VCD Comercial movie quality

[vcd2002a]

I watched some comercial VCD TV series. The picture is so sharp and only during fast transitions, one will notice some minor blockness. Also, for high contrast texts, you don't see Gibs effects. I tried TMPGEnc left and right for months, with different profiles I could find here, following different leads. I don't think TMPGEnc can do it, at least I have not made one close to comercial VCD quality with the same bit rate.

That leads me to think there are better VCD encoders out there that can produce better picture quality with the same VCD bit rate.

[Mick]

I am looking for answer to the same questions as you for months. Still, cant find answer. I have tried TMpegEnc, Ligos, Cleaner 5, mjpegtools with MPipe (Mac), Toast VCD Plug-in (Mac), WinOnCD old mpeg encoder - still quality not the same as comercial VCD.

Still trying...

Mick

[rallytbk]

I have been having this problem since day 1... and I am confident in saying that depending on the level of equipment and the source video that we use, the results will be just as good as the original. Commercial VCDs are created with commercial grade equipment and the source video is of a higher grade format. We pretty much capture in either VHS quality or some of the 8mm formats currently out there. DV video if converted properly can be just as good as the original, but that also depends on the equipment you use to finish the CD.

Anyway... Good luck working on your videos.

[Grativity]

I have the solution to your problem that will make sure you get PERFECT quality, just like store bought vcds. First you get rid of those pesky time consuming and fusterating software encoders, go for what the professionals use, buy a $10000 hardware encoder. After that you are only half done, you have to use master copies of the film reels to get good quality, vhs and dvd sources result in too many blocks, I know you could probably buy the dvd for the price of all the stuff, but when you see the difference in quality you will be happy. Sorry guys but there is no secret magic encoder that is the industries best kept secret, the only reason the com vcds look so nice is the fact that they buy the $10000 hardware encoders, making it practical for mass production only. Most of the time they use master copies of the films as well (not to say that they use others - I bought the vcd Blow in china town, it looks like it was recorded off of tv at half res to deinterlace it the lazy way:P) So the best you can do is what you already have, theres no super unblockness mpg encoder. Personall I use SVCD ripped from dvd, it looks much better than VCD, but takes a hell of a lot longer. Good Luck either way!

[karhooi]

Yes, some of the commercial VCD is very sharp, for example i seen "David Copperfield - Illusion", wow no blocky at all on 34" TV.

Would like the expert out there to explaine more on the commercial machine used to create the VCD, please.

[Mick]

You absolutely right about quality of the equp. and source material. Sad thing that I try to use my family DV footage with very good quality. I can have very good quality from TMpegEnc but with modified VCD profile. This kind of cd very chunki on my hardware VCD player NAPA DAV-309. Almost good quality (at least I can live with it) I get from MPipe with mjpeg tools (Mac OS X) and its playable on my NAPA player. But, of course it is not the same like comercial VCD. May be magic in films 24fps :lol: (just kitting). You know, once again I want to tell that you absolutely right - all our problems that we are trying to get comercial level of output with free software, on home PC and Macs with cheap media.

Friendly, Mick

[Jestorius]

The footage of the original material has much more higher quallity than the one you are using for your home made VCD production.

Most of them is a film. The resolution of a film frame has more information to choose from to make a 352x288 or 240 picture . The film isn't interlace. To get a smooth motion the camera makes motion blur around the moving object. It is much better for a VCD which isn't interlaced video. Of course interpoleting / blending 2 fields can give you much more the same effect from a DigiBeta tape but do you have a such recorder?.

Ok, after scanning the film, digitalisering the film frame by frame you get a video stream ready to encode to what ever you like. This material is much cleaner than you get out from your handhold camcorder or recorded tv-serie with a tv-card. So the commercial VCD's are better not just because the encoder was better but becouse the original footage was much more better.

I'm using DVcam camcorder. It has a higher quallity than other handhold camcorders. But to get a good VCD out of it needs correct use of AE-shift, Gain, Iris, White-ballance and light settings.

[Mick]

... But to get a good VCD out of it needs correct use of AE-shift, Gain, Iris, White-ballance and light settings...

I'll be really appreciate if you can give some advices to After Effects' post processing of DV footage for VCD output. Did you mean After Effects under AE, didn't you? I have to stick into VCD for home made movies cos I have NAPA DAV-309 for VCD. As DVD player I use hmmm.. PS2, sorry about it, but it was greate compromise between gift to my kid and DVD player for family fun. I can't afford DVD burning yet. I tried to burn DVD with iDVD - I am not ready to pay such money for such bad quality. I can get access to DVD Studio Pro, quality gerat, but DVD media in Finland tooo expensive for home movies.

Regards, Mick

[Barnabas]

I don't think it's ever going to be possible to make a home made VCD that will look quite as clear and sharp as the commercially produced VCD's. Like DVD's, commercial VCD's are pre-processed over weeks or even months so the quality is the best it can possibly be. Commercial VCD's have the advantage of usually having a direct film source.

I have tried many methods to make the highest quality home made vcd's. I have tried capturing to AVI first at the highest resolution, then using TMPGenc at the best settings and the longest time to encode, but still the quality is not as good as the commercial vcd's.

I now just use a PV-231 or PV-233 Hardware Mpeg-1 encoding card to capture to VCD. The quality is just as good or better than it was when capturing to AVI first with out all the time and trouble . The quality is still not quite as good as a commercial vcd, but the quality is still very good, and I don't have to waste all the time I used to put into it before.

As far as blocks in VCD's, even the picture on Dishnetwork shows some blocks on some channels on high motion scenes at times, and if that's your source, your captures are not going look any better than the source is. Even the best commercial vcd's will show a few blocks here and there.

[vhelp]

Evening all.

Feww! After a few crashes on my other pc, and this forum being down,
I've finally finished this post, from this morning, he, he...

I know how you all feel too. But, I'm surprised that there is NOT one
guide here that helped you!! There are SOOOO many of them here! Why
hasn't one worked for you's ? ? ?
Anyways. . .

Some points:
* Clean source (studio being the best qulity source)
* profesional quality ENCODER (software/HARDware), then
* encoded correct (23fps coupled w/ a good IVTC ??) but, even 29fps,
quality can be achieved given the above two points.
You'll never get around it, w/out the above, period!!

CAPtures from source such as:
* VHS (worse, can forget about)
* Cable (some are DIGital)
* Satalete, (or DIGital cable)
* DVD
...as to quality will be dependant on your source quality.
Not every TV show/movie (source from your provider) will be in
good and clean condition. Not to mention how each are pre-encoded
for broadcast, OR, rented from another source, who may have not
preped it well to begin with. IE, I did a DV capture of the
movie "Contact" the other night/weekend. In a lot scenes, the
quality just wasn't their, though it looked good on my tv, just
not really good. IE, Farscape on sci-fi looks REALLY good.
The people who preped this for broadcast done an exellent job.
...ever week they do.
So, you see, it also depends on EACH type of show. Here, look at
the movie JAWS, they ben showing this week on Satalite. This move
looks like it went through some dull filters and re-encoded 2 or
3 times. I have the DVD on JAWS II and man, the quaity is soo
bad on the Satalite capture, even when I use my DV cam (taped to
miniDV tapes) in compaison to my DVD.
Another example, is my DVD of Farscape. Quality is SUPER!!! Even
though my Satalite capture of Farscape is very good, it doesn't hole
the candle high enough to my DVD! For you guys, i'll show you a
sample clip done in CBR 1150, keepng the VCD spec, using TMPG and
a sample scene of Farscape, since its very good clean source on my
Satalite.

As to commercial eqipment, the above poster stated pretty well,
$10,000 more or less. Somehow, I don't see any real good enough
reason to want to explore any kind of equipment over $300 or $400
just to make standard VCDs!! It's just not worth!!
Again, Source materials from studio's are as perfect as can be.
DVD, is about the BEST source you can use in making standard VCDs
with excellent quality. DVD's are not studio sources, but darn
close enough to my eyes. But, then again, I only have a 13" tv,
not a 60" or HDTV.

Noise:
There are all kinds and variations of noise present on
sources like broadcase television. So, when you cap from cable
or satalite, you'll be capping the noise as well, or if ya taped to
a tape, your machine's machanical mechinism's background noise, etc.
Noise can be looked at for instance, badly done encoded source.
JAWS, for example. you can see the square blotches, (i call these
patch work) This is counted as noise/artifacts. These will no
doublt result in poor quality encoded VCDs even SVCDs.
Other type of noise examle, are those that have tiny needle looking
dots, or snow or static. This is noise and will blow your
encoding quaity away. It will show up as macro blocks during most
fast scenes, or even slow ones. The higher you turn up the bitrate,
the less macro blocks you'll see (to a point that makes no difference,
etc)

Filters:
* temporal smoother, or it's cusins, smart smoother, and
* de-noise filters (or tmpg's, noise filter)
* tmpg's softem filter (Advanced tab) at defaults.
will remove a good portion of these noise AND even improve on your
encoding quality, BUT these such filters will actualy alter
your video to some degree. That's why it's always best to use just
the defaults or less settings. I try NOT to use these filters in
the majority of my encoding projects and am proud of it. But, if
you to fit as much as poisble on 1 cdr, you might look into a few
of these filters in your encoding projects. They may help to
reduce the final size just enough to fit on one cdr
This filters will, for the most part do:
* reduce your final encode size
* show less macro blocks
* Take wayy longer to encode.
Remember, you wanna retain as much as the original source as much
as you can. So, use filtering at minimum!!
Also, remember that proper order of filtering useage is key to a
successful looking encode, not just how it can effect how much time
it takes, but the bottom line is HOW well it will look when finished!

If time allows, i'll show a Sample clip of a standard VCD
using the above facts (minus the filtering) as a good illustration
to what I've just analy mentioned above... bla, bla, bla.
This same clip, when done in CVD yields very good quality, IMO.
I felt that a good action clip was in order her as a good example to use here.
And, remember, if you play these on your pc monitor (for testing) please
use WinDVD 3.0 for max. quality.
You will not see the benefit of the true quality with PowerDVD on this clip!
PowerDVD shows artifacts, blocks and grains, etc. WinDVD 3.0 plays (my
clips) smooth, and /w NO artifacts what-so-ever! aside from what shows up
during encoding due to source materials quality (ie, captures)
NOTE: I would really appreciate anyone with a large screen, HDTV and
those with 50 or 60" screen's to let me know how the quality looks
on these types of television's. This is a STANDard VCD. Thanks.
If you'r interested in a sample, give a hollar!!

* vcd2002a, by any chance, are those "sharp" looking VCDs done w/
a resolution of 352x480? ? ?

* Those w/ bad results of standard VCD encodes, are you talking about captures
only, or home-made footage from your CAM's ??

-vhelp

[vhelp]

Ok, finally got it all straighten out.
please don't spoil it w/ PowerDVD, you wont appreciate
it. It'll look like crap. Use WinDVD 3.0 Ok, so it's
not DVD, he, he... I never said it was.

Man, that "Deep Blue Sea" is pretty good, he, he....
They didn't jimmy the quality too much either, and
nice watery action scenes.

Filename to download: "0512.dv.stanvcd.mpg"

D/L and burn to CD. Hope it plays well on those larger size tv'syour large screen tv's.

-vhelp

[Barnabas]

Is your capture from analog satellite or digital satellite?

Ok, finally got it all straighten out.
please don't spoil it w/ PowerDVD, you wont appreciate
it. It'll look like crap. Use WinDVD 3.0 Ok, so it's
not DVD, he, he... I never said it was.

Man, that "Deep Blue Sea" is pretty good, he, he....
They didn't jimmy the quality too much either, and
nice watery action scenes.

Filename to download: "0512.dv.stanvcd.mpg"

D/L and burn to CD. Hope it plays well on those larger size tv'syour large screen tv's.

-vhelp

[vhelp]

barnabas,

DIGital, i imagine. You familuar w/ DirecTV?? ??

That's what I have. I'm pretty sure it's digital though.
But, NOT all tv shows/movies, etc. are in good quality to begin with.
I'm recording the currently playing movie "Deep Blue Sea". I guess
my provider is not providing it "jimmyed". (they're re-airng it again at
11pm tonight) (still playing)

My CVD's come out much better, but I guess some people can't view
non-standard VCDs w/ their dvd players and that that's why they have
to stick with standard VCDs.

-vhelp

[Barnabas]

Yep, DirecTV is digital, MPEG-2 I think too. Actually looks better than the sci-fi channel does on Dishnetwork. Lot's of compression on Dishnetwork anymore. The BEST source would be analog satellite. Wish I still had my 13' C-BAND dish and commercial quality satellite receiver! Used to have a side by side setup with Dishnetwork and man, C-BAND satellite looks MUCH better than Dishnetwork does.

barnabas,

DIGital, i imagine. You familuar w/ DirecTV?? ??

That's what I have. I'm pretty sure it's digital though.

[Tbear]

MPEG -2 is the starndard for digital brodcasts. one big problem with the 18" dishes is when a thunderstorm comes through and it rains hard there goes the signal. But with the C- Band dish keeps the signal. Some of the cable compamies use the small dishes to re-brodcast there digital signals.
Was taping a movie this morning when a strom came through and there goes the picture, ruined again.

[freetza]

I've used kwag's template and gotten close to perfect quality rips to fit on one disc. Check it out at www.kvcd.net

[vhelp]

freetza,

I figured sooner or later, someone would come out w/ that post.

These guys (per SUBject line) were talking about VCD, standard VCD
that is. Assuming there player only supports VCD and not xVCD.

Yes, we all know that encoding w/ both frames, ie x480 will yield the
best (sharpest) quality, BUT there still are some who can't play even
at that spec. I'm assuming that this is the case for the thread. That's
why I posted a sample clip AT the VCD spec, and NOT xVCD spec.

Also, they're talking about TV shows. These are not film, and most are
a pain in the azz to ivtc. Even the new movie I just finished taping to
miniDV is causing me great trouble, even at VCD standards. ivtc'ing
is a real head-acke. There's always that one, repeating frame that
throws off the ivtc, hence the studder, or brief pause. No matter what
method I through at this, so far, I haven't ben able to rid that studdering
frame (which is random in this movie, though every capture via firewire
is always the same place in frames) These are those bogus frames they
like to jimmy-us around with in our encodes. The only way around this
or these random bogus frames is to use a "script" in vdub or AVIsynth.
Not something I want to tackle with at the moment! But, a script WILL
cure this nonsense, once and for all.

-vhelp

[Anonymous65]

Get hold of a digital uncompressed D1 copy from the movie studio, and run it through Tmpgenc and burn it to a VCD. Then you will get a commercial quality VCD. However, you will never get a copy of a movie in D1 uncompressed video!

You can make your own "original quality" standard VCD`s with Tmpgenc.
I have done this with both DVD & DV sources.

I use Tmpgenc for the video & Besweet or Lame for the audio.

I have both original VCD`s and my home-made VCD`s, I do not think anyone could see the differance..........people who have already viewed them cannot.

[Mick]

These guys (per SUBject line) were talking about VCD, standard VCD
that is. Assuming there player only supports VCD and not xVCD.

Exactly, I have been talking about absolutely standard VCD 2.0 disks that I can put into my standalone VCD player NAPA DAV-309. That’s the whole point – I have particular hardware setup that is VCD 2.0 compliant. I couldn’t afford to change it in the nearest future. And it’s not that bad! It plays perfectly commercial VCDs. So, original point of this topic was “is it possible to achieve quality close to commercial VCD in home made VCDs”. My additional point is family movies that I shoot on miniDV camcorder and want to transfer to VCD. I could not achieve quality that satisfies me, because I now how good can be VCDs. I have couple of commercial disks that perfect in the sense of VCD.

Vhelp, I will burn your 0512.dv.stanvcd.mpg today. It looks really nice on monitor. Lets see how it looks in my NAPA.

Anyway, thanks everybody to join this discussion. Thanks for all suggestions, comments and advices. I really appreciate it!

Well, lets continue this topic for few days more? Let me remind you, imagine, we have miniDV footage of family stuff. What is the best way of preprocessing it and so on to put on STANDARD VCD. Unfortunately in case of my VCD player NAPA DAV-309, video encoded with TMPegEnc is jerky and skipping all the time.

So, invite all of your for more discussion.

Regards, Mick

[Jestorius]

I guess in this days there isn't so much different between encoders. There is a different in speed but not in quallity. Most of the studios I know are using Ligos bundled with DPS solution. The quallity is just excellent. I'm using Tmpgenc and Pinnacle and get the same quallity.

If you are a ripper than the "original" footage you have is more than good to make an excellent VCD. Becouse the DVD was made of a film and the film was made by a proff stub. So the result is only up to your knowledge of using the encoder you have. I don't think there is a "best tamplate" to use again and again. All the encoding is different. You need different settings and preprosessing, filtering.

[Mick]

Hello again Jestorius,

You wrote before:
"... But to get a good VCD out of it needs correct use of AE-shift, Gain, Iris, White-ballance and light settings... "

Can you give me some advices in filtering and preprocessing with AE for home miniDV footages?

Regards, Mick

[Jestorius]

You adjust the WB all the time. Focus on a white paper and let the camera finde the right value. All the settings has to be on manuall.

Gain - 0
AE - 0
Shutterspeed - 50 (pal)
Iris - ask the camera first and keep the value you get. If you turn , ask again. Use Iris to correct the picture.
The camera gives you a hint abouth to use the NBfilter.

Lightning - I know people supporting a familly of 5 just to setting up lights for commercials. It's an art. It's not so easy. Use reflected lights, point your lightsource to a white stuff or paper. Use it to reduce shadows in your picture. Allways adjust your camera to the lightning condition.

Encoding -> Tmpgenc offers many options like sharpening, deinterlacing and noice reduction. Experiment with these setting - this is the key to make better VCD.

Audio ->If the sound is perfect it's lifting the quallity of your VCD. You belive it is a better picture just because the sound. It's only an illusion.
I've seen a few DVD's with a not so good encoding(PAL). But I didn't realised it before I turned the sound off.

[Jestorius]

AE - isn't After Effects it's an automatic to adjust the blender, iris.

[Mick]

Thanks a lot for camera tips, Jestorius!

Friendly, Mick

[Mick]

Filename to download: "0512.dv.stanvcd.mpg"

D/L and burn to CD. Hope it plays well on those larger size tv'syour large screen tv's.

-vhelp

I just make CD with it. The only thing I did in advance is de-multiplex and multiplex it back, because my WinOnCD says "multiplex rate is too high". Wow, never saw this kind of messages before!

Well, it plays perfectly on my standalone VCD player NAPA DAV-309. Quality is very - very good. Now tell the secret, how did you encoding? What was the original source DVD or Satelite?

Mick

[vcd2002a]

Good to see so many posts after 3 days. Many people sharing my experience and many people seem to have made ahead of others.

The comercial VCDs I was talking about was the standard PAL VCD format, 25fps, 352x288.

I think the source quality is definitely a key factor. But the rate controller of a given encoder is very important too.

First each picture is cut into 8x8 macroblocks (MB). Then there is theI, P,B frames and motion estimation search. Then some MBs are DCTed. 8x8 spacial signal gives us 8x8 frequency domain data samples. Then we quantize and then encoding. What if the bit rate is too high? The rate controller will take care of it. I think TMPGenc does this: drop high frequency coefficients of those 8x8 MBs (the MBs with most none zero samples are the ones with complex scenes and TMPGenc seem to target on those MBs), until the bit rate drops to spec. How can I prove this. Easy. look at those high contrast texts edge with moving background. Everyone sees those mosquitos around them, right? The MBs near the edge of those texts can not be motion estimated
because the texts are fixed and backgroup are moving. Therefore, for every frame at those areas, the MBs are different from frame to frame and need to be fully DCTed and encoded. And when the high frequency samples are dropped, YOU SEE THE MOSQUITOS. This happens to sharp edges also. But in there, the situation is better, the MBs will be related to future MBs (I never doubt the high quality motion search TMPGenc provides and TMPGenc will find those related MBs). The problem there is that in the I frame, the MBs high frequency samples are dropped to control the MAX bps, resulting in a little better mosquito effects.

Based on the above description, I think CCE is a better encoder than TMPGEnc. I never used CCE but was curious enough recently to check the functionality. The rate controller there has a slide bar for you to control how the samples are dropped when needed. You can favor complex scenes or flat areas. My bet is that when you favor the complex scenes, the edges, high contrast texts will be good. The noises in the flat area will reveal, which we can use VitualDub or AVISynth noise filters to remove. I will find a way to try CCE. Anyone with experience with CCE, please comment.

The only mode in TMPGEnc that is doing better than other rate control modes of TMPGEnc is the one recommened by KWAG's profile. 352x480, CQ=75 with high and low bps settings. From my experience (I am guessing here), TMPGEnd will drop DCT coefficients according to CQ (trying to maintain CQ first, flat area MBs will use less bps in this case, leaving more bits for complex scene MBs), therefore, the complex scene MBs are preserved better in this case. I have seen posts from KWAG's web sites, my own trials, and other DVD ripping successful stories to confirm this. What happens if in order to maintain requested CQ and MAX bps, and the MBs still have too many samples left to be coded, my guess it that TMPGenc will drop the high frequency coefficients the same way described before - mosquitos again.

[kwag]

@vcd2002a:

You're 100% correct on that last post.

I just wanted to add something.

The "Mosquito" effect doesn't show too much, at least on the samples I've done with KVCD templates, mainly for two reasons:

1) The GOP structure in the KVCD template is I=1, P=12, B=3, the I frames are further apart than in the standard MPEG-1 GOP of 1,5,2.

This has the advantage of more predicted (P) frames so that the encoder has more data to analyze and to compress. The advantage is, of course higher compression ( through the use of motion compensation in the P frames ), but at the same time it has a very slight blurring effect on the "Mosquito effect".

2) When processed via an AviSynth script, with a small amount of Temporal Noise reduction, this eliminates most of the noise ( Mosquito effect/ sharp spots / other analog noises in the source, etc.

So the result is a pleasing image, and the Macro Blocks are hardly visible.

On a standard VCD, even on slow action scenes, you can see some of the Macro Block edges because of the tighter GOP structure.

Just like if you use I frames only, even at a high bit rate, the results are very sharp Macro Blocks.

With the process described above, they are softened, and blend in with the picture, and are hardly visible.

The result is, well, you know!

Just something I wanted to pitch in

kwag

[vcd2002a]

KWAG,

Just let you know. I stretched your profile to the extreme by a typo. I accidently used MPEG1 VBR, P=20 and B=3, with CQ=65 and MAX bps set at 800Kbps. I captured the movie Fallen from cable (I believe it is 100+ min movie). I was able to fit the whole movie to 1CD. I used VirtualDub to remove noise first. The encoded pictures were bad. The background noise were shown as chunks of noisy areas rather than grainy spots. My DVD player can play it but with a little picture racing now and then (like some frames were skipped, not too bad though). Then I tried it on my VCD player, I can see it sync on I frames and lose soon due to the large GOP.

This is an interesting link regarding CCE advanced features:

http://www.doom9.org/mpg/cce-advanced.htm

I started searching the capabilities of CCE and found the above link. I believe that is the answer to my ealier question and CCE is much better than TMPGEnc. TMPGenc has the manual VBR mode you can set for handling different scenes but there is no absolute gauge for you to tell the quality of the pictures. In this advanced CCE VBR configuration, you have this quality gauge - namely, if you maintain Q<9, you will not see the difference between the source and the encoded output.

I had a tough time to make CCE work on my Win2K Pro machine but made it eventually. I will try more clips before I can say anything...

[vcd2002a]

...