SVCD or XVCD, with less blockness. Which should I use?

[sbudach]

Hi,

i´ve played around with TMPEnc for quite a whilw now, but i couldn´t get rid of the blocky mpeg-2 stream anyway. I´m using my Mac to capture directly from my Sony Digital8 via Firewire to my hard drive. I then use iMovie to do a little cutting and such stuff, before i output the video to a DV compliant stream. I use this file with the TMPEnc with its svcd settings. When i burn it on the cd and throw it into my DVD-Player i get those unwanted blockieness. I´ve searched the whole forum for any hints, but beside not being the only one with this problem, i could find no solution to this.Sigh!!

[pibble]

Just some general suggestions to reduce blockiness:

1. Make sure you're getting your frame rate conversions right. I don't have the time to go into a detailed tutorial on frame rates, the info is out there, but make sure that if you have a 30fps NTSC source you are making a 30 (29.9) fps NTSC outfile file. If you have a 24fps progressive video source (a movie on DVD), make sure your output file is a 24 fps file. If you want something else, you're going to have to do additional work for a proper frame rate conversion. Frame rate problems manifest themselves with a 'flicker effect' usually. But it sounds like you're describing 'block noise' which is an mpeg artifact. This can be reduced.

2. The motion search precision factor in Tmpgenc does play a role in block noise. Highest/Higher quality settings DO reduce block noise at the cost of additional encoding times. For me, it seems "Higher Quality (slow)" will take about 20% longer than "Motion Estimate Search (faster)" all things being equal.

3. There is no need to encode interlaced output if your players will re-interlace when neccesary. Set "Encode Mode" to "non-interlace" on the Video tab in tmpgenc.

4. In the GOP structure tab, try changing "Number of P picture" to 4 instead of the default 5. This has the effect of increasing the rate of full I frames, making your player have to do less error-prone interpolations. (Also increases your file size slightly.)

5. In the Quantize Matrix tab, under Special Setting, turn on "Soften Block Noise." This should be your main help in fighting block noise. (All of the above steps are recommended though.) I've found a setting of 32/32 virtually eliminates block noise on my DVD player. It also has the side effect of making still shots (no motion) a bit more, well, soft ... blurry. You may also wish to enable the "Use floating point DCT."

6. Other settings listed on pages like this may help you:

http://www.flexion.org/video/DVDConv/DVD2AVI/index.html

Hope this helps,
Preston