CVCD vs. SVCD, my experience

[macleod]

I recently learned of the CVCD format (NTSC 352x480 2600Bit Rate) and took a shot at it.

I have a 1.2 gig emachine with a TV wonder card, and powercvrII 3.0 (with tweeks) and have been trying to convert my home movies, commercial movies, and TV over to a digital format to play on my apex 1100W stand alone DVD player.

I have read a lot about captures, etc. on this site and had been using a lot of the suggestions on this site to reach the "perfect" capture/convert/burn.

I came across an article regarding CVCD "boasting" about its standard and quality, etc. I figured I'd give it a look since I had been doing VCD and SVCD's for awhile now and had been pretty happy with the results of the SVCD's, but wanted to see what this could do.

My only complaint of SVCD, captured through my TV wonder & powervcrII was that when there was a lot of color and high motion scenes, it would blur and "pixelate". Not perfect, but liveable.

I went ahead and tweeked the registry for powervcr to do 352 x 480, motion search "3", MPEG2, 44mhz and began capturing Star Trek. When it started capturing, I noted that the screen (d-uh) scrunched in and the words at the bottom of the screen were barely legible. I figured that it would probably look like crap, but thought, what the hell. I finished up the capture, edited the commercials in powervcrII, and burned it using NERO (turned of standard compliance of course) and dropped it into my apex 1100w dvd player (of course region free and de-macrovisioned). I was shocked. The picture was EXCELLENT!!! Losing those X amount of horizontal lines had the data that would have gone there reallocated to the remaining resolution and made the picture PERFECT.

I've been bitching on different posts about how I have been wanting to get a perfect capture and nothing I try seemed to get me there. I always had to ignore this or that problem". This was a perfect capture. It actually looked better (yes, I know this is a technical impossibility) than the original broadcast.

My experience may not be the same as others, but if you are beating yourself in the head trying to get a good capture to go to CDR, why not "waste" a coaster on the CVCD format. You might be surprised with the results. I don't know if this is the software, hardware, or what, but I am really happy with this new CVCD format and from my understanding, this will be easier to convert to DVD when the time comes.

[SatStorm]

You are lucky, 'cause you have Apex...
Almost 1/3 to 1/2 of R1 Standalones ain't compatible with CVD format

Also, it is CVD (China Video Disc), not CVCD ;D

CVCD is a well known x-VCD format, popular in spain.

[jpb1977]

Well Macleod, we have the identical setup in regards to capturing video. I've got a 1.2 AMD, TV Wonder and even a DV card with EVERYTHING you could possibly need for software. Adobe Premiere, Ligos, PowerVCR, PowerDirector, ATI MMC 7.7. Using 7.1, I've already capture about 40 hours of 352X240 old VHS-C home videos. Good quality, the key is watching on a smaller TV!

So.....

now that my major project is done, and I can afford to take a little more time with my video (convert as I shoot, a few minutes a week) I'm exploring ALL options. AVI capture, then transcode, or realtime through PowerDirector. So far, SVCD has been very disappointing, yes it is sharper than my 352X240 video, but at high-motion, it appears to have MORE artifacts. I figured that the quality acheived from DV to AVI capture in Premiere before using Ligos (SVCD preset) to export would be great, but it was horrible compared to non-realtime capture using PowerDirector (straight from DV). Of course, the 17 minutes it took to process this 2 minute clip was a little unfortunate, but with DV, I can set up a batch and show up the next morning, so I don't mind.

So - Macleod, please fill us in with a little more detail about the steps to create 352X480 video using PowerVCR (or PowerDirector) and then burning with Nero. In Nero, do we use the SVCD burn template or the VCD template?

Thanks!

jpb

[macleod]

I used the SVCD template, however, turned off standard compliance.

There is a tweek on this site for getting powervcr to capture at any resolution (basically the 352x480). Once you apply the registry tweek and can capture at 352x480.

2600 bit rate motion search to 3

capture........

use nero SVCD template to burn to CD.

I'll try to do a better run through if people need it at home this evening.

[thxkid]

This true if don't spend the money and by a true MPEG2 card, I did and really happy with SVCD on it even more happy with the 704x480 at 5000 bitrate i get off it abd my Daewoo plays it as an non compliant SVCD without a problem and on a 36 and 46in screen they look great even the SVCD looks, now if a capture AVI and encode to SVCD I do not get the same great results, some pixalation in high speed motion, so it must be the MPEG2 chip and manual settings I use on the MPEG2 card, but now having bought a Home DVD recorder, kind of a mute point now, since I record everything on the DMR E-20 DVD recorder.

[jpb1977]

Hey Macleod...

Just a few questions - do you keep smoothing, noise reduction and de-interlacing on? Thanks!

jpb

[macleod]

If I remember my set up on powervcrII, I had the motion set to 3, the picture smoother option checked (the option is something else, but I cant remember what it says exactly) and the next option after that checked.

The short answer to your question is I have those options (in one form or another) checked off on my powervcrII software (I take that back, I don't think I have anything regarding deinterlacing - dont think there is even an option on powervcrII for that).

I have just done a DVD rip(harry potter) using the CVD format and it looks just about identical to the DVD(yes I know, technical impossible). When I say just about, I think that is because I am closely watching the CVD for any little thing wrong (mountain out of a molehill mentality). I think if i were to sit down and just watch it for the pleasure of watching it, I wouldn't see a difference.

I now wonder what would happen if I were to TMPGEN the file after I capture it in 352x480 (using the same output resolution, etc.) and did the filters you are talking about. Might come back to the forum singing the praises of adding this step.

[jpb1977]

Resist the tempation!!! If you are getting great results without adding any more encoding time, avoid it! Just wondering, how many minutes can I expect to fit on a CD with your settings (352 x 480, 2600kbps) Thanks! Can't wait to get home and give it a whirl!

jpb

[jpb1977]

One more thing Macleod - if you are planning to switch to DVD at some point in the future, you must encode the audio at 48k according to what I've read. Can anyone else chime in on this??? Is it even possible in PowerVCR - the file size increase should be minimal. Thanks!

jpb

[macleod]

Can't speak to the audio piece of it. I'll need to look at that closer.

On the other question, I'll use my Star Trek TNG captures as the measuring bar:

480x480 SVCD compliance 40 minute episode was about 8-900 meg

352x480 CVD "compliance" 40 minute episode was about 650-700 meg

I was reading over my previous posts and wanted to clarify "perfect" (yes, the catch comes now ) Using Star Trek again. Normal motion is perfect. Picard's suit does not have "dancing" pixelation like the SVCD version had. It looks like one color(red-supposdely the worst conversion color from cable/analog). During SUPER fast scenes you'll (in critiqing mode only) see "streaking" in the objects that move quickly (dont know how to describe it really). I say during critqing because when you just watch it for the heck of it, you don't notice a change). That being said, hope your experience with this will be as good as mine.

[SatStorm]

With NTSC those color problems are usual you know, expecially with low bitrates...
Do you know how we call NTSC in Europe? Never The Same Color

[Sylvester2000]

What setting do you use in PowerVCRII for the audio portion when capturing. Powervcr2 has everything from 48 kbps up to 500. What setting did you use to capture at 352 x 480 x 1600 bitrate?

Thanks

[Donny661]

When you say 48kbps your talking bitrate. What jpb was refering to was the sampling rate(it's called that or i think frequency range but i can't remember) and dvd's sampling rate is 48,000 Hz or 48 kHz. Vcd and Svcd standards call for a sampling rate of 44,100 Hz which is the same as audio cd's. I you were to use 48 kbps as your audio bitrate it would be very poor quality.

[Sulik]

The quality (amount of blockyness) of a video format in high motion / complex scenes is almost directly proportional to the number of bits per pixel, which is (resolution*fps)/bitrate.

You'll find that 480x480 SVCD has actually a very small bpp, and will cause more blockyness in high motion scenes than even VCD.
Of course, since the resolution is higher, the blocks are smaller, but 352x480 is typically a better choice for high motion at 2.5Mbps and under.

[jpb1977]

QUESTION - Does encoding the material NON-realtime shift the quality advantage back to 480X480??? Using PowerDirector, I use the DV batch encode because after you run it once, you just can't touch the quality (compared to realtime through the s-video of my TV Wonder at 480X480 or 352x480.)

Next, if the quality is better at 352x480 - does anyone know what to hack in the PowerDirector registry to get it??? Thanks!

jpb

ps - I've got about 15-20 hours of video I'm about to encode, hand held complex home movie stuff, so I need a relatively quick answer - thanks!

jpb

[SatStorm]

Based on earlier post by macleod and modified a bit from me (but not sure that gonna work perfect)

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#352 x 576#352 x 480#480 x 480#480 x 576#640 x 480#720 x 480#720 x 576#"

[erzug]

Many DVD players will support CVD CD's with either 48K or 44100 audio bit rate. My Malata N996 has no problem with either and neither does my dad's Onkyo Integra.

[Stanley Bostitch]

Guys, I am on the verge of buying the ATI TV Wonder, and I see that a bunch of you have it. I was wondering if the capture quality is good.

I was also wondering exactly what parameters do I set in TMpegenc + when I am encoding a frame-served (.d2v and .wav) DVD Rip to CVD? I have only burned VCDS at 1500kbs in the past because SVCDs give me motion blur. But from what macleod is saying, CVDs sound great. I'm gonna be buying a Apex DVD player soon too, so I'll hopefully be able to view them.

[SatStorm]

I don't own an ATI, but a Hauppauge Win TV primio FM. AIn't bad, capture great with no frame drops at a duron 1200, full screen
I also have a asus 7700 GTS deluxe, to my other computer. Very good quality, but the support ain't that great from the net.

Ati has great internet support. Also includes a TV out which many users find very good for quality. Older models are very cheap and is a good overall solution, expecially if you use NTSC