DV PAL to SVCD =choppy

[tkid]

hello!
I´m trying to convert a DV video from iMovie captured with an
analog/digital converter from Dazzle. So I capture the Video then quit iMovie. I then rename the DV files from clip01 to clip01.mov. After that I use ffmpegX0.0.04g to encode the video. The problem is that when there is a pan in the video, my standalone DVD Player makes it look choppy (stroboscope effect). I use VBR with a qmin = 2 (maybe higher?), bitrate around 2000 (100 min Movie for 2SVCDs). Some SVCDs from edonky play fine though...so it must be the settings.... No idea, maybe someone can help me. Maybe I should export the Video from iMovie using the iDVD setting and then encoding it with ffmpegX...don´t know. Does anybody have some experience with encoding DV Files?
any help is welcome!


p.s. When I try to encode the Video for 3CDs (bitrate around 3100) the player chops up the sound too....guess my dvd player cam´t handle high bitrates.

[major]

Try to open the clip01.mov in Quicktime player, open the info panel, and check the "High quality" and "Single field" boxes. Then "Save". Then encode again.

[tkid]

thanks major!
I will try that right away....
I marked the mentioned boxes (single field, high quality) in quicktime
and now I´m saving. funny thing is that the original file was 1.9GB and the saved file is about 3GB. -is this normal?
I´ll encode it right away...stay tuned

[major]

now I´m saving. funny thing is that the original file was 1.9GB and the saved file is about 3GB. -is this normal?

Don't do "Save as" to create a new file. Just hit Apple-S to save the single field and high quality flags in the same file.

[tkid]

ok, got it with the save...
but i really don´t see any improvement in the "choppy" problem.
as i said before, this happens especially when the camera pans or when people move their head quickly. maybe I´m getting a bit "picky", but i`ve downloaded perfect svcds on edonkey-so my dvd player is capable it.
btw when i make vcd´s theres no problem....but its just not as good as svcd!
I´ve tried changing the qmin level(2,5,8,10,20,31), but just the quality drops, no improvement when panning. bitrate is around 2000
any other suggestions?

[major]

Is XVCD or mpeg-1 XSVCD (from the presets) any better?

[Wizeman]

There is a big difference between the svcds you mention having downloaded from edonkey etc and the film clip you are encoding now - consider the source. The former most likely originate from studio DVDs, and the latter is
a) shot on DV (which basically means you get a 5:1 compression straight away) and
b) converted w Dazzle (never used their product, but I'm guessing since you mention using this you don't go 100% lossless straight from the DVcamera to the Mac, so you're losing quality here too)
c) compressing the 2nd generation into MPEG-2 with a bitrate of 2000 (which in itself isn't all that good when it comes to quick movements and pans)

I'm not saying it won't look good or can't look better than what you've done thus far, but don't compare to the SVCDs of "proper" films. Chances are they've had your budget and added a few zeros at the end :/

/Wizeman

P.S.
I use a Canon DV camera with Digital in/out (+ analogue in/out and S-VHS in/out incidentally, great little machine) so I go lossless from the camcorder into the Mac - and I *still* have to pay close attention to how I film shots that include heavy movement etc. Then again, maybe I should have saved up some more dosh for a 3CCD instead of a lone-chip <sigh> well we're not made of money I guess... but *damn* my new iMovie G4/800 w SuperDrive owns... hey, this started out as a helpful reply and wound up a bit of a brag... sorry 'bout that...

[tkid]

actually... my source is a DVD. I seem to be the only one in the world who has a g4, but no DVD drive (1st quicksilver, 733 only CDRW Burner). So I hook up my standalone DVD Player to the Dazzle Box (with SVHS Cable) and then via firewire to my mac. I then use iMovie to capture.... so the source is not the problem..... I´m now trying to encode the DV Files into mpg2 with the quicktime encoding plugin that comes with DVD Studio Pro. After that reencoding them with ffmpegX to SVCD Specs.... Lets see...

[Wizeman]

Aha, then I understand. Or I don't. Hmm.

The first DVD I popped into my machine was FRIENDS. I was schocked to see how poor quality it was. The computer monitor doesn't work exactly like a TV; but the difference here was monumental. It was sooo interlaced, it was - seriously - impossible to watch. I thought there was something wrong with the hardware/software until I tried some other titles.

Tried lots of conversions with these files, but nothing worked. It never got watchable on the computer screen, but looks great on TV. What I'm trying to say is that just because it looks good on T.V. doesn't mean the actual source material is that high a quality. Heck, to get a decent SVCD backup of the uncut pilot (29 minutes, never aired here where I live) I had to go via my standalone DVD player through S-VHS to the DV and *then* have QuickTime MPEG-2 it... weird...

/Wizeman

[Ender11]

Hi. I have the same problem when I convert from DV, through firewire into Final Cut Pro, then use ffmpegx to create an SVCD with the default settings (MOV to SVCD). This was just a test with a 5 mins clip. The only thing I changed were the (strange) default setting for 2 CDs to 1 and at the tools tab I changed the (strange) default setting to chop the stuff up in 3 parts. (sorry I can't be more accurate... can not access the panels as I type this).

The sound is fine but the picture is choppy. The only comparison I have is an SVCD which a friend gave me and which he burnt on a PC and that doesn't have any problems and lots of moving images.

Hope someone will be able to give good advice!

Ciao, E.

[tkid]

I MADE IT!!!! SVCD NOT CHOPPY-GOOD QUALITY!

to wizeman:
this seems to be the way to go. capture DV in iMovie, then open the file in QuickTime an export it with the MPG2 Exporter included with DVD Studio Pro. Unfortunately, the exporter splits the DV into one m2v file and one aif file. I then converted the aif to mp2 audio and then muxed them back together. Finally, I then reencoded the "DVD size" mpge2 file into and SVCD size file...and there it is! Its not the easiest way to go, but the quality is perfect and since I don´t have a DVD Drive, its my only choice.

to ender11:
have you tried using vbr when making SVCDs? Cause when you just choose the preset in ffmpegX (MOV, VOB or DivX to mpeg-2 SVCD) you encode in a constant bitrate of 2500. In order to make it vbr, you have to go to the VCD/SVCD Options Tab and choose XVCD from th Profile Dropdown menu. Try that if you didn´t already..... the quality is def. a lot better then with a constant bitrate. If the SVCD is still choppy, try the method mentioned above.....

[Wizeman]

Excellent news, glad to hear it!

I've never converted the QT MPEG-2 output to 480x576/480 for SVCD compliance - what program did you use and how long did it take? Did you see any difference with the naked eye? I'm guessing that bit allocation would be much better if we could just get QT to export MPEG-2 straight to our format of choice, but we can't have everything I suppose...

/Wizeman

[Ender11]

Thanks man. I will give that a go.
Couple of questions, if I may.

In the to Wizeman bit you say 'then I reencoded the 'DVD size mpeg2 file into a SVCD size file... how did you do that?
I am a bit of a newbie I suppose.

In your advice to me you say I should choose XVCD from the dropdown menu but shouldn't that be XSVCD?

Thanks!
E.

[Ender11]

I should be a little bit more specific (always like that when you reread your own text):
- how did you convert the aif into mp2? Used ffmpegx for this?
- I understand how you muxed the two into one DVD format mpeg2 (using mux as DVD option)
But then how did you convert it to SVCD? (again used ffmpegx I assume but what settings did you use?)

Please don't disregard my question about the XSVCD option in the previous posting.


Thanks! E.

[tkid]

Ok.. sorry!
I guess I was a bit to brief when I posted my "method"
Since I live in Europe, this is all PAL sizes and specs...

I've never converted the QT MPEG-2 output to 480x576/480 for SVCD compliance - what program did you use and how long did it take? Did you see any difference with the naked eye? I'm guessing that bit allocation would be much better if we could just get QT to export MPEG-2 straight to our format of choice, but we can't have everything I suppose...

I think the mpg2 encoder from DVD Sudio Pro can only encode to the DVD Size (PAL = 720x540). Would be really cool if you could choose the size, bacause the encoder is f***ing fast!!! (almost realtime on my G4 733!). Anyways, I then get one m2v file and one aif file. Then you have to encode the aif file into a mp2 file to be able to mux them together. I tried using the "Missing Mpeg Tools" to do this, but I only get errors. So I use ffmpegX. Now it gets a little wierd.... first, open the aif file in quicktime an export it to a .mov file(16bit stereo, uncompressed). You then get a mov file with only the sound in it. Now use ffmpegX.
Do the following:
1. choose your mov as a source (for example sound.mov)
2. choose a output folder
3. choose the Quick Preset for mov to SVCD
4. Deselect "encode Video" in the Viedo Tab of ffmpegX
5. In the "Audio" Tab choose "Add Audio" and then select the sound.mov file again (same file as in 1.)
6. In the "Tools" Tab check "Keep Elemetary Streams" -otherwise you will not get the mp2 file! (uncheck everything else...)
7. Encode
In the Terminal you will see some error messages complaining about a missing video file - thats ok, cause we just want the audio!
ffmpegX then encodes the sound into a mp2 file!
I then use Missing Mpeg Tools to mux them together- I guess you can do that with ffmpegX too, but I havent tried it.
The result is a mpg2 file with 720 x 540.
The I just use ffmpegX to encode the file to the SVCD Size (480 x 576).
This takes alot longer then with the qt exporter...

to ender11:
Of course you are right! I meant XSVCD! (sorry for that)
my settings:
Qmin between 2 and 5 (I don´t really see much of a difference, resulting files get smaller when you increase the qmin level)
Calculate the Bitrate, depending on the length of your movie and how many Cds you will want to use (I always use 2 Cds, because my DVD Player can´t handle high bitrates very well).
I hope this answers your questions....just post again if it doesn´t work.

Maybe you think this way is a bit strange....but I´ve been trying to solve this problem for quite a while now. This works for me, maybe not for you. If somebody has a better way of doing it, please share it with us.
The best thing woulde be, if you could just make SVCD mpg2 files with Quicktime.

[Ender11]

Well... you said I could so... I am posting again...

I tried the XSVCD option you suggested. Did give a different kind of choppiness but it still made me seasick watching it so... I am starting to wonder if I really ought to understand what all the other settings are for (qmin, qmax, this and that) although I did experiment with the bitrates on the first tab. I used 2500, 2498 (how odd!) but never tried to go higher than that. (If I tell the calculator that I only want 20 mins of stuff on 1 CD it goes to values in the 4000 range... I wonder if that would be a good idea.)

There is another thing that I may need to mention: whenever I export MPEG2 from Final Cut Pro, it has a default bitrate setting of 8.0 Mbps. I assumed that this is a standard value for MPEG2 so I never changed that. Since I have no idea what to try there and it goes from 1 to 9.something, I left it the way it was.

Then I moved on to your next even more elaborate suggestion of creating separate video and audio files... I followed the recipe except that I used Final Cut Pro to convert the .aif file (which created it in the first place) to an audio only .mov file. (I don't seem to have any options to do this in QT)

I followed your instructions to the letter as far as creating an mp2 in ffmpegx.
However, I seem to be getting all sorts of errors in the terminal window that seem more serious than the warnings you predicted. This is what it spat at me:

[Stanley-Kubrick:~] stanleyk% pbpaste | sh
## Component Manager: attempting to find symbols in a component alias of type (regR/carP/x!bt)
error: movie contains no video tracks!

**ERROR: [mpeg2enc] Could not read YUV4MPEG2 header: system error (failed read/write)!
## Component Manager: attempting to find symbols in a component alias of type (regR/carP/x!bt)
INFO: Opened WAV file, freq = 48000 Hz, channels = 2, bits = 16
INFO: format = 0x1, audio length = 54359040 bytes
INFO: slots/frame = 731
INFO: frac SpF=0.429, tot bitrate=224 kbps, s freq=44.1 kHz
INFO: Fractional number of slots, padding required
INFO: System is big endian
INFO: Avg slots/frame = Inf; b/smp = Inf; br = Inf kbps
INFO: Encoding with psychoacoustic model 2 is finished
INFO: The MPEG encoded output file name is "/Users/stanleyk/Desktop/Track6audio.mp2"
INFO: [mplex] mplex version 2.2.1 ($Date: 2002/04/20 19:08:30 $)
**ERROR: [mplex] Unable to open file /Users/stanleyk/Desktop/Track6audio.m2v for reading.
Encoding complete!
[Stanley-Kubrick:~] stanleyk%


How about that, eh?
Regards!

[looftmac]

There is one other aspect to consider: Interlaced video.

Interlaced video is made up of two half pictures (fields) which are broadcasted at 50Hz (PAL) resp. 59.94 Hz (NTSC). So one frame actually consists of two fields, upper (eneven lines) and lower (even lines).
The sequence of these fields is important, since they capture objects in motion at different times and if they get swapped during the processing you get a "two steps forward and one backward" effect, which looks real choppy. Since computer monitors are always progressive, you probably don't see it there.
Now, here's the deal:
For broadcasting, PAL sends the upper field first, NTSC the lower. To make it even more complicated, the DV-format always puts the lower field first, regardsless of PAL/NTSC.
So there are at least two opportunities to unconsciously swap the fields:
1. Converting PAL - NTSC
2. Burning DV-PAL video on a SVCD in interlaced mode (since DV uses lower field first, while the TV is expecting upper field first).

Premiere has a function to swap fields and with mediapipe you can force the field sequence through the mpeg2encoder-pipe.

I assume, fcp3 has that ability as well, iMovie unfortunately lacks that function.

BTW, when exporting iMovies into iDVD and burning a DVD, no swapping is neccessary. Apple obviously took care of that internally. That maybe the reason, why encoding with the Apple mpeg2 encoder does not create the choppy videos.

[Ender11]

Wow, thanks for that explanation. I have always wondered what that was all about! THough I knew about the way the picture is built up in two interlaced/interleaved images... I now finally see the whole picture! (no pun intended but I am not unhappy with it!)

It is very unlikely to be the problem here though... since that would mean movements would be quite consistenly choppy... and this is not the case.

However, this is very good to know, thanks!!!

[looftmac]

Ender11,

I guess, you're right, although the effect I described gets worse with the speed of motion (greater difference between the two fields).

If your footage was shot with a camcorder, you should also change the interlace mode in the VCD/SVCD tab. I don't know exactly what the encoder does diferently between "frame" and "field", so you have to give both a shot to see what works best for you.

If your video seems to stall or skip frames it's most likely a too high bitrate. Sometimes even expensive brand name players do not do well at standard SVCD bitrates of 2500 kbps and if the resolution is higher than 480x576 all kinds of strange things can happen.

If you go to lower bitrates, you eventually want to increase your qmin, so that the mpeg2 encoder doesn't try to queeze high quality into a too small container (you'll get nice colored blocks).

Have you tried playing on the mac? You could use videolan (vlc).

[tkid]

to Ender 11:
sorry to keep you waiting. I was on vacation...
anyways, regarding your terminal output. It looks fine to me. That is exactly what I get too. Are you getting the mp2 File? All it says in the Terminal, is that there is no Video Stream (m2v) and that is correct.
Be sure to check "Keep Elementary Streams" in the Tools Tab of ffmpegX, otherwise you won´t get any output!! I might ad, that I do not use FinalCut to export the files-I use Quicktime. In order to be able to export mpeg2 files with Quicktime, you need Apples DVD Studio Pro. It includes a Quicktime Component that allows you to export with QT. As I mentioned before, you cannot choose the output size (always DVD size) so you can´t generate SVCD ready Files. I will try to use Final Cut next time, I´ll keep you updated!

[luca]

I too have the choppy pal SVCD problem using the route DV-iMovie-ffmpegX-Toast

I wonder, has anyone at all succeeded to make a non-choppy SVCD starting from DV on the Mac using free tools? Has anyone made that on a PC, for that matter?
If so, what's the secret?

Luca