Home video to VCD

[bicnarok]

Hi.

For ages now Ive been playing about trying to get a good quality VCD from my home video´s but its always blocky and bright colours are all smudged.

I film my boy playing football and using Powerd Director Ive captured (video in video card) and cut the stream so It´ll fit onto a CD.

I then export the file to MPG with resolution of
352x288 1856k bit rate.

Ive exported it loads of times trying various quality settings, noise reduction smoothing etc

Then Burn it with Nero.

The VCD works fine but as mentioned above it looks crap.

I have a
1.5 Ghz Athlon
Ge Force 5200 Ultra 256 MB mit TV in out.
512 RAM
XP Pro

Any tips would be appreciated.

[bicnarok]

Oh yeh Ive captured it using various settings also, DVD quality mpeg2 etc.

[setarip]

Have you tried using "TMPGEnc" to convert to MPEG-1VideoCD format?

[bicnarok]

I don´t need to use TMPGEnc, Power director does all that and takes 20 minutes not 3 hours.

[bicnarok]

I made a vid a year ago with avi Divx format, 640 x 480.
No probs.

But now I can´t capture that high a resolution. Maybe it´s got ot do with my video card. I used a ASUS ge force 2 card then, now Ive got a Nvidia capture chip, ge force FX

[setarip]

"For ages now Ive been playing about trying to get a good quality VCD from my home video´s but its always blocky and bright colours are all smudged.
I film my boy playing football and using Powerd Director"

"I don´t need to use TMPGEnc, Power director does all that and takes 20 minutes not 3 hours."

Are you looking for speed or QUALITY?

[bicnarok]

Im looking to make a VCD which can be viewable without everything being smudged up so you can´t recognise anyone.

I ran it through TEMPGEnc and the file size halfed, and the quality is even worse.

Ohh and my day gets even better I can´t brun any more due to a "Power allocation error" yoo hooo. Friggin computers, kill em all

[setarip]

To create a VCD:

1) Load .AVI file into TMPGEnc
2) Set to "System Video and Audio" (lower right side)
3) Click on "Setting" radio button
4) Click on "System" tab, change mode to "MPEG1-VideoCD" (from default of "MPEG1")
5) Click on "Advanced" tab, change "Video arrange method" to "Center (Custom Size"), change dimensions to 352x288 or 352x240
6) Change "Source aspect ratio" to either "4:3 525 line (NTSC 704x480)", "4:3 525 line (NTSC)", or "16:9 525 line (NTSC)" - If you're in the PAL world choose either of the two similar PAL settings instead
7) Under the "Video" tab, change the dimensions to 352x288 or 352x240 (Note: "Video" tab mode of "MPEG1" is okay) - set "Motion Search Precision" to "Normal Quality". Change the "Aspect Ratio" to match, as closely as possible, the "Source Aspect Ratio" you set under the "Advanced" tab.
8) Change "Rate Control Mode" to "Automatic VBR (CQ_VBR)" and "Bitrate" to "1,150"
9) Under the "Audio" tab, set to "MPEG-1 Layer II", 44,100 224Kbps
10) Press "Start"

(Or, instead of the steps 1)-10) above, you could attempt to use TMPGEnc's VCD "wizard"/template)

Note that if your video runs longer than 70-80 minutes, you'll have to subsequently split your VCD-MPG file in two. This too can be easily and precisely accomplished using TMPGEnc. Under the "Files" dropdown menu, click on "MPEG Tools" and select the "Merge & Cut" tab. Once again, make sure to change the mode to "MPEG1-Video CD". Load your file and enter a new (.MPG) name in the "Output file" box. Then doubleclick on the ORIGINAL file's name in the window, which will bring you to the cutting area. Select your desired start and end points for the first half, click on "Okay" which will bring you back to the first window and generate (in a sequence of three automated steps) the first new file. To create the second new file, repeat the steps starting with "Then doubleclick on the ORIGINAL..." (be extra patient with the second half, as the program has to do more seeking to establish the beginning of the new file).

Use a burning program, such as NERO to burn your CD-R or R/W CD as a VCD (DON'T ask NERO to format the file as a VCD, since you've already accomplished this!)

Let us know of your success ;>}

[bicnarok]

I captured it to a Mpg file no Avi, We have PAL TV´s here.

In Power director Ive converted it ot VCD with a bit rate of 1856 Kb which most DVD players can cope with. Doesn´t anyone know this?

It all works fine except for the quality.

I ran it through TMPGEnc which took nearly 4 hours (Power director 20 minutes) and the quality is worse, i can´t change the bit rate as it is blanked out in TMPGEnc.

Im going to delete TMPGEnc, the only thing its good for is Cropping.

Then Im going to buy a dvd writer and make dvd´s instead.

Thanks for the info

[setarip]

"In Power director Ive converted it ot VCD with a bit rate of 1856 Kb"

That rate is far in excess of MPEG-1VideoCD standards, regardless of whether "most DVD players can handle this"...


"Then Im going to buy a dvd writer and make dvd´s instead."

Welcome to the 21st Century ;>}

[bicnarok]

But 1856 works and it looks much better than the 1150 which TMPGEnc encodes to.

I read it somewhere in a tutorial how to make VCD´s.

[sfheath]

From www.videohelp.com:

PAL


Video:
1150 kbit/sec MPEG-1
352 x 288 pixels
25 frames/second

Audio:
44100 Hz
224 kbit/sec MPEG-1 Layer2

Extra:
Menus and chapters
Still pictures in 704x576,352x288