Improve sound and brightness in (s)vcd?

[DJ_Romeo60]

Hello my friends i would like your help once again.Lately i've been burning some (s)vcd's and play them on my deck dvd player but i encounter some brightness and volume problems,as some of them are too dark,and the sound volume is too low!I've alreasy tried adjusting brightness on tv but the colours get too messed up,and tried the volume on max but still it's pretty low.

Any suggestions on how can i edit the vcd's so there would be no problem next time?

[reboot]

Use the filters in your encoding program.
Tmpgenc has a few.
Personally, I edit/adjust everything in my avi in virtualdub, then frameserve to my encoder.

[DJ_Romeo60]

Can you plz tell which filters should i use and how to use them plz?It's urgent thank you!

[reboot]

In tmpgenc, use the Audio tab, put a tick in Use Audo Edit, click the Setting button, put a tick in Change Volume, increase it to whatever % you need.
Click the Advanced button, double click Simple Color Correction, increase the brightness.
Run a short test clip to see if the output is where you want it. Adjust as needed.

[DJ_Romeo60]

Ok i'll try it but do you think it will work?I really want the best results possible.Is Virtual dub best suited for this job maybe?

Thanx a lot for the tip!

[reboot]

If your original is an avi, and you know how to frameserve, then virtualdub is the way to go.
If that's all confusing (as I don't know your ability level), then stick with tmpgenc.
In virtualdub, click Video, Filters, and Add whatever you want. Play with them.
I usually find that the "Levels" filter works much better than brightness/contrast.
For audio in virtualdub, select Audio, Full Processing. Then select Audio, Use Advanced filtering. Then select Audio yet again, and select Filters, then Add.

[DJ_Romeo60]

No my original files are vcd but just wondered which filters work best since i have never used filters before exceptd direct vobsub and textsub.

If virtual Dub does better work then i'll try the mpeg version of it to make a beeter vcd.

Also is there a way to know if a vcd sound volume is low before i burn it?

[reboot]

Not really. Trial & error method.

[DJ_Romeo60]

Pk then Tmpgenc it is!Thanx a lot for the help.

One last question though,will i be able to tell if the sound needs increasement before i burn it?I don't want to do this procedure if nothingd wrong.

[DJ_Romeo60]

I just tried to increasing the volume with the tmpgenc method but doesn't work!When i change the volume setting and then return to the main window and press start it says that audio.mp2 cannot be created!Why's that?Of course if chosen ES sudio only.

[reboot]

I have no idea. It works fine on mine.

[theDruid]

IMHO you're unlikely to improve how your VCD files look by filtering them as you'll have to re-encode if they're already MPEG(1) files. The same goes for the audio, which you'll have to re-encode if you want to edit (unless you know of an app that can edit mp2 audio directly).

Every time you re-encode your video/audio you discard information and lose quality.

By all means try and use the filters to improve the brightness etc.. on new VCDs you make from other sources, and normalise the audio before encoding to mp2, but it's not clear that you'll improve things by trying to retrospectively fix these things on existing VCDs, as you have to decode -> edit -> re-encode.

Having said that, here's a few thoughts:

Any flavour of VirtualDub can open MPEG1 files as far as I'm aware.

If you have authored VCDs, use VCDEasy's tools to retrieve the actual mpg files.

VirtualDub can frameserve into TMPGEnc very easily, and this way you could use any of VirtualDub or TMPGEnc's filters.

TMPGEnc's MPEG tools can demux a VCD/MPEG1 file and give you the audio stream as an mp2 file, which I believe most audio editors will be able to open.

Use an audio editor like Audacity, GoldWave (not free) or Sound Forge (not free) to open the mp2 audio track, then normalise (or maximise the volume) and re-save as a wav file.

You should be able to see the effect that this process has had on the wave form. If it's had very little visible effect, it might not be worth doing.

You can then use tooLame and tooLameGUI to re-encode to a VCD compliant mp2 file (224kbps) and remux with the video stream in TMPGEnc's MPEG tools.

As far as making new VCDs goes, the audio editor in TMPGEnc has a simple maximise volume tool, which also should give you a good indication of whether you need to try and alter the level of the audio.

SSRC and Azid both have two-pass normalisation functions, and both of these tools can be used through BeSweet's GUI (only use them if you need to e.g. to resample from 48,000khz to 44,100khz or to decode from AC3).

All of the software I have mentioned there is freeware (except where I have indicated otherwise for the audio editors). As far as I'm aware all of the software can be found in the tools section of this site.

Let me/us know if you need any more details about any of this - I've glossed over a lot of different software and tasks there!

cheers,
theDruid.

[DJ_Romeo60]

No i pretty much get the point,but there are some vcds that are really dark and have very low volume that maybe its best to rencode them.I'd like to use soundforge for normalizations and see what happens.

As for the extractions can it be done with vcdeasy you say?In what way does it differ than extracting with isobuster,the method that i do?

Thanx for the help!

[theDruid]

I've never used ISObuster, but I doubt the results are any different to using VCDEasy's tools. All I was getting at is don't just copy the .dat file(s) and rename as .mpg - which is what a lot of people do. (This means the files play in WMP etc.. but can cause problems... but you already know that if you're extracting the files properly.)

There's no harm in seeing what the audio looks like in soundforge - I would say it's the best tool to use for normalising. You may find it's worthwhile to boost up the level of the audio, and that the quality loss from re-encoding the audio is not too bad.

Have a go and see if you think you're really improving things by re-encoding the video and/or audio.

Just remember the old sayings from this site: garbage in = garbage out, or another way of putting it: you can't polish a turd.

Let us know how you get on (I'd be interested to see some screen grabs if you try and filter and re-encode your video).

cheers,
theDruid.