352x288 mpeg2 dvd guide/help

[ultramarine]

Hi,
I am new to video stuff and have been playing around with tmpg, super, and some other not so good software. I've found a lot of info in this forum. Thanks to all.

Got a few questions with regards to 352x288 DVD. I'm interested to convert my high quality xvid wedding clips to DVD. I'm making mpeg2 with res=352x288 with Bitrate=VBR=1200 and sound bitrate=128k sampling at 48000. Lets not compare with DVD quality.

1) I'm able to write 7 hours to a DVD with menu. My eye hardly tell the difference between an averate of 1000, 1200, 1300, 1500, 1800. What is the most commonly acceptable bitrate?

2) I'm playing on a 29" normal TV. Quality look like TV transmission. Is this going to be bad if played on HDTV?

3) Does 352x288 DVD work with all DVD players and TV? I've tried with 2 different brands and have no problem.

4) Should I turn on or off "de-interlace" when converting from xvid to mpeg2? I've found some materials on the net but tooo complicated for me.

5) My samsung DVD player with "progressive scan" play the files with good quality compared to another player i have without progressive scan. Is this reduction in quality because of the player of my bitrates?

Thanks in advance.

[manono]

Hi-

OK, I'll chance it.

Lets not compare with DVD quality.

Yes, let's not.

1. Depends on the source. One suggestion would be to run the MPV or VOB through Bitrate Viewer. If the average quant (Q-Level) is maybe 7 or less, it should look decent. If it's down around 2 or less, you can use a much lower bitrate. If it's up above 10, you'll need a much higher bitrate.

2. Yes, it'll look like garbage on any decent sized HDTV. At the very least it'll look soft and blurry. If the source XviD is of a decent resolution, I don't understand why you're using such a low DVD resolution. Is it absolutely necessary that you cram 7 hours onto a DVD5?

3. Yes, it's a PAL DVD compliant resolution. All players should play it with no problems.

4. I expect the XviD is already progressive, so don't deinterlace.

5. There's no point in using Progressive Scan unless the TV is also progressive. You've said your TV is a regular old 29" set (interlaced CRT), so Progressive Scan should be off. I don't know why it looks better using one player than using a different player, but it has nothing to do with Progressive Scan.

If I've said anything foolish, or just plain wrong, I'm sure I'll be corrected.

[ultramarine]

I'll try out. What's a Q-Level?

I cram 7 hrs in 1 dvd because 95% of the people i want to give the dvd to does not own a hdtv.

How to tell if xvid or what ever format is progressive or interlaced?

Thanks again.

[manono]

Hi-

What's a Q-Level?

It's the average quantization level. It's an indication of how much additional compression has been done on the source, or how much detail has been removed. Lower is better.

How to tell if xvid or what ever format is progressive or interlaced?

Look at the frames. If you don't see any interlacing, it's not interlaced. Unless it's DV 720x480 straight from the camera, then it's almost certainly progressive. But an XviD wouldn't be straight from the camera. You do know what interlacing looks like, right? If not:

http://www.100fps.com/

[SatStorm]

I use 352 x 288 a lot myself
Few facts:
- 352x288 can be interlace, but only few DVD players playback correct this framesize. The scalers inside DVD standalones varies a lot. Keep in mind that.
- 352 x 288, IMO needs an average of 1500 kb/s for a "perfect" picture.
- If you use TMPGEnc 2.5 to encode, set CQ mode with 1150 min / 1800 maximum. IMO that produce the best results with this framesize
- Filtering is a must if the source comes from mpeg 4 (Xvid / DivX). MSU_Deblocking and Smart_Deblocking filters help a lot

On a HDTV, 352 x 288 looks blured, almost like VHS. DVD Standalones have differences. A HTPC with purevideo installed, makes 352 x 288 look far better anything else I saw recently.

[ultramarine]

Satstorm, you brought up a problem i had. I have old VHS which i compressed to RMVB which gives very small files. I used SUPERv19 to changed them back to 352x288 with bad quality. Is this because of that dumb RMVB format i used? OR is it because VHS is already bad and if i convert from RMVB to DVD its not going to get better?

[SatStorm]

Your original convertion was a bad choice...
If you still have the original VHS tapes, then buy a DVD standalone recorder and do them from scratch...
Far better (but far more complicated), is to capture those tapes to the higher framesize you can, use some filters, resize to 352 x 576 and encode to 352 x 576 mpeg 2, with an average bitrate of 3100kb/s. That way you can do DVDs with 3 - 4 hours per DVD5 disc (not bad...)

"Small" means awful for digital video. Digital video needs "Huge". Latest compression technics / codecs (XviD or h.264 for example) try hard to make them less huge, but compression has its limits!

[ultramarine]

Agreed RMVB is a bad choice. But small size. I stopped using that somewhere mid 2004 after those dvd-r became very cheap.

The trouble is, i still lots of soccer games recorded in RMVB. I'd like to convert them to DVD 352x288 or 352x576. What converter should I used. Here are some of my experiances:
1) SUPER2006v19 -- some rmvb files are ok. some stopped after 2-3 minutes. Some stopped after 15 minutes. Many non-consistant stops
2) Xilisoft 3.17 (5 minute free version). On some rmvb files, tmpg dvd author says non compliant sound and i need to re-encode the sound resulting in very long processing time and sometimes the audio sync is out.
3) WinAVI -- creates very big mpeg2 files with absoluly no way to change settings. And (i think) its own codecs is crashing other conversion programs. I had to reinstall k-lite-mega pack to fix my system.

I give up....
Can anyone help with RMVB to DVD 352x288?