How to get good looking VCD's?????

[Mudhole]

Hello, I'm looking for help on how to produce good quality VCD when played tru DVD players on tv. I have made several videos that play great on Windows Media Player, but when I make a Video Cd and play it on my DVD player, the video shows the pixels (really blocky/blurred) and the audio is out of sink! I'm using a Dazzel DVC Capture device, editing with Ulead Video Studio 4.0, and burning my Video CD's with Click-N-Burn. I'm also running a 700 MHZ, Pent 3 computer with a 20 GHD. I want to be able to produce good/great quality outdoors videos for sale on my web site. Like I said before, I have some that will play great on a computer, but now want to get into the video cd field, so they can be played on the family tv set!

[vcdfreak]

I used the Ulead Video Studio 4.0 before and it seems that the quality of the MPEG-1(VCD) file produced is quite blocky. The 5.0 version improves the quality a bit.

Now I am using Premiere to do all the editing and frameserve it TMPGEnc and the quality is superb!

[Mudhole]

Is that the Adobe Premiere? And what is frameserve? Could you run that by me one more time, please?

[vcdfreak]

You can get more help here:

http://www.vcdhelp.com/premiereavisynth.htm


Yes, it's Adobe Premiere. If you are willing to pay for it, it can produce avi files and be converted MPEG using the free TMPGEnc (Tsunami MPEG Encoder, http://www.tmpgenc.net).

Whereas, Ulead Video Studio converted video directly to MPEG using not so intelligent conversion algorithm.

It's a bit confusing when you do frameserving using avisynth for the first time. Once you are familiar with it, you will stick to it. The reason is to avoid generating big avi files and export frames directly to encoder software such as TMPGEnc.

Of course, to get better VCD quality, you need to sacrifice more time and probably money. Hope this helps.

[Mudhole]

Was looking at Premiere, little to high for me right now @500+, is there a good capture device that don't cost so much? The Dazzel DVC I have ran 200 bucks!!

[vcdfreak]

I ran across this the other day in this forum:

http://www.geniv.com/MPEG.HTM

To me, it's quite informative.

[geniv]

hehe

" I ran across this the other day in this forum:
http://www.geniv.com/MPEG.HTM
To me, it's quite informative. "

someone actually recommending my page with out me posting any annoying self promotion

despite what card u use, if u can afford the HD space and time. I recommend encoding in 320x240 (or PAL 320x28 resolution and highest bitrate u can, then reencode it to VCD complient file with Tmpenc.

[sracer]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2002-01-15 18:51:39, Mudhole wrote:
Hello, I'm looking for help on how to produce good quality VCD when played tru DVD players on tv. I have made several videos that play great on Windows Media Player, but when I make a Video Cd and play it on my DVD player, the video shows the pixels (really blocky/blurred) and the audio is out of sink! </BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

You omitted the most important piece of information: What DVD player are you playing these VCDs on? A majority of the time, when people complain about the quality of VCDs, they're usually using an Apex, Toshiba, or Sony DVD player. These are notorious for substandard playback. Apex players in particular have problems with pixelation and audio sync.

I have a Dazzle DVC (USB version) and have had great success with it in the nearly 2 years that I've owned it.

Check out the sample on my homepage: http://pages.prodigy.net/tcperconti/ I have an unretouched sample captured with the Dazzle DVC using the VideoCD template.

Before investing any more time in creating higher quality VCDs, I recommend testing your VCDs on a known quality player, like a Pioneer DV-343, DV-434, DV-440, or DV-444.

[Mudhole]

Just looked at your site, very nice clips!! What settings to you have your Dazzle set on? Maybe I need to mess with those some more! I also noticed that you captured from a DVD player, I'm sure thats got a great deal to do with it! I getting my video from 1-full sized VHS camera and 1-VHSC camer, and sometimes yet another camera, all are usually set up on tripods!

[sracer]

As I mentioned in my previous post, that sample was captured using the VideoCD settings/template in the Dazzle DVC software. Yes, using a DVD player as source helps, but even my home videos (8MM Sony HandyCam) look nearly as good.

What DVD player are you using?

[Mudhole]

Check your e-mail, I sent you one earlier

[Mudhole]

Just checked it out, it's a Samsung DVD-V1000 Combo player

[vcdfreak]

Your player is not found in the DVD Players (Compatibilty List) on the left on this screen (OTHER section). Maybe you can contribute your findings to this site at the end of your research!

[NeVeRLiFt]

http://168.144.91.167/nickyguides/synth-vdub.htm
http://168.144.91.167/nickyguides/frameserve-flask.htm

http://www.doom9.org/mpg/tmpg-ivtc.htm
http://www.doom9.org/mpg/vfapi_reader_codec.htm

There are some guides and they might help you.
you dont need high dollar software. I have Adobe Premier 6.0 and was not impressed with it. Neither was I impressed with Ulead Media Studio Pro 6.5!
I can make awesome looking VCD/SVCD's using TMPGEnc and for DivX I use Nandub and my 1cd DVD rips made by Nandub are supra.