The Resolution when watching a made vcd sucks!

[vballtlf]

How do I fix the resolution when I watch it on my dvd player, its very blurry. I need it clearer, anybody got any ideas. thanks

[videoguy79]

Hello--

I am under the assumption that your description of your VCD looking "blurry" refers to sharpness. Some things to consider:

1.)What was your source?? Poor quality video only looks worse as a VCD!
2.)VCD is not high-resolution--it is one-quarter the resolution of a DVD (1/2 horizontal lines * 1/2 vertical lines=1/4). You could try making SVCD's (480x480 for US TV's), which will look sharper if your original source was of high quality (such as a 704x480 DVD rip).
3.) Did you use any noise reduction or smoothing filters when you encoded the VCD? If so, try re-encoding the original source file without them. This may marginally improve the sharpness.

Your best bet, in my opinion, is to make SVCD(s) if you are not happy with the resolution that a VCD gives you. Hope this has been of some help

[bbb]

You should increase the sharpness.

With Tmpgenc, use Edge Enhancement and increase the horizontal and vertical settings to 80 or more. Check fieldwise for even greater sharpness. This makes VCDs more watchable.

(I think Tmpgenc can also frameserve the video with these settings to the Panasonic Encoder if you prefer the Panasonic).

If you make SVCDs, blurriness will not be a problem on standard TVs. But, you can still use Edge Enhancement if you plan to watch on a computer monitor. But with SVCDs, don't check fieldwise or else you will start to see the actors' acne.

[videoguy79]

bbb-

Good point. However, I have a question about such settings since I have never had to use them. By increasing the sharpness to the nth degree, wouldn't that result in more macroblocks/compression artifacts @1150kbps? MPEG has a difficult time resolving sharp edges and lines at standard VCD bitrates, at least in my experience.

[bbb]

Compression artifacts, if the source is bad, can be contained with moderate noise reduction. These settings vary according to the type of movie, amount of noise in the source, and resolution of the source. For old VHS TV recordings with noise I use 30 2 30.

Macroblocks of encodings tend to show themselves in high movement sences where the colors change rapidly. I found that increasing the sharpness doesn't really increase the amount of blocks. Keeping it blurred may lessen the visibility of blocks but they are still present and visible.

Watching a standard blurry vcd clip versus watching an appropriately sharpened version of the clip, I guarantee that most people would prefer the sharpened clip.

[Anonymous65]

To get more detail, assuming your source material has it, is to capure at 704x240 or 352x480. Then let tmpgenc downsize the frame to VCD size. This will give you a ~50% increase in vertical resolution.

[noahas]

Since there appears to be some knowledgeable posters on this thread, I will ask here. Someone referred to poor video quality coming in, creating poor VCD picture quality. This makes sense, my question is, if I am using video from a Hi-8 Sony camcorder (about 3 years old), what resolution is this? 320 x 240? If so, then I am assuming there is no benefit to trying to increase resolution through making an XVCD at 7xx X 480 or an SVCD at 480 X 480 is this correct? Thanks for your help,

Noah