Poor quality VCD encoding and burning.

[DavidT]

What am I doing wrong? All I want to do is transfer DV from a camcorder, add some titles and burn onto a CD so that I can watch my home movies on my DVD player. The quality though is very poor and unwatchable.

I can capture ok using WinDV, I can add titles and encode to VCD ok using Ulead Videostudio SE v7.0 but when I burn using VS or Nero to a CD the quality is rubbish.

The movie looks good when I play it thru VS but something goes wrong with the encoding and burning process. When I view the movie from the CD on either my PC or DVD player all the moving characters or objects break up. Its hard to discribe but looks like there are being transported from the Starship Enterprise.

Please help before I ditch the whole idea.

David

[dlawedor]

Try to encode your dv-avi with tmpgenc and then author and burn it with vcdeasy or nero ... the quality will increase ...

dlawedor

[holistic]

...poor and unwatchable...

What are you comparing this too?

Try this : Transfer you DV files to your compuer (as before)
This time open them in VirtualDub (cut as necessary)
Frameserve file to TMPGEnc and encode with VCD template (for compatability).
Burn with NERO.

You can do titles in VirtualDub but for this experiment you are testing visual quality with a different encoder.

If done correctly (with a clean high quality source) a VCD can look as good as most commercial VHS.

[DavidT]

Thanks for the quick responses. I should add that I use the default settings with all software.

As to what I am comparing quality to it is merely a standard VHS recording.

What I would like to know is, does anyone use Videostudio and get good quality VCD's (at least as good as VHS).

I am a complete novice at this and want to use an all in one solution, having said that I like the ease of use of WinDV, is this feasable?

I also have a copy of Nero Express but the quality on that was also poor compared to VHS.

Thanks for the help.

David

[holistic]

There is NO "All in one solution" that can do a good job. That is why you will find, that most people here use multiple programs for different purposes.

WinDV is not the issue. Its' purpose is to transfer DV files - nothing more.

You problem seems to lay in the encoding. That is why TMPGEnc has been recommended to you.

NERO is a burning engine. DO NOT use it for encoding.

Make the MPEG1 file in TMPGEnc and load it into NERO for "mastering" to VCD.

][

[DavidT]

Ok, so can I use the following;

Capture - WinDV
Editing - Ulead VideoStudio
Encoding - TMPGEnc
Burning - Nero or VideoStudio

Am I right thinking that I will nead to save the edited video from VS as an MPG file on my PC and then encode with TMPGEnc. Will this maintain all my titles and initial play screen?

Thanks

David

[holistic]

Never used Ulead MediaStudio so I don't know if it has "frameserve" abilities.

Go here and try this program:
http://www.debugmode.com/pluginpac/frameserver.php
Read about the program, download it, follow install instructions.

With frameserving ,you can do your editing in media studio then serve it to the encoder frame by frame. This avoids having to save the file then reopen it to encode.

][

[Ejoc]

If your player will support SVCDs or CVDs, make thoes instead of VCDs, its like the difference between night and day.

[DavidT]

Unfortunately my Sony DVD player does not support SVCD's.

I'm now thinking about buying an DVD writer, I have seen a Liteon LDW401S for £99 that I think is well priced. What do you guys think, will a DVD writer help me to get better quality or will I be wasting my money.

Thanks

David

PS Anyone want to buy a brand new CD writer?

[holistic]

..will a DVD writer help me to get better quality ..

DVD is the medium. It will not give you better quality.

The better quality is obtained from the DVD's ability to hold over 7 times more data than a CD. With this ability DVD is able to hold up to 2 hours (some may argue more) of high quality MPEG2 video and AC3 audio.

Again i must stress : Quality is a subjective thing. The video and audio on your DV tapes by definition are better quality than a DVD because they are not as highly compressed.

..will I be wasting my money..

Depends . What are you trying to achieve ??

If

..so that I can watch my home movies on my DVD player..

is your objective then a DVD burner is one of two options.
The other is a standalone unit.

How do i edit and do titles with a standalone you ask ! .Simple . Do all your editing / titles etc in your editor , then export (transfer) it back to a DV tape. Plug the Dv camera into the standalone and away you go.....

][

[DavidT]

At the moment I copy from my DV camcorder onto a vhs tape and am happy with the quality of the resulting video but I wanted to catch up a bit with the latest advances in technology and have my videos on a CD / DVD. The benefits that I saw was ease of editing, longer life, equal or better quality than VHS and CD's take up less storage space (or so I thought anyway).

Having done some research, my understanding is that VCD (MPEG1) and VHS are close in quality, SVCD (MPEG2) is much better quality and DVD (MPEG?) is at least as good as SVCD but the advantage is that all DVD players will, obviously, play DVD's and you can get more video on a DVD than a CD. Am I right?

My thinking is that I can either buy a DVD writer OR buy a DVD player that supports SVCD, either way the quality of the video will be more or less equal.

One other question on quality, should I expect to see VHS quality when viewing at full screen a VCD video on my PC?

Thanks for the help with what must seem like dumb questions.

David