VCD or SVCD

[cpc]

My capture card is Snazzi VCD Creater. It limits the capturing frame size to 288 X 352 for PAL and 240 X 352 for NTSC since it is for VCD creation. The default video bitrate are set at 1150 kps ( only this setting can be changed).
What I wish to know is by increasing the bitrate during capturing and produce SVCD for the final video, would the quality be very much better and the frame size be increased?

[bprothero]

An SVCD is MPEG2 at a resolution of 480x480 and up to 2500 kbit/sec. The quality is somewhere between VCD and DVD. I would make SVCDs but my DVD player only supports VCD.

Brian

[Agent 0008]

VCD is half as good as SVCD.

The only difference would be if you can live with a lesser picture in order to gain room on the disk your creating, you have twice the space on a VCD over and SVCD but you loose a great deal of picture quality.

[bprothero]

I have recently been capturing at 352x480 for my VCDs and the quality is so much better than capturing at 352x240. Even though I later encode to 352x240, I have 2x the vertical resolution to work with during encoding.

Using VirtualDub, I use the Smart Deinterlace filter to get rid of the interlace artifacts ("combing"), then I use Smart Resize to scale the vertical resolution by 2/1. The video is then frame served to TMPEnc for MPEG1 encoding.

Even though I still end up with 1/2 the resolution of SVCD, it results in very good VCD quality and will play on my stand-alone DVD player and gives me up to 80 minutes play time. For archiving TV episodes, it works just fine and the digital signal is preferable to analog VHS.



Brian

[bbb]

Since you capture at vcd resolution, even by increasing the bitrate, you still only have vcd resolution. SVCD needs 480x480 or 480x576.

If your video has fast motion parts or lots of movement and is bright, increasing the bitrate will help eliminate these motion blocks. If your video has no blocks using VCD bitrate 1150, then you gain nothing by increasing the bitrate higher. You only get a bigger file.

If you VCD video is blurry on your dvdplayer. You can use the sharpen filter in Tmpgenc to make your video sharper/less blurry. I use settings: 70 horizontal, 70 vertical, no field.

[bprothero]

bbb is correct. Increasing the bitrate but keeping the VCD resolution of 352x240 will not result in a SVCD but a XVCD (a non-standard VCD with increased bitrate). It is not going to gain you much other than fewer compression artifacts during fast motion scenes... and a larger non-VCD spec file.

[cpc]

Thank you for all the responces.
A bit disappointed to hear that there is not much I can do to improve the video quality.
BTW, is there anyway to manipulate the resolution setting while capturing? anyone familiar with this product? is it controlled within the hardware or the software?

[BOXINGJUNKIE]

Hey bprothero can you please tell me the settings you use when using the Smart deinterlace filter? Also you said you capture at 352x480 then resize back to 352x240. I was capturing at 704x480 then resizing to 352x240. Is there any benefit to this? Or should I capture at the resolution you are using? Any help is appreciated.

Thanks Boxingjunkie

[bprothero]

TV resolution is determined by the number of vertical lines of resolution. For example, VHS is around 250 lines, broadcast TV is around 320 lines, laserdisc is 400 and DVD is around 500 lines.

Capturing at 702 isn't going to help much. Most capture cards automatically capture at 702 horizontal resolution and then scale down to 352 via hardware if that capture size is selected. So, if your destination is VCD, then you might as well let the capture card do the scaling for you rather than pump the extra through the bus and then have to scale it later.

The first filter applied is always the Smart Deinterlacing Filter. You want to deinterlace before modifying the data in any way. Here are the settings I use for the Smart Deinterlacing Filter for VirtualDub.

Motion Processing:

Field and frame differencing = checked
Show motion areas only = unchecked (used for testing your settings)
Blend instead of interpolate in motion areas = unchecked (depends.. try both ways)
Motion map denoising: checked
Threshold = 10-15

Advanced Processing: I don't mess with these options.

After the deinterlace filter, I crop the edges if necessary using the null filter (to get rid of uneven borders or noise). Then I resize with the Smart Resize filter using these settings.

Enable = checked
Aspect ratio = 2/1
Select "Fit Width" and set horizontal resolution to 352 (defaults to 320).
No enlarge = checked
Now select "Fit width and height w/letterbox"

The "Fit width and height w/letterbox" option will not enlarge the frame but will center it evenly with equal borders. The thin borders will not show when displayed on a TV.

I sometimes will also use Dynamic Noise Reduction filter set to around 10 (mainly if I am using M-JPEG compression) and set sharpness to 10 because the video is sometimes a little too soft for my taste. Don't over do the sharpness setting or the edges will become too crisp and video noise will become more visible.

Brian