settings for converting divx or xvid into good MVCD (KVCD) ?

[kenshinlux]

Normallly I am convertring my 250 mb 25 minutes anime divx or xvid files into xvcd with 1850 kbits/s. Higher bitrate my Pilips DVD 710 does not support. So the resulting quality is ok not much blocks and pixels. But I think the quality of the source divx file is better. I am using TMPgenc. Which settings MVCD/KVCD at TMPGENC I must use to get an good quality (approx. the same qualtity like the source or an acceptable quality or same quality like with 1850kbits/s). I heard something about CG (contant quality) or 2 pass VBR bitrate ans settings about max bitrate and minimum bitrate. Is there somebody who has experienced some good results with using KVCD/MVCD. I heard that it is possible to get 120/130 minutes on a cd with good quality. When I am using xvcd with 1850 kbits/s I get > 50 mins (2 anime episodes) in a 80 min CD. My aim is to get 3 episodes on a cd (75 min) but with same or better quality. I want to loose as less as possible from the origin divx quality. Is there somebody who can explain me in detail which easy words which settings to use at TMPGENC for kvcd/mvcd and tell me also his experiences. It is said that with KVCD/MVCD you need less mb with getting the same quality

[theDruid]

Personally, I don't tend to use XVCD's (which are any MPEG-1 authored video which does not comply to the VCD standards - as far as I understand it) - as I don't want compatibility problems later on.

However, a couple of points:

I heard something about CG (contant quality) or 2 pass VBR bitrate ans settings about max bitrate and minimum bitrate.

As far as I know, VCD - and I think XVCD - has to be CBR (Constant Bit Rate). I don't think I've seen an MPEG-1 encoder which does VBR (Variable Bit Rate) encoding.

My aim is to get 3 episodes on a cd (75 min) but with same or better quality.

If your episodes are 25 minutes each, this is 75 minutes of video. You can fit that on to a standard CD-R at standard VCD bitrates. However, if you put the bitrate any higher (making it an XVCD), you won't be able to with CBR.

Essentially, you can tweak some of the settings to make the video look better to your own eyes, but you won't be able to improve the quality in terms of how much data is being used to store the video (i.e. higher bitrates), if you want to fit 3 episodes per CD.

Some of the ways you might tweak the video include:

* Use the highest quality (slowest encoding) settings for Motion Search Precision
* Alter the GOP settings (I don't know much about this - so I'll leave it to someone else to advise you; I think this is the sort of thing that KVCD etc.. plays about with)
* Try a different MPEG-1 encoder - there used to be lots of discussions about whether Panasonic encoder produced better results than TMPGEnc for MPEG-1 output, for example. Many people thought than Panasonic gave less detailed, but therefore smoother looking VCD's. Panasonic is not free, however - you could give bbMPEG a try?
* Frameserve your avi sources into your encoder, and use filters to smooth/sharpen/clean etc.. the video - VirtualDub is the obvious choice for this, although many people prefer AviSynth; there are many filters available for both.

Another option you could try is (X)SVCD, or maybe CVD. These use MPEG-2 rather than MPEG-1.

This means you can use (multipass) VBR, and the quality is generally thought to be much better. You still might have trouble fitting 3 episodes on each disk though - at decent quality settings anyway.

There are many MPEG-2 encoders, but bbMPEG is the only one I know of that is freeware.

In general, however, fewer standalone players are compatible with (X)SVCD and CVD than are with (X)VCD.

There's a few things to think about anyway - ' hope that's some help.

cheers,
mcdruid.

[bugster]

Yes you can use CQ or 2-pass VBR mode in TmpGenc.
If using CQ mode, it is difficult to determine the final output file size, but it does produce good quality results.

with 2-pass VBR, you can calculate the filesize exactly as you would for CBR, but using the Average bitrate setting. Set the max to the highest you know your player can handle and set the lowest to about 300. Encode a short scene (5 minutes or so, with some action), burn and test to see if you like it.

[theDruid]

Yes you can use CQ or 2-pass VBR mode

sorry - my mistake!!

Am I right in thinking this will make a non-standard VCD? Do many players support VBR MPEG-1? I suppose they're used to VBR in MPEG-2?

You live & learn!

cheers,
mcdruid.

[bugster]

Yes you can use CQ or 2-pass VBR mode

sorry - my mistake!!

Am I right in thinking this will make a non-standard VCD? Do many players support VBR MPEG

Yes this make it XVCD (non-standard). Many DVD players will handle VBR mpeg-1, though the max bitrate they can handle tends to vary quite a bit.

[2man]

Kvcd templates aren´t standard but you could use is matrices to make standard VCD (i did and theys work in Pioneer/LG/Jocel/Sampo/and some OEM DVDs
i always use avisynth (2.52) to frameserve to Tmpeg (scripts+templates from kwag) and the quality is great, to make xvcd-mpg-1 and to burn 120 min in a 80 min cd
in Tmpeg the settings are :
- CQ_VBR from 300 to 1150-1450 and quality from 75 to 95%
- mpg-1 352x288
- audio at 128kbps stereo

the quality is good and don´t have any problem on watch them on a regular DVD

to put 25 min of anime you could try XSVCD 480x576 pal or 480x480 NTSC w/bitrate from 1750 to 4000kbps and CQ_VBR or CQ, at 100%
give a try