Highest VCD Quality

[JamesB69]

When using Tmpg to convert from a divx avi to a vcd (ntsc film), what settings should i use to yield the absolute highest quality? Encoding time is not an issue, quality is everything in this instance.

[PlaiBoi]

Are you trying to stay within VCD specs or not? If not, then depending on the length of your film, you can increase the bitrate to about 1600 (if its about 120 min .long) and fit it on 2 full CD's.

[theDruid]

JamesB69,

if you do want to keep to the VCD standards, just use the wizard/template for most of the settings, but then set 'noise reduction' to 'high quality mode', and under 'Other Settings' set the 'Motion search precision' to 'Highest Quality (very slow)'.

that should be enough to keep your PC busy for a good few hours! but I believe those are the main quality settings you can change without increasing the bitrate (which can improve the quality, but won't comply with the basic VCD standard.)

if you're not bothered about VCD standards, look into some of the other TMPGEnc templates for XVCD's, KVCD's, CVD's etc.. (look in the tools section of this site) or maybe think about MPEG2 and SVCD.

cheers,

mcdruid.

[JamesB69]

Ha it says 70 hours for the highest quality and the high quality mode noise filter

40 for just plain filter

20 for high quality on its own. This is what i am going with although it is an entire two hour movie for each time. How much difference does the noise quality make. Using win98 i really doubt this computer would make 70 hours without crashing. I cant wait to see the results, as i am doing three movies like this, the star wars trilogy.

[PlaiBoi]

@JamesB69
Wut kind of cpu do u have? 70 hours sounds like way too much.
BTW, dont get too excited over what your quality is gonna be like. The noise filter and highest quality motion search isnt going to increase your quality very drastically. You may notice a small increase in quality. It's not going to be anything big. If i were you, I would just use normal motion search.

[JamesB69]

AMD K6-2 500mhz

My project is I took a Star Wars Episode IV Divx, 25.00 fps (which was evidently from a laserdisc capture) and converted it to a NTSC Film VCD. Started my brand new video on one TV and my hot off the press VCD on another. The two videos actually were very close in total time/speed and audio was great. Only difference video was fullscreen, vcd 2.35:1 (yes!!). Quality goes to the VCD. Overall VCD wins. I love this

[Jester700]

OMG!

You REALLY need a new PC! At least a new mobo & CPU. A used celeron, duron, or PIII running near a GHz will do at least 5x better, can probably use your existing memory, and should be damn near free. The K6 had notoriously poor floating point units, and that's heavily used in video encodes.

Better yet to spend a couple hundred and get a midline Athlon XP or Pentium4 and new mobo & memory. You won't regret it.

[JamesB69]

Not a lot of money, where can i get this PIII processor and motherboard. Im all ears for cheap speed. I build computers and have not had luck with motherboards from Ebay, as they are usually bad.

[furball6969]

Aside from the new PC etc...

Why don't you use virtual Dub and snip, say, a two minute clip and try several of the Tmpgenc settings that you're interested in and see how much difference there is? Best snip from an area with a good bit of motion or action to see the full potential of the encoder.

[FoxGarrison]

Why don't you use virtual Dub and snip, say, a two minute clip and try several of the Tmpgenc settings that you're interested in and see how much difference there is?

This is an incredible piece of advice. You can take it further and rip the sample clip from a THX certified disk...oh, say..."Phantom Menace" and use that to try out different settings in TMPGEnc. I use that sample as my reference for my Sony Vega, both my DVD players and my computer's display.

Good Luck!

[Jester700]

Actually, it WAS eBay. A friend of mine got a new Duron 1.2 GHz (IIRC) mobo/CPU combo for around $70 to upgrade a K6 system for his son (one that I originally built, in fact). Personally, I'd go the extra mile - spend $200 for a newer tech setup.

There are also closeouts in lots of places - compgeeks, tigerdirect, etc. I usually tell people to make sure they NEED to upgrade before doing so. But that's the average Joe doing mostly internet surfing. If you intend to do video work, this will be money well spent.