improving SVCD quality???

[esanchez]

I been doing my first captures. I"m using an AIW PRO with MMC 7.6. THis are my settings MPEG-2 480 X 480, NTSC 525, 2.03 MBit, Audio 44.100,16bit,stereo, # or P frames 4,# of B frames 2, Motion Estamation 100%. My question is how can I get a better looking capture. I have no problems capturing or buring the SVCD or playing it everything works great. Except that what gets played back just doesn't look as good as the VHS tape I'm inputing. The VHS tapes contain home movies taken with a VHS-C camcoder. ANy tips on how to improve capturing quality...are there any adjustment I can make to the SVCD setting to make it play better????

[Tommyknocker]

You will not be able to make your SVCD look better than your original video when making copies. However, there are TMPGEnc settings which make your generation loss less drastic. Try this guide.

[esanchez]

in TMPGEnc if you load a template. What does the template effect???? If just go to MPEG tools, and select multiplex. Will the templated loaded effect all the settings from the pull down menu??? How do I go about applying a template to an mpeg file I already have...

[Tommyknocker]

The template will affect the video you have loaded in TMPGEnc. So if you load a template, THEN add the video, the video's criteria will be in effect, and not the template's. So to apply a template to your video, load the video first, then select the template.

[Nelson37]

Crank your bitrate WAY up around 12 Mbit/s, set to I-frame only for better capture and then re-encode.

[esanchez]

what should I set my I frames too???

[SingSing]

Higher caprture bit rate will help.
I captuire at 8mbos, and then re-encode.
Use a S-VHS deck with Noise reduction will help too.

[hwoodwar]

There are two settings I've found that cause the great increase in quality (decrease motion effects and macroblocks) of the final product, wether it be VCD, CVD, SVCD or whatever. Both are in settings (in TMPGenc) on the Video tab.

Motion Search Precision; set this to High or Highest Quality. Many people say they see only a minimum difference between the two but using High vice Highest does decrease the encoding time.

The other setting is Rate Control Mode. I've found 2-Pass VBR works best. I usually set the minimum bitrate to between 500 and 1500, maximum bitrate start testing at 3600 and average bitrate between 1700 and 2500 (I try to keep it above 2000.) I prefer to use the project wizard as this lets me choose the template I wish to use, but more importantly on the bitrate setting page it has a tool to estiimate file size. You can use this tool to change the average bitrate (if you previously selected 2-Pass VBR) so that you maximize the space on the CD.

I have gotten up to 55 minutes of good quality video on my CVD's using the above mentioned settings. Captures/videos with darker scenes and/or fast motion give the most problems. On these especially, try to keep the bitrate as high as possible.

[Nelson37]

Check the tab that says I-frame only, this means all I frames.

Also, get Stinky's MMC RegTool and bump up the motion search parameters, default is 32 and 16 and I use 128 and 64. I also set Quality to 6 rather than the default of 3. Once you have set quality, do NOT go into settings on MMC as this will reset it to 3 again.