mean 720 x 480 Mpeg2. I have experimented with interlaced, non-interlaced, 2-pass VBR, CQ, floating DCT, Basic YCbCr, filters, soften block noise, etc. However, I am still not happy with the results. I am using bit rates around 5000Kb/s max, 3000Kb/s average. Recently I obtained good video quality (with CQ, =50, 5000Kb/s max) but the audio is all choppy (even though I have experimented with various sample and bit rates). One other thing I notice is that often if I do a Pause on the DVD player (of my XVCD), the video jitters or flickers, whereas this does not happen with a real DVD. Anyone know why? Is this an indication of some incorrect setting I have used?

Can anyone give me a good "how-to" or some hints

Thanks, ...Roger

[EricB]

Roger,
Just my opinion, but I bought a DVD player primarily to use for home video stuff. If your goal is to overwrite your DV tapes after you make video cds, I would get a player that supports SVCD. I convert DV to SVCD with the default TMPGenc template, and the results are great. The Pioneer 343 plays these nicely.

I still don't plan on overwriting original tapes until I can afford to record to DVD standards with reasonably priced media.

[colbeck]

Eric:

I thought about returning the unit to get one with SVCD support but then I found that XVCD (or is is XSVCD - still not sure of the nomenclature)worked. Since the XVCD I'm using is higher resolution, MPEG2, and fairly high bit rates, I thought I should be able to get really good quality. (Is this an incorrect assumption). However, I clearly have not hit on the correct settings yet, or maybe have too high standards. I should look at some sample X(S)VCDs but have not found too many of these on the net (even on this site).

Good point about waiting until DVD writers are affordable before erasing my DV tapes!

..Roger

[kevbach]

I bought the toshiba sd 4700 model so I could also play my home movies on a dvd player. I am using Ulead video studio 5.0 and tmpgenc for conversion. I know that the 4700 cannot play mpeg2 format cd's (or at least I cannot get it to) but I have had good success with mpeg1 vcd's. The settings I use in tmpgenc are :
resolution 352 x 240
automatic variable bitrate @ 3000 max, 500 min, and 80 quality
High setting on the filter

Conversion is about 4-5x and I can fit about 30 minutes on a cd.

Keep in mind I am new to this as well but the I am happy with these results. I play my vcd's on a 46 inch bigscreen I and am happy with the quality. While its not as good as the direct camcorder feed, its better quality than if I were to dub it to a vcr tape.

[colbeck]

Thanks for the input. What is your original video source - analog or DV?

Actually I bet the 4700 can play mpeg2, as it is probably the same as the 5700 and 3750 (which I had for a few days). I encode to mpeg2 720x480. (I don't think mpeg2 at any other resolution works on the player.) It plays but I find the video quality a bit grainy and blocky (I think worse than VHS quality). I will try a VCD with the settings you mention.

Since the source is DV and is very crisp in native format, maybe I'm just being too fussy and expecting too much from the conversion.

..Roger

[kevbach]

My source is DV from a Sony digital8 camcorder.