Picture quality of VCD through TV

[qprfact]

I've followed the steps in Sefy's guide (an older version of the one currently on site, but essentially the same) to produce a VCD of around 48 minutes that I'd ripped from a DVD.

Firstly, I have to say the process worked extremely well, and I got my d2v files and then successfully converted them. The final MPEGs have superb picture and sound quality when viewed on my PC in Media Player, but on my TV the picture is a bit "blocky" (Sorry - don't know how else to explain it!). Is there a way of getting round this? Can I make the display window smaller to preserve picture quality or can I make the quality transfer successfully in a full screen on my TV?

Thanks!!!

[vitualis]

Is the picture always "blocky" in the same part of the video on the TV? Or is it random blockiness that comes and goes (and not in the same place when you rewatch a bit of video?)

If the blockiness is there all the time, those are blocking artifacts on your VCDs. They are generally unavoidable due to the relatively low bitrate of VCDs and that VCDs have a fixed CBR bitrate.

Some higher quality VCD/DVD players can do post-filtering of the video that can greatly enhance the apparent quality of the VCD and diminish the effects of MPEG artifacts. Some do not.

If the blockiness is random, it may indicate that your player is having difficulties reading your CD media.

Regards.

[qprfact]

Michael

Thanks for your quick reply!

I'm not sure - the closest analogy I could draw is that if a subject moves on screen, the movement isn't "fluid" and there are little blocks that appear and fade as the movement occurs.

Looking again at the source file through Media Player on my PC, I do find a similar thing in full screen mode - I wonder if it's something to do with the picture being made full screen from a small version which looks fine?

Steve

[vitualis]

Okay, that sounds like blocking due to bitrate limitations. Try watching your MPEG on your PC in full screen and you should see them more clearly.

If you are encoding with TMPGEnc, did you set it to "slow" in the motion search precision? If you didn't, you should.

Regards.

[Sefy]

Also, something that might help, you mentioned that your clip is just 48min, so you have plenty of Bitrate to boost it to fit an 80min CDR, and that will drasticly improve quality. You can use the Auto Settings in TMPGEnc Wizard.

[vitualis]

i.e., making a higher-bitrate XVCD...

Regards.

[poopyhead]

if you're going to make your VCD outta spec, then xVCDs basically have the same compatibility as SVCDs....

i would rather stick to SVCDs.

[Sefy]

Not True, VCD variations will still have higher compatibility then SVCD, most due to the fact that SVCD is not playable at all on some DVD's while VCD and variants are playable.

[Vejita-sama]

Sefy's correct an xVCD at 352x250/352x480/480x480 @ 2520kbit/s is more likely to play on most standalones than a SVCD (at whitebook spec). There's the further advantage that TMPGence encodes MPEG1 for free, and encdeos MPEG1 faster than MPEG2.

I would suggest making an xVCD at 352x480 to get both fields. This makes a huge difference in quaility. Then use a bitrate calculator to determine the maxbite you can use (maybe drop audio to 192 or 160, even 128). Then encode with 2pass VBR at:

min = 300
ave = (from bitrate calculator)
max = 2520

[poopyhead]

i don't quite understand how a MPEG1 xVCD can have more compatibility than a MPEG2 SVCD if they both have the exact same resolution and bitrate and both encoded with 2 pass VBR.

wouldn't the player have to spin at the same rate for both at the higher bitrate?

in my pioneer, even SVCDs are simply recognized as VCDs...so at least to my player, it basically thinks of xVCDs and SVCDs the same.

[Sefy]

@poopyhead, it has nothing to do with the specs, it has to do with the compression, and not every DVD goes well with SVCD's only most new ones can finally play SVCD, and even then, not all of them handle it good.

Also. a note that others forgot to mention. MPEG2 is optimized for higher resolutions and bitrate while MPEG1 is optimized for lower resolutions and bitrates, therefor MPEG2 might not look as good as MPEG1 on the same type of format.

Your DVD is propably like mine or similiar year model, cause mine also only writes VCD, even if I have an SVCD in there, that doesn't mean anything, it is like Microsoft "GPF" for every possible error

[qprfact]

I must admit some of this discussion is going way over my head, but I have seen how to change to "Slow" in Motion Search Precision!!!

[poopyhead]

@Sefy,

but if a xVCD and SVCD were encoded at the exact same bitrate, then wouldn't the DVD player have to spin/read both at the same rate...

one of the main limitations of X-any format is that the DVD player is not able to spin the media fast enough to read it at the higher bitrate, but in this case..both the xVCD and SVCD were encoded at the exact same bitrate...hence, the DVD player would be required to spin/read the CD at the exact same rate...

i'm not referring to the quality, etc...between the 2..just purely the compatibility.

[Sefy]

@poopyhead, this isn't about the DVD spinning, it's about reading a certain encoded format and how it handles it, and for some reason a lot of DVD's don't handle SVCD, or any MPEG2 encoded file, even though it reads DVD's which are in MPEG2 format

Now, regarding this spinning issue, think about this, DVD has upto 9000kbps Bitrate, do you really think a DVD that can handle that, will have any problem handling anything that is much lower then that ? Personaly I think it doesn't make any sense, but that's me

[poopyhead]

DVD has upto 9000kbps Bitrate, do you really think a DVD that can handle that, will have any problem handling anything that is much lower then that ? Personaly I think it doesn't make any sense, but that's me

well....it's just a wild guess, but i'm guessing dvd players have separate lasers to read DVDs vs. CDs since each format requires different wavelength. if that is the case, i'm guessing that the lasers reading the DVDs are designed for high bitrates cuz DVDs are high bitrates, while the lasers for reading CDs are not designed to read high bitrates since VCDs are hella low. if true, then bitrate would be limited on how fast the CD lasers can read the CD media, rather than if it prefers MPEG1 vs. MPEG2.

[FulciLives]

I have a CYBERHOME DVD player (model CH-DVD 500). I got it mostly because of the ability to play any region coded DVD and to convert PAL to NTSC (of which is does VERY well).

Before I got a DVD burner I tried making SVCD discs as well as VCD discs. I was unhappy with the quality of standard VCD and SVCD looked good but the model CYBERHOME I have cannot play back SVCD very well. They play back with a lot of stutter and it is not me ... it is well documented amoung SVCD users who have this machine.

So ... I tried making an XVCD using TMPGEnc and NERO to burn. I used an audio bitrate of 224 and a video bitrate of 2200. I was trying to keep the combo below 2500kbps which I thought then was the max you could do. Since I've heard you can use about 2500kbps for the video and 224 for the audio but I don't know how true that is. I'm onto doing DVD now anyways but I'm getting off course.

My XVCD discs were 352x480 at 2200kbps video and 224 MP2 sound. This worked fine. However I read that 352x480 was not a "proper" ratio for MPEG-1 and COULD cause problems but that the SVCD 480x480 resolution was fine for MPEG-1 XVCD discs. So then I made some at that resolution (480x480) with the same bitrates. Again these worked fine on my CYBERHOME.

Of the few SVCD discs I tried to make only ONE played back correctly. All the other SVCD discs did not work. I don't know why. ALL played back fine on an old APEX I had (the 500W I think).

So, in short ... the Cyerhome had MAJOR playback (stuttering) problems with almost all SVCD discs but had no trouble at all with my XVCD discs.

So it sounds to me like the problem is the mix of MPEG-2 on a normal CD-R vs a DVD-R

- John "FulciLives" Coleman