end product picture quality

[efiste2]

ive captured vhs using windv through a canopus advc100 , encoded uisng tmpgenc+ then authoured with tmpgenc authour and burned onto a quality media at x2 speed but im not 100% with the picture quality of the DVD the only way i can describe it is that the picture is not as smooth as the VHS source it came from, ie its slightly pixelated in places, Is there anyway of improving the quality or is it just the fact that its been through a conversion process twice etc and also i have put about 90-100 mins on each dvd disc so the bitrate of encoding is lowered in tmpgnc ,

[rcb]

process a sample (cuppla minutes or so) of your avi file where the pixelation, etc. shows in your final dvd's. You can use TMPGenc's built-in editor to find/select the objectionable areas.

Run the sample thru TMPGenc using VBR 2 pass and a bitrate of about 5500 to start with. Burn to a RW dvd & ck results on your player.

To get more pix quality, you can jack thet bitrate up to around 8000.... if the output at that point is still bad, yiu've hit the wall. If 5500 gives you good results, you can drop the bitrate in another test to find your comfort zone - and increase playing minutes/dvd

While doing all this, keep in mind that bitrate will determine how much time you can get an a dvd. If you use TMPGenc's Project Wiard, you will see related impacts on the bitrate selection screen

[FulciLives]

Use VirtualDub or AviSynth because either way there are filters you can apply that will make the image look better. Such filters are really needed for VHS source material.

I'm rather found of the Convolution3D noise filter which works with AviSynth.

There is a Temporal Smoother filter in VirtualDub that also works pretty nice.

Also if it is VHS try doing HALF D1 (352x480 NTSC or 352x576 PAL) insteadof FULL D1 (720x480 NTSC or 720x576 PAL) with a bitrate of 5000kbps. That will pretty much max out your quality and should result in no MPEG-2 artifacts. If you have to go lower than 5000kbps (in order to fit the program on a single DVD) then do a 2-pass or multi-pass VBR otherwise HALF D1 at 5000kbps CBR is about as good as you can get. Anything over 5000kbps is prety much overkill ... again this only applies to HALF D1 which again is more than enough resolution for VHS source material as well as most cable/satellite TV.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[efiste2]

is avisynth as easy to use as tmpgenc ie with a wizard etc??

[FulciLives]

is avisynth as easy to use as tmpgenc ie with a wizard etc??

No.

But it is extremely powerfull and a much faster form of frameserving than frameserving from VirtualDub which is not only slower but seems to take up more CPU resources making it hard to even do "simple" things while encoding such as net surfing.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman