VCD Quality

[ROBO1964]

Ok, last night I finally made my first test VCD and it worked. The only concern I have is the quality of the picture. I used the default VCD settings in WinCoder to make the file and used Easy CD Creator to burn it.

The picture is OK but you can see at times that the picture is blocks. Is this the best you can do or is there any way to improve the quality of the picture? I was viewing this on a 32 inch screen so that might be the problem there but if I could just slightly improve the picture it would be perfect or very close to it.

I was wondering if capturing at a higher setting and then using TMPGenc to convert to the proper format might improve it?

Any Tips?

[banjazzer]

I would try creating a VCD from a DVD. This will give you a benchmark to compare with your source material. I watch VCDs on a 32" screen, and they look remakably good.

[ROBO1964]

You mean capture in DVD format and then convert to VCD format?

[banjazzer]

No, I mean do an encode from a DVD to see what a perfect VCD should look like! Then you know the quality you are hoping to achieve.

[Craig Tucker]

I download divx and convert to VCD, and with a good quality source divx the resulting VCD can look much better than a VHS tape.

Craig

[ROBO1964]

Well what I did was capture a VHS tape to my digital camcorder and the captured it from that. The video is perfect on my PC but when I view it on a VCD on my TV then I can see some blocks in certain areas. Its not horrible but its noticeable when looking for it.

[Craig Tucker]

If I understand you correctly you are taping from an analogue source to a digital tape and then transferring this to your pc via firewire. Is this correct. If so you may find that you dont have to record it to dv tape, you can just pass the signal through and use your camcorder as an analogue to digital converter. If you are creating VCD's from a VHS source they are never going to look that great, as VHS is a pretty crappy source.

Craig

[banjazzer]

I don't know about Wincode, but I would imagine you will get better results using something like TMPG.

[JohnnieWalker]

I have created a few VCDs as well from analog sources (VHS/8mm) and of course the output depends greatly on how clean the source looks. I've used TMPGEnc to encode to MPEG1. Would it benefit me to increase the datarate when I encode?
I've noticed the blocky artifacts as well and have just been using TMPGs default settings.

[ROBO1964]

Well what I have been doing is recording something on VHS. Then I transfer it into my Digital Camcorder. The reason I do that is its too difficult to move my VCR to the computer so I record it to a high quality portable source. The quality is fine on the camcorder. Then I capture it into my Capture card via S-Video and go from there.

On my computer using the default VCD capture settings the video looks great. Although if I go to full screen it looses quality and looks similar to how it looks on TV. It's watchable but its got the blocky artifacts here and there.

I read for another capture card what the person did is record at a higher setting and then use TMPGenc to encode that source to the VCD format and use noise filters. I was wondering if anyone has done that and if it works and if it is worth it or not? Would that help this problem with blocky artifacts?

[banjazzer]

What you seem to be doing is capturing and converting to mpeg in real time, which I think is probably the source of your problems. I think you would get superior results if you could capture in the least compressd form possible, and then convert at leisure with something like TMPG. You don't even need to capture at any higher resolution than VCD, the compression of the capture is what is important.

I'm not even sure that hardware capture cards are better than capturing uncompressed, and converting later.

[ROBO1964]

What formats would you recommend? With video formats I am not really familiar with which is compressed and which is not.

I looked at Vegas Video 3 and it has a capture feature which seems fixed at 640x480 and creates huge files. Is that what I should use to put in TMPG enc and create the VCD format file?

[Craig Tucker]

For the best quality, capture at a resolution of 352 x 480(ntsc) or 576(pal), the double verticle resolution means you capture both fields (the video then needs to be deinterlaced if going to VCD, TMPGEnc or Vdub can do this), if you only capture at 240 or 288, you only capture one field, and hence loose 50% of the video right at the start.

Check this link for a very good explanation of interlacing, and capturing with vdub.

http://www.lukesvideo.com/

Capture using YUY2 or YUV with huffyuf compression. This will create very large avi files, but if you have the hard drive space its worth it because after you have encoded to mpeg, the avi file can be deleted.

Craig

[banjazzer]

if you only capture at 240 or 288, you only capture one field, and hence loose 50% of the video right at the start.

I completely forgot about the interlacing.

[ROBO1964]

That lukes video site says if your planing to watch on TV to leave it interlaced.

So which is better to capture in YUY2 and then encode to a VCD stadard format or capture as an MPG at 352x480 and then encode that to a VCD?

IKnow I couldn't do any substantial project in YUY2 as that was nearly 200MB for a 15 second clip.

[Craig Tucker]

You can leave it interlaced if you are creating SVCD, but if you are creating VCD it has to be deinterlaced. VCD does not support interlaced video. In fact if you choose a VCD template in TMPGEnc I think it automatically deinterlaces.

For best quality like I said capture using YUY2 with huffy compression, its much better than real time mpeg encoding. But if you are stuck for hard drive space you may find that this is not possible.

This is the way I capture, I then convert to VCD using TMPGEnc, but I have got 310GB of hard drive.

Did you capture uncompressed or did you use huffy. Huffy compression is very good as it is lossless.

Craig

[ROBO1964]

Should I use Virtualdub to capture? My current software doesn't give me too many options from what I can see.

[Craig Tucker]

Yes vdub is very good for capturing

Craig

[yg1968]

Capturing form your digital camcorder should not be done at anything else than DV (720x480). If you are capturing at anything else but DV, you are encoding on the fly which is not ideal. You should capture your DV on your hard disc. Use TMPGEnc and do not forget to use bottom field first in the TMPGEnc settings.

You can capture DV using freewares such as amcap or DVIO. Virtualdub is not easy or the ideal program to use for DV. Unfortunately DV takes 13 gig per hour of hard disc space. However, this DV (avi) file is only temporary until you encode it to mpeg.

[Craig Tucker]

From what robo1964 has said he is capturing via svideo from his camcorder, not transferring dv via firewire. So vdub is fine for this use. I agree the best way to go would be to get a firewire card and transfer using software such as ulead video studio. But i suggested vdub because he is using a capture card and not a firewire card.

Craig

[yg1968]

You are right. I misunderstood. I agree with you, he would get better results by using his firewire port to transfer the video to his computer. I own an ATI capture card and a miniDV camcorder but I never use my ATI capture card since my DV camcorder gives me much better results. In my opinion, encoding from DV to VCDs gives better results than anything else.

[JohnnieWalker]

Actually capturing at 352X480 won't automatically give you 50% more usable data (though it will double the size of your capture file making it seem like you're gaining something).
That's very dependent on your capture hardware, and how it handles the fields/frames. If you read further on lukesvideo.com he eventually gets to that point.

[ROBO1964]

I don't have fire wire. I got a gainward gerforce 4 Ti 4200 and it has VIVO and its pretty damn sweet I must say. I have WinCoder which came with the card and I have Vegas Video 3 which is a professional level editing program.

Wincoder is a real time MPEG 1/2 ecoder. Its great for online media as its cyrstal clear but for VCD its just not perfect. Like I said its nice but not perfect.

From my understanding from reading Luke's site is that their are 480 line on a television so if you capture 480 you get them all. So when you downsize to VCD you will have a more accurate picture than if you only capatured 240 lines in the first place since thats only half the lines. Thats my takle on it.

[yg1968]

This doesn't answer your question but you can get a firewire port with a cable for Cdn$50-70. I have never gotten good results using encoding on the fly.

[thxkid]

doing VCD for 2 years 1150 bitrate most of the time will have more pixelation over than lets say 2520 which is more than twice the bitrate, anything important or I want to archive this is the bitrate I use, actually I took a MPEG2 template in TMPGE and chnage some settings around to fit into the MPEG1 requirements like 352x240, but left the I and B frames unchanged with a couple other tweaks and NERO sees it as VCD and never had one yet fail in a stand alone DVD player and they look great without any pixelation. But this took a couple weeks of playing around with the settings and that a clue it may take some time until you find s setting or program with something you like, FYI I use a 36in TV to playback on.

[Craig Tucker]

This doesn't answer your question but you can get a firewire port with a cable for $50-70. I have never gotten good results using encoding on the fly.

A pci 3 port firewire card in the uk is only £20


Craig

[banjazzer]

A pci 3 port firewire card in the uk is only £20

With cable? If you don't get a bundled cable, this can set you back more than £20!

[Craig Tucker]

No, no cable thats an extra £4.75+vat from ccl computers.

Craig

[banjazzer]

That's very good. I got my firewire card + cable for around £30, but at the time the cheapest cable I could find was from Jessops, which cost nearly as much as the card and cable combined! 8)

[energy80s]

I bought my 3 port firewire card from DABS for only £15 with a cable! Works fine too.