What resolution to use???

[kjmacke]

Hello I am capturing from a digital cable box. What is the best resolution for capturing if I am only making vcd's.

[Tomas]

PAL:352x288
NTSC:352x240

Later surf this site more.....

Capture into 704x576 or 704x480 and then (bicubic) resize to res. 352x288 or 352x240.

Thanx for attention of adamp007

[adamp007]

I am afradi that is not quite the case. Although the resolution for VCD are the figures shown , it is ALWAYS best to capture in as HIGH a resolution as possible with the LEAST compression. Encoding down to VCD resolutions will yield far better results.

Cheers
Adam

[baker]

640-480

best res for eveything, capturing, convert

[Bud]

I also Capture via Digital Cable using Adobe Premeire 6.0, it save the file to DV2 (AVI 702x480). I use VirtualDub to edit, have used resize to 352x240, bicubic, into frameserve into TMPGEnc template at standard VCD. works for me great, have also gone through Panasonci MPEG Encopding and the results are about the same as far as I can see. My only problem is if I use some very el-chepo CD-R, they either won't play or play very bad, so I try to use Fuji Film CD-R, Imation or Sony all work good. My setting i nVurtalDub Capture is normally set at 352x480 then resize down, the only reson I use VDub Capture is for the Timer, Adobe does not have a timer so I can set up like a VCR.

Bud

[alb1n0]

From http://www.geocities.com/lukesvideo/

Average quality
ntsc 352x240
pal 352x288

High quality
ntsc 352x480
pal 352x576

[kjmacke]

Thanks for all your input I really do appreciate it.

[Tomas]

I didn't find any advantage of using 352x480 or 352x576(pal) in XVCD.

It has advantage for SVCD, because of interlacing, but for XVCD (it doesn't support interlacing) it doesn't bring much more quality. If you have sufficient bitrate (>2000kbit) , then i would recommend 480x576 or 704x576...

[Dave B]

I always capture at my target horizontal resolution (e.g. for VCD its 352) and at full vertical resolution (e.g. 576 for PAL)

If you only capture at half vertical resolution (240/288) then, due to the way a TV picture is diplayed, you are actually throwing away half the information!

You could argue that if you are making standard res VCD, which has a 240/288 vertical resolution then you will just have to throw away the extra information anyway. This is partly true but most "smart" deinterlacers decide what detail to throw away and what to keep - ensuring that your final video contains as much of the orginal detail as possible.

For the record, I was very unhappy with my standard VCDs encoded from captures until I captured at full vertical res. I suggest that if you still have doubts then capture clips at both resolutions, encode to VCD and see which of the two you like better.

[Tomas]

to DaveB:

Yes, i undestand you and interlacing, but:

MPEG1 compression doesn't support interlacing so odd and even fields get blend between due to compression... so i don't think that it is what you want - blured pictures...

[vitualis]

What DaveB has posted is mostly correct.

Many capture cards will throw away one of the fields if you capture at ???x240/288. This means that you are potentially losing up to half the visual information.

You will get better results (from my experience and this is the experience posted by many other people in this forum) if you capture at full vertical resolution (i.e., ???x480/576) and then de-interlace and resize down to 352x240/288 for VCD.

The image will look a little bit sharper and furthermore, you have noticeable less noise in the picture.

Regards.

[Tomas]

Yes.

I only can agree with you Vitalis. Of course if you use deinterlace, then everything is all right.

But what kind of deinterlace to use?
One kind of deinterlace do the same as if you were capturing at 352x(240/288) - throwing away one half of pictures...
other kind blures odd and even fields together
and other....

And i didn't find any kind of deinterlace doing better pictures than throwing away one half of pictures, because than pictures are clear and not blured.

I am using two metods:
1) grabing interlaced at 704x576 and make SVCD, which supports interlacing
2) grabing at 352x288 or 704x288(then resize to 352x288) and make (X)VCD, because it doesn't support interlacing.

(PAL~NTSC) vertical resolution
576~480
288~240

I am using PAL

[vitualis]

"Smart Deinterlace" in VirtualDub seems to work well...

Regards.