VERY blocky SVCD...help!

[adhouse]

I have capture din full screen PAL (720x576) and now convert to svcd (480x576).

I am using 2520 CBR bitrate and high quality (slowest) motion.

There are more blocks than if I convert to VCD at 1150!

WHy is this. Am I doing something wrong? I thought SVCD should be higher quality than VCD?

Thanks
Andy

[natcom]

e-mail me i send you the temple you need for great picture quality and sound at same time keep file size very small for svcd or vcd

[Triffid]

If you think about it, SVCD has 2.7 times the information and only a 2.3 times the bite rate (max) of VCD, so there is definately some risk of increased blockiness. But generally, you should expect similar results (regarding blockiness) and increased picture quality from increased resolution and proper handling of interlacing. Both VCD and SVCD will result in blockiness at fast motion (and especially on home filmed videos..where everything moves and shakes all the time...even just a bit)

I have found one of the biggest culprits in producing bad SVCDs (compared to VCD) is getting the frame order wrong, as this creates a situation where everything is jumping backwards and forwards from frame to frame, just like lots of motion! Also, applying any area based filters to full frames instead of individual fields. VCD is not effected by these situations.

As I hate blocks, my solution, is to do MPEG2 at SVCD bitrates and VCD resolution. But quite possibly, xVCD at SVCD bitrates would work just as well (you are almost at the same ratio of bitrate to resolution as DVD when you do either of these, and it's a choise of whether you like MPEG1 or MPEG2)

So, it is a trade off between resolution and blockiness - which one represents the biggest quality issue for you, and the video you are encoding.

I hope this helps is some way!