Blurry VCD when capturing at 640 X 480?

[Trifu]

I was wondering if someone could tell me how to capture so that my final output (VCD at bitrate of 1725) will be not blurry.

I currently have a Pinnacle DC10+ capture card, I capture at 6MBit/Sec, at 640 X 480. I then convert it to a VCD in tmpg, using 4:3 source aspect ration, and 4:3 for the output ratio. The final movie is at a frame size of 352 X 240. I find that this configuration has very little blockiness in the movie.......however.......it is very blurry, and the picture colors isn't as vibrant as before.
(I am capturing from a VHS by the way).
Does anyone have any ideas as to how I can capture/encode to make my videos not blurry?

Thanks a bunch,

[kwag]

Capture at the highest bitrate that you can, but also capture at 352X240 if your final MPEG is going to be 352X240.

There is no gain by capturing 640X480 if your final size is 352X240.

Hope this helps.

[Kdiddy]

If your player will take an Xvcd..you can try only resizing to 352x480, provides a sharper picture...as far as the "the picture colors isn't as vibrant as before." That is what happens when you bitrate goes from 6mbps to 1.725mbps..with over 70% reduction in bitrate, do not expect the same output quality as the original capture...also, since you are starting from VHS, your output will NEVER be better than what you start with espeially with a 70% redux in bitrate.

[doobster]

Actually there is an advantage at capturing at 640x480. Because when you shrink the video down to a smaller aspect the quality will not be lost. And you should use 1:1 VGA as the aspect ratio. Not 4:3. Video will look alot better this way. And if you can even capture at a larger rez then 640x480 the video will look even bigger. But of course that means longer encoding time. But way the odds, wait an extra hour for superiour video or don't wait and have decent quality.

Just my two cents

[vhelp]

Trifu,

Yes, I'm with kdiddy on this.
But, take MY advise (I have lots of experience with the DC10+ card)
don't capture at 352x240, even if you are capping from VHS!!!
Continue capturing at 640x480 and when you encode, bring it down
to 480x480 or 352x480 and run some tests on quality. See how
they look played back on your tv set. The 352x480 will most likely
look the same, so you'll probably want to encode w/ 352x480.

Unfortunatley, the DC10+ does not capture at 352x480!!! I've tried
getting it to, but doesn't!!! Would of save you a bound, but oh well.

And, lets face it, 352x240 (VCD) usually do look pretty blurry!!
But, you might be able to reduce the blurryness to some degree, but
not too much. I've done a couple to for test purposes to see how they
would looke on my tv, and I was pretty impressed, but not by much!
Anyways, I won't go into it here though, as i'm busy with other
things and reading all these post and answering what I can too. So,
i'll leave that up to you or someone else here to help you out with
your blurry VCD's issue.

HISTORY:
-----------
I did an xSVCD for someone as a favor - was their first DVD player.
They asked me if it were posible to transfer all their VHS tapes to
CD (they the lingo, DVD) I said yes, and the quality would be next
to "same" if done right. She didn't believe me. So, she gave me
one of her daughters favorite VHS "Comphy Couch" at the time, I used
my DC10+ card on it. Video was only 25minutes I think. So it wasn't
a problem. I captured the VHS at 3000 bits and encoded it as an
SVCD w/ 480x480 and CQ-VBR of 1750mn/2520mx bitrate.
She has one of the DVD/VHS machines. She said she was able to play
both (by switch some button?) and in the end, she couldn't tell the
difference!! I said the DISK is yours!


Good luck!

- vhelp

[semmerket]

That blurry aspect of vcd is because the vcd is non-entrelaced. The tv frames are entrelaced in two fields. When you capture from an entrelaced media such TV , to a non-entralaced media like computer, you lose half of this fields, losing quality. So, to keep the maximum quality possible try these settings:

To videos that the original source has been made for cinema (24 fps):

Capture at 512 x 480 @ 29.97 frames per second. Load your captured movie into VirtualDub and set the resize filter to 352x240 with the "precise bicubic" option. Go to the "video" menu, then go to "frame rate" and choose "reconstruct from fields - adaptive" in the "inverse telecine" box. DO NOT change the frame rate. "inverse telecine" will do it automatically.
For the compression, choose RGB Uncompressed or a lowless codec.
-Choose your preferred audio compression.
-Set audio to "full processing mode".
-Go to the "audio" menu, then go to "interleaving". Set the "interleave audio every" to 30 frames.
-Save your work.

Or, to videos that the original source has been made for TV (like series or talk-shows...) 29,97 fps:

capture at 640x480 at 29.967fps, and then DEINTERLACE it. You can do that with softwares like Adobe Premiere or VirtualDub (this one is highly recommended. However, that resolution demands a lot of processing power and free disk space. Some experts would say that such a high resolution for a VHS source is a waste of time and space, but I insist: if you like things perfect, try that resolution. Now, if you don't need such perfection, or your system can't keep that up, use 512x384 at 29.967 and the result will look quite as good as 640x480. At last, resize The movie to 352x240 using VirtualDub with the "precise bicubic" filter on.

After all, the resulting file can be converted to compliant MPEG VCD 2.0 format in TMPEnc.

[Trifu]

I have a question, is it possible that my VCDs are so blurry cuz I'm capturing at a frame size larger then what it's suppose to be? I thought the frame size of t.v. was 352 X 240?

however.......when I capture at 352 X 240, I get lots of blockiness......when I capture at 640 X 480.......I get like no blockiness......but lots of blurryiness........

also, can one use virtual dub with the DC 10+ capture card?
I remembered trying that program out once before, but it wouldn't capture sound.......so I just gave up.

[Trifu]

Semmerket,
It seems like I'm doing a lot of filtering in Virtual Dub,
wouldn't all of that filtering and resizing in virtual dub degrade the video quality each time I pass it through virtual dub?

[semmerket]

Sorry, I couldn't reply your question before, because a lightning fried my modem...

I don't know if you can capture with DC10... Virtually, yes...

Note that I've posted TWO different methods (you have to choose the one that fits with your source). And note also that the DEINTERLACE isn't a filtering process. This only corrects the field orientation (from INTERLACED to NON-INTERLACED). Only the Resize filter is applied and the "Precise Bicubic" option enabled gives the best quality. The quality loss in this process is almost imperceptible. The COMPRESSION is the real worry thing! When you compress to MPEG1/2, DivX, Indeo, WMV, or anyelse codec, you invariably LOST QUALITY. Even the so commented DVD quality, "is like cinema..." LOST VERY QUALITY from the original. So this is a thing that we have to live together...

If I could help with some more, please email me ...
My modem still is fried...

[azali]

I've tried the dc10 myself and found that unless you set the sharpness on the driver settings above default it will look out of focus (blurry). I set mine to about halfway (can't remember the number value) for a crisper vcd mpeg image.