My TV Capture to SVCD Setup and Recommendations

[modeler_us]

My TV Capture to SVCD Setup and Recommendations

The Problem:
-----------------
To be able to capture TV (specifically the cartoon Samurai Jack) in the easiest and most effective manner that will result in the best quality and most quantity that will fit on a CD and play on my DVD player.

My Solution:
-----------------
I went with the cheapest, decent tv tuner card I could find at the time which ended up being the ATI TV Wonder VE pci card which I got at Best Buy for $40. Given this card the following software I determined was the best to use:

Ahead Nero 5.5.8.0
Cyberlink PowerVCR II 3.0

That’s it. I told you I was going for the most streamlined and easiest to use. Voila. I ended up setting a profile in PowerVCR with the following attributes:

Encoding Fromat: MPEG-2
Video Size: 480 x 480
Video Bitrate: 1950 Kbps
Audio Format: MPEG-1 Layer 2
Audio Bitrate: 224 Kbps
Quality: 3 (High Quality)

This allows you to have two half hour episodes with near perfect quality that fit on one 700mb 80min CD-R. The best part being no re-encoded is needed they can be directly burned using Nero. This basically makes the whole thing a two step process. Record it. Burn it. Done.

My Reasoning:
------------------
Before all of you super geeks start ripping me apart let me explain my solution. First off let me talk about the tv capture card. I basically chose the card by price and availability. It was cheap and it was there. That’s it.
Next is the software I’m using for capturing. I was thoroughly disappointed and annoyed with the ATI software that came with the card. I tried every combination in the book from MMC 7.1 to MMC 7.6 with Stinky’s Registry Hack and every combination in between. I had no trouble getting it to work but the quality was just awful. And I despised the fact that to get the registry hack to work I was not allowed to view the settings. I thought there has to be an easier way. So I scoured the web forums looking for what other people are doing. I had very little luck except for one reply that I just happened by stating that the guy used PowerVCR and the quality was great. So I went with it. And sure enough the difference was amazing. It was like I was using a whole different card. The quality was near perfect. It did have a couple hang ups though but I managed to fix them. First the recording volume was too low and secondly they had many different video sizes to choose from but no 480x480 which is the standard for SVCD NTSC. Lastly the thing would only record 600mb of video. So I went into the Registry and did the following tweaks:

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\CyberLink\PowerVCR II]

"MaxRecSizeMB"=dword:00000fa0
"AudioPlayLine"=dword:000000a
"AudioRecLine"=dword:000000a
"AllVideoSize"="288#384 x 288#360 x 240#360 x 288#480 x 480#640 x 480#720 x 480#720 x 576#"

Basically the tweaks just set things correctly. They set the start volume and record volume at a max of 10 and set the maximum recording file size to 4000mb. And lastly they added 480 x 480 size to the list of video sizes. Then to top it all off cyberlink released an update in April that would allow you to schedule records with an online tv guide type interface called CyberEPG. That was just frosting on the cake. In addition the software came with a built in video trimmer which allows you to trim out commercials without re-encoding the whole file.
So with one straight forward program the whole process of video capture and conversion is done. Now you might be asking why I used the profile I did. This is where my testing came in. Since the average cartoon without commercials comes to about 20-22 minutes I assumed it would be possible to capture 3 episodes or 66 minutes worth of cartion video and burn it to a 700mb CD-R with no problem or loss of quality. Boy was I wrong. Now I know this is where people might argue with me but let me tell you all I tried many bitrates and settings. I could just not get a cartoon episode to look good and have the file size stay small enough to fit three to a disk. I tried capture at a high quality which looked wonderful then re-encoding with Nero’s SVCD Plug-in and even with TMPGenc which both on average took 6-10 hours a shot. I tested many bitrates with no luck. I always got a sort of pixilation of shapes throughout the clip when ever the bitrate dipped to a level (around 1400-1500 Kbps) that would allow me to create clips that would fit three to a CD. So I gave up and just went for the highest bitrate that would allow me to fit 2 episodes a CD which ended up being 1950 Kbps. The quality was nice and eliminated the pixilation that I was seeing with the lower bitrates.
Lastly I went with Nero for the burn of the SVCDs. I use it for my normal backup and music burning so I thought why not. It comes with a built in interface for creating a menu and title page and it creates SVCDs that actually work with my DVD player. What more could I ask for. They only thing I had to do is turn off the Standard SVCD compliancy so Nero would not try and re-encode my video since it seemed to do an awful job and it actually didn’t really need to be re-encoded since it was in the correct format to begin with. The latest addition of Nero also came with ImageDrive which allowed me to mount Nero image files (.nrg) to a virtual drive. This allowed me to test the finished SVCD without actually burning a disk and possibly wasting the media which is nice.

Conclusions:
----------------
There are many, many ways to create, edit and author tv captured video for use with a standard DVD player. This is just one person’s solution based on their specific taste for quality. It might not be the solution for everybody but I thought the least I could do it is post the knowledge I gained for others to use. I hope it helps. Thanks.

[kidfob]

very informative. good job.

[Stinky]

Seems that you have found the SVCD setup that works for you (and thats what counts). MMC 7.6 can do really good SVCD's also - you just have to remember to set your Motion Estimation Settings (all 3) as high as they go. I find that when people load my SVCD presets they forget to adjust those values.

If you (or anyone reading this post) wants to see how good MMC SVCD captures can be - stop by Rich's web site, he has some examples. http://www.pcphotovideo.com/SvcdSamples.htm

two questions for you - 1) did I read your post correctly that you had trouble using my tool ? please if you did send me an email with what the problem was so I can look into it (make sure you are using the latest version of my tool, version 0.9.8 thats the most stable and bug free to date ... so please update any old reg tool 2) when you loaded the preset from my tool did you adjust your Motion Estimation setting to their highest values?

Plus if you ever go back to MMC 7.6 for any reason - try my custom X-Rez SVCD and set your Horizontal/Veritcal Motion Estimations and I think you will be very happy with the results (more than happy usually! - my X-Rez template is similar to the standard SVCD settings but just a bit sharper and less blocky durig fast motion. X-Rez produces 480x480 but not in a conventional way --- see the example below for a correctly set up SVCD profile....





Notice the CPU Load is at 100% (1.0) and the Motion Estimation Search Values are H:256 and V:128 ... if you neglected to set them then your capture would look blocky and have a ton of MPEG artifacts

you can even boost the bitrate and then a quick run through TMPGEnc will result in an SVCD standard capture thats ready to burn in Nero -- it only takes a few seconds to run it through TMPGEnc. (See the 'how to' below)



Again I'm glad you found a way that works for you I just wanted to present the idea that you might have missed something in MMC.

Thanks for the detailed info on how to capture good VCDS with Cyberlink PowerVCR II 3.0 !!!

[modeler_us]

Stinky,

Thank you so much for the reply. I think it is very informative and hopefully will help a lot of people out if they read it. I don't think I will be switching back to MMC anytime soon but just to let you know I did try your latest tool and I even tried your templates. I can't remember but I might have missed changing the Motion Estimation Search Values if they were set differently in your templates from what they need to be. I basically just used the template no tweaks. I don't know if it's still a problem but I just really disliked how I had to go about setting up the whole thing. I didn't like the fact that when I went into the setting of MMC it erased my profiles. It was just annoying for me personally. I also did "standardize" the SVCD with a quick run through TMPGenc. It wasn't so bad but with my current setup I have eliminated that step.

Overall I'm glad you made your tool and I'm thankful that you have spent so much time helping others with there video problems on this forum and others like it. I'm sure other people are thankful as well.

I did have one question. With your setup are you able to to record 22 minutes worth of a cartoon clip and get it around 233mb with high quality and no fast motion blocking problems? Just curious.

So in short thanks for the reply.

[ahrand]

modeler_us, this is almost the exact same setup I use, except that I author/burn with POWER Director, even easier to use then Nero !

A question : where did you get these most intresting and usefull registry modifications ? Is there a users site for POWER VCDR somewhere ?

[TKS]

I hate to ask a dumb question modeler, but will powervcr work with the ATI TV Wonder PCI? Im kinda confused about VE. Im having some problems with the trial version of powervcr2 3.0

Seems everytime i try to run it.. it gives me a message saying "this 30 day trial is limited visit cyberlinks site" then i get a "Yes" or "No" I hit "NO" and nothing happens. Im confused to say the least :)


tks

[tonyk]

For ahrand, modeler_us and others using PowerVCRII -

You might want to check out www.skunkwerkz.com - in the "files" section, there is a utility that works with Cyberlink PowerVCRII which adds 480x480 capture and changes the recording file size without manually editing the registry.

As mentioned on the skunkwerkz site, there's been a lot of discussion of the PowerVCR program at the IOMagic Support forums, since IOMagic bundles the PowerVCR program with their tv card (which is actually a re-branded Pinnacle PCTV). Similar registry hacks were listed (by users) on the support forum, but the "tweak" tool takes care of all the changes without registry editing.

Obviously I use the PowerVCR program too - but I still run captured files through TMPGenc since the PowerVCR program only captures in CBR. TMPGenc can decrease the size of the files, but it also adds time to your capture/editing process...but then again, when I'm sleeping, the computer is encoding!

Cheers, --TonyK

[jpb1977]

This is a great post - first modeler_us for letting us in on his fantastic results, and Stinky for shedding more light on the proper way to encode an SVCD file (especially the tips re: using TMPGenc. Does PowerVCR work with MMC still installed? I'll give it a try only if it doesn't mess up my MMC 7.6 , I'm guessing it should be fine. Where can I get this program? Is the trial fully functional for those 30 days?? Thanks!!!

jpb

[jpb1977]

OK ISSUES ALERT!!! Why is it that I capture at 480X480, yet the file still displays as 640X480 in Media Player??? Even the samples downloaded from pcphotovideo do the same thing? I'm not talking about just displaying at 4:3 640X480, but even the file properties dialogue (WMP 6.4) state that the file is 480X480?? Is this normal?? (Looks great though!)

jpb

[jacknjt]

how come i cant get mmc 7.1 to work??? i open the file i captured and it says the file is 640x240 instead of 640x480. i did followed the instructions and i have a ati tv wonder ve running winxp

[toddfv411]

How the hell do I get this thing to run?!!!!! I downloaded POWERVCR and every time I try to run it ,it causes an error in my kernel32.dll, I have gotten rid of all traces of ati multimedia and still.................I even took out my video card driver and reinstalled that. Any help would be greatly appreciated

[Stan DeHaven]

Hi,

I am interested in software for the ATI TV Wonder (VE actually) that works in ??X480. I looked into PowerVCR at the Cyberlink web site and they had a note saying:

"PowerVCRII doesn't support ATI TV Wonder. However, to serve more and more customers with ATI TV Wonder, we are working on a patch file to solve the audio issue happened to PowerVCRII when using ATI TV Wonder.
The patch file is planned to free release around the middle of April.
By then, the users using ATI TV Wonder may free download the patch file
on Cyberlink web site."

I looked but did not see the patch. I guess you are using a patched version? Did you experience this audio problem?


Thanks,

Stan

[therick]

ok, so I guess I'll go way way back to the original point of this post...what first caught my eye was that modeler_us was capturing samurai jack, which I love, but something else also occurred to me as I was reading...

@modeler_us - did you ever think about capturing at (or converting down to) 352x480? I know that Samurai Jack has some fast motion...and if you used 352x480, it would probably look better...and the main reason for doing 352x480 is of course that someday you could transfer all your samurai jacks to DVD (just make sure to keep backup audios at 48kHz). These days I find myself doing less and less stuff at 480x480 and more and more stuff at 352x480...just a thought...

[wfiguero]

Stan,

I think that the patch for PowerVCR that you need is in:

http://www.gocyberlink.com/english/download/dl_file.jsp?dl_id=76

Thanks,
Wilfredo

[Stan DeHaven]

Thanks Wilfred,

However the patch is actually here:
http://www.gocyberlink.com/english/download/dl_file.jsp?dl_id=51

What I am running: Win2k, ATI TV Wonder Card, 30 GB, 60GB (for capture) drives, P4 1.7GHz, GeForce2 Pro Video

Ok... to be blunt! What OS are you running Modeler_us? I am having the same problem with PowerVCR that I had with VirtualDub, FreeVCR and IUVR (well, I could not get anything w/IUVR) which is my sound stops. PowerVCR has a 3.5Mb download patch for WinXP (I am running Win2k). Have you applied this patch? Or are you running Win95/98/ME? The patch does not work for the trial version.

A broken trial version is ... well, that's not too encouraging. Also I get this nifty message when trying to run MMC7.1 ATW (ATI Tv Wonder) after PowerVCR (VirtualDub, FreeVCR):

"The TV player failed to initialize video. Ensure the correct video drivers have been installed and close any applications which may be playing video such as DVD or WebTV before attempting to restart TV."

The PowerVCR video modes are great! and I love the interface. However, if I order the software it will be through the web, which makes it difficult to return for a refund. Anyway, it's a step in the right direction and PowerVCR does seem to acknowledge the existence (if not support for) ATW.


I appreciate you sharing your information modeler_us.
I would not normally rant on like this... but I believe maybe there is nothing 'wrong' with my machine but rather VirtualDub, FreeVCR and (maybe?) PowerVCR are not compatible with WinXP/2k.

Stan

p.s. I found using MMC7_1 352X240 MPEG-1 I-Frames 15Mb/s 100% Quality when post processed w/TMPGEnc gives a decent looking VCD. Still like the idea of PowerVCR more though.

[jacknjt]

Can someone help? i cant seem to get mmc7.1 to capture at 352x480 can someone please help? wat program do i needs ?? i did follow the instruction but it doesn't work

[cgsauer]

Can the above setup be used with Win XP Pro?

[sonoma]

jack: do you want to capture avi or mpeg?

[jacknjt]

i want to capture in mpg format at 352x480 but i cant seem to get it to work any suggestion?? mmc7.1, winxp, p4 1.3mhz, 384 ram,

[sonoma]

I can do this in avi format. I will try when I get home in mpg and get back to you.

[modeler_us]

WOW!

I'm glad to see this post was helpful. Sorry for the delay but here are some answers to some of the questions directed towards me.

ahrand: where did you get these most intresting and usefull registry modifications ? Is there a users site for POWER VCDR somewhere ?

I figured out these registry mods myself. And to my knowledge there is no user site for PowerVCR except for cyberlinks help forum which is very lacking.

jpb1977: Does PowerVCR work with MMC still installed?Why is it that I capture at 480X480, yet the file still displays as 640X480 in Media Player???

yes it worked for me on windows XP pro with MMC 7.6 installed. as for Media Player I had the same issue but was not an issue for me since powerVCR has a file player and I also use powerDVD to watch files.

Stan DeHaven: I guess you are using a patched version? Did you experience this audio problem?

I am using the latest patched version. I installed 2 patches one general patch and then the latest patch to allow CyberEPG to work with TitanTV. As for the "audio issues" I'm not sure what they are talking about but I did experience some volume recording level issues but I fixed with my registry tweaks I posted originally.

therick: did you ever think about capturing at (or converting down to) 352x480?

I'm glad to see another samurai jack fan. You have many points but right now I only have a cd-rw and don't plan on getting a dvd-r burner so many output format is SVCD cdr that play in my dvd player. So 480x480 is the standard so that's what I'm going with for now. I am assuming that samurai jack will come out on dvd before I am able to get a dvd burner.

cgsauer: Can the above setup be used with Win XP Pro?

Yes. that's what I am using.


Well sorry again for the late answers. Hope they help. good luck everyone.

Thanks.

[Jerzybo]

First of all thanks for the information. This whole post has been extremely helpful.

I have a PowerVCR question that hasn't been mentioned, though. Have any of you had any trouble with the editing tool? I'm trying to trim commercials out of my recorded shows. I'll set the End Trim where I want it, but the end result has an additional 2-3 seconds of stuff I didn't want - namely, the first few seconds of the commercial. Any of you ever run into this? Is there a way around it other than setting the end trim 2 seconds earlier than I want it?

I also ran into the same audio problem others did. I did the registry tweak as suggested by modeler_us, and it works, but if I close PowerVCR and then try to open it again, there is no audio. When I go into the registry I noticed the audio settings defaulted. If I reboot I get sound in PowerVCR again, but once I close it and try to reopen it, no audio. I suppose I can just reboot every time I'm done recording. That's an annoyance I can live with if no one else has run into or solved this.

The main thing I'm worried about is this End Trim problem. Any information anyone has would be greatly appreciated.

By the way, my system is: ATI TV Wonder VE, RAGE 16MB PCI, WIN2K, 900MHZ Athlon, KT133 ASUS, 256MB RAM, 40GB.

PS - The MPEG2 capture w/PowerVCR is terrific. As modeler_us said, it's like using a whole new card after struggling with MMC. I bought PowerVCR based on this post, and I'm not sorry at all - well, except for the problems mentioned above.

[modeler_us]

Jerzybo

Glad to hear this post has been of help. I use the video trimmer in powerVCR regularly without trouble. I am not sure if I'm understanding you right so I will just give you a little rundown of how I do it. Maybe that will give you insight on something you might be doing wrong.

first I open the video. then set the start time of the first segment by moving the "S". Then I set the end of the first segment by moving the "E" to just before the first commercial section. Then I click the "+" to get another segment. This new segment has the start (S) and end (E) set automatically by the program and usually the start (S) is set a little before the end (E) of your last segment. This is where I think your extra video might be coming from. Then I move the start (S) in the new segment to the end of the first commercial segment and move the end (E) to just before the next commercial segment. And repeat as needed . . .
Finally when all is done I click the "merge all items" button which selects all the created segments and opens a save as box. I select a file name and save. done.

Well I know that is pretty dull but maybe you will see something different in your technique as compared to mine. Hope that helps. No answer with the audio problem. Only thing I can think is I'm using winXP and maybe win2k has issues with those registry changes.

Good luck.

[Jerzybo]

I wonder if it IS a Win2K problem...

I'm doing it the same way you are. Sorry I wasn't clear enough with the first post, and thanks for the quick response.

What's happening is this: I open the file cutter/merger in PowerVCR. I open the uncut MPEG2 I just recorded. I place my start tab, then I place the E tab at a point in the movie just before the commercials start. I'll preview it by hitting the play button, and it previews fine, just how I want it. Then I'll hit the trim button, name the file, and when I check the file in Windows Media Player 2-3 seconds of the first commercial is left on. I'll go back into the file trimmer and set the E tab about 3 seconds farther in, so it appears that I'm going to lose some of the show I'm trying to record, and it turns out fine.

It's something I suppose I can deal with if I have to. I was just wondering if any other PowerVCR users had run into this and if there was a way around it. It may very well be that it's something to do with the registry tweak in Win2K - I don't know for sure.

But thanks for getting back to me so quickly.

-Jerzybo

[modeler_us]

Jerzybo

I finally came across the trim problem you were
having. So it's not just a win2k problem. For me it
is less than a second of extra video that I can't seem
to get rid of. I'm trying to merge and/or trim two
segments and a little piece of video about .56 secs
keeps hanging around. I'm hoping someone else might
have some insight on this issue because I'm currently
at a loss.

any thoughts anyone?

[Jerzybo]

I've noticed the first trim I do usually turns out fine, but then as I add more segments to merge, the extra video problem gets progressively worse. By the time I get to the "third act" of any show I've recorded there's up to 6 seconds missing from the beginning and another 6 seconds of unwanted video at the end of the trimmed piece. As if the video has "shifted" somehow.

As I said, the only way I've been able to deal with it is to move the beginning and end sliders 6 seconds back, and though my preview shows the piece ending prematurely, the actual MPEG is exactly right. This gets kind of frustrating, as I'll wind up trimming the show up to 5 times before I get it right. I wish the editing tool was a little more precise - like manually entering the actual second where you want the piece cut. Maybe in a later version.

I have no answers, but I thought I'd share what I've noticed in case someone with more technical expertise can come up with a hypothesis.

I've been doing searches for PowerVCR on VCDhelp to see if anyone else is talking about this, but haven't found anything yet. I'll let you know as soon as I do!

-Jerzy Drozd[/b]

[CbSnakeCB]

I have this same audio problem when i get done with Cyberlink. After closing the main program (the pad with all the options) the sound will quit and after reopening the program the sound will not work. I have to do what you did JerzyBo, restart the computer and the sound will work. I have the ATI Tv Wonder VE, at first i thought it was my sound card which is a philips brand that i bought at the local best buy store. It gets really annoying having to restart the computer everytime i close the application. Does anyone know a fix for this or is it just not possible to fix. Thanks for the very good guide modeler_us, ill have to try those things next time i want to capture something.

[TKS]

BTW..

Modeler.. POWERVCR IS FANTASTIC!! :)

Thank you thank you... Ive been able to get some really good VHSrips outta some of my old movies and convert them to DVD..

Im still having some problems with your registry tweaks though. I got Skunkz registry tweak program and that gave me the 480x480 resolution, but i was unable to manually edit the registry to make the audio full volume. Ill keep on experimenting though :)


tks

[Plant_Guy]

Gentlemen,

This is a great post. I am having a problem that maybe you have come across. My config is:
Athlon XP1400+
512MBRam
WinXP Home
PowerVCR II, demo edition
AverTV stereo TV card

I downloaded the skunkwerz utility to get the 480x480 res. I set up a user defined capture profile of 480x480 as defined in the beginning of this post. After save, in the description window it says that the output is 240x480. I cannot fix this, and indeed the picture is 240x480. Otherwise, the picture is very clean. What is going on? Can anyone help me with this issue? Thanks for your help.

TomG.

[Plant_Guy]

After installing an updated driver, my machine crashed with a blue screen of death(BSOD) Anyway, I re-installed the older driver, and after checking, I noticed that PowerVCR was working at 480x480 Modeler, I tried your settings, with the exception of bitrate, which I have at 2520. The capture output has pixellation and other blocky artifacts Is there another setting I forgot? In the dialog box that mentions I frames and quality settings, did you change anything there? I must also mention again that I am using XP home edition, and I have not applied the XP patch yet. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Plant_Guy