Help me convert 640x480 mpeg to DVD without visual expansion

[SingSing]

Ha, let me explain what I means "without visual expansion". For me that means make drop the 640x480 mpeg clip into a DVD frame with black borders. This will help to stop the generation of visual blocks, that make the outcome look really awful.

Digital Camera and picture phone can capture 640x480 mpeg, or avi, or wmv, or mov clip. They can be convert to DVD mpeg2, with sound. The easiest type of them to work with, is of course the 640x480 mpeg clip.

When I put a bunch of them thru TMPGenc source creater, the outcome is in 720x480 mpeg2, scaled up from the 640x480. As you guess the video has a lot block distortion. I am sure if the expansion did not take place, and the 640x480 resolution is preserve with black border, the video will look much better.

TMPGenc 2.5 can encode with black border, but it can't take "a bunch of video clips". So I am stuck. I know TMPGenc 2.5 has a mpeg merge tool, but in the past it introduce glitch and audio pop. Is these still happened ?

So how do I merge a bunch of 640x480 of mpegg clip without visual expansion ?

[dphirschler]

Even if it were possible to add 40 pixels of black to either side without re-encoding, then your picture would look squished (tall and skinny). You're gonna have to re-encode anyways... might as well do a bilinear resize to 720x480. It shouldn't look blocky though. Maybe you were doing a pixel resize which does no blending at all.


Darryl

[TBoneit]

I find that TMPGEnc Xpress 3 can take a lot of video clips and output them either separate or as one file. And you can leave themn as 640 by 480 in the settings.

Having said that I tried using 640 by 480 via DVD patcher. Patch to dvd resolution, add to TMPGEnc DVD Author, Unpatch back to 640 by 480 but on my DVD players they didn't fill the screen, YMMV. OTOH 544 by 480 does display properly using the same method.

And what he said above, If you added 40 pixels to each side to goto 720 by 480 thsn on TV set that is also 4 x 3 ratio the added black will make the picture narrow. If you players support 640 by 480 then your golden if not? well, re-encode time.

[jagabo]

You could scale the frames to 640x436 then pad the left/right with 32 pixels and the top/bottom with 22 pixels to give a final frame size of 704x480. That will maintain the picture aspect ratio. Most of the padding will be cut off by the TV's overscan anyway.

[guns1inger]

640 x 480 is the 1:1 pixel aspect ratio of NTSC. If you convert the pixel aspect ratio to suit NTSC broadcast you get 704 or 720 x 480. As was pointed out, adding borders and then encoding to DVD will distort the image. You have to stretch it (resize it) to DVD res to preserve the image when you play it back on a TV.

[manono]

And doing it the right way, as guns1inger described, has nothing to do with the blocks you're getting. Either they're already in the source, you're not giving it enough bitrate, or your max bitrate isn't set high enough to prevent blocks in complex scenes.

[SingSing]

The blocks are not in the source. I view the original at 200%, and they are clean. I also let TMPGenc Source Creater uses the highest bit rate.

TMPGENC express 3, may have the combined feature that I need, but TMPGenc express 3, and TMPGenc mpeg editor do not come in trial ware. I can't try them out. sigh......

[LloydAZ]

Digital Camera and picture phone can capture 640x480 mpeg, or avi, or wmv, or mov clip. They can be convert to DVD mpeg2, with sound. The easiest type of them to work with, is of course the 640x480 mpeg clip.

Have you tried running the AVI clips through DivX2DVD and see how it handles them when it makes the conversion? Download the old free version and see if it works for you.

You could also try using a simple AVISynth Script that uses Lanczos Resize and feed the AVS file into TMPGEnc.

A down and dirty script for this would be:

AVISource("c:\my_Movie.AVI")
LanczosResize(720, 480)

It's worth a try.

[TBoneit]

The blocks are not in the source. I view the original at 200%, and they are clean. I also let TMPGenc Source Creater uses the highest bit rate.

TMPGENC express 3, may have the combined feature that I need, but TMPGenc express 3, and TMPGenc mpeg editor do not come in trial ware. I can't try them out. sigh......

Are you sure? They used to come in trial versions.... And the links here still show trial versions.

[RoopeT]

If your source is from digital camera / mobile phone you really cannot expect any quality. The blocks are already there, you just cannot see them on your phone/camera display (as they use much worse resolution)

Get a MiniDV Cam is the only hint I can give, sorry.

[SingSing]

I do have a miniDV camcorder. I am in a common situaton, that my digicam takke good picture, and my miniDV capture good video, but it is really painful to carry them and swap when I want both pciture and video. from my footage, I saw a lot of my edited video are less than 3 minutes per segment. With digicam SD memory price going down, and digicam video capture getting better. I want to move to get a good camera that I can capture good picture and good video. ( Note Samsung DuoCam has both functions but not quality capture ).

From my initial experiment, the digicam video get in trouble mostly due to scaling up, and less due to low bit rate ( as long as you don't put it thru multiple encoding processes ). Try it yourself. If I can resolve the scaling issue with a single tools, then We can all digitized our life better and easier.

[SingSing]

Are you sure? They used to come in trial versions.... And the links here still show trial versions.

You are right, the trial versions are posted under the retail version (damn those long long legal statements ). I will tried the TMPGENC Xpress3 and Mpeg editor.

[Bjs]

Virtualdub can add what you want , under video , filters , resize , expand and letter box image , using black as fill colour .

Frameserver to either tmpgenc or bbmpeg (aka avi2mpeg) .

[SingSing]

Virtualdub can add what you want , under video , filters , resize , expand and letter box image , using black as fill colour .

.

I open up video then filter in virtualdub, and there is blank box.
Where can I find resize, expand, and letter box .... ?

I also did not see any option to merge multiple mpeg clip into one. please advice.

[jagabo]

Video -> Filters... -> Add... -> Resize

[SingSing]

Video -> Filters... -> Add... -> Resize

Thank you, got it.

[SingSing]

640x480 is 4:3 for VGA monitor which has 1:1 pixel aspect ratio.

720x480 is 4:3 for TV, which has a 1.1278:1 pixel aspect ratio.

Does it means I have to re-encode to DVD mpeg anyway ?

[guns1inger]

yes

[edDV]

640x480 is 4:3 for VGA monitor which has 1:1 pixel aspect ratio.

720x480 is 4:3 for TV, which has a 1.1278:1 pixel aspect ratio.

Does it means I have to re-encode to DVD mpeg anyway ?

yes,

For video, 640x480 VGA is square pixel 4:3 aspect ratio as used in 60Hz regions (equivalent is 768x576 for 50Hz regions).

The equivalent 4:3 aspect ratio for Rec-601 digital video is 704x480 although many DVD authors will stretch to 720x480.