quality of xsvcd help!

[vcllvc]

can someone tell me what's the definition of "good quality" of a xsvcd? Can you see any jumpy or pixel box in the movie? I've tried almost any setting of bit rates and field order, but the quality is still not acceptable. My stand alone player is Pioneer DV-525 and I burn xsvcd in 1x speed with the Yamaha CDR-4416E.
It seems there is no standard method of making a good quality vcd in the world.

[paulgab]

can someone tell me what's the definition of "good quality" of a xsvcd? Can you see any jumpy or pixel box in the movie? I've tried almost any setting of bit rates and field order, but the quality is still not acceptable. My stand alone player is Pioneer DV-525 and I burn xsvcd in 1x speed with the Yamaha CDR-4416E.
It seems there is no standard method of making a good quality vcd in the world.

1. It depends on your video source. if very good quality, it is possible to achieve near or same quality with your source.
2. 2-pass VBR template on TMPG is recommended for better quality SVCD.
3. Re jumpy and pixelated, what rate and resolution are you using for XSVCD? It might be that your player cannot take such rate. Mine can take 720x480 VBR min 2000, ave 3500, max 7000.
4. Try using standard SVCD setting.

[fantomlord]

you should also give some specs for your XSVCD...
if it's encoded at 1000 kb/s, then of course it won't get good quality
I've got the DV525, and it doesn't help you to make XSVCD--it won't play anything over a bitrate of 2500--SVCD standard. so, you're just as well off making a standard multipass VBR SVCD, using a bitrate calculator to make sure to fill the discs. as far as the type of quality you can expect...
if you've got a good source(eg. DVD rip), you should be able to achieve the infamous "Near DVD quality"--for me, on my old 27" TV, when I get good sources, they look just about as good as DVD's when I'm done.
hope that helps

[DJRumpy]

vcllvc, if your video is jumpy, your probably exceeding the limits of what your standalone player will accept. A symptom of bitrates that are too high, is jerky video, jumpy sound, etc. You shouldn't even need xSVCD. SVCD can give you close to DVD quality as is.

As for bitnoise (pixels), you rarely, if ever see these on SVCD if they are done properly. SVCD doesn't suffer from the bit shortage as badly as VCD does.

[vcllvc]

Thanks guys. Here is what I've done so far. Sorry, this is long.
Source: Sony digital camcorder DCR-PC101, captured format is DV AVI.
Computer: Pentium4 1.5G,
CD Burner: Yamaha CDR4416E
Software: mostly use ULead Visual Studio and DVD MovieFactory, also tried TMPGEnc, VCDEasy has no luck.
Specs for my XSVCD:

XSVCD CBR6000 FIELD A
XSVCD VBR6000 FIELD B
XSVCD VBR6000 FIELD A
XSVCD VBR5000 FIELD A
XSVCD CBR3500 FIELD A
Above format give me jerky, jumping and audio sync promblems.

XSVCD VBR2500 FIELD A
sync ok. no jumping or skipping but quality ..... forget it.


XSVCD VBR3000 FIELD A
XSVCD VBR3000 FIELD B
XSVCD CBR3000 FIELD A
XSVCD VBR2950 FIELD B
XSVCD VBR2940 FIELD B
XSVCD VBR2900 FIELD A
I can find VBR2940 is ok, since I have had so much disappointments. But this bitrate isn't XSVCD average rate and quality, right. I can still find pixels around my moving hands and my eye balls are square shape.
For bitrate above 2940, the video is still jumping a bit.
For bitrate at 2900, no jumping screen but I don't think this is the "Near DVD quality" all you experts talking about. I mean more pixel can be seen.

Well, for TMPGEnc, I follow some steps form Doug mazinz's "How to make an XVCD using a Dazzle Capture card" article. I encoded the source through TMPG. ....Result? If it's ok, it won't have this post at all....
Also I burn the disc in 1X speed and on CD-R only. No CD-RW.

See if you guys can have anything to bug me. I'm going crazy.

Thanks in advance.

[vcllvc]

Oh, on the other hand, I used TMPG to encode movies to VCD format before. The result is ok. You know what I mean no pixel noise. The head is round not square. oh.........................

[troyvcd1]

Why are you putting emphasis on xsvcds. It is hard enough to get good quality at 480 x 480 svcd and your not going to get good quality increasing the resolution. My pioneer dvd player maxes out at about 2600 so your pioneer probably maxes at the same. If anything you should think about making a cvd at a lower resolution and this will give you better quality at 2600. I found the only way to get good quality is to make a cvd with tmpgenc or get cce for better quality svcds.

[vcllvc]

Well, I really don't mind what format either SVCD or XSVCD. My task is to put the video on a cd with good quality, and I can play it on my player. That is. Simple. VCD, SVCD or XSVCD doesn't matter. All I don't want to see is the pixels. That is. And I want to know how you guys can make your video in "SVCD can give you close to DVD quality as is". That's all I want.

[vcllvc]

Actually, I also did vcd and svcd standard, too.
SVCD 480x480, CBR 2500 FIELD A
VCD 352x240, CBR 1150 FRAME BASED

Anything I can try, I have tried and I will. Please.

[CyberDude101]

Try making a normal SVCD with CCE but using 3-5 pass VBR, should do the job

[Mavrick]

I’m converting home videos to CD. I have managed over time to get it down to 4 easy steps.
I didn't want to buy more software, well at first anyway...

I just thought; “There HAS to be an EASY way to convert my VHS/Hi8 videos to CD, without using ump-teen programs and 1000 steps...”

So I made it a mission to capture, edit, and render all in one program with quality results; and without worrying about 1000 settings and filters.

After 3 Months of downloading and trying allot of programs I found the EASY way with Ulead’s Media Studio 6.5 DC! And to me it was worth every penny. After all I done dropped a few bucks for all the hardware to make it work.



Step 1: Capture the video as uncompressed AVI (this gives you the best quality to work with) as close to the final output resolution as you can. This will save encoding time if it does not have to resize it. In my case 480x480 or 640x480

Step 2: Edit the captured video. I use Media Studio Pro 6.5DC for this.

Step 3: Save the edited video in Media Studio as an MPEG2 480x480 with a VBR of 4000. Field order B first. (Make sure your player can play this).

Step 4: Burn the MPEG file(s) to CD with DVD Movie Factory. Make your menus etc…

That’s it!!



Works every time and I get video as good as the original… I would say its DVD quality. The Sound is ALWAYS in sync, and I never get micro-blocks, etc.

The down side is I can only get 20-30min per CD with a bit rate that high… but with this quality, I’ll take it! And for most home videos 20-30min is enough time for one "Theme".



Software Used:

You can download a trial copy of Media Studio Pro from
http://www.ulead.com/msp/runme.htm
They also offer upgrade offers from other editing software – so you can get it as cheep as $129.00 for the DC version.

You can download a trial copy of DVD Movie Factory from
http://www.ulead.com/dmf/runme.htm
It’s about $45.00

[vcllvc]

I don't know what is going wrong. I never get Mavrick's "video as good as the original… I would say its DVD quality. The Sound is ALWAYS in sync, and I never get micro-blocks" Anyway, I really appreicate all of your helps. Thanks. But I am not succeed.

[Mavrick]

I don't know what is going wrong. I never get Mavrick's "video as good as the original… I would say its DVD quality. The Sound is ALWAYS in sync, and I never get micro-blocks" Anyway, I really appreicate all of your helps. Thanks. But I am not succeed.

What results are you getting? What Methods, Resolution, Bitrate, VBR or CBR?

Let me know what your doing and how. I'll see if we can get you going... Don't give up...

[vcllvc]

Thanks Marvick. I've listed out all the format I've done above post. In short, the result isn't "closed to the original", don't even think about close to DVD quality. Pixels around any moving object which means everywhere, depends on how much biterates I set to.
On the other hand, the source information is the fowllowing:
File format: Microsoft AVI file -- OpenDML
File Size: 172,451KB only
Frame rate: 29.970 Frames/sec
Duration 49.082 seconds
Data rate: 3512.11kbps

Video Compression: DV Video Encoder -- type 1
Attributes: 24Bits, 720x480
Total frames: 1,471 Frames

Audio Compression: DV Audio-- NTSC
Attributes: 32.000kHz, 16Bit, Stereo
Total samples: 1,570,637 Samples.

What else do you need? Please let me know if I miss anything.

[Mavrick]

Hummm… There are only three things I can think of…

1. I don’t use Video Studio, so I don’t know a lot about it, other than it came with my Radeon 8500DV AIW card. Have you downloaded the latest patch for Video Studio? I’ve seen post on here that it has added better MPEG support.

2. Try Downloading the Media Studio Trial and use that with the specs I listed above. It’s a little more powerful editing program.

3. It may be your DVD player can’t handle higher bit rates, especially since you said it plays fine at lower rates. You can test this by taking you XSVCD to an electronics store and trying it out on another player. Look for the RCA 5240P ($99.00). I have tested it with bit rates as high as 4500 and they play great!

I think #3 is most likely your problem.

[Mavrick]

P.S.

One more thing! I know it sounds funny... But encode your MPEG2 file at a resolution of 480x480. It will look funny on your computer, but when played on the TV, it will look fine. When I first started making these things it took me a while to down size the video to 480x480, I was scared of loosing too much quality, it dosen't! I chalk it up to video "magic"

Your player might be able to do the 4000VBR at a lower res...

Try it...

[vcllvc]

uhhh, sounds like I am idiot. I tried using the MS and updated my VS version. I also followed your 480x480 method,too. For 4000VBR, the result is jumping and having audio sync problem. If I reduce the resolution, sync problem is gone. However, I would consider my XSVCD video is a VCD quality.
The only thing I haven't done that is trying on other player.

Also fantomlord posted:

if it's encoded at 1000 kb/s, then of course it won't get good quality
I've got the DV525, and it doesn't help you to make XSVCD--it won't play anything over a bitrate of 2500--SVCD standard. so, you're just as well off making a standard multipass VBR SVCD, using a bitrate calculator to make sure to fill the discs. as far as the type of quality you can expect...
if you've got a good source(eg. DVD rip), you should be able to achieve the infamous "Near DVD quality"--for me, on my old 27" TV, when I get good sources, they look just about as good as DVD's when I'm done.

.... not for my DV525.

It seems there are a lot of people asking this similar question every minute on this site even though there are so many guides. Looks like there are no stardard solution on this issue in the world. huh....

[MrKGB]

I also tried Ulead some time back, but it was giving me very bad quality on speeds 2500-3000. I was comparing MainConcept, CCE, TMPGenc, LSX and Ulead , and Ulead was the worst. Of course if you encode at 4000, any encoder will do excellent job. The problem is that not every player can play 4000.
So I would suggest to try 2500-3000 VBR and use the proven encoders : CCE or TMPGenc.
For me TMPGenc works better. I used to have a lot of noise after moving edges when encoding with 4 pass VBR using CCE . Then I switched to TMPGenc, and the noise is gone....
I am using the plain SVCD template of TMPGenc with VBR avg 2400 and slowest motion search precision.
One more advice:
I am using PowerDVD for viewing results of encoding. This way I don't have to burn too many disks. It does very good job of deinterlacing and shows even 480x480 with proper aspect ratio. This way I can aslo see all encoding problem much easier becasue PC screen is much better than any TV.

[Mavrick]

Couple of things to think about…

I don’t know when MrKGB tried Ulead or if it was Media Studio Pro 6.5 or Video Studio. Ulead has a new MPEG encoder included in their newest Service pack for MSP. It does a great job, even at the lower bit rates. Besides, Media Studio Pro is free to try… Sure TMPG is a good encoder. But why add extra steps and programs to the mix? There’s nothing wrong with thinking outside the box.

Do you plan to eventually go to DVD? If you do, then remember DVD’s rates are 4000-8000. If you can play the high rates now, then do it. Once you encode at lower rate, some of the quality/information is lost. You can’t add it back by re-encoding later. Just like you can’t make a 56k MP3 sound better by re-encoding it to a 256k…

In the end, the golden rule is… Use what works best and easiest for you…

[MrKGB]

Mavrick, I was using Ulead VS 6.5.
I've heard that they are using LSX encoder, is that true?
I agree that at high bit rates it is giving good results. I was even considering to use it for capture, but decided to go with huffyv, though recently I started using Picvideo MJPEG at 19 to save space.
Until yesterday (when I discovered that tmpg is indeed better than CCE)
I was using the following process:
1. VDub for capture using huffyv or MJPEG codec
2. VDub for editing in direct stream copy mode (my editing is very simple - just remove unvanted parts)
3. DVD2SVCD for encoding with encoder CCE 4 pass VBR 2700 avg. DVD2SVCD is required because otherwise I was having audio sync problems. DVD2SVCD creates CD images and splits them on multiple CDs if needed.
4. burn CDs using Nero or cdrwin
Also not too complicated.
Yesterday I encoded a short 15min clip using tmpgenc at 1500 min, 2500 avg, 3500 max 2pass VBR (everything else from PAL SVCD template) and I really liked the result.
So now I have to change the process for using tmpgenc .
The good news is that DVD2SVCD also allows to use tmpgenc as encoder.
The problem with tmpgenc is that it is so slow (it took 3hrs to encode that 15min video), so I need new hardware.
New mobo/cpu must arrive tomorrow
Life will never be easy

[Mavrick]

MrKGB,

I didn’t mean to offend you, and if I did, then I apologize…

Media Studio Pro 6.5 is now using the Ulead MPEG.Now codec. It seems to be very stable and yields great results.

TMPG is a great encoder, no doubt about it. You also can’t beat the price. Sometimes the VDUB, TMPG, and Frame Serving stuff can get a little rough; especially for newer users.

For the more advanced users wanting to do more powerful effects and editing, the MSP option may be the better route. I was just trying to offer another solution to achieve the same goal.

As always the Golden Rule is: Use what works best and easiest for you.



Take Care,

Mavrick

[MrKGB]

Mavrick,

No problem! I thought I am offending you :P
Did you try low bit rates like 2500 with MSP and compare it to tmpgenc?

[Mavrick]

Mavrick,

No problem! I thought I am offending you :P
Did you try low bit rates like 2500 with MSP and compare it to tmpgenc?

LOL… That’s the problem with text... you can't see the other persons expressions when they are saying it, so it's kind of hard to see the intent. No harm done…

I have not used TMPGne in a while... I usually make the XSVCDs... On the rare occasion I do make a regular SVCD, the quality is good.

[vcllvc]

Once you encode at lower rate, some of the quality/information is lost. You can’t add it back by re-encoding later. Just like you can’t make a 56k MP3 sound better by re-encoding it to a 256k

I know. I'll go for DVD eventually, but won't be so soon. That's why I want to burn my video onto at least SVCD format.

TMPG is a great encoder, no doubt about it. You also can’t beat the price. Sometimes the VDUB, TMPG, and Frame Serving stuff can get a little rough; especially for newer users.

True. I agree that TMPG is not very new user friendly even the latest version has a lot of improvement.

MrKGB, thanks your advice. I'll try your suggestion and see if any magic happen. I'll let you know later.

Thanks again. Everyone.

[DJRumpy]

vcllvc, let me make another suggestion. Your source is a cam, which is going to eat up bitrate like crazy, due to all the movement in the video. I'm assuming this is some sort of home movie? Because there is so much movement in your source, it will be hard to satisfy the bitrate demands no matter what you do with SVCD.

Try using a lower resolution, like CVD (352x480). This will give you back some extra bitrate, and quality by sacrificing a little resolution.

Maximize your motion detection. Try using another encoder, like TMPGenc. Use the highest motion detection setting, or the next to highest (most claim that the difference between the two is almost unnoticable). It's painfully slow, but the results are worth it. Better yet, if you can get your hands on CCE, give it a try, using multipass VBR.

Try reducing your audio bitrate. You can reduce bits from audio, and give the bits to video. I don't know what your sound quality is like, but its likely it doesn't require anywhere near the usual 224kbs.

You can also try a few avisynth plugins, or virtualdub plugins to help correct shakycam. It works by analyzing frame to frame to see if minor motion can be corrected (stilled), so your encoder isn't wasting bits in the final product. I ran across such a filter a few weeks ago, but I've never tried one. A search on google might yield some results.

Last thing, try to find out the maximum bitrate your standalone will support for SVCD, and stay in those limits.

[vcllvc]

Hey, DJRumpy, thanks a lot. I'll give it a shot tonight.

there is so much movement in your source

You're right. Since I was hand helding, it still look shaky even though the cam has already compensate a lot.


Is CCE a freeware? Can you give me a link?

[DJRumpy]

CCE is not freeware, although they do have demo version available. The demo leave a logo on your final product. The cost for CCE is exhorbant:

www.cinemacraft.com

Unscrupulous individuals would download a crack for the demo, to disable the logo. You can't ask for one in the forums, as it's against policy. I might suggest you start with Google if you need help there.

[MrKGB]

I am also encoding home movies, and those movies were made by very old camcorder without image stabilization, so I have a LOT of motion.
I was always seeing some artifacts (like flying pixels which are following moving edges) after encoding with CCE 4 pass. I tried even bitrates like 3500avg, the artifacts reduced but are still there.
Then I tried TMPGenc and this problem is gone!!! I am using SVCD template, but 1500min, 2500avg, 3500max, slowest motion serach.
BTW, CCE seems very simple, but it has problems with audio sync, so you have to use multiplex - demultiplex for best results or use it inside DVD2SVCD, so it is not very easy.

[DJRumpy]

I rarely ever use the audio setup on CCE. It's easier to work on it somewhere else.

I wish I could remember where I saw that still motion filter. It wouldn't have solved everything, but it could have improved things marginally, if the motion, or shaking weren't too bad.