no sharp image on svcd after converting with tmpgenc

[keith]

I Downloaded a movie(final fantasy) in avi and encoded it to mpeg2(supervcd)with tmpgenc(to play it at my dvd-player). But my result doesn't have a sharp image at all and the image seems to dark.
I tried all the settings that I could find on this site.
Does somebody have a solution?

[will trver]

I just posted the same question yeterday. The concencoiuse from the responses I recieved seemed to blame a low bitrate on the problem. I seem to doubt that, I think we loose vibrance of the picture in the TMPEG or CCe mpeg2 process.

[xaanin]

Well, I don't really know about the Final Fantasy DivX (Currently converting the VCD to SVCD, hopefully it will be good) but I know my 700 mb DivX version of Shrek converted perfectly to SVCD. So how big is the Final Fantasy DivX? And what bitrate are you encoding to?

[keith]

The file part 2 is 160MB/AVI
I use tmgpenc to SVCD 16/9 (mpeg2): bitrate 2520/CBR

[keith]

by the way: were do you get your movie-files?

[haubrija]

while your problem could be a low bitrate, many divx movies are dark and not very sharp by nature. The best thing to do is to run some filters through it to brighten and sharpen the picture. The easiest ones to use are in tmpgenc but they can mulitipy encoding time. The best way to do it is to apply the filters in virttual dub. I use the brightness/contrast filter to brighten it up and have downloaded the unsharp mask filter which does a great job at sharpening things up. Let me know if you need any more help.

[will trver]

Where did you download the unsharp mask from? This sounds interesting.

[xaanin]

Keith, that sounds like bad quality in the DivX version. How large is the first part? I know my normal VCD version is 680ish mb per part. I've also seen a one part DivX at about 680mb.

[keith]

You may be right about the quality of the Divx.
I download most of the files on Kazaa.
Do you know a better(quality) site to download movies?
Thanks

[haubrija]

here's the link where you can get unsharp mask... this is a powerful sharpening tool and read the directions in the readme to figure out how to get the best from it... i usually set it high, then gradually bring it down till the white lines around objects are no longer there but the image is sharper.

http://sauron.mordor.net/dgraft/

check out some of the other filters as well. The divx movies on the web suck for quality and although these filters are not miracle workers, they can help out considerably.