dv-avi to mpeg1/mpeg2

[dik]

This is driving me nuts!! I have a Sony TRV33 digital handycam (new). I have recorded 22mins. of tape and transferred it to the pc via firewire. I used Ulead Mediastudiopro 7 (which keeps crashing/rebooting my pc under XP, so I'm using 98SE) and the quality looks fine in the timeline. However, when I export it as MPEG2 and burn it using VCDeasy the quality is CRAP!!! There is blocking evident everywhere, sparkling around the edges of light/dark transitions and in general it doesn't look good.

I then tried Premiere 6.5 - it also kept crashing XP so is running under 98SE (glad I've got multiple partitions). Same thing, when I export it as MPEG2 it has the same problems.

I then tried exporting as MPEG1 and burning as VCD, using both VCDeasy and Nero. The results were even worse...duhhh!

Recording a few minutes of colour bars and playing them back looks perfect on both (analogue) video monitor and waveform monitor, very close to broadcast quality, so I don't think the problem's with the camera.

Anyone have any ideas, please, as I've run out of them!!!!!

[pb]

DV is very difficult, only DVD resolution and bitrates do it justice. I had limited success with SVCD, but used progressive instead of interlaced. I now have a DVD burner, so no problem.

If you are making VCD's then it should be Mpeg 1 at standard resolutions, which will not give you any where near the same quality as recrded on the DV camera.

[dik]

Thanks, I've ripped a few dvd's to svcd and been very impressed with the results (even vcd didn't look too bad), so coming from dv-avi I expected something reasonably close, certainly not what I'm getting. The camera makers extoll the virtues of producing home movies to cd and I'm sure if they got the results I'm getting they wouldn't dare promote it, as they would be flamed into oblivion. My results are simply not acceptable, but so far no-one can enlighten me as to what's wrong.

A colleague who does video editing/burning as a business said, from my description, I don't seem to be doing anything wrong and I'm certainly using the right tools for the job. He's as perplexed as I am.

[pb]

There is nothing wrong with your process or camera, just the limitations of DV to Mpeg on CD at VCD/SVCD bitrates. I tried for almost 18 months to get acceptable SVCD (approx. 40 mins), and had to settle for less than original quality. The problems with DV are camera shaking (mpeg encoding finds this difficult), DV bitrate etc. Ripping DVD's is easy as the source is alraedy a high quality Mpeg 2 stream. DV is approx. 5 to one compression already, plus all the other things associated with it. I found that if there is any motion ( camera panning etc), then until you get up to DVD bitrates it will always be blocky/noisy. Changing the field order to progressive helps, but then backgrounds are blurred when panning the camera, not a big problem if you are watching something moving in the foreground.

I used lots of software but have stuck with Vegas 4 for editing/converting to DVD mpeg 2 as its the best I have tried. There should be nothing wrong with Ulead Media studio, its just the source and bitrates for VCD/SVCD.

[dik]

Many thanks for your thoughts, pb. I've been reading a lot of posts today, and doing a lot of thinking (my brains hurt!) and I think you've put into words what is hovering in the back of my mind - until I get a DVD burner, I'm wasting my time.
My intention, when I bought the camera, was to use it to transcode all my 8mm. home movies onto cd. From what you've said, I assume that importing, editing and burning to dvd will give me comparable results to the existing 8mm. analogue quality, but without that dvd burner I'll never achieve the quality I want. (Or that my camera is capable of).

I didn't want to buy a burner yet, as the prices are still dropping, but I may not have any choice, it seems. Bummer.

Out of interest, what burner are you using, have you had any problems with it? Does different media make any difference? Is burning speed a factor?

Looks like another steep learning curve.....

[funkguy4]

I guess this will teach us to use tripods! Also, have you tried the SKVCD template from KVCD.net for TMPGEnc.......it is good......:P

[pb]

I have a Sony DRU 500AX, original firmware, can be a bit picky with 4X media, only seems to like Pioneer or Verbatim at 4X, but no problems yet. Had the occasional coaster due to a sense problem?, but can't really nail down why. I have tried a lot of cheap and name brand media, and have stuck with Verbatim 4X DVD-R's, and use DVD+RW's to test etc, try www.pcx.com.au for cheap media brands. Be aware, my Sony will not burn Ritek, Princo or BizQiz 4X media at 4X, only 2X. I cannot find any 2X DVD-RW's yet.

[dik]

@funkguy4
Yeah, you're right, but lugging a tripod around all day? Not this little black duck.
I'll have a look at KVCD - thanks.

@pb
thanks again for all your help, cobber.

[dik]

Well, this has just got worse. The problem appears to be my source dv-avi. I ran PowerDVD and opened up the source avi, "captured" by Premiere. Now knowing what to look for, I stepped through frame by frame and sure enough blocking was evident - blocking also showed in the same places on the file "captured" by Ulead.

I used the default settings in Premiere (Pal/25fps/depth=millions/ quality=100%), nothing there to adjust. File size was approx. 4.5gb. for a 22 min. clip, which sounds about right.

I thought that the dv-avi from a digital camcorder was supposed to be pretty damn good. Am I right in expecting that my camera should record better quality than I appear to be getting?

There's no point in burning this to a DVD, if the source material is poor quality all the bitrates in the world aren't going to help.

Now I'm feeling depressed....

[shimrod]

I used to make SVCD's out of captured AVI-files from an old Compact-VHS camera. In the beginning I also struggled with macro-blocks because of moving and panning scenes. But after months and months of intensive research and experience I finally succeeded in making SVCDs with more than acceptable quality.

I use DVD+R now. The creation process is the same. You also get the best results when you do the mpeg-encoding with a standalone encoder. DVD-quality is the best because of the higher resolution and the higher bitrate.

1. First of all - you have to make sure that the source material is of good quality. Does the image look good when you playback your movie with the camera connected to your Television? No need to continue if it doesn't.

2. Capture the movie into the PC in the highest possible quality. Load the resulting AVI-file in VirtualDub (or PowerDvd) and check the movie quality. If it doesn't look good you need to find the problem, and start over again.

3. Macro-blocks will appear in your movie when you use lousy Mpeg-encoders or bad bitrate settings. You will get the best results when you manually encode your movie stream with a standalone Mpeg-encoder like TMpegEnc or CinemaCraft (the absolute best).

You will get the best results when you do all the steps manually. It's more work and there is a lot to learn but the results will be sooo much better.

A brief summary of all the steps.
- Audio and video will be handled separately.
- Audio will be extracted from your movie and re-encoded.
- Video will be extracted, edited (deinterlaced, resized...) and re-encoded.
- The final audio and video stream will be multiplexed (muxed) together into a final Mpeg-file.

Use the following tools:
- VirtualDub for loading your captured avi file. Virtualdub can export the audio stream to a Wav-file. You can frameserve your movie stream with Virtualdub to your favorite Mpeg-encoder. Virtualdub has also lots of great filters to edit/enhance/deinterlace your movie and its easy to use.
- TMpegEnc or CinemaCraft can encode your "frameserved" avi-file into a great looking Mpeg-file (*.mpv).
- TooLame or BeSweet can convert your wav file into mp2, ac3 or whatever other format you need.
- Use BBMpeg to multiplex your mpv movie stream and your mp2 audio stream into the final mpg file.
- Finally you need to author the movie so it can be played on a standalone DVD-player. If you only need basic menus or no menus at all use Nero Burning Rom. It has a build-in SVCD feature. Just drag your mpg files into Nero and burn the disc.
If you need SVCD-menus - use Tscv. It is a bit buggy but the final result is great and 100% SVCD-compatible.

I hope this doesn't depress you more.

[funkguy4]

My DV source also has blockiness....is there a quality setting on the newer DVs?

[dik]

@funkguy4
I don't have my camera at the moment, my daughter's gone o/s and taken it with her (sob), but I don't recall any options, it simply sends the output to i-link (firewire). That's it.

@shimrod
Of course it depressed me...but I got over it. DVD2svcd does pretty much the same process, except it has a nice front end to do it all for me.

The signal looks pretty good on tv, but PowerDVD shows blocking if I look hard enough. That's one of my problems, trying to determine if the original footage is the quality it's supposed to be.

I'm making a couple of assumption here -
1. The camera works as it should and is indeed recording a suitably high quality signal.

2. Premiere's settings for capture (PAL preset) are the highest quality possible, because there are no options available to change them.

I tried to encode using TMpeg, but it couldn't recognise the file format - I've d/l the Canopus converter and will try again with TMpeg. (CCE also had problems with the source file).

I'll also have a look at the signal with Vdub.

It's just as well I've got nothing better to do with my time

[funkguy4]

I think my rob is im capturing over the USB 2.0.....altho it is supposed to beat out firewire by 80mbps....

[dik]

Wow! You're the first person I know who actually has any hardware that runs at USB 2.0 rates!
Yep, USB 2.0 has slightly faster transfer rates than Firewire. The only thing I know is that my camera handbook does not recommend using USB (1.1) for transferring dv/mpeg1/2 video as the results may be poor (slight understatement I think).
Hence the adoption of Firewire with its up-to 400Mb. rate. I don't see why USB 2.0 shouldn't work, as the speed is there - unless there are other factors I don't know about.

Doesn't help me much, though.