2 clips for you to destroy...and diagnose...

[therick]

Alright, I am on the verge of getting the perfect system down to convert my Star Wars LDs to SVCD...here are two clips for you guys to look at and evaluate...and help me out. I know the clips are dark, this was my first time fiddling with levels...but the main problems I am having have to do with a stair step effect on lies in the .mpgs. Are the fields on these two clips swapped? What is the best way of finding out? Now I have swapped the fields and burned them to test on my TV...but I can't tell a difference. Is it field swapping at all that is my problem? Any help would be much appreciated...the clips are here:

www.clemson.edu/~rlrobbi

and this is my method...

From the S-Vid of my Sony LD Player to the S-Vid of my PCTV
Captured at 640x480 using VDub and Huffy...
Frameserved with vdub (2D cleaner (r=1, sp=9) interlaced checked, smoother = 2 with noise prefilter, and resized to 480x480 bilinearly)
to CCE 2.5 and encoded at a CBR of 2500
muxed with sound from toolame via bbmpeg


any comments on my methods or the cips would be greatly appreciated...I guess I should probably IVTC? Thanks in advance...

[therick]

...and just for shits and giggles I added a 3 1/2 minute clip of what I think is the worst part of the whole movie quality wise...all the other stuff looks good except for some of the desert stuff...any filter advice...this is acceptable to me, but I am definitely willing to take filter suggestions...

[bbb]

Looking at test2.mpg, the imperial battle cruiser looks very jagged like a vcd. That should not have occured if you captured at 640x480 and downsized to SVCD resolution.

You should have used bicubic resizing. Bilinear washes out colors and does not do a good job at hiding jaggies (it is a growing misconception that Bilinear is better than Bicubic for resizing purposes). Stick with Precise Bicubic for enlarging and downsizing. Do a test encoding comparing the two and you will see that bicubic gives better color and detail.

Other than that, your blacks look pretty decent on an lcd.

Also, try IVTC and encode as progressive to lower the number of cdrs that you need to use (from 3 to 2).

[therick]

I was afraid that it was resizing, yeah I have read everywhere that bilinear is the way to go....DAMMIT!....I will try that, thanks man...

[therick]

hey which bicubic should I try? There is .6, .75, and 1.00...or should I just do precise bicubic...any suggestions??

[baker]

Precise bicubic does 2 things:

1. Really ups the quailty a lot, and i do mean a lot, billinear looks like a sh!t a cat with the wolloy wollys did.

2. really ups the encoding time but believe me its worth it.

so go with billinear and see if you can see the differrence between ure ld's and ure svcds

baker

[dphirschler]

Bilinear is great. Don't knock it. Bi-cubic is great too, but I prefer bilinear. But if you want the best quality, try both and compare the two. Always use precice. But whatever you do, don't use 'pixel resize' or the like.

I would suggest you get Donald Gaft's decomb filter. I think it is the best IVTC (inverse telecine) filter. It is a snap to use and makes beautiful IVTC conversion. You'll notice much better detail and fewer artifacts if you convert to progressive through the use of IVTC.


Darryl

[MITSUI_1]

The clip with the Jawa's transport almost looks as if you've used one of the "even field" or "odd field" settings in TMPGenc's or the Vdub interlacers. Not good, as that disgards 1/2 of your scene information.

Let me give you a suggestion for a filter chain, and you can see how it looks (apply the filters in this order).

1. Deinterlace (Area Based) setings of 19 and 21.
2. Levels (if you want to ... shave 10 to 14 from each side of the top slider).
3. Resize upwards (that's right, upwards... trust me) using "nearest neighbor" (trust me on this too) to 960x960.
4. Now apply 2d cleaner using the settings you've settled on, but w/o checking interlaced. Because you've risized upwards, the filter will not wipe out as much detail.
5. Next, do a 2:1 reduction (high quality). That drops you back to 480 x480 and is a nice nice nice quality resize.
6. Finally, add a touch of regular "smoother" (i.,e., set it to 1 or 2, with noise prefilter on).

Do a frameserve to TMPGEnc

Last but not least, set your TMPGenc advanced settings to include noise reduction (high quality checked). Put the top slider all the way to zero, the middle slider to 1 or 2 and the "time" slider (i.e., TMPGenc's temporal smoother) to somewhere between 7 and 25.

Encoding this will take a HELLA long time. Up to a week depending on your computer's power. So make sure you do a couple 5 or 10 minute samples using "source range" and burn them to CDRW to test. I personally don't mind super long encodes so long as the results are nice, because lets face it, you only have to encode once if you do it right.

Good luck, and may the force be with you.

(BTW, the above all assumes you're not going to do IVTC and intend to stick wiht 29.97 fps. I agree with others that IVTC is useful, but its damn hard on the starwars films because the goofey scene change effects play hell with the telecining patterns, in my experience. I'm working on the Star Wars films myself, however, and will let you know if my opinion changes!

[markab]

"Encoding this will take a HELLA long time. Up to a week depending on your computer's power. "

A WEEK ! Ouch... you have more patience then I my friend. 8)

[baker]

BILLINEAR IS CRAP!!!!!!! i didn't want to say this eailier in case i offended somebody but it is total shite!!

baker

[therick]

Thanks for the replies guys...yeah I have decided (at least in this case) that bilinear is NOT the way to go. I have done some tests with bicubic and it DOES look a lot better. Not only are a lot of the lines gone, but color IS better...I will post some more clips next week at work (behind my shitty modem at home this weekend) to show you guys the progress...finally I seeing the light at the end of this tunnel...

@MITSUI_1 - I tried your method on a 10 second clip...it took 20 minutes just to do the AVI! I noticed a little quality increase...I am gonna take it to the TV tonight to see how it looks...

[vhelp]

therick,

for the life of me, I just can't seem to see how your clips are
producing such bad quality. I mean, no color, and yes, jitters.
Sounds like "field order", and incorrect 3:2pulldown or something,
caues I noticed that every 5th frame re-displays (or stops) and not
to mention blocks.

I thought that LD's were suppose to be good quality, like DVD.
If what you have produced is the best that can be (ripped) from
these LD's, ...what a waist. I think that you'd (i'd) get better
quality from a VHS capture. Sorry, not to sound like I'm ranting
on you. I'm not. I was just surpised at the poor quality. And,
even if you do fix the "field order" / 32pulldn issue it doesn't
look promising to me. I'm shocked.

Another thing that really sucks (not your encoode) is the really
narrow "widescreen" views. I hate thise narrow ones. I don't mind
the lesser "widescreen". They are good quality.

In any case, what's the purpos of the use of the 2D filter??
If you LD is close to DVD quality, then why even use this filter??
Same goes for the noise filter too.

Tip, instead of fighting your method of encode, leave out ALL those
filter till you got the other two issues fixed (32pldn, fieldorder)
then, if you stll wanna, then use the filters. I recommended this
because you are in the development state of finding the right kind
of encode to produced better quality than your previous attempts,
but, keeping these filters on will only steal your prescious "time"
away, as well as kill your desire to produce good VCD/SVCD from your
LD's. ie, instead of only producing 3 encodes, if you stop using
any filters, you could probably do 20 encodes, and get closer to
your goal. Juts trying to help here.

Give the above a try.

-vhelp

PS: i'm stll stumped about the LD quality though

[therick]

@vhelp - don't feel bad...honestly I was surprised at the quality also...I started with a WinTV Go doing these through the composite video, but held out for S-video (Pinnacle PCTV) because I thought the quality would be much better...but alas, as you have said the quality isn't great.

I HAVE stopped putting the filters on trying to get rid of this problem. Those clips are just from when I was starting out, they are off of one of the CDs that I have at work.

I will post some raw captures next week...so you can see why I have the cleaning filters on there...

Another side note...I have a friend here at Clemson who is using the serial interface on the back of the LD player to grab EACH frame with a copmuter...(he is doing video encoding reasearch for a prof) and he says that his quality is similar to what I am gettting...the LDs do look good on my TV, but when I capture them they just seem to lose a lot of quality...

[vhelp]

therick,

ok, so let me see how the quality scale is thus far, from highest
to lowest:
* LD (laser disk caps) (worse quality)
* TV (atten. caps)
* VHS (caps)
* TV (cable. caps)
* TV (digit. caps)
* TV (Satalete caps) (great quality, pending their source qlty)
* DVD to VCD/SVCD encodes (VCDs reach VHS or better quality)

I don't get it. I've actually done some straight captures to AVI
from a VCD source via my dvd player and got "same" quality as my
store bought VCD (Goldfinger) if not slightly less qlty.

What is the resolution (lines) for LD?? 100?? You must be doing
something wrong. Only because VHS captures and encodes to VCD look
pretty good.

-vhelp

[MITSUI_1]

therick:

Wow, i didn't think it'd take THAT long!


Question:

What resolution are you trying to capture in?

[therick]

@MITSUI_1 - I am capturing at 640x480...then going down to 480x480...

@vhelp - I capture loads of stuff from different sources...I'll have to post some of my clips to prove that I know what I am doing...

Digital Satellite - really, really, good quality...the S-Video makes a HUGE difference with this...I have done about 20 Seinfeld episodes(->VCD), 10-11 movies(->SVCD), 2-3 basketball games(->SVCD)...about 15 Simpsons episodes(->VCD)...I don't even use filters the quality is so good...

VHS - tons of stuff, too many to mention...not so good, but without filters they look as good as they do on my TV....I rarely use filters

LD - this is the first source I have HAD to use filters on....there is dot crawl and a lot of noise...

I will post some clips from my oither captures and then the LD ones...maybe my player sucks I don't know...I can live with the quality I am getting though...I would like better, but I am ready to move on to other stuff (my guitar, etc..) so I think I am gonna try to get this right as quick as possible or else just set it aside for a while...hell this is the only reason I got into this obsession anyway...

[MITSUI_1]

therick:

Ok. Hmm.. What are you using to capture so far as a codec?

Is there any way you can uplood 30 to 50 megabytes of your "raw" capture footage somewhere, and I'll download it and play around with it. I only ask because I am supposed to do a couple L.D. captures for a friend in a few weeks (he's bring over his player) and its sounding like I need to prepare for extra work.

Best regards,

MITS

[therick]

@MITSUI_1 - I am using Huffy...and I think that I will be switching to AVI_IO for capture because it doesn't drop any frames...yeah, I'll see if I can get some of the raw on my website...won't be til tomorrow though....maybe that is the root of the problems anyway.....

[vhelp]

therick,

hows the quality of the AVI file??
* does it look sharp and colorful??
If the above is good quality or looks pretty close to the LD's quality,
then it must be your encoding method(s)

For the above method to yield good results, I like to use BSplayer and drag a file to it's icon to start and load up the avi file (or mpeg1 file)
When I do my 352x480 captures, i do the above. I like it because it will retain the origonal capured video size (352x480)
If you capture at 720x480, it may not display/play properly, so the beaty
of BSplayer is you can size it while it's playing (or in pause mode) by
using the "-" or "+" keys on the numeric keypad. Size it smaller to get
a smoother play of your 720x480 captures.

-vhelp

[therick]

@vhelp - the AVIs look alright (not great) I have some vhs tapes that are better color wise, but another thing that I should mention is that there is not a lot of color in A New Hope. There is the light brown of the desert...the gray of the death star, the black of space...three scenes with color jump to my memory:

1. Luke looking at the sunset
2. Yavin, the red gas giant, and the jungle scenes of the moon
3. The end ceremony...

other than that this movie does not have tons of color if you think about it...what color there is sometimes muted (cantina scene...)

I will have to post some pictures of my AVI caps...to show you the quality I start out with...now I have done my Perfect World LD before and the colors look really good...I will post some pictures of that...yeah I am gonna stay away from the filters until I get this straightened out...and as for the captures, they do look fairly colorful, but one thing they are NOT is sharp...but you will see...I will gladly proclaim myself an idiot, liar, antichrist if I can get these freaking LDs transferred with decent quality...

[vhelp]

therick,

I to am having great dificulty like you in your endevers. ...getting my DV to transfer via
firewire, using Studio 7 (CD is the 7SE) they must have updated
it or sometihng. But box said supports windows 98, and when I
load it up, it works fine, but when I go to capture something,
my old ATI card and DC10plus driver showsup ONLY. No mention
of my firewire or DV cam, etc. To, I'm also pulling my hair
out figureing this out by my lonsome. As for those posts that
want to argue with me (prev threads) I could care less about
those frevilous legalities, he, he...

anyways, I'm not sure I can d/l any huge avi's, but may try to
if possible. I'mtrying to get my firewire issue worked out.
Oh, my firewire card installed w/out a hitch, and I have no IRQ
conflicts. Just studio 7 wont pull up my 1394 driver in it's
list.

I would post for some help here, but noone here seems to be
using there DV cam's to "capture" via firewire.
anyways...

Quesiton, do you have many LD's?? and have you tried them all
for quality. Cause maybe it's just the Star Wars LD's or
just that this particular disk is worn out, he he...

-vhelp

[therick]

@vhelp - sorry I have no experience with that or I would help you...I am actually planning on just grabbing some .jpg files of my quality and posting them (along with an .avi)...son't worry, I only have like 80 MB on this webspace, so I don't think I will be able to get anything on there...but yeah, I will post some pictures tomorrow...

[vhelp]

therick,

As for my DV endevers. . .
Tanx for your consirn. I got it working. I am now able to transfer my DV tape recordings via firewire. I'm testing (vcd/
svcd) them and burning them as I right this.
I hope that this DV stuff proves to be better quality productions, else
I'm be pretty dissapointed. I'm
sure I'll be hitting some more bumps along the way.

Anyways, oh, 5mb is ok. I wish I had 80mb for web storage, but
i only have 20mb. Still, its not so bad.

-vhelp

[therick]

I have done IVTC with AVISynth! I think that it looks better (at least on my computer) than my earlier clips, but I can't get one in to post it...any ways, my last issue is my terrible input quality...I don't have any raw AVI files, but I DO have some clips posted on the web...but since I think this is getting into another category, I am gonna move this discussion here:

http://forum.vcdhelp.com/viewtopic.php?p=212000#212000