DVD Ripping - Quality Issue - Help is appreciated

[KaoS]

I tried to look through the forums to find the answer to this, but to be honest.. I am such a newbie to this that I have a hard time knowing what is relevant to my problem and what isn't.

I first used the basic tutorial on vcdhelp to rip a dvd (Smartripper, DVD2AVI then TMPGEnc) and it worked great.. very good quality.

However I then came across a more detailed tutorial that would allow me to use subtitles (my wife loves subs) and it is supposed to be better quality. It has me go through the following steps.
Smartripper, DVD2AVI, VFAPI 1.04 Codec (convert the .d2v file to a avi file), tooLame (convert the .wav to a .mp2), Virtual Dub (with telecide filter if needed, smartresize and vobsub filters), frameserving it to TMPGEnc and encoding it, then using bbMpeg to multiplex it all together.

Well it works great for the subtitles, but the quality is in my eyes, horrible. VERY BLOCKY.

I guess I am trying to either figure out what I am doing wrong or I would like to find another tutorial that will allow SubTitles but produce good quality.

Any help is appreciated

Thank You

[vitualis]

You've done something wrong...

Both methods you've described use the same mpeg encoder (TMPGEnc) so the quality should be mostly the same... The pre-processing steps will not cause the end result to be blocky.

Are you sure you didn't change the settings on TMPGEnc somewhere?

Regards.

[KaoS]

I have not changed anything as far as I know.. here are the setings I use.

Size: 352x240
Aspect Ratio: 4:3 535 line (NTSC)
Rate Control Mode: CBR
Motion Search Precision: Highest Quality
In the Gop settings I change P Picture to 4 and Output interval to 1
I also check Soften Block Noise and set Intra and Non-Intra block to 32

To be honest, I have no clue what most of those things do.

[nfl2k2]

Try using a bitrate calculator so that you're movie fills the cd up with better quality. once you get your bitrate, use cbr and type the number in.

[vitualis]

Standard VCDs only support one bitrate. The bitrate calculator is thus inappropriate in this situation.

KaoS, on both methods you described, did you load the VCD template in TMPGEnc?

Regards.

[KaoS]

In the first example yes.. I loaded the VCD Template

In the second example, I followed the Tutorial and used the settings that it told me to use.

I think I found this tutorial on http://www.flexion.org

Thanks

[Vejita-sama]

I've used the Flexion.org guide to make x(S)VCD with subtitles (japanese audio and english subtitles). Since you're using TMPGenc to encode in both cases the quaility should be the same. The flexion site has you use 'soften block noise' while the 'standard vcd template' does not. This will get rid of 'blocky-ness' but make the picture less sharp (could be the problem).

Also, are you sure you set motion search to high? It makes a big difference

[VideoGuy]

You threw BBMpeg in the mix for MPEG1, ders da problem! Only use that for MPEG2, IMHO..

HTH

[vitualis]

As what Vejita-sama said.

Quality for VCD standard MPEG-1 can be a somewhat subjective. If you find a set of settings that looks good for you, you should stick with it.

Regards.