Beautiful X(S)VCD's - conversion questions (Sefy please ring

[mkirk]

Ok- I got a video camera and am now capturing at 720x480 without dropping any frames (hooray for firewire). I capture through Premiere on Mac platform and output to .MOV format. I then move the file over to my PC via LAN... encode (using CCE) and burn (Nero).

The result are BEAUTIFUL xSVCD'S that play in my DVD player.

I would like to stay standard and burn SVCD's but want input from the forums-- should I care about doing this? My thought was I could share the content more widely as SVCD's are more compatible with commercial DVD players out there. I plan on posting lots of content so I don't want to have a format that's useless to a majority of people out there (although works in MY dvd player).

I HAVE tried to convert to 480x480 by opening in TMPGenc then saving project >> opening .tpr using VFAPI converter output as .avi >> opening .avi in CCE for encoding. The result is a correctly sized but poor looking .m2v file. Why do I lose quality (is it the VFAPI codec)?

I'd love input on whether I should worry about keeping on spec for SVCD and secondly the best way to resize my files. Sefy you've been a great help so hopefully you'll see this one.

Thanks,
MKirk

[kinneera]

You may find it easier and higher quality to use Avisynth instead of TMPGEnc for resizing. It gives you more control over the exact method used for the resizing.

[mkirk]

Thanks kinneera - does Avisynth affect quality at all? My problem when resizing using TMPGenc > VFAPI > CCE means I lose quality.

mkirk

[Sefy]

mkirk, I'm not sure in what I was of help, but thanks, unfortunatly this question regarding resizing, i'm gonna let the experts in this field answer, as I don't do much of those

[kinneera]

When using CCE, Avisynth will probably yield the highest quality for a couple of reasons:

Avisynth can operate in the YUY2 colorspace, whereas VFAPI operates in the RBG colorspace. This leads to imperfect colorspace conversions twice during the process, which reduces quality. Those conversions also make the encoding take considerably longer. Since CCE supports the YUY2 colorspace, you can serve video in its original state using Avisynth and avoid those conversions.

Secondly, Avisynth allows you to select your resizing method (bilinear, bicubic) as well as specify some of the parameters regarding how the filters will perform. This allows you to choose more optimal settings for MPEG encoding.