MPEGing Computer Generated Graphics

[House de Kris]

Recently I've gotten into making VCDs. I started out with putting home videos on VCDs and they looked good. Then I captured some master tapes of mixes I've done of computer generated stuff with the Dazzle DVCII and they looked great. This got me excited enough to consider changing the way I make these mix tapes. In the past, I've used two S-VHS machines (or two computers) as sources to make a mix. I figured I could make a bunch of VCDs and use two DVD players as the sources. Continuing on with my excited state, I figured rather than capturing off of tape to make a VCD, why not just keep it all in the digital domain to make a VCD. This looks terrible and is the reason for this post.

To make my MPEG-1 files for VCD I use Video Factory (VF). I've never seen anyone write anything about VF on this site, is it known to be an inferior encoder? At any rate, I start out with a series of GIF files which I use VF to create an uncompressed AVI at VCD resolution and frame rate. This file looks fantastic. Then when I bring this AVI into VF and encode as MPEG-1, it looks very blocky and almost painful to watch.

My guess is that it has something to do with the wider dynamic range and bandwidth of computer generated graphics as compared to real life scenes captured with a camera (like movies). If so, I'd want a compressor and filter to run the AVI through before MPEGing. The closest plugins for VF that I could find this morning that would do somthing along these lines are the HSL adjust and blurr.

For those of you that make VCDs from computer graphics, am I on the correct path or am I completely wasting my time? Is there a great encoder for difficult scenes?

[Ricardo]

There is a CG setting within TMPGEnc settings which does help a little, but I think you'll find that unless you go for a high rate mpg2 (such as DVD) then CGI stuff doesn't go too well on mpeg.

Try SVCD with the CG setting and see if it gives you better quality files.

[House de Kris]

Thanks Ricardo, this makes sense. This is still more reason to switch to Nero.