Vertical lines :?

[EAO]

I want to keep the maximum amount of quality that my capture source allows (Doesn't everyone? lol), and I have run into a problem.

My source is a sat TV capture using Virtual VCR at 720x480, Picvideo MJPEG at 19. NTSC.

I am coverting to DVD using TMPGenc Plus. Being a newbie, I start in the wizard template, but then adjust the settings on the advanced options screen. The best thing about doing this is that TMPGenc will display a bar showing how big your mpeg 2 file will be. No calculating is a wonderful thing.

I tried 720x480 using constant quality set to 100 with a max bitrate of 8K and a minimum of 6K. Padding was enabled.

When I played it back on my 36 inch TV. The picture is watchable, with no annoying blurring/artifacts during action. But I noticed what seems to be vertical lines in the image across the screen. It's hard to describe - the lines are not interference seperate from the image. It's sort of like the pixels have not blended ever so slightly, creating vertical gaps. I don't want to say it's a sharpness issue, only because I'm not experienced enough to understand what I'm looking at. But I'm hoping one of you understands what i'm trying to say.

I can tell you that when I capture using setting 20 and convert, I don't notice those lines on the TV, so it just may be a capture quality issue. But I'm not convinced. Here's why. This was my first attempt (a fast test of setting 19) coverting using CQ. I have only used 2 pass vbr from setting 20 sources in the past. Also...when I play the avi - that I capture at 19 - on my 17" trinitron monitor before converting, those lines are not there (or not noticable).

Capturing at 20 is not an option. I want to schedule caps that would be bigger than my harddrive. Huffyuv does not encode motion - for me - as well as picvideo. (It's too bad there isn't a hack that let's you set the mjpeg to 19.5 )

Anyway... can someone help me 'cheat' a few steps - explain what I'm seeing and maybe also suggest their perferred settings for TV caps they want to keep?

[au7usa]

I've been making VCD's for quite a while now, and over time i'm getting pretty good (i think anyway). I read somewhere that to capture at 1/4 resolution 352x240 is the best, but, after playing with it a while, i've decided that 320x240 is better. Here's why:

VCD, 352x240 is actually 320x240 that is streched. During playback on my DVD player it is crunched back to the 4:3 aspect ratio. Now although the height measurement is a direct calculation, there is no way to convert 352 to 320 with whole numbers. There will always be something after the decimal place that depending on the value, wil be rounded up, or rounded down. (there is no such resolution as 234.375 x 687.293)

After that i decided to capture in only resolutions that could be calculated with whole numbers. What a difference that made!!!!

[au7usa]

What i'm getting at is that your NTSC capture, 720x480, displays properly at 720x540, or 4:3. If you devide 540 / 480 you get: 1.125....not a whole number! Some of your pixels are not at their proper locations, they are rounded up or rounded down to whole numbers.

You would probably get better results by capturing at 720x540 (if possible), or 640x480. 320x480 would be less sharp but would not have the lines, as would 640x240.

Try a test capture at 640x480!

[surreal]

EAO, I was getting something similar to this with VirtualVCR a couple of days ago - I'm in PAL-land but the way I fixed it was to make sure the video input setting (on the Devices tab) was on Composite, as I had been setting it to SVideo.

Soon as I did this the vertical lines disappeared - take a look at the last page of the Star Wars thread to see a small image of what I was getting.

[EAO]

Well I switched back to 2 pass vbr, using 6500 avg at 720x480. I lowered the cap to picvideo 19.

The results were surpringly good, and the vertical 'lines' are gone. I'm going to assume it was the CQ setting with quality 100.

[SatStorm]

Imho:

- Better capture and encode @ 704 x 480.
- If you gonna use TMPGenc to encode, set the input aspect ratio at 4:3 manualy. Also choose Full screen (keep aspect ratio 2). It is the only combination never mess up with the aspect and the picture overall.

Latest TMPGenc Plus versions are not that good for 2 Pass VBR encoding, or to be precise: The author(s) of this encoder, is focusing to implement the CQ encoding methods, so the CQ encoding mode (which is 1 Pass VBR) result better! It was a hard thing to admit it myself, I'm a supporter of 2 pass vbr encoding, but for TMPGenc it seems there is no any further development (or desire?) for multipass VBR. If you wish multipass VBR, switch to CCE or Mainconcept 1.4.1
For a 704 x 576 encoding, if you set the CQ mode at 3000 min / 8000 max @ 70%, the picture gonna be excellent.

[EAO]

Interesting. I think I know that the card - Leadtek 2000xp dlx is capping at 704x480, because that is the way it shows up in TMPGenc. Or is this just a setting that the wizard is defaulting to rather than an analysis of the avi file?

When you say to encode at 704x480...isn't that out of DVD spec? How will this play in my player? Me slow like Hulk Are you saying that if I use the aspect ratio setting you listed, etc, it allows the DVD player to work?

CQ encoding = better than VBR . More advice please. I want to put 2 TV episodes (704x480?) onto one DVD. Isn't 3K rather a low bitrate for that resolution? Are you not getting any blocking at high action scenes?

[SatStorm]

You need to do some reading...

Short talks:
The Legal DVD resolutions (AKA framesizes) are: 720 x 480/576, 704 x 480/576, 352 x 480/576 and 352 x 240/288

2 Pass VBR is better than 1 Pass VBR (CQ that is...), but not for TMPGenc. If you use other encoders (like CCE or Mainconcept), 2 Pass always look better. That use to be the rule with older TMPGenc versions also, but after 2.56 it changed.... Latest version do excellent CQ encodes and bad 2 Pass ones...

[dwiesel]

I've been using TMPGenc and testing at 704 and 720...
...with all other variables the same, the 704 file is bigger than the 720 file...

...why is this the case? And more importantly, which is better? Can anyone explain the difference between the two processes...thanks.