Capture res

[Northstar]

Heres a question for all you experts out there...

If you capture at 768x288 and then resize it to 768x576 (PAL) when encoding it, would there be any quality loss, and would it be better to do it that way rather than capturing at at full PAL 768x567 then deinterlacing it, is it even possible to capture at that res?

I ask this because it just occured to me and i cant try it because im capturing at the moment

[Northstar]

Well im done capturing and tried it with a 10 minute capture at 768x288, then resizing to 768x576.

The advantages of doing it this way as i see it are - 1 - Less cpu power when capturing - 2 - The end result takes less encoding in vdub - 3 - No deinterlacing needed - 4 - I cant see any difference in the quality, but then im old any my eyes arent what they used to be

I now have MY method of capturing, anyone see any flaws in it, or why it shouldnt be done this way?

Cheers for any advice.

[Richard_G]

Another way you might like to try is to capture at 1/2 D1 (352 x 576) and, rather than resize, leave at this size and encode at 3000 - 4000 kbs. Don't bother to deinterlace, just leave it as it is. This is a DVD compliant resolution but will give nearly 4 hours per DVD and the quality is hardly any different to full D1 (720 x 576). I use this for anything that started out as VHS or broadcast TV and the final result is as good as the original was.

[bottle-necked]

According to TMPGEnc DVD Author you need to capture in one of the following formats for PAL.


PAL
352x288 / 352x576
704x576 / 720x576
Aspect ratio 4:3 or 16:9


I would not resize because you're always going to loose some quality.

I would not deinterlace. TVs use interlaced video.

Find a capture template that records smoothly, dependably, and with 'in sync' audio in one of the above frame sizes and frame rate.

Good luck.

[Northstar]

I was talking along the lines of AVI m8, i have a xvid/divx player (Yamada 6100), so i make avi's all the time. 1 700mb disk for anything under 1 hour 40 mins, once it starts hitting 1 hour 45 i will think of using 2 cd's. I aslo find that capturing at anything lower than 640x looks really bad to me (as many other people also say), this way i get a much higher quality

[bottle-necked]

Ok, now I see. Divx and Xvid. Got ya...

I've spent a few minutes trying to find out what frame sizes that player will except and all I'm finding is aspect ratios 4:3 or 16:9, nothing about actual supported frame size. So I assume it excepts them all.(?)

To maintain proper aspect ratio, and I would if I were you, use a cool tool like Ecuador's AVI Bitrate Calculator V2.91DX. Heres a link if your interested http://www.ecuadors.net/pcdvd/dvdabc.htm

Such a tool includes an Aspect Ratio Calculator. That's an easy to use tool for calculating proper frame size and bitrates. Very handy and useful.

I wouldn't resize. Capture in the size you intend to author. Same with interlace. TVs use interlaced video. If you intend to capture just for computer playback then yea deinterlace, but for TV playback then I recommend no. Capture interlaced and author interlaced.

By the way. I'd capture AVI with like HuffYuv codec, then convert the codec to DivX. Trying to capture in DivX leads to sad results.

And on bitrate for DivX. I use DivX 5.1 Pro and a normal bitrate is around 700. According to what I've read about your player it said you could put 6 movies on a DVD. That's 12 hours. My bitrate calculator says that bitrate will be like 600 if not a little less. I've did some 600 Divx and know 'the quality of the original file had better be high or this bitrate won't look very good.'

Good luck.

[Northstar]

I use the Morgan M-Jpeg v3 to capture with, i've tried others and decided on this one as it seems the better quality one for me.

As for aspect ratios i dont think they really matter a lot to me as im sure i will always own a xvid/divx player now and in the future, im sure they wont mind what the aspect ratio is

Deintelacing is another problem alltogether, i suppose it matters where its going to be played, fair enough on the tv you can leave it, but i do share the avi's with friends who play them on their pc's, i dont want to have to go to all the trouble of explaining how to watch it deinterlaced, plus i do watch them on pc myself too... if they are on my hardrive.

Lastly, i have done a film interlaced and it wouldnt play back properly at all on the player, i had black streaks going accross the screen and it was jerking all the time, thats what convinced me to deinterlace first, and i have to agree that on some films that i've deinterlaced the picture isnt as good looking as it should be (on the tv its kinda flickery on some), i thought doing it this new way would/may stop that flickering as i havent deinterlaced it, thats the theory anyway

[Northstar]

One thing that baffles me about not deinterlacing is how to get it to NOT deinterlace correctly. Each time i have tried it the picture looks terrible, the scanlines seem to smear and not appear in the normal way as they did before compressing, the playback also gets choppy as hell on the tv. When people talk about not deinterlacing are they talking about dvd/s-vcd compliant disk AND AVI? I use XviD to encode, i have tried DivX also but prefer XviDs quality compared to DivX and both give the same smearing/big black lines choppy results.

[bottle-necked]

One suggestions comes to mind on your interlaced videos jerking and jumping on your TV is Field Order.

I have one program I sometimes use that I must set to 'Field Order B', where all my other programs I must set to 'Field Order A'. Your jumping with interlaced video may be from using the wrong field order. Just a though.

Good luck.

[Northstar]

Worth a try, i'll give it a go when i get a problem with a certain film sometime, thanks

[Northstar]

Oh btw, you were correct on the resolution not being supported, my player dosent support 768x576 even though i presumed that was a pal res, damn wouldnt you know it, i thought it was the best looking capture and encode i'd done too, captured at 768x288, resized to 768x576. Next to try is 704x576 as 720x576 looks a funny colour for some reason, hopefully the player will like that res.