How much in a svcd format???

[MrPhelps]

Hi everyone I have a vhs tape I want to capture on to a 80min cd and I was wondering what settings I need to use to put it on one cd. It must be Svcd, It seem my Apex ad2201 won't play VCD's. Any help is great.

I tried it at 480x240 for 5 minutes and it was 350megs so you know it won't work.

Please help me clear it up.

ATI AIW 7500 64 DDR
100 gig hard drive
AMD 1900+
896meg of ram.

[Fozzee]

If u look on the left there is a section called.........

WHAT IS......SVCD


Fozz

[medievil]

350megs for 5 minutes means you weren't capturing to Mpeg 2, you were capturing lossless.

[MrPhelps]

I am not sure what LOSSless is ???


Mpeg-2
It is 480x240
P frames 4
B frames 2
Video bitrate 2.99 b/ps
Motion 100
Constant bitrate

Please help

I am capture directly from a vcr to my computer using rca cables into my ATI AIW 7500 and I capture it at the settings above

[Craig Tucker]

Capture to AVI using a lossless codec like huffyuv, 480x480 for SVCD hope you have lots of hard drive space the file will be very large. Then convert to mpeg2 for SVCD using TMPGEnc, this will dramatically reduce the filesize. You can capture to mpeg2 direct but the results arent as good as doing it this way. Depending on the bitrate you use an 80 min cdr can hold 45-60min of SVCD video. For more detailed information read the guides on capturing, converting and authoring.

[MrPhelps]

Thanks that is what I needed now its time to capture.

[MrPhelps]

I am currently capturing at 720x480 There isn't 480 x 480 avi
What do you recommend??

[Craig Tucker]

capturing at 720x480 is fine, when you convert it will be resized to svcd specs of 480x480 anyway

[MrPhelps]

Can I please have one more stupid question?

I just captured for 15 minutes and the size was 3.6 gigs. Does this seem correct??

The average video rate is 19.997 and the frames dropped in this 15 minutes is 8176. The total frames captured is 18096.
It looks like in 1 hour the file will be approx 14.4 gigs

Thanks in advance and I promise I will not ask anymore today.



Yes I do read the how to and I will read alot more tonight.

[hwoodwar]

MrPhelps:

Frames captured: 18096, dropped: 8176 is almost a 1/3 loss rate...Totally unacceptable.

Start off with this guide:

http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/userguides/81808.php

and work your way through it. When things are working properly you should have less than a 2 percent dropped frame rate (my opinion.) If after you check/change things as mentioned in the guide and you are still getting an unacceptable amount of dropped frames I suggest you lower the resolution of the capture.

I assume you are using the ATI MMC. If you are you really should have more resolution choices. In the MMC select TV and then setup. Now go to the Digital VCR tab and click set custom. You should now be able to see many resolution options including a create new option, where you can set a custom profile. You say you have an ATI AIW 7500 what format are you trying to capture to? I suspect you may be trying to send it strait to MPEG-2. This takes a lot of processing time. I believe the only format that is lossless if you are using ATI's MMC is AVI format.

CraigTucker mentioned HuffyUV. HuffyUV is a lossless compression codec used with AVI files. You can get it through the tools section of this board. Download and install it. As you make a custom profile on the first page of the capture wizard, capture type select AVI, next page select HuffyUV for the video codec. Then finish building your custom profile. As an alternative you could modify one of the existing profiles and save to a different name.

[hwoodwar]

MrPhelps:

Sorry, I missed your system specs. With the system you have you should be able to tweak it an save strait to MPEG-2 format with minimal to no loss. However, I doubt you will like the quality of the final product.

CraigTucker mentioned this and I agree. It would be best to save to AVI and then use TMPGenc to convert to SVCD MPEG-2 format.

[MrPhelps]

Thanks this is very helpful. You guy are the best and I really appreciate it.

I hope I can help someone at this level or higher to pay back.

[Fozzee]

I hope this isn't a dumb statement as I capture direct to mpeg2 usually.
But the one time I tried VirtualDub I had the same problem with dropped frames on 19.997 setting.
When I changed to 25.000 frame rate I lost no frames.
Dunno if this helps or not but hey no harm done.

Fozzee

[MrPhelps]

I hope this isn't a dumb statement as I capture direct to mpeg2 usually.
But the one time I tried VirtualDub I had the same problem with dropped frames on 19.997 setting.
When I changed to 25.000 frame rate I lost no frames.
Dunno if this helps or not but hey no harm done.

Fozzee

I thought I should do that also but it has been said that the quality would be much better if I capture avi with Huffy codec then encode to mp2.

The different settings are what are the challenge, I know you need the right ones to achieve a good capture. I just have to experiment.

With my machine I was surprised to have had dropped frames.

I ran scandisc
I defragged
Nothing else was running.

[Fozzee]

I obviously know not enuff about virtual dub to be dangerous too LOL.

I capture real time mpeg2 and am very happy with my results. I can send u a sample if u wanna see how could it can be.

Fozzee

[Craig Tucker]

If you are dropping a lot of frames with your pc then something is not right. I haxe an XP1900+ and can capture 720x576 PAL huffy and drop 1 frame every 3-5 minutes, and virtual does this purposely to maintain AV sync. Make sure you have the framerate set to the correct framerate for your region. EG if you are in an NTSC region (29.97 fps) and you capture at 15fps (which is vdubs default, you have to change it) you will automatically be dropping 50% of the frames.

[Craig Tucker]

By the way as for the size of the file. With huffy compression at 720x576 PAL you are looking at about 13-15MB/s. This equates to approximately 45 to 55 GB/hour.

[Fozzee]

So my point about changing my frame rate to 25.000 was a valid one then ????????
As I am in a PAL area.

Fozzee

[Craig Tucker]

Absolutely

[Fozzee]

Wow
Not as as stupid as i look then

Fozz

[willy_annand]

Frame dropping rate might also be caused by your VHS tape or VCR.

Silly as that seems it is true. With my VCR, I can capture tapes recorded at 2 hour speed ( commercial tapes or home-made) with less than 60 frames dropped over the course of an hour capture. When I attempt 4 hour speed (cheap commercial tapes) I get 30-35% frame drop. When I try 6 hour speed, if the tape was taped on the machine I have now, I get the minimal frame drop, if the tape was recorded on another machine, I am back to 30-35% frame drop.

There is another thread about VHS problems and a full explanation of the problem.

[MrPhelps]

If you are dropping a lot of frames with your pc then something is not right. I haxe an XP1900+ and can capture 720x576 PAL huffy and drop 1 frame every 3-5 minutes, and virtual does this purposely to maintain AV sync. Make sure you have the framerate set to the correct framerate for your region. EG if you are in an NTSC region (29.97 fps) and you capture at 15fps (which is vdubs default, you have to change it) you will automatically be dropping 50% of the frames.

If I understand you the setting in Virtualdub defaults to 25, I am NTSC and that would be 29.97 so I should capture it at 15fps.

how did you come up with 15 fps?? I searched everywhere??

And thank you for clearing up the size issue I think alot of others will benefit.

[MrPhelps]

craigtucker

Thanks for being patience with me.

[Craig Tucker]

The default in vdub is 15fps, if you are ntsc set it to 29.97. Click on file -> capture AVI, then capture -> settings. Change frame rate to 29.97

[vhelp]

fozzee,

I capture real time mpeg2 and am very happy with my results. I can send u a sample if u wanna see how could it can be.

.
.
yes, please do, he, he....I haven't seen any latest ATI MMC samples in at
least a year AFAIK.

And, no, nobodies stupid.
Thanks.

[dcapp1]

Fozee

What program do you use to capture to mpeg2 because I use Vdub to capture at a resolution of 640 X 480 using PicVideo with a quality of 13, and I get a good quality avi. I then encode to svcd and get a good final product. I would like to captur directly to mpeg2 with good quality so I can save time. Thanks

[easydvd]

The only way that you're going to be able to cap directly to mpeg2 with good results is a hardware encoder..........BIG$$$$$

[vhelp]

...and, do add on tony's so true a statement. . .
.
.
a really good and TRUE MPEG-2 HW encoder would be one that is capable
of determining HOW to do the following in real-time or Hardware (HW)
* 3:2 pulldown
* deinterlace (if need be, but not for TV, otherwise for PC, yes)
* basically, undo the crypitic Interlacing pattern seen on MANY tv movies
* and, doesn't mess up on the Fields issue that we all suffer from, time on.
.
.
and then finally, burned to CDR or DVDR

I seen many HW mpeg samples, and I could easily see the blurryness of
those, even those on movies (captures from TV that is)
You could just tell, that they weren't smooth, by just looking at it.

But, yes, I still want to see fozzee's sample, as I like keeping up w/
these real-time encoders anyways.
-vhelp