Help, please: Sony DV -> SVCD

[aroma]

Hi all,
I am trying the following:
- record on Sony 120 DV camcorder,
- trasfer with Pyro firewire card
- encode SVCD with TMPEnc trial version less then one month old using detected from AVI settings (Interlace, field B first, CBR 2500, ...) and High Quality (slow) motion detection.
- burn with NERO 5.5.7.8
- play on JVC VX-300

Result:
Overall it is not too bad, but it is inferior to original:
1. When I come closer to TV there is kind of jumps on big areas (house windows) when no fast moves happens. Seems like 2 frozen noise patterns jump one to another at random. REALLY, REALLY annoying.
2. Edges of houses look "stange": waves, jitter and noise around.

I'd really appreciate any ideas.
Do not care about conversion time and MPEG size.

Thanks in advance.

[Dave B]

Many DVD players can only support up to around 2500kbps CBR bitrate so it looks like you're pretty maxed out with your current settings.

You may like to look at applying a noise reduction filter to your DV video before it goes into TMPGEnc. I recommend Avisynth with "Temporal Smoother" or VirtualDub with "Dynamic Noise Reduction". This will help ensure that the bitrate gets allocated to actual video detail rather than artifacts or noise in the source.

Secondly many people on these forums find that CCE performs MPEG2 encodes better than TMPGEnc. You may like to try encoding some short samples with both programs and comparing the quality between them.

[aroma]

Thanks, Dave B
I'll try your suggestions.

[EricB]

aroma,

I've gotten much better results with motion in SVCDs by changing the frame size. If you haven't tried this, you first load the SVCD template. Then in the "Extra" folder load the unlock template. Then go to settings and change the frame from 480 x 480 to 352 x 480. This is a valid frame size and seems to make more bandwidth available to motion. Especially in home DV material I've gone to using this frame size for all SVCD files.