VCD and SVC capture resolutions?

[zx80]

Hello,

I'm converting Hi-8 (analogue) home movies onto VCD and SVCD formats (maybe even XVCD, XSVCD etc.). Eventually onto DVD, of course.

Currently I'm capturing via my Mac G4 Cube, using the following pipeline:

Sony Camcorder (Hi8, analogue) ->
S-Video cable ->
Sony Media Converter ->
Firewire ->
I-Movie 2

I'm capturing at 29.97fps with 720x480 resolution, uncompressed. Then subsequently converted (uncompressed)into a Quicktime file. Needless to say, I'm using vast amounts of HD space, but that's no problem.

I've tried a variety of encoding solutions with mixed results. Mostly I'm compressing using TMPGENC on a PC.
Admittedly I've not tried using perfect source material (e.g. DVD) to compare my results against. Naturally the quality of source material greatly affects all subsequent results.

My question is this:

I am likely (YMMV) to get better results capturing at the same resolution as the destination format(s), cleaning them up then compressing them,
OR
am I better to capture at my current resolution then apply a combination of size reduction / filters to end up at the target resolution before compression.

Your thoughts/experiences would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[Shabubu]

It depends on your source, general rule of thumb is that you cap at your target res, but when you convert res's VHS is only about 300, Broadcast is around 500 (stanweber can confirm or deny this ), so you may be being a bit wastefull, it may also be worth getting the huffyuv codec (if it can be used on mac's) as you'll get a 2.1 x saving on space with no quality loss(lossless codec), Picvideo also has a lossless codec...

It's a pity they stopped making the cube, it was a gorgeous little beast how's it handle UT ??

[JHebert]

As far as I know the Sony Media Converter is a DV device and as such is set to 720x480 using DV compression. Its not really uncompressed, its just that the device is doing the conversion in hardware before transferring it via Firewire to your Mac. I'm not sure if any resolutions other than 720x480 or codecs other than DV will be available. Not that this is a bad thing since DV is a very high quality capture method.
Anyway I would say your current method is good although it requires a lot of HD space and conversion time in TMPGEnc as you said. I don't know of any freeware Mac MPEG encoders comparable to TMPGEnc, but if you can get your hands on the QuickTime MPEG enocder extension that comes with Apple DVD Studio Pro (big $$$), I understand it is very good and fast encoder.

[zx80]

JHebert: You're correct, it is DV not quite uncompressed. Nonetheless the quality on the Mac is very good, haven't really noticed droppped frames. The Mac is 500Mhz with a fast 60Gb HD.
I FTP the files to my 900 MHz Athlon to do the MPEG encoding... a little extra time to do that, but the encoding time is killing me (and everyone else no doubt
I think you may be correct about the media converter resolution, I'll have to look it up. It's a great piece of equipment, though. Very compact.

Shabubu: Yeah, the Cube is terrific. I got it to do non-linear editing of my home movies, I-Movie 2 is cool. OS-X is very sweet. I keep the files in DV... can TMPEGENC use them as-is? Right now I convert to an uncompressed Quicktime file then read that in on the PC side. A lot of duplicated data, of course. About 1Gb per 5 mins it seems at that resolution. I'm waiting for the day I can get an external firewire Superdrive or equivalent

Anyway, still not sure if I should reduce the size before compression. If so, what should I use to do that? I've heard good claims about VirtualDub (seems cool so far) vs. TMPEGENC.

Thoughts?

[JHebert]

I think TMPGEnc should be able to open the DV files so you could skip exporting to uncompressed QuickTime and save a lot of time and HD space. The TMPGEnc plugin for importing QuickTime MOV is flaky from what I have heard, so you may want to export to DV AVI instead of DV MOV from your Mac. You would need to have a DV codec installed on your PC such as from MainConcept.
Also look into the QuickTime MPEG-2 encoder from DVD Studio Pro that I mentioned. Not sure if it works in OS X or just OS 9. If it does work it might save you a lot of time exporting to the PC.
I usually just resize in TMPGEnc when needed, but probably others have some views on the subject.