Converting AVI (bitrate 790 kBit/s, 432 x 320) to DVD

[moviebuff2]

Hi everyone

I have an AVI with a bitrate of 790 kBit/s and a size of 432 x 320. I would like to convert it to DVD, using DivXToDVD.

I am concerned about the quality of the DVD since I have never converted to DVD a video file of 432 x 320 frame size.

Should I use VirtualDubMod to convert this AVI to another AVI with higher bitrate and larger frame size, and some enhancement like increased sharpness, or should I convert it directly to DVD?

Thanks

[guns1inger]

Re-encoding, even to a higher bitrate and resolution, is unlikely to improve it at all, and may in fact reduce the quality. Encoding again to DVD will just make it worse.

At that resolution, I would resize in virtualdub to either half-D1 or VCD resolution, then frameserve to an encoder, then author. DivxtoDVD isn't the solution in this case. It's time to get your hand's dirty.

[manono]

Hi-

Unless you make an intermediate uncompressed AVI, you'll only degrade it farther in the process. Making another XviD or DivX AVI, even at a higher resolution and bitrate and sharpened is pointless. You can either resize, add a sharpening filter in VDub, and then frameserve to your encoder, or (better) do it all in an AviSynth script file fed directly to your encoder.

Edit: guns1inger beat me.

[moviebuff2]

Thanks for your replies.

When I resize and add sharpness filter in VirtualDub, am I not creating another AVI?

Please tell me where I can read more about frameserve. Which software will do it?

Thanks

[FulciLives]

You need to use AviSynth and an MPEG-2 encoder that can use AviSynth.

For freeware you might try FitCD to help you set up the AviSynth script and for the MPEG-2 encoder you could try QuEnc which I have tested and it's OK but not great. Maybe someone else can list a better freeware MPEG-2 encoder. But QuEnc works good enough.

Your best bet would be to get CCE BASIC which is around $58.00 US Dollars last time I looked.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[guns1inger]

HCenc is arguably better. There is a GUI for as well. However coming from such a low resolution, going to full D1 is a big ask, regardless of avisynth filters or encoder.

[FulciLives]

HCenc is arguably better. There is a GUI for as well. However coming from such a low resolution, going to full D1 is a big ask, regardless of avisynth filters or encoder.

Well when this is converted to DVD the height is going to be the same be it Full D1 or Half D1 the only difference is if the width will be 720 or 352 and since the current width is 432 I say go Full D1 resolution.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[moviebuff2]

Hi guns1inger:

Would you please elaborate further your instruction:

At that resolution, I would resize in virtualdub to either half-D1 or VCD resolution, then frameserve to an encoder, then author.

I have been trying to educate myself without much success.

For example, I could not find "half-D1" or "VCD resolution" in the resize filter.

And what do you mean by "frameserve to an encoder"? I used frameserve in virtualdub and got a file of only 1K (from a +700-MB video file)! I found "frameserve" in the glossary but it did not help much.

Thanks

[mats.hogberg]

Read here for how to frameserve from VirtualDub: https://www.videohelp.com/virtualdubframeserve.htm
Read on here for other frame servers:
https://www.videohelp.com/guides.php?guideid=189#189

There are no presets in VirtualDub resize filter.
First of all, use the Lanczos setting - not nearest neighbour or anything like that. Bicubic is fine too.
VCD is 352x288/240 (PAL/NTSC)
1/2 D1 is 352x576/480 (PAL/NTSC)

/Mats

[moviebuff2]

Thanks, Mats.

[Scorpion King]

432 x 320 is 1.35:1 AR. 4:3 (1.33:1) AR is 432x324. It's close. 648x480 is right on I guess. That would require 28 pixels of black bars on each side of the video to maintain AR if you resize to 704x480. Just a thought.

790Kbps shouldn't look that bad if it was a conversion of a HQ source file. I did a quick divx capture in 432x320 and it looked pretty good. Far - far better than VCD IMO.

I loaded the file in VDMod, added a MSU Deblocking filter, resize to 720x480, then sharpen filter set to about 8. Frameserved that to Tmpgenc w/DVD Template - CQ=100%. The resulting mpeg2 looked just as good as the original captured divx file. It might of even smoothed out DirectTV's microblocks a little.

[moviebuff2]

Hi everyone

I have tried everything that is detailed in the link https://www.videohelp.com/virtualdubframeserve.htm . I still cannot make TMPGEnc Plus to work.

I have an AVI file with the size of only 448 x 336. I want to try the frameserving method to see if I can improve the video quality before converting the file to DVD.

Using VirtualDubMod, I opened the file and added 2 filters: resize (to 720 x 480) and sharpen (15%). Then I started frameserving. Everything occured exactly like written in the instruction and I have the dummy file video.vdr.avi in my D drive.

The problem is that TMPGEnc keeps telling me it cannot open the dummy file. I copied the msvcr70.dll to my win/system32 folder. I downloaded and ran install.bat from the readavs.dll vfapi plugin. I assigned "higher priority" to DrectShow Multimedia File Reader.

BUT, TMPGEnc Plus continues giving this error message "File...video.vdr.avi cannot open or is not supported".

I am using Windows98SE. Could this be the cause?

Thanks


added note:

I forgot to mention the other problem. I also installed proxyon.reg. TMPGEnc gave the error message "error occured when ACM was initialized".

[AlanHK]

Hi everyone

I have an AVI with a bitrate of 790 kBit/s and a size of 432 x 320. I would like to convert it to DVD, using DivXToDVD.

I am concerned about the quality of the DVD since I have never converted to DVD a video file of 432 x 320 frame size.

Should I use VirtualDubMod to convert this AVI to another AVI with higher bitrate and larger frame size, and some enhancement like increased sharpness, or should I convert it directly to DVD?

I was playing with some cartoons at a similar resolution. I thought it might be better to keep the original resolution and make half resolution DVD, but on TV that looked jaggy. Resizing with Avisynth to full size 720x480 gave a smoother result.

I used Avisynth and HCEnc.
You can make an initial AVS file using FitCD to get the basic parameters (I generally do anamorphic rather than adding black borders).

Then open the AVS with VirtualDubMod, you can twiddle the script with its script editor, try sharpening or whatever filters. When you get it right, feed the AVS to HCEnc to make MPEG.

Avisynth has the same effect as making an uncompressed AVI, except it doesn't fill up your hard disk. Don't resave as a new compressed AVI, that will only degrade the quality, and is pointless if you're going to make an MPEG.

[machf]

Hi everyone

I have tried everything that is detailed in the link https://www.videohelp.com/virtualdubframeserve.htm . I still cannot make TMPGEnc Plus to work.

I have an AVI file with the size of only 448 x 336. I want to try the frameserving method to see if I can improve the video quality before converting the file to DVD.

Using VirtualDubMod, I opened the file and added 2 filters: resize (to 720 x 480) and sharpen (15%). Then I started frameserving. Everything occured exactly like written in the instruction and I have the dummy file video.vdr.avi in my D drive.

The problem is that TMPGEnc keeps telling me it cannot open the dummy file. I copied the msvcr70.dll to my win/system32 folder. I downloaded and ran install.bat from the readavs.dll vfapi plugin. I assigned "higher priority" to DrectShow Multimedia File Reader.

BUT, TMPGEnc Plus continues giving this error message "File...video.vdr.avi cannot open or is not supported".

I am using Windows98SE. Could this be the cause?

Windows 98SE is definitely NOT the problem, I can tell you that. Two questions:
1. Did you execute the "Install handler" option in VirtualDub's AuxSetup file, and rebooted just in case?
2. Are you keeping VirtualDub still open while frameserving the video to TMPGenc? The .vdr file by itself isn't a video file, it's just sort of a set of pointers to the output VirtualDub is generating

Thanks


added note:

I forgot to mention the other problem. I also installed proxyon.reg. TMPGEnc gave the error message "error occured when ACM was initialized".

OK, that could indicate something else... try extracting the audio as a .WAV file and feeding it to TMPGenc as a separate audio source, and have VirtualDub indicate "No audio" in the Audio options before frameserving. TMPGenc Pluss won't accept some off the audio formats that can be included in an AVI file.

[moviebuff2]

Thank you machf.

I made a wave file, disabled the audio stream in virtualdubmod, frameserved and voila! TMPGEnc started encoding.

Unfortunately, the original AVI's resolution must have been very low. I made a test portion of it with DVD settings. The result was very dismal.

Well, one good thing is that I have now learnt how to frameserve.

Thanks again.

[machf]

Well, you'll find out that frameserving has several uses... basically, you'll use it to apply various filters to a video prior to feeding it to an encoder that doesn't have any itself.
Regarding the poor resolution, that's why guns1inger suggested you use Half-D1 or VCD resolution for encoding. Personally, I wouldn't attempt to encode anything with a resolution lower than 512x384 to D1, and possibly some other people wouldn't even go lower than 640x480 for D1.

[moviebuff2]

Hi everyone

I just converted an AVI file of the similar resolution to DVD. The result really surprised me.

Here are the file's information: 448 x 336, Divx 5.2.1 Codec.

I watched the AVI file on a 20-inch television monitor, using Philips DVP642. Although I could watch it, the picture was bad (please note that the picture was still watchable, unlike in some wrong codec cases). It was even worse than some of my Beta II tapes .

I used DivXToDVD (free version) with all automatic settings (aspect ratio, standard) to convert the file to DVD.

The result was a big surprise to me. The picture is clear, the color is better.

Can DivXToDVD improve an AVI file?