Maximize XSVCD Quality

[pburdett]

CD-Rs are cheap and I want my Hi-8 home movies to look as good as the tapes.

My DVD player will play XSVCDs so that is the format I am after. I took a 720x480 avi file and encoded to 480x480 MPEG2 using TMPGEnc. I used constant quality encoding set to 100, thinking that would give me the best result. My max bitrate was at 4000, my average at about 2400. Motion quality was set at the highest.

Still, I was not happy with some of the artifacts that showed up during motion in the video. What encoding parameteres do I need to use to get the HIGHEST possible quality? 10 minute CDs I can live with, but blurriness is uncacceptable. Still, if I can economize on bitrate where it is not needed, I would rather do that. That's why I think I want to stay with a variable bitrate. 15 minute CDS would be nice.

[Bruce Simpson]

What codec and settings were used to create your AVI files?

I get close to "broadcast quality" SVCDs with bitrates as low as 2500 and two-pass encoding so I'm wondering if the damage has already been done when you've captured to AVI.

If that's the case then no amount of fiddling with TMPGenc, higher resolutions, or with bitrates is going to fix things.

[jarvis1781]

the problem is with the constant quality
you should use VBR 2 or more pass
that always fixes my problems

i encoded Lord Of The Rings to SVCD at a pretty low bitrate to put the whole movie on 2 discs but with 4 VBR passes in CCE the quality is just amazing

every little bit was squeezed out possible

hope it works for you

[crahak]

Some people will call a 3 hour movie on a SVCD amazing, some people will call 10 minutes on a SVCD ugly, even with all the optimized templates and all the good stuff. I have only seen one SVCD come near broadcast here, and the movie was on 4 SVCDs... You can also try to encode to CVD, you might like it better too...

[SatStorm]

The source you have is not easy for standard CVD/SVCD bitrates.
The only way is to go xCVD or 1/2 DVD.
Both solutions needs an average bitrate about 3000Kb/s. Multipass VBR helps.
Try this with TMPGenc: Mpeg 2, 352 X 576/480, 2 Pass VBR (motion estimate search mode), bitrate: min 1000 average 3000 maximum 5000.

Those settings give about 30 min per 80min CD and the quality on TV must be close or same with the source. (The best solution is an average of 3500). On DVD you have to mux the file as standard mpeg 2

[pburdett]

CVD is not an option, unfortunately, because by all accounts my standalone DVD player (Apex 5131) will not play it. XSVCD is probably my best bet for high quality.

I picked up a couple of good things to try in your suggestions. First, I will go for multipass VBR. I don't understand why that would make quality any better than CQ at 100, but I'll give it a shot.

Second, I am going to push up my average bitrate setting to 3000 or more. It was set at about 2500, I think. My thought was that movement problems were probably a function of the max bitrate rather than the average, but I'll give it a try. I will also push up my max rate.

I am also going to try one more thing I got from another post. I am going to reverse the order of my interlacing while encoding.

By the way, is there a good way to test the maximum bitrate I can put put on my DVD player?

I am not sure what you mean, Bruce, by my capture codec, but I am using a WinTV card with a BTWINCAP driver and the VideoFactory capture utility. I then edit and encode back into avi from VF. TMPGEnc recognizes the file as "uncompressed".

I'll let you all know how the changes work.

[DJRumpy]

You should utilize multipass VBR to take advantage of the better bitrate allocation for motion, scene changes/detection. Each pass, the encoder learns a bit more about what it's encoding, which allows it to better allocate bits to complex scenes, fades, or hi-motion scenes that require it, while not wasting them on scenes that don't require them. This is especially important on home video, as all of the shaking motion common on these, coupled with the sometimes poor/noisy quality of your source eats up the available bitrate. I would NOT however, set your minimum to 1000. This needlessly wastes bitrate. Set it to 0. If your player complains, then set it to no higher than 300.

The AVG setting is up to you. You can set it to 5000 if you prefer, or if you want a more balanced MPEG, without wasting bits, try something in between, like 2500. Your max should be set at or near the max capabilites of your player (5000 in this case..see below).

Make sure you don't skimp on the 'Motion Search Precision' setting. Considering your source, it should be set to NORMAL at a minimum, or one of the slower settings.

Last but not least, consider pre-filtering your AVI's if they contain noise. Noise will also eat up precious bitrate. Look for 2-d cleaners, or Temporal filters in VirtualDub, or AVISynth.

If your captures are uncompressed, then I would change nothing there. Uncompressed video is lossless, and probably not what's compromising your quality.

To test the max capabilities of your player, you would normally need to run encode playback tests using CBR (preferrably on re-rewritable media ), until your player chucks up. In your case however, a quick look in the DVD Players list shows the Apex 5131 is capable of XSVCD at 5000kbit/s, as well as XVCD at 5000kbit/s.

[SatStorm]

There is minimum bitrate to support a still picture. For CVD this is about 1000Kb/s and for SVCD about 1200Kb/s. For TMPGenc I found this neccessary, with CCE maybe it can be skipped.
If you test enough with TMPGenc, you will notice that if you set minimum and maximum equal distance from the average, the results are way better than using maximum and minimum bitrates imperiously (arbitrarily).
Also try to mux with bbmpeg.

[BJ_M]

DJRumpy is correct -- filtering is a must for good quality when the source is tape (hi8 , s-vhs, vhs) -- even with beta sp and sx i use filtering (i dont use dv - but i bet same applies) .. only when you get up to digital betacam and above is it not nessessary (ussually) ..

[pburdett]

Okay. This is what I will try...

I'll pre-filter my AVIs. I don't have the software mentioned, but I'll look around on this site and expect I can find something.

I'll set my minimum bitrate to 300. (There is a conflict in advice here, so if others want to comment I would appreciate your opinion.) So far I have been using 300, which seems to be a default, but I am not sure it has been going that low. It might be staying at 1200, but if the software can bump up automatically, I'll let it keep doing that.

I'll use max at 5000. That is what is listed as the max and I have confirmed it using various CBR settings.

Motion search will stay at very slow, which is what I have been using.

Before I settle on multipass VBR, I would like clarification on one point. Constant quality VBR seems to me that it might be better. It requires only a min and max bitrate in its settings. That suggests to me that it simply applies the as much quality to every scene as it needs, up to the max. Multipass VBR asks for an average as well. My guess is that this is simply doing a CQ-VBR initially, and then scaling BACK quality if the average is too high. Is it really possible that a second pass could actually improve on the quality of a first pass?

Average about halfway between min and max. In this case I'll leave it at 2500.

Another key setting I have found critical through testing -- the interlacing order. I was using the wrong order and getting it right made a BIG difference. Question: why is my Hi-8 interlaced? Is it normally so, or am I doing something to it in capture? Not that I am complaining. I understand that the interlacing improves the motion effects when viewed on a TV, which is my ultimate target medium.

Mux in BBMPEG? What is mux?

Did I miss anything?

[BJ_M]

yes -- hi8 is always interlaced

[SatStorm]

Mux: Multiplexing. Helps on some DVD players multiplex with BBmpeg that leave TMPGenc do the job done!

[pburdett]

Hey, DJRumpy, or any other guru,

I was looking at available filters for VirtualDub. There is a pretty good selection on the website of Donald Graft, but I don't see anything called a "2-d" or "temporal" filter" for cleaning up noise. Are there any specific ones you would recommend?

[pburdett]

Regarding "muxing" or multiplexing: Why do I want to mux in BBMPEG?

Do I mux before or after I encode to MPEG2 using TMPGEnc?

Multiplexing is the mixing of the audio with the video, right? Why would that cause problems with my video?

[DJRumpy]

pburdett, Donald Grafts site offers filters for VirtualDub, and for AVISynth. VirtualDub comes with a built in Temporal Filter. The Optimized 2-d filter should also be available on DGraft's site.

If you want a good temporal filter for AVISynth, download MPEG2DEC (It's in the TOOLS section). It has an plugin for AVISynth.

Getting the VirtualDub filter to work in AVISynth is not for the squimish. Someone was nice enough to write an import filter that allows you to use any VirtualDub filter in AVISynth. You can access the 2-d filter for VirtualDub in AVISynth. Of couse you will need to modify the paths for your PC. You can find this import file here:
http://www.avisynth.org/index.php?page=VirtualDub_I

This script accesses the Pentium 2D Cleaner. There is also a plugin for other processors. It of course, requires that you have downloaded and placed the 2-d filter in your virtualdub plugins directory.

Import("c:\Program Files\VirtualDub\plugins\vdub_filters.avs")
clip=AVISource("C:\MyVideoDirectory\mymovie.avi")
ConvertToRGB32(clip)
VD_2DCleaneroptp3(10, 2, 2)
ConvertToYUY2()

A quick search of google.com for VIRTUALDUB and FILTER or AVISYNTH and FILTER should yeild good results as well.

As for muxing your streams, I've never experienced a problem using TMPGenc's MPEG TOOLS. Perhaps someone could clarify that statement.