Captured video using DC10+ - how to get to SVCD

[lchiu7]

After some travails managed to capture some camcorder Hi8 video using the DC10+ card and Studio 1.06 though lots of dropped frames. Now want to get that video to SVCD format. What would be a good way? First attempt was to make a movie file to DivX format with high data rate to avoid artifacts and then perhaps use TMPGENc to take the output DivX and turn into MPG format. It sort of works but there are many blocks and other artifacts. Then thought maybe just use TEMPGENc directly on the captured AVI file. It seems to work but there is no preview of the video and at this point in time the results are spotty - on one occasion I got a MPG file I could view in MMP7, other times it just locked up the player. I would prefer to take the raw AVI file to another and faster machine but it doesn't work - probably because that XP machine does not have the MJPEG decoder installed (which installs as part of the DC10+ and Studio software)

Any other ideas?

Thanks

[dattrax]

I have used my DC10+ to make SVCDs many times, and its really quite easy.

1, capture. There are a whole range of reasons why you are getting dropped frames, but a quick way to tell if its your camcorder or machine thats causing them is to hook up your DC10+ to a perfect signal (eg digital satalite or cable) and capture. If you get 0 dropped frames then its your camcorder (or more precisly the variance of sync on the tape) thats causing your drop frames. Analogue tape should really be fead through a time base corrector (TBC) before being captured.

2, avisynth. use this program to produce a virtual .avi file that can be any length (I've done well over 2hrs). You can use this for filtering and horizontal resize, as for SVCD the vertical size from the capture is correct.

3, convert. TMPEG, choose VBR around 2400kbps and that should give you good quality.

Note : If your camcorder source is noisey then filtering is really important as you noise is high frequency, and in mpeg high frequency is costly to encode. It's really important that when you clean the noise up that you don't destroy the interlace information. I use a combination of three filters, 1 to extract all the fields, 2 do filtering, 3 recombine fields. look in the avisynth manual as to how to do this.

Hope this helps a bit.


Jim

[Cardosi]

Hi Jim,

Could you please explain how can i frameserve with AVIsynth from DC-10?

I figured it out inside Premiere 6, but sometimes i like editing
on DC-10 bundled software.


Did you suggest higher resolution capture as possible before frameserve
to TMPGEnc or can i go straight for VCD 352 X 240?


Thanks for any assistance.

[dattrax]

sure,

download the software from www.videotools.net
install it and then follow the examples for writing scripts on the site.

I use SegmentedAVISource() to append the multiple files together, but you can use AVISource("cap00.avi") + AVISource("cap01.avi")...... etc but if you have a lot of files then the line can get quite long.

In terms of sizes, I use 720x576 (dont have the crop to TV set in the DC10+ control panel as you wont be able to have interlace properly in your final output). Capture at about 4Mb second as this give good quality.

You will need to use the letterbox() function in avisynth to delete the overscan corruption on the top & bottom of your capture, so you don't waste 'bits' on parts of the image you cannot see.

If you wish to go to VCD and your in PAL then just chuck half of the fields away, using SeparateFields() and ChangeFPS(25) (you can probably do this other ways). SVCD is easier as you just need a resize to 480x576


Jim

[lchiu7]

I have used my DC10+ to make SVCDs many times, and its really quite easy.

1, capture. There are a whole range of reasons why you are getting dropped frames, but a quick way to tell if its your camcorder or machine thats causing them is to hook up your DC10+ to a perfect signal (eg digital satalite or cable) and capture. If you get 0 dropped frames then its your camcorder (or more precisly the variance of sync on the tape) thats causing your drop frames. Analogue tape should really be fead through a time base corrector (TBC) before being captured.

2, avisynth. use this program to produce a virtual .avi file that can be any length (I've done well over 2hrs). You can use this for filtering and horizontal resize, as for SVCD the vertical size from the capture is correct.

3, convert. TMPEG, choose VBR around 2400kbps and that should give you good quality.

Note : If your camcorder source is noisey then filtering is really important as you noise is high frequency, and in mpeg high frequency is costly to encode. It's really important that when you clean the noise up that you don't destroy the interlace information. I use a combination of three filters, 1 to extract all the fields, 2 do filtering, 3 recombine fields. look in the avisynth manual as to how to do this.

Hope this helps a bit.


Jim

Jim

Thanks for that. But I don't have digital cable nor satellite so that is not an option. I guess I could try a DVD with its s-video output - that would be a pretty clean picture I would guess.

Not sure about avisynth. Are you saying I should try to use avisynth scripts in conjunction with TMPGENc? I guess I am trying to take the MJPEG avi file that Studio creates and get it into a format that TMPGENc can read. It seems to read the MJPEG image file okay but there is no preview as it does the encoding to MPG and the output file is unplayable.

Thanks

Larry

[oa]

go to option/environmental setting/vfapi plugin - and raise the priority of the avi vfw combatibility reader to 0
that did it for me

[dattrax]

Quite correct. you have to turn off the OpenDML in TMPEG. DVD input will give a clean picture to test your capture setup.

Jim

[RCMuller]

I´m trying to do some works in VCD and SVCD with my DC10+.
I already have some good results but I´m not sure if I´m doing the right way.
It´s very difficult to find a complete guide to work with DC10+.
I think the great problem is to find the correct software and the best parameters for these software (for each stage of production).
Because this I´m looking for information from DC10´s users to build a guide covering how to capture, editing, converting and burning.
I think the capture and convert are the most complex stages and require more attention.
I intend to publish this guide at vcdhelp to help future users.

If somebody wants help me with suggestions and tips about this matter, please e-mail me at rcmuller@iname.com.

Best regards,