TMPGEnc - What are the best settings for creating SVCD/VCD?

[makavel1]

i've been using this proggie for about a month now...have ripped a few dvds to vcd but am finding that some of the divx dvdrips i have downloaded look alot crisper in full screen than my vcds. the divx dvdrips are around 650-700mb where as my vcds are clocking in between 1.2 gig and 1.6 gig

am i correct in assuming that a higher bitrate will improve my quality, or are there other options in the settings that i should be considering also?

also, if i encoded an SVCD and VCD of the same movie at the same bitrate (eg 1500kbps), would the SVCD look better than the VCD?

and finally, i have noticed that with my recent VCD creations im getting this high pitched sound through the movie. is there something i've done wrong along the way or is there a way of filtering this out?

i've been using dvddecrypter to rip the vobs, DVD2AVI to frameserve and encode the audio, and TMPG to convert to VCD MPG format. i'm running a PIII 1gig w/512 mb sdram so dont think hardware is the problem.

anyway, your feedback and help is greatly appreciated

[poopyhead]

upto a certain point, bitrate doesn't improve quality...just filesize.

also, MPEG-2 (SVCD) has a much better compression algorithm than MPEG-1 (VCD)....so having a SVCD rip the same size as VCD rip will definitely favor SVCD in the quality department.

also, motion search accuracy to high quality (slow)......if you wanna do SVCD, the best quality would be 2 pass VBR...

of course that doubles the encoding time of CQ_VBR, which I personally use with great quality....if you do decide to use CQ_VBR, putting the CQ above 70 would be pointless (addes to filesize w/o adding quality)

also, increasing resolution will not add to filesize, but should increase quality somewhat (i.e. 720x480 vs. (standard) 480x480)

finally, dealing with crappy quality of standard VCDs...their low resolution and bitrate automatically makes their quality low

[makavel1]

thanks for the pointers dude, very helpful indeed

i'm ripping a dvd to svcd right now and although the bitrate is not that high (1230kbps) the quality is much better than my previous attempts at vcd

i attempted to change the resolution also but this cut off the edges of the video

i used cq_vbr also as you suggested...see what u mean about 2 pass taking twice as long (24 hours in 2pass vs 14 hours in cq_vbr) but found that increasing/decreasing the CQ had no effect on size

another question - what does non-interlace and deinterlace do? i have turned these settings on but not sure what they do. are there any foreseen problems that i will have if i use/don't use these settings

once again thanks a heap

[poopyhead]

when you use dvd2avi, you'll notice in the info box that most movies are majority FILM....however, they are not completely FILM (i.e. 95% FILM 5% NTSC)

that NTSC property of the movie can cause interlaced lines if you turn on FORCED FILM in dvd2avi....that's still the correct thing to do if the movie is consistently 95%+ FILM

the de-interlace filter basically removes these horizontal lines (the reason you didn't have to worry about lines in VCD was because VCDs have half the vertical resolution of SVCD)

[kwag]

Hi makavel1:

You may try the template, available below in my signature link.

As you already use DVD2AVI and generate the .d2v project, just load the template with TMPEG 2.53 and check your results.

There are mpeg samples there available for your evaluation, all created with the template posted there.

kwag

[poopyhead]

hey kwag, i haven't seen the samples myself...but i assume you included samples during action sequences right, where blocks are the most likely...

(i.e. in driven when the cars are racing against the standium background full of people)

[kwag]

hey kwag, i haven't seen the samples myself...but i assume you included samples during action sequences right, where blocks are the most likely...

(i.e. in driven when the cars are racing against the standium background full of people)

Yes. Try downloading the sample "Rules of Engagement" and see that there are no blocks on that scene, because the bit rate goes up to 2,300Kbps.

The best sample is the "Farscape" sample.

Look carefully at the playing time and file size of the files.
Playback only with PowerDVD or WinDVD ( or burn as non-standard VCD for standalone player ).

Sadly, today, the site is very intermittent, because they have network problems. Hopefully tomorrow it will be up again.

kwag

[kwag]

The site is up, and the links are working properly now.

Let me know your results.

kwag

[makavel1]

thanx for the help and the website, they work a treat