Poor DVD .mpg Video Quality With Pinnacle Studio SE Ver. 8

[drdrop]

I recently bought a TDK Indi 420N DVD+R/RW burner. It came with Pinnacle Studio SE Version 8. My PC is an HP Pavilion, with a 533 MHz Celeron processor and 192 MB RAM.

I haven't even burned a DVD yet, but was using Pinnacle SE to create both VCD- and DVD-compatible mpeg files from video captured from my camcorder. Whenever I play the files on my PC (using either Windows Media Player version 7 or PowerDVD), the DVD-compatible mpeg doesn't seem to have any better picture quality than the VCD-compatible one. Plus, the DVD-compatible one is "choppy" when played back.

Does anyone know why this is? Is it because I'm trying to play it on my PC? Will the problem go away if I play it on a "real" DVD player? The DVD-compatible mpeg picture quality should be noticeably better than the VCD-compatible quality, right?

Thanks!

-Dave

[SVCDummy]

Pinnacle Studio 8se is a CPU hog!

If you want the video to be smooth you need at least a PII 800mhz and a really good video card. Anything less will be choppy.

I actually read the min/max requirements for this package and it had a "recommended" CPU of PII greater than 500mhz. I tried it on a 350mhz, a 500mhz, a 600hmz, a 800mhz , a 900mhz, and a 1.2ghz processors. I had all of these available to me at work where I was editing the video for a project. I kept moving my Matrox 32mb video card to each box as I tested the program. The 800mhz machine was 'passable' the 900 and up boxes worked fine.

I didn't get any better quality out of the encoder until I used the 1.2 ghz PIII and switched to a Gforce 64mb video card. Then the output files were noticably better. I think the G-Force card took some of the processing requirements away from the CPU and let the CPu do a better job of encoding.

Those are my tests. Anybody else?

[drdrop]

Thanks!

I actually don't have a video card at all; just whatever video-handling software that came with the PC.

So, since it's Pinnacle that's actually the memory hog, does that mean the files themselves are screwed up and "choppy," or that they'll just play bad on my PC? Will the files made in Pinnacle on my PC play okay in a "real" DVD player?

(The reason I haven't just tried it in my own DVD player is that's "phase II" of my plan. Right now my player only plays DVD+R, and I don't have any DVD+Rs; only DVD+RWs to actually play with the burner . . .)

-Dave

[drdrop]

One more thing . . .

Even if Pinnacle is a CPU hog and makes the picture "choppy" when encoded with a 533 MHz processor, shouldn't the picture quality (minus the "choppiness") still be noticeably better with the DVD-compatible mpeg file?

-Dave

[wthess]

I have Studio 8 myself, even though I'm going to stop using it due to quality factors and lack of flexibility.

However, in your situation, the problem probably is not Studio, but a result of your hardware since this is happening on playback in multiple sources. Here are my observations.

Your primary problem is the PC. First of all, it is only 533 mhz. On top of that, it is a Celeron. Since that PC is so old, my guess would be that you have an old hard drive, which is slow by today's standards (yours is probably an Ultra 33). I would also say that you have an old slow graphics board that isn't capable of full motion video. If I'm understanding you correctly, you don't have a separate video card, so that means it is built into your computer

You don't have enough RAM. Video likes lots of RAM. If your PC has run out of RAM and has resorted to Virtual Memory for more memory, then you've got a double whammy. Not only is your video being spooled from the hard drive, it will be competing with the virtual memory accesses. This would definitely make for soggy cornflakes. I wouldn't go with less than 512MB on an XP machine. Windows 98 won't really use much more than 256.

My suggestion is to buy a new PC if you want to do video editing. You can get the cheap ones for around 400 bucks now, monitor not included. However, you can continue to use your current monitor with the new one. Keep in mind that the $400 PC's are the low end, but they are still MUCH faster than your old PC and should be able to handle full motion video. For 500-600 you can get a PC with a DVD built in, but if you already have one, save your money and take it out of your old one.

Hope this helps.

Todd

[DigiDo]

Sounds like a caputure related problem.. I have a faster machine 1.2GHz and use either iLink/1394 or Pinnacle USB MovieBox and both capture methods seems to work rather well.

As for rendering and compiling mpeg2, well it's rather slow. I don't know what other software out there does as much as Studio 8 does for the price!

Studio8 has some bugs which can be trying at times. Most I know how to avoid or discard.

DigiDo

[drdrop]

Thanks for the input, everyone!

Just to make absolutely sure, the problem is with the mpeg file itself (MAKING it on an old, slow PC), not the fact that I'm PLAYING it on an old, slow PC, right?

I'll start hunting around for a faster box. The good news is I'm still within my 14-day return period on the burner, so getting a box that comes with a burner is still an option . . .

Thanks again!

-Dave

[wthess]

It could be dropping frames as you capture due to the old system. When you captured, did you notice how many dropped frames you had?

Still, my bet is that most, if not all of this jerkiness is related to playback. Either way, I would invest in another computer. You'll be surprised how much more quickly your rendering will be.

If you would like, I would be happy to take a look at a captured clip on my PC. Then, that would answer the question as to whether the problem is capture related or playback related. Which codec are you using in your AVI file by the way? I'm on my work PC right now, so we would have to make sure the codec is installed on my PC. What quality settings are you using to capture? Also, if you want to do this, only capture 10 to 15 secs as those files can get quite large and may take a while to send.

[bertmartin]

I tried Pinnacle for about a year and had all kind of problems. I suspect it's not your computer. Pinnacle is noted for memory leaks (available memory is used up by programs that don't free it after they complete). I use a program called FreeMem Pro to monitor my free memory and reboot when it gets low. By the way I have a P-III 500 and never drop a frame. I found Ulead Video Studio works for me. I use SceneAnalyzer to capture. Video Studio now has a decent encoder and for most projects I just use the built-in encoder and the DVD plug-in Ulead provides.

Even though Pinnacle has an appealing interface I would recommend gettin rid of it and trying Ulead Video Studio for entry level editing, or one of the other editors recommended here. All I can say is it works for me.
Bert

[curritch]

You didn't mention whether you were creating the mpg files "on the fly" or were capturing avi's and then doing the mpg encoding.
It has been reported on the S8 forum that the conversion from avi is of condiderably higher quality than the "on the fly" quality. Also mpg quality is controllable in S8. Are you using the highest quality setting?

Also Pinnacle has made improvements to its encoder both for Studio 7 & 8 that may not be in the SE version. I don't like S8 because of its general flakiness but I have experimented with mpg2 encoding and I can't tell the difference between it and TMPGEnc under identical circumstances. I don't know whether you can upgrade to the latest release of S8 from the SE version or not. Probably not.

I'm no computer expert but it seems to me that processor speed would affect encoding time, not mpg quality provided that the capture was free of dropped frames. It might also affect playback quality so maybe part of your issue is the inability to play back properly not the quality of the mpg2 file.

PS. My computer is a Dell 866MHz Pentium and works quite well for video except for long mpg2 encoding times. I don't know whether the difference between 866 and 550(?) MHz should be an issue or not except for encoding time.

[wthess]

I'm no computer expert but it seems to me that processor speed would affect encoding time, not mpg quality provided that the capture was free of dropped frames. It might also affect playback quality so maybe part of your issue is the inability to play back properly not the quality of the mpg2 file.

Curritch,
You are absolutely 100% correct. Processor speed, among other things, does affect encoding time. Digital is digital and it doesn't matter how slow the PC is, the quality will be the same with Pinnacle on a 1.5 GHz machine and a 533mhz machine, provided frames weren't lost during the capture.

The issue regarding choppiness boils down to this...hardware. If your graphics card can't handle the number of "bits" you are streaming to it (in or out), then it will simply "drop" them. That's why you see all these graphics card reviews talk about frames per second (fps) when it comes to playing games. The faster your processor and the faster your graphics card, the better chance you have at full motion video. Most on-board video cards back in the 533mhz days (and on a Celeron machine) cannot handle full motion video. The same thing applies to inputting video as well. If your computer can't handle the large amount of information coming in, it will simply "drop" frames.

To give you an example, I have Flight Simulator 2002. When I first bought it and tried to fly, my video was very choppy flying through a city with my Diamond S7 based video card. My frames per second were about 9 fps. Talk about choppy video!!! So, I bought a top of the line Asus graphics card with GEForce 2 chip in it and that increased it to 15 to 16 fps. Still too choppy. Finally, I went and bought a new motherboard and processor. Now, I get 22-30 fps in the city depending on several factors. Keep in mind, though, that 3d full motion games are resource hogs anyway. I capture video at 30 fps without a problem on my system. The only time I get choppiness is on playback when I have 10 or so programs open in the background. Once I close a few of them, my video goes back to normal.

[drdrop]

Aaaargh!!

I just did some more playing around with this stuff. I re-captured video from my camcorder, this time using the "MPEG full-quality capture" option, rather than the "DV full-quality capture" option I was using initially. When I played the resulting MPEG file in Media Player, it was choppy with poor, VCD-like (or slightly worse) picture quality.

Just for kicks, I took this MPEG file and made two MPEGs from it - one VCD compatible and one DVD compatible. When I played the VCD one in Media Player, it was fine. When I played the DVD one, it was choppy with poor, VCD-like picture quality.

I got to wondering why in the heck encoding the file a second time (to VCD) would "fix" the problem. When I tried playing all 3 files with PowerDVD (which I could've sworn I tried the other day), none of them were choppy. (Still, though, I didn't think the picture quality of the DVD compatible MPEG was all that great . . .) So, I think the only problem may have been me trying to play the DVD compatible MPEGs with Media Player. I guess Media Player isn't able to play MPEG-2s? (DVD compatible MPEGs are MPEG-2s, right?) Sorry if I've wasted a lot of people's time here by being an idiot . . .

But, back to the DVD MPEG picture quality: should it be head and shoulders above VCD quality? The files are roughly 5 times the size, but when I watch both VCD and DVD back to back, it doesn't seem like the DVD is that much better. Maybe I need to try this with several different video clips (outside, inside, text, motion, etc.).

Would any of you seasoned DVD burners out there be able to give me some feedback on whether DVD picture quality should be obviously better than VCD? Judging from the "Video File Comparison" table on this site (https://www.videohelp.com/vcd), going from VCD ("good" quality) to DVD ("excellent" quality) seems like it should be pretty much night and day. If I'm having this much trouble deciding, I'm questioning whether it's worth spending money on a DVD burner and media when I can just burn VCDs on [pretty much] free CDs . . .

Thanks!

-Dave

[scottvf]

I bought pinnacle studio 8 and regret it. Sloooooooowwwww. I now use Sonic Foundry Vegas 4.0 + DVD. You can edit your videos with great results and it's faster to encode to .mpg.

[wthess]

Drdrop,

I had written a long reply to your last post, but when I hit the submit button, it asked me to login again and I lost it all. Something wrong with the web page I suppose.

Anyway, I'll summarize what I wrote to you.

Your issue still sounds like a slow PC issue. The reason Mpeg DVD is choppy and the Mpeg VCD is not is the bit rate is higher on DVD compliant Mpegs, thereby requiring more resources.

As far as the quality goes, did you drop the file to an Mpeg1 or Mpeg2 file. Mpeg1 is much lower quality. Also, bit rate matters too. The lower your bit rate, the lower the quality. If I'm not mistaken, DVD compliant is 3500kbs - 9500 kbps. The lower your bit rate, the lower the quality. Oh, and you can't compare VCD bit rates to DVD bit rates. They aren't the same.

Most experts in this forum say you shouldn't capture directly to mpeg from any source. You lose too much quality. Additionally, you should only use DV if your camera is digital AND you are connecting it via a firewire port. Otherwise, go with some other codec.

Media Player on my system plays back mpeg2 files fine, even those encoded in Studio 8.

And no, you aren't wasting our time. I enjoy helping others out. No, you aren't an idiot. Video editing is an art. I've been a computer tech for 15 years. I've installed and supported PC's, servers (Unix, Windows, OS/2, Novell), and routers. I have to admit that video editing is one of the most challenging things I've ever attempted to do. It took me less time and brain power to figure out how to configure a router than it has to conquer this video editing junk. I'm still learning myself.

[curritch]

I agree that your issue sounds like an inabilty of your computer to keep up with the higher mpg2 data rates. Plus I don't remember what version of Windows media player you are using but I never got good results from media player with mpgs's until I upgraded to V9. I've never had a problem with Power DVD though. There is a free download mpg2 player from Elecard available from Doom9 that you might want to try. It displays a smaller window than Power DVD and might be less demanding of your system.

Relative to a comparison of VCD's and DVD's I don't know of any inherent reason that DVD's would be less choppy since both have the same frame rate to my knowledge. The big advantage of DVD's is the resolution (720X480 VS 352X240). Both have a place. VCD's are very useful for short clips that you want to share but don't want to invest in a DVD. For serious stuff, though, the DVD is the way to go in my opinion. It totally preserves the resolution available from miniDV and would be better for digitized VHS or High8.

One final note. At one time I did a fair amount of comparison of mpg2 quality (with various encoders but mostly using TMPGEnc) to my original miniDV footage). When using the higher quality settings my uneducated eye had a hard time telling the difference. There was no noticeble choppiness such as you are experiencing. So I believe that you will find an answer although it may not be one you like, such as the need to upgrade or replace your computer.

PS. If you want to see if Studio8 is the source of the choppiness then TMPGEnc can be downloaded for a 14 day trial. There are many settings in TMPGEnc, though, and I don't know what the quality of the standard DVD template might be. There are threads on this forum that deal with high quality templates.

[drdrop]

Thanks for all the help, everybody. I think we can put this one to bed . . .

I just did another vcd-to-dvd head-to-head comparison with a different video clip captured from my DV camcorder. I captured the clip to my hard drive as a full DV quality .avi (only 1 dropped frame). Then I used the .avi to make both VCD- and DVD-compatible mpeg files.

When I played them with PowerDVD, they both played fine. (I'm pretty sure the original choppiness I experienced was caused by playing them back with Media Player version 7.) After watching them back to back, over and over, I was convinced that the DVD mpeg had better resolution than the VCD mpeg. (Still not as big of a difference as I had expected, but a difference nonetheless.)

Finally, I played the original tape on my TV with my camcorder to compare that to the DVD mpeg. It wasn't completely an apples-to-apples comparison, but I'm pretty sure the quality of the DVD mpeg was pretty much comparable to that of the original tape.

I do think I'm going to return the TDK + burner and get a -/+ burner instead, though. (I think it may be nice to be able to use whatever media I want, and customize DVDs to fit the DVD player I'm burning it for . . .) After that, I'll do a true DVD mpeg to original tape comparison on my TV. That's what really counts, after all . . .

Thanks again for everyone's help!

-Dave