VCD - not the quality I expected

[AlanHK]

So I assumed then that the majority of DVD players in the US could only play ntsc discs. Again, I might be be wrong about this assumption.

Yes, NTSC would be safer in the general case. But if he can use PAL it'd save a lot of hassle.

I'm in Hong Kong, which is PAL, but the TVs and DVD players are pretty much all multi-system here.

[filmshooter]

She.

Is it possible in tmpgenc to convert pal to ntsc?

[guns1inger]

What framerate did you capture at ? At a guess, probably 29.97 NTSC. If this is the case, it is difficult to actually alter the framerate back to 25 fps without getting jerky and unpleasant results. Going from 23.976, on the otherhand, can be done quite easily.

29.97 to 25 fps presents two major issues. One is choosing which 4.97 frames you are going to throw away each second, the other is altering the audio to match and keep everything in sync.

You could try using an avisynth script to do this, and tackle the audio seperately, and let tmpgenc do the encoding (the encoding is a no brainer - it's getting the right video in their first that's harder).

As you seem to have a relatively low opinion of the quality anyway, you could try using ConvertXtoDVD to convert the video and encode it to a PAL DVD structure. From there you could either just burn a PAL DVD, or use the converted contents to resize and re-encode as a PAL SVCD. It will be a lot quicker than letting tmpgenc do it.

[classfour]

The best VCD encoding that I've done to date was using a DVD master, then encoding with VCD easy - about two or three years back. Most of the others that were burned with the old Teraping unit five years ago are at best VHS quality, even using a DVD source. I've included a screen capture on The Green Mile that was encoded to VCD.

BTW: If I remember correctly, it took several hours of encoding to produce the three discs; more than encoding a DVD with Rebuilder at mastering quality.

[ROBERT BLACK]

4. I have never seen a VCD that compared favourably to a good VHS tape, although I have seen many crap VHS tapes that would be on par with a VCD

Check out the production vcds for the Shaw Films catalog of a Hong Kong company called Celestial Pictures. I would put some of their vcds up against the quality of any VHS. A couple of them were comparable or near to Laserdisc quality. Of course measurements don't lie,they can't be laserdisc quality. But whatever mastering process Celestial used, created the best vcds I've ever seen.

[DereX888]

4. I have never seen a VCD that compared favourably to a good VHS tape, although I have seen many crap VHS tapes that would be on par with a VCD

Check out the production vcds for the Shaw Films catalog of a Hong Kong company called Celestial Pictures. I would put some of their vcds up against the quality of any VHS. A couple of them were comparable or near to Laserdisc quality. Of course measurements don't lie,they can't be laserdisc quality. But whatever mastering process Celestial used, created the best vcds I've ever seen.

I still do own some of them (until I replace all with DVDs).
They all are far, far, far from *good* SP master VHS... maybe if comparing them to some early 80's 2-head VHS machies would yield in VCDs favor, but even that I doubt.
But yes, these are really good for VCDs, probably they are examples of what VCDs should have been when they came out in 90's

[jman98]

I'll have to ask her in my next e-mail if she can play PAL DVDs on her DVD player. I simply assumed not. I know someone here in Australia who shot a 'feature film' on film and telecined the footage to minidv and then burned DVD copies to sell to people around the world. Unfortunately, he only had the software to burn PAL format DVDs and apparently, many Americans who purchased his film could only play these DVDs on their computer CD / DVD drive and not their DVD players. So I assumed then that the majority of DVD players in the US could only play ntsc discs. Again, I might be be wrong about this assumption.

Well, actually a large number of US DVD players CAN play PAL DVDs, but certainly not all. The biggest problem you have is that most of the people in the world don't read VideoHelp and don't know anything other than "Just push the play button and it works". The real problem with many US DVD players is that they must be manually configured to output all video in NTSC, which forces the DVD player to convert PAL to NTSC output. It's crazy, but the default value often is set to "Multi" output, which outputs the video in exactly the same format as on the disc. This sends PAL output to American NTSC TVs, which of course can't display it correctly. "Multi" is fine IF you have a multistandard TV, but such TVs are difficult to buy in America and few have them. Region coding is usually a bigger problem in America than PAL conversion, but there are indeed some DVD players that can't correctly convert PAL DVDs to NTSC output.

[filmshooter]

Mat's suggestion of creating a VCD were as follows:

Transfer DV from camera to computer DV AVI with WinDV.
Encode DV AVI with TMPGEnc using the VCD template.
Author your VCD with VCDEasy.

What then would the step by step process be for creating a DVD?

[SingSing]

Transfer DV from camera to computer DV AVI with WinDV.
Encode DV AVI with TMPGEnc using the DVD template.
Author your DVD with TMPGenc DVDauthor.

[filmshooter]

Thanks SingSing. I would also have to add VirtualDub to that list for basic editing once I get the footage onto the computer. Though with so many steps involved, would this have any degrading affect on the quality? I know that there are people who say that if you save a videoclip a number of times, you lose quality. I assume then that with the WinDV - Virtual Dub - TmpGenc - TmpGenc DVD Author route, there would likely be a save at each stage.

[jagabo]

Though with so many steps involved, would this have any degrading affect on the quality?

Transfer DV from camera to computer DV AVI with WinDV.

This step is lossless unless you have a bad caputure (dropped frames).

Edit with VirtaulDub

This is lossless or lossy depending on what you do. If all you are doing is simple cuts you can work in Direct Stream Copy mode -- lossless. If you need to apply filters (brightness, contrast, color, noise reduction, etc) then you must work in Full Processing Mode . You will be losing some quality in exchange. Using a lossless codec for the intermediate (HuffYUV, Lagarith) will help reduce your losses.

Encode DV AVI with TMPGEnc using the DVD template.

This step is lossy. You pick the quality indirectly by selecting the bitrate, or you pick the quality directly with Constant Quality encoding.

Author your DVD with TMPGenc DVDauthor

This step is lossless as long as you used DVD compatible settings in the MPEG encoding step.