352x480 or 352x240 if using CCE Basic?

[dinkob]

Let's suppose that all my captures are at 352x480 (which lately they are).

I noticed that CCE Basic and CCE SP (only tested with trial version) did have different outputs in terms of quality.

CCE Basic looked blurrier (note: I selected progressive source instead of deinterlace option so the output looks like tmpgenc one - which blends the fields together if vertical resolution is 480) whereas CCE SP was sharp and encoding time was much faster (can't say for the whole pic because of logo but for the rest of the picture it does look sharper - not necessarily better).

That did confuse me as it says on Cinemacraft website that both use the same engine.

Then I discover that CCE SP in it's VCD template automatically selects half vertical resoution if your source is 480 vertical.

So I did the same thing in CCE Basic and voila - got the same result (still slower encoding though).

But my question is; Since I am using half vertical resolution anyways would it matter if I capture at 352x480 or 352x240.

I haven't tried to compare the two as 352x480 gives me more options to work further if I want to convert to DVD specs, but if I know ahead of time that I want VCD would it really matter?

Is there some technical documentation that explains this in depth?

As my personal prefference I simply began capturing everything at 352x480 but if it's useless I could go back to 352x240.

[lordsmurf]

x240 is progressive only, forcing deinterlace from tv sources. YUCK! Leave it as x480 interlaced ... this yields best quality. Why not use SVCD? Or xSVCD?

But if you insist on chopping the source down to x240 for VCD, I would deinterlace AFTER capture, using an ADAPTIVE method, which yields best quality, not a nasty blend or drop-field.

[jimmalenko]

I've always believed that if capturing to AVI with the intention of converting to MPEG-1/2, then you should capture at the best possible settings so that you get the best possible conversion, and if capturing to directly to MPEG-1/2 you should just capture to the specs that you want your output to be, saving you the time, hassle and any possible quality loss from re-encoding.

So my short answer is that if capturing direct to MPEG, and you want to output to VCD, just capture at VCD specs from the beginning.

[Nelson37]

Why are you capturing at a resolution which is known to CREATE undesirable artifacts with almost all capture hardware?

If you are going to re-encode anyway, use a resolution (something over 480 x 480) which does NOT introduce blending/resizing/smoothing artifacts caused by the capture hardware.

[FulciLives]

@dinkob
What type of capture card/device do you have and in what format do you capture in (by format I mean codec such as HuffyUV or PICVideo MJPEG etc.)?

Depending on the capture card you might be better off capturing at 720x480 or 704x480 instead of 352x480. We would have to know your capture card/device to advise properly though.

You definately want to captue at a hieght of 480 ... not 240 ... and you want to leave it at 480 when you encode with CCE. Also your capture will be interlaced so unless you do an IVTC (which is damn tricky) then you should leave it as be and encode it as interlaced ... not progressive.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[dinkob]

I am using WinTV PCI with VirtualDub VCR Sync.

It can't capture at 704x480. Max I can go is 640x480.

My colorspace is YUY2 and no compression as my CPU is 1 Ghz.

It works well so far with that setting - the only thing that matters to me is just to get the movie to my HD.

In terms of my encoding I just stick with VCD. It's more than enough for me and when I compare the direct capture from TV program and then from VCR tape - VCD looks better with the downside of not having interlaced movie.

VCD is fine with me most of the time as it's quick and easy to do.

CCE Basic doesn't have an adaptive blend but I could try using tmpgenc to export adaptive deinterlaced movie as AVI (- b.t.w this is how I convert some divx stuff so it preserves the aspect ratio as it automatically adds black boxes on top and bottom).

I guess I'll stick with 480 vertical resolution.