Am I correct on this?

[Bartenhagen]

I have been reading many posts on this site as I am trying to make SVCD's from home movies taken with my JVC DV camera. I have a few questions.

I am using Ulead Video Studio 5 to capture the video. When I capture the video from my camera with VS 5 is it actually a transfer? In other words am I getting an exact copy of what is on the tape with no quality lost? Also I use VS 5 to add transitions and some titles. As long as I save it back to a DV file is the only parts that are changed the parts where transitons or titles ar added?

I use TMPGEnc to encode to mpeg 2 and then use Ulead Movie Factory to add the menus and burn with this program. Is there any difference in the quality of the final SVCD by using different programs or speeds to burn?

If I try to answer my own questions I believe that I am getting an exact transfer from my camera to VS 5 and also that the only parts of the file that are encoded by VS 5 are the parts that I add transitions or titles. I would also think that since I am basically burning data that any program will work about the same. This would lead me to believe that the only varaiable in getting an SVCD to look as close to the source (camera) as possible is the encoding with TMPGEnc. Is this correct?

If this is all correct what should I expect from a SVCD made this way? I have made about 6 or 7 using this method and I have been somewhat disappointed in the results. The colors have been very faded compared to the orginal and the one scene that I have been working with has my kids dancing around the room. There gets to be quite a bit of blockiness especially when they get close to the camera. There is also a lot of what I would call jitteryness (not sure if this is a word) around the edges of people etc. How much of this should I expect from a SVCD? I am not ready to give up yet but I want to make sure I am not trying to get a result that can't be a gotten.

[snowmoon]

I'm not a DV expert, but I believe you are correct on your own questiosn.

I would say that SVCD's can approach 95% of the original. It takes time and effort to figure out all of the quirks though. Personally I capture with the saturation turned up 5% to compensate for the bland colors that generally end up comming out of the process.

My personal opinion is that TMPGenc is a good encoder for non-interlaced materal, but for interlaced materal you can get much better results with either LSX or CCE. I know these are generally much harder to come by, but CCE offers a trial version that you can use to judge the quality. Take your most demanding clip of video 25 second long and conver it with CCE with the following paramaters... one pass mpeg-2 min=0, max=2520, Q=30 ( under quality settings ) Image quality priority 5, NR to taste. I bet you will be plesently suprised a the diffrence.