MainConcept. The way to improve quality.

[AndrewFx]

Hi there!
does anyone knows the way to improve the image quality for
avi -> vcd convertion in MainConcept 1.4.1 ?
i use standart template (vcd). may be i should use mpeg1 template and simply adjust some settings then?

thanks in advance,
Andrew

[SaSi]

Not much you can do with the VCD settings, as the VCD has a low and constant bitrate.

The only thing I've succesfully done with moderate compatibility success is to increase the video bitrate and lower the audio bitrate.

I encode audio at 128kbps joint stereo instead of the 224kbps. This gives me an extra 96kbps to add to the video's standard of 1150, raising this to 1246.

This "tweak" is supposed to be compatible with any player. The decrease in audio bitrate is inaudible on a standard TV set.

To further increase the video quality, which is the one that suffers most, you can raise the video bitrate a bit more, but a couple of players I tried start skipping and freezing if the total bitrate exceeds 1600~1700.

Another thing to try is to use variable bitrate for video encoding. This gets you "officially" out of compatibility and standards, but it works on all players I tried.

Use a min bitrate of 0 a max of 2000 and an average in the range of 1200~1400.

I have found this to be the answer to blockiness in short high motion scenes.

Note that as the average bitrate increases, the capacity of the CD will decrease in terms of duration.

[AndrewFx]

thx for advice, SaSi!
what you mean by TV set? tv speakers?
i think as we have in most part MP3 audio stream in divx films, so we wont have any inconviences with sound coz mp3 has 128kb/s stream by default. i'm wondering if the "color noise" will be removed after video bitrate rising till 1246 kb/s? will motion search precision affect to the quality also?

Andrew.

[bigjimmpls]

SaSi,

You seem to have a grip on mainconcept. I have doing some conversions from avi to mpeg2 and all the conversions seem to have a green flutter at the top. I have not recorded to dvd yet so do not know if that will show up on the dvd player. Is there a way of getting rid of that? I appreciate the help. I used to use TMPgenc but I updated to the new version and it takes forever now. I did a 1 1/2 hr video and it took 7 1/2 hours to encode.