HELP - DVD quality is bad, but the same on a VCR looks better !!

[rampax]

1. DV to AVI ( WinDVD Capture Tool)
2. AVI to MPEGII ( TmpGenc Plus )
3. MPEGII to VOB Files ( TmpGenc Dvd Author)
4. VOB to DVD ( Nero)

I am not sure, what video - codecs i have and I need, i am very novice in this area.
are there any OS - directx stuf - I need ?


Quality is better on the VCR TAPE - directly copied from the DV CAM, than the DVD I made !!
Please help, what am I missing here..


Machine ( Dell 400SC, 1.5 GB RAM, 400GB HDSpace)
Graphics Card
- have a 64 bit tv tuner / etc card from ATi ( PCI Card )
- onboard agp is disabled/notused.

1. Do I need an upgrade in my Graphics Card.
2. Do I need a software upgrade ?

What else do I need, please advice.

Thanks

[FulciLives]

It probably boils down to the settings you used when you did the DV AVI to MPEG-2 DVD spec conversion with TMPGEnc.

There are a lot of settings and a lot to know on how to properly use TMPGEnc.

Nothing that can be gone over without writing a book.

So either give us A LOT OF DETAIL as to your TMPGEnc settings ... including the running time or length of the video and what audio format you used ... and maybe we can give some pointers on where you might have gone wrong.

There are also guides on using TMPGEnc ... look them up.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Marvingj]

It is like FulciLives says the settings but it would be nice to let us see a clip..

[rampax]

Thanks for the responses, the file is too big to upload, please see the word doc attached for
all the settings I could possibly find on the TMPGENC PLUS app.

Thanks Again.
File : 9:53 min run time.
Encoded as : MPEG2 Video( 720x 480 ( 4:3) , 29.97 fps 8000 kpbs.
Encoded to .mpg file, file size 650MB, orginal AVI size is 2.2 GB

tmpgenc_settings_plus.doc

[lordsmurf]

Make that plain text. Nobody here will open an unknown Word file.

[kyemeng]

How did you transfer the video over? Using firewire or thru your TV tuner card?

[vhelp]

Evening everyone

Hi rampax,

Actually, its really easy to upload (U/L) a file for sharing, really.

Instructions:

Just go here:
UPLOAD: http://rapidshare.de/

** Next, click on [CHOOSE] button. This will give you an explorer folder
** for you to navigate to your HDD where your MPEG is located. Find it
** and select that mpeg clip for the upload.
.
** when your filename displays in that skinny text box, the next thing to do..
.
** Click on [UPLOAD!] button, and your file begins to upload.
** note, if you are on IE, you will see a nice BLUE progress bar showing how
** much of your file is complete. Opera (at least my version) does not give
** me anything, and I have to wait till another pop-up box tells me its complete.
.
** Next, when it is complete, you'll get a pop-up box and a short beep to tell
** the file uploaded successfully. And, it will struct you to scroll down to
** the bottom on this same screen, to locate two things..
.
** copy-paste these to things into your notepad (or whatever you are using to
** share with us, via URL links to your file (for us to D/L)
** So, what you will need is the first link. drag your mouse to it and RIGHT-CLICK
** it and select "copy shortcut" (or whatever it indicates on your OS)
** This is the link we want.

Now, I'm not sure how long the file (with the URL link) will last on that server.
Could be a week, I think. But, then they give you a "delete" link to use if you
need to delete it. IMHO, I would copy that link as well, just in case you U/L'ed
the wrong file and need to remove it *imediately*

Last, if you are on dial-up, be in a panic mood, as it takes a long time to U/L
a file. Last time I did so, (this week) and it took 10 minutes to U/L a 950 kb
file.. not even a megabyte and it took that long. That was aprox 2 kb transfer
rate. At work today, I was able to transfer a 20 MB file in 8 minutes. I even
thougth that was lengthy, but no-where's near dial-up - agany.

Good luck,

-vhelp 4015

[choirislife923]

Make that plain text. Nobody here will open an unknown Word file.

unless they're on a mac :P

it's a bunch of screenshots...i attached a PDF version of it to this post.

tmpgenc_settings_plus.pdf

[choirislife923]

question:

what do you mean DV to AVI?

DV is already an AVI codec...if you're going from your camcorder, you should be able to transfer the DV stream onto your PC (it will be named .DV or .AVI depending on the program) and then encode to mpeg2 using TMPGenc and then author.

[rampax]

hi - thanks all for he replies.

1. DV to AVI ( WinDV does this, copies from my DV CAM to an AVI format using a firewire port, this is all I meant here.

I am not an expert in all this stuff, and really trying to get the output from my camcorder, recorded to a DVD, so that I can send my newborn's videos to my folks who are about 10000 miles away.

I have sent a bunch of screen shots on my settings of TMPGENC PLUS, and thanks to Choirslife for converting to a pdf, appreciate that.

I got some suggestions that, TMPGENC PLUS setting must be at 8000, and use 120% of disk space, and then I can use DVDSHRINK to reduce the size, is this what I need to do ?

My Concerns are,
1. AM i missing out on the video codes here, what are the must to have ?
2. What obvious things am I missing out, like graphic cards.. codecs.. etc..
3. DVD+R is the media I am writing to, does this have any issues ?


And anything, if I have missed please feel free to question me,
I will repeat this again, I am not an expert in all this.

Thanks for your support.
- R.

[FulciLives]

I got some suggestions that, TMPGENC PLUS setting must be at 8000, and use 120% of disk space, and then I can use DVDSHRINK to reduce the size, is this what I need to do ?

My Concerns are,
1. AM i missing out on the video codes here, what are the must to have ?
2. What obvious things am I missing out, like graphic cards.. codecs.. etc..
3. DVD+R is the media I am writing to, does this have any issues ?

And anything, if I have missed please feel free to question me,
I will repeat this again, I am not an expert in all this.

Thanks for your support.
- R.

First of all thank you for providing all the screen shots. I wouldn't open a DOC either so thanks to choirislife923 for the PDF version ...

As to the suggestion about using DVD Shrink etc. (the part I quoted) ... NO ... totally ignore whomever told you that.

Your video/graphics card in the computer has no bearing on the quality of the video that you are converting and burning to a DVD disc. As long as your DVD player can handle DVD+R then that is also OK although most of us so-called "experts" prefer to use DVD-R but that's neither here nor there.

Looking at your settings for TMPGEnc Plus ... they seem pretty much spot on ... more or less. The DV AVI format needs a DV codec on your computer. As you might imagine there is more than a single DV codec. TMPGEnc Plus works a bit different depending on what DV codec you are using.

For instance ... if using the "Canopus DV codec" there are special settings to use just for that codec (meaning they supposedly do nothing with other DV codecs). That stuff is in the first picture (the first page of the PDF which is hopefully in the same order as your DOC file).

Also picture 10 (page 10 of the PDF) shows a screen with a setting called "Output YUV data as Basic YCbCr not CCIR601" and this options needs to be checkmarked ... or NOT checkmarked ... again depending on the DV codec you have on your computer.

Some other notes ... if using a high video bitrate (and a CBR of 8000kbps is high) you should set the DC COMPONENT PRECISION to "10-bits" ... this screen is on page 7 of the PDF. Also on the same screen is an option called MOTION SEARCH PRECISION and if you have a fast computer (or don't mind waiting) this should be set to "HIGHEST QUALITY (VERY SLOW)" but if you have a slow computer or don't feel like waiting a LONG time then it is OK to use the next lower setting called "HIGH QUALITY (SLOW)" ... many people say they can't tell a difference between the two settings yet the HIGHEST QUALITY (VERY SLOW) is much much slower than the HIGH QUALITY (SLOW) setting. Personally if you have the time and/or a fast computer I still would use the HIGHEST QUALITY (VERY SLOW) option but that's me.

For video that is the extent of my comments. Unfortunately I rarely work with DV AVI so I'm not sure which settings to use with DV codec "A" vs DV codec "B" vs DV codec "C" etc.

vhelp (the name of a long time VIDEOHELP.COM user) uses DV AVI alot so maybe he can chime in.

One last note ... if doing a CBR of 8000kbps for the video you might as well use LPCM WAV audio instead of MP2 audio. Why? Well LPCM WAV audio takes up a lot more space but still you should be able to fit 60 minutes per DVD and with home video footage that is more than enough per DVD disc. So you maximize quality as LPCM WAV is the highest quality audio format for DVD ... also some DVD players do not like MP2 audio (aka MPEG-1 LAYER II audio).

If you don't want to use LPCM WAV audio on the DVD but want to use compressed audio then use AC-3 instead of MP2. In this case use LPCM WAV audio as the option in TMPGEnc Plus ... it will just extract the audio from the DV AVI and save it out to a separate file. After the covnersion of video is done you will have a video only file (filename.m2v) and a LPCM WAV only file (filename.wav) ... at this point you can convert your WAV audio file to AC-3 using ffmpeggui. I would use 256kbps for the AC-3 audio. Just remember that TMPGEnc Plus may not be accurate with how much will fit on a DVD disc if you use LPCM WAV but then later change to AC-3 since AC-3 takes up much less space.

For instance if I have a video that is 73 minutes long and use LPCM WAV then TMPGEnc Plus will report that the final DVD will be over 100% ... but after you do the conversion and convert the WAV file to 256kbps AC-3 the audio is much smaller and everthing (video and AC-3 audio) will fit on the DVD. That's just one pitfall I can think of when you are using AC-3 audio ... i.e., can't rely on the TMPGEnc built-in bitrate calculator.

Here is a good bitrate calculator to use ---> CLICK HERE

Anyways if you use a CBR video birate of 8000kbps and 256kbps AC-3 audio you can fit 73 minutes onto a DVD (say 72 minutes to be safe). If you use a CBR video bitrate of 8000kbps and actually use the LPCM WAV audio on the DVD then that should fit about 60 minutes.

I say go for the CBR video bitrate of 8000kbps with LPCM WAV audio and keep it at or under 60 minutes per disc. That is about as high a quality as you can get bitrate wise.

But there are other settings to tweak depending on the DV codec you use ... wish I could help there but I can't ...

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

P.S.
Another option you have is to set the video bitrate to a CBR of 9000kbps and use AC-3 audio. You should never use a video bitrate of more than 8000kbps with LPCM WAV audio but if you intend to use 256kbps AC-3 audio then you can "get away" with a CBR of 9000kbps for the video. TMGEnc Plus will not let you go above 8000kbps unless you load the "unlock.mcf" file. This is done through the LOAD command on the MAIN SCREEN of TMPGEnc Plus but you have to be carefull of what you are doing if you do that. Best way is to use the WIZARD MODE and once it starts to convert ... stop it ... all your settings will be the same. LOAD the "unlock.mcf" file then click on SETTINGS and change the video bitrate to 9000kbps making sure you don't change anything else. Then hit START on the MAIN PAGE and the encoding will start over again from the start (asking if you want to re-write over the existing files it started to create the fist time which of course you do) with all the same settings except now it will use 9000kbps (or whatever you made it) for the bitrate. Again you must use AC-3 audio this way or you will exceed the bitrate limit of the DVD Video format. This method will still fit about 60 minutes per DVD disc.

[choirislife923]

just a suggestion to any moderator:

since rampax needs help keeping good quality when encoding from DV-AVI to MPEG-2 (and not making menus), can we move this thread to the Advanced Conversion section? I think there will be more help for him there.

[Ai Haibara]

Make that plain text. Nobody here will open an unknown Word file.

unless they're on a mac :P

I'd be wary about it on a Mac, too. It's possible for macro viruses in a Word document to cause havoc on the Mac as well.

[rampax]

John - thanks a lot for taking that time, and an extended reply.
I am going to try this and post a reply to this thread.

Choirislife - thanks again.

I still have one unanswered question, which will be
1. What is the recommded codec for DV to AVI and AVI to MPEGII.
2. The TMPGENC settings for this recommended codec.

If we can have this posted on this site somewhere, it will be a lot more useful for
newbie's like me.

Cheers
R.

[FulciLives]

John - thanks a lot for taking that time, and an extended reply.
I am going to try this and post a reply to this thread.

Choirislife - thanks again.

I still have one unanswered question, which will be
1. What is the recommded codec for DV to AVI and AVI to MPEGII.
2. The TMPGENC settings for this recommended codec.

If we can have this posted on this site somewhere, it will be a lot more useful for
newbie's like me.

I agree but this is very much a "gray" area.

Also just to clear up your terminology a bit ...

When you copy (actually it is just a digital transfer or data dump) from your digital camcorder to your computer (using a FIREWIRE port) the file you get is called a DV AVI file. Now an AVI file can be any number of different video formats with just one of them being the DV format.

So your "captured" video is DV AVI and you convert that straight to MPEG-2 DVD spec using a software encoder such as TMPGEnc Plus.

I would load your DV AVI file into VirtualDub (which comes in more than one version ... most people here including myself prefer the VirtualDubMod version). Once you open VirtualDubMod and load your DV AVI you can go to FILE (across the top) and under that click on FILE INFORMATION and this will give you some details about your file ... it also tells you what codec is decoding the video. This way you know which codec you have.

Another tool you can try (which come to think of it might be better for this purpose although VirtualDubMod always comes in handy for a variety of uses) is called GSpot. Load your DV AVI into it and it will tell you all kinds of information including what codecs you have installed that can decode the file etc.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

P.S.
I've heard people say good things about the Panasonic DV codec. Here is a link where you can download it: CLICK HERE