VCD vs Half-D1 vs Low bitrate full-D1

[edDV]

I am using Premiere CS4.

Here in India the difference between DVD5 & DVD9 is higher.

You can afford Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 but not a $2 DVD blank?

[nharikrishna]

I can afford DVD9 blank, but it is just a feeling when you are giving someone something for free as a favour, why spend more...

[edDV]

I can afford DVD9 blank, but it is just a feeling when you are giving someone something for free as a favour, why spend more...

Why ask us to help you for free?

[PuzZLeR]

Ahh, I kind of figured that. The South Asian communities here in Toronto use lots of high compression movie content that they do alot of importing for. It's obvious from what one fellow said that there is indeed a scarcity mindset over there as opposed to the fat abundant glutton over here.

As for encoding with Adobe, I'd personally forget it regardless of its settings. Yeah, it has MC under the hood, I know, but so did VideoStudio and you can tell the difference in quality comparing it to the stand-alone version. Something is done to the frames underneath the front-end umbrella I believe.

Most of us here use a good, stand-alone MPEG encoder for the final task for DvD encoding. HC Enc is indeed excellent (and free), so is CCE. But CCE is not rated highly with MPEG-1 as it is with MPEG-2 just so you know.

[AlanHK]

I can afford DVD9 blank, but it is just a feeling when you are giving someone something for free as a favour, why spend more...

Spending hours of your time to save $2 for a blank disc isn't a good tradeoff. Unless you're going to burn a few hundred.

[nharikrishna]

Ok. Thanks for the inputs. I ask in this forum because I know you guys are super experts, compared to me...I ensure that the existing posts are researched enough before asking a question.

By the way what I am capturing is a TV series from Satellite broadcast. My uncle acted in that TV series, and he is going to be the recipient of this DVD. He considers me as an expert in this area (in comparison with him ofcourse)...

I guess I will use HC and also consider DVD9...

[DB83]

Also, your arguement that full-D1 @ 2,300 kbps looks fine for you is rather weak. The only common factor between you and your uncle is a CRT tv. But can you actually guarantee that your uncle has the same level of visual tolerance as yourself ? More than likely not and he may not appreciate the gift, even with the sentiment attached to it, if the end result is eye-strain.

DVD-9 disks may well be expensive in your part of the world but you will still put that content on two DVD-5's, fit 4 hours of video on that (4,000 kbps full-D1) and have a much better, and appreciated, end result.

[nharikrishna]

Makes sense. Will go for DVD9 actually.

[SatStorm]

You source is a DVB /S mpeg 4 channel.

1 - Use mkvtoolnix to turn your source to mkv
2 - Use mkv extract to extract the audio
3 - Use virtualdub (latest version) and the Matroska plugin by fccHandler to load the mkv (without the audio) to virtualdub (plugin here: http://fcchandler.home.comcast.net/~fcchandler/Plugins/Matroska/)
4 - add this filter chain to virtualdub:
a: MSU Smart Deblocking (http://compression.ru/video/deblocking/smartdeblocking_en.html)
b: MSU Denoiser Filter (http://compression.ru/video/denoising/index_en.html)
5 - Frameserve from virtualdub to your favorite encoder.
6 - Convert audio to mp2 @ 128kb/s using your favorite audio encoder
7 - mux to mpeg 2 VBR using TMPGEnc 2.5 free

In case your favorite encoder is TMPGenc 2.5 pro (trial mode gives you 20 days of mpeg 2 encoding I think), then encode in the following way for 4 hours on DVD with excellent quality:

Framesize: 352x576
Mode: 2 PASS VBR
Video Bitrate: min:0, average 2410, max 9668
Audio Bitrate: 128kb/s

For more or less, use this freeware Bitrate Calculator: www.videohelp.com/calc.htm

This is the best way to make a 4 hour DVD from a DVB /S mpeg 4 source, the freeware way.

[lordsmurf]

Please do yourself a favor, and stop using garbageware (Adobe Media Encoder).

Sorry, Heg, but that comment is ridiculous.

AME = MainConcept SDK, one of the best encoders currently around.
It's put a hurt on Procoder and CCE both, because of it's quality.
On Mac platform, it's eating in Squeeze and Episode.

Only in the very early versions of MC SDK (v1.3 in Premiere 6.5, CS1) was quality subpar compared to Procoder.
The encoding from CS3, CS4 and CS5 is excellent.
But edit your own settings -- don't just blindly pick a template.

[El Heggunte]

Please do yourself a favor, and stop using garbageware (Adobe Media Encoder).

Sorry, Heg, but that comment is ridiculous.

...

Only in the very early versions of MC SDK (v1.3 in Premiere 6.5, CS1) was quality subpar compared to Procoder.
The encoding from CS3, CS4 and CS5 is excellent.

I stand corrected, sir

Sin embargo, it's difficult to remain up-to-date with the very-latest information,
especially when the "first impressions" were rather unimpressive.

[PuzZLeR]

M/C is great software, no doubt - as a standalone.

However, any encoder under the hood of an app is only as good as what the front-end does with it. I've seen M/C stifled by other apps in the past.

[lordsmurf]

I stand corrected, sir

It happens to the best of us, no doubt.

especially when the "first impressions" were rather unimpressive.

Can't say I disagree here.

But I always knew it had potential, so I kept following it. It didn't hurt that I had to stay on top of Premiere use, from 6.5 to CS to CS2 to CS3 to CS4. The real shame was how after v1.4, they dropped support for capturing video to MPEG -- that had potential, too!

As a few others have mentioned, however, the SDK can be used differently. So Sony and Adobe and Ulead/Corel didn't always match in quality. In earlier versions, Sony had a better tweak. Now Adobe is pretty good. Ulead/Corel is all over the map, from good to bad. The standalone Reference is always a safe bet.

[edDV]

The Mainconcept SDK is/was a Chinese menu of features.

Adobe and Vegas (Sonic Factory) never antied up for the real time capture module but surprisingly ULead did in some products. Still, one needed an above average CPU at the time to avoid frame loss buffers when using real time.

When using a 2.6 GHz P4, frame loss started below 7000 Kb/s bit rate.

[nharikrishna]

SatStorm, thanks for the detailed procedure. Will try out your procedure as well.