How to make the video look sharper/crisp

[spooky]

I have the Hauppage WinTV FM ( 401 ) & I use the uiVCR to capture my TV shows. The input source is my digital cable box with S-Video out which is connected to the card using the S-Video in. When I watch the video on the pc before capture it looks really good, nice & sharp/crisp. I capture it using the MJpeg ( setting 18 ) into AVI file, then I run it through VDub & frame serve it into TMPGenc so I can turn it into VCD Mpeg. However when I convert it over to MPEG i loose the sharpnes/crispness.
Can someone shine some light on this for me on how I could keep the sharpness?
In VDub I use two filters, one is the resize since I capture it at 640x480 & the other one is Deinterlacing filter.

Hope someone can help
Thanx

P.S. Here is the sample of my video
http://www.geocities.com/spooky617/sample.html

[WeedVender]

When u reconvert, you loose quality. What you might wanna do is make it a little sharper on Virtual Dub and then frame serve to the encoding proggie, it would look like the original. I know this might not work but its a half baked Idea....

[rhuala2]

What bitrates are u using? If your using the template for VCD 1150kbps then forget it. Why don't u like CVD, try it at around 3000 to 4500?

rhuala

[SatStorm]

I own a variation of your card, win tv primio fm, which I use a lot
The best way I found untill now is capturing with huffyuv or pic video (19 value, 18 is ok...) @ 352 X 576 resolution with virtualdub, and realtime set the noise reduction filter to a very small value (1,2 or 3 the most!)
Sharpening during frameserve don't help sorry. You have to proccess your video (to much HDspace that way) if you wish some sharpness with the use of specific filters.
I usualy simply frameserve now the avi file with vdub to TMPGenc 2.59 plus (latest built) and encode to xCVD with 2pass VBR 1000 min 2000 average 3000 maximum. This is about 60min per disc and for most uses is OK.
With VHS, I have to rise the values if the source is very jerky: 1200min 2300 average 3400 maximum are OK for movies and mainstream VHS stuff, but for home movies, even 1200 minimum 3000average and 4800 max ain't enough sometimes! Test a bit to find what is situable for you.

The other TMPGenc alternative, is to capture @ 352 X 576/480 and then resize and encode to mpeg 1 or mpeg 2 @ 352 X 288/240 with an average bitrate about 1500kb/s. It is -x- for CDs but O.K. for DVD.

With standard VCD bitrate, you don't have a change for good quality on home movies.
With standard CVD bitrates, you don't have a change if you use TMPGenc. Try CBR 2520 and it might look good but not perfect

The only way to succeed almost perfect VHS quality inbetween the CVD specifications, is by using the very expensive encoder with the name CCE. That way and with a 4 pass VBR (min2000, average 2300, max 2600) encoding, you may have VHS/SVHS quality on standard CVD bitrates.

[PHYcos]

If its sharpness your going for try upping the rez. Make a SVCD or DVD. There is a huge diffrence from VCD to SVCD in terms of sharpness.