Quality - Media Player vs VCD

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I'm using Dazzle to capture the mpeg files at 3mbit/sec. They look great using Media Player both minimized and maximized. Using the Panasonic 2.5 trial version I've encoded them to VCD format using all kinds of different parameters. The quality is still not so good. The question is why is the end result(VCD) quality less desirable than the original captured mpeg file. What can I do about it without spend hundreds of $$$. Thanks in advance for any help.

-- Bob (gbharris@flash.net), September 06, 2000

Answers

I'm not sure about this but it looks like you are capturing at 3 Mb/s and then using the Panasonic Encoder to Re-encode to Mpeg at VCD rates. Proper VCD rates are only 1.15 Mb/s. That's one thing I'd worry about. But more than that .. I wonder why you are using the Panasonic encoder at ALL. You SHOULD be using the Dazzle to capture to Mpeg-1 at 1.15 Mb/s for VCD mpeg. THAT should be compliant and from there you just burn the disc. The Panasonic encoder is really best suited for AVI to Mpeg conversion or encoding. I have no idea what an Mpeg to mpeg encoding would do .. especially if you are using 3 mb/s source to end up with 1.15 Mb/s.

I'm pretty sure with the latest updates that Dazzle device has a direct to VCD proper profile for Mpeg-1. 3 mb/s is not VCD proper.

-- Rich (richa@home.com), September 06, 2000.


Your problem is more VCD format then the panasonic encoder.

VCD rate is 1.15Mb/s which is very low, you can get a little less block if your source is very good. I capture from satelite direct to my Dazzle DVC II in VCD template and it's not good enought.

My recommandation is to make XVCD or SVCD at 2.6Mb/s max (video+audio)

Try capturing your clip to MPEG1 352 X 240 @ 2,35Mb/s video + 224 Kb/s audio, edit then use NERO to burn non compliant VCD.

Note: If you are using the DVC and not DVC II, I hear you have to capture at 3mb/s then encode with panasonic to 2.6mb/s to have a good quality.

Tuan

-- Tuan (anh.tuan.tran@clp.gouv.qc.ca), September 06, 2000.


Anyone experienced with any incarnation of the Dazzle DVC will in short time be aware that capturing using its VCD template with a view to creating ready-to-author-to-VCD MPEG files produces atrocious quality video (VERY blocky, noisy, washed-out EVEN with top-notch sources like the analogue outputs of a D8 or DV camcorder) with audio and video severely out of sync on top of that if one is lucky. One sweet way around this is to capture using a higher bitrate (2500 to 3000kb/s, which makes video quality more acceptable) then encode this back to 1150kb/s using Panasonic, for example. Even this doesn't guarantee top notch results. You obviously are aware of this because it's the route you take. The one proponent of this method in this forum is Doug, and if you search for all of his contributions to this forum for the same, you just may increase your MPEG quality. For Rich, yes, the Panasonic DOES accept MPEG-to-MPEG encoding comfortably, most so the latest ver 2.5. One use for that is for those who love to rip off DVDs; after DeCSS and the unencrypted and playable *.vobs are sitting on your HDD, FlaskMPEG can be opened to process these MPEG-2 files and stream them over to Panasonic plug-in to convert them to VCD-compliant MPEG-1.

-- Mehmet T (turk690@yahoo.com), September 09, 2000.

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