Followed all suggestions and still not happy

steffche · Post by **steffche** » Sun Mar 05, 2006 4:24 am

I have followed all the suggestions as far as seting up VS9..capturing via firewire to AVI format then converting to MPEG with all commpression settings set to 100%, and using 2 pass encoding...and I am still not happy with the end results. The picture seems blocky to me, and no clarity at all. What am I doing wrong?

AVI Settings..
NTSC DV 720x480 29.97 fps
Lower field first
DV type 1
48,000 16 bit stereo

Then when converting to MPEG..
NTSC DVD 720x29.97 fps
Lower Filed first
MPEG-2 100% comp
48000 dolby digital stereo etc..
perform square pixel render

Is there a better way...?

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Sun Mar 05, 2006 5:22 am

You should be performing NON square pixel rendering.

Steve J

steffche · Post by **steffche** » Sun Mar 05, 2006 5:36 am

I did have that option selected..I meant non-square pixel rendering...

Do you know if by having the camera audio option set to 16 bit does it reduce the quality of the video? ie, bandwith restrictions etc...?

Post by **Ken Berry** » Sun Mar 05, 2006 5:42 am

Can I ask why you are capturing and producing using NTSC when you are in a PAL country? Is your camera a PAL model? If so, that could be the root of your problems.

I personally am also not convinced that using the 100% setting is necessarily always useful. I leave mine at the default 70 or 80% and never seem to have problems, producing very clear and high quality DVDs.

And no, the 16 bit relates to the audio and certainly does not lower the quality of the video. In fact, we usually advise people who have their cameras set to 12 bit to change it internally to 16.

steffche · Post by **steffche** » Sun Mar 05, 2006 5:45 am

Ok..thanks for clearing up the 16 bit query.

The reason I am using NTSC is becuase I was in Taiwan on a business trip and decided to buy a video camera...without even thinking about what format it might be in..

How does the Sony DCR-TRV22 handycam rate? I just connected it via S-video cable to my plasma and even the raw footage off the tape isn't all that good...

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Sun Mar 05, 2006 7:30 am

there are reviews of your camcorder here:
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/so ... review.htm
http://reviews.cnet.com/Sony_DCR_TRV22/ ... 91504.html
http://www.digitalcamera-hq.com/camcord ... views.html

Steve J

steffche · Post by **steffche** » Sun Mar 05, 2006 9:10 am

Thank you so much steve...I'll have a read.

steffche · Post by **steffche** » Sun Mar 05, 2006 11:01 pm

Seems to have rated fairly well...

I had a play around with the VS9 SHARE settings...mainly the bitrate settings and quality slider.

I have found that to get really good results I had to take 2 pass encoding off...use VBR and push the bitrate up to 14000!!! and the quality slider really didn't seem to make much difference between 80-100%. This obviously resulted in a huge MPEG file...20secs of video gave 34Mb file.

I found that reducing the bitrate any lower than say 12000 and I was getting really bad macroblocking on dark colored objects. Can anyone explain or assist me on this issue?

I have read a few threads that were related to "Advanced Settings" for the MPEG.NOW encoder in VS version 8...is this still available in version 9?

Many thanks in advance!
Steve.

heinz-oz · Post by **heinz-oz** » Sun Mar 05, 2006 11:56 pm

Something really doesn't add up here

For starters, your mpeg file at 12000 to 14000 kbps will not be playable by any standard DVD player. I usually use between 4500 to 8000 kbps for my mpegs and my resultant quality is excellent. Even though I use MSP 7.3, not VS, the same applies.

If you have fast motions in your footage, 2 pass VBR gives better results at smaller file sizes. Single pass VBR is useless because the encoder does have no indications as to where the bit rate should be varied because of the content.

What are you judging the quality on? Preview window, rendered file in MediaPlayer or burned DVD?

steffche · Post by **steffche** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 9:24 am

Actually I haven't yet played the 14000 bitrate version on my dvd player...although I have played the one I did at 8000. The 14000 one is one that has been rendered using NTSC DVD format and played back on my pc with windows media player.

steffche · Post by **steffche** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 11:10 pm

It must be the restricted settings on the MPEG encoder in VS9 that give poor quality outputs... I tried to link VS9 into a full version of MainConcepts MPEG encoder...it worked a little...as in I could get the MainConcept screen to come up when I clicked the advanced settings button in VS9 MPEG setttings box...but when I tried to create an MPEG output file it came up with an error saying that it couldn't start the MPEG encoder...

Damn...I thought I was getting close...

2Dogs · Post by **2Dogs** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 1:14 pm

Just a thought, and probably a long shot.

Looking at your system spec, it seems like you may have put it together yourself - so do check to see that you have all the latest drivers for all your components. It's harder to do that on a home-built system than with a Tier one pc (HP, Dell, etc) since the latter baby you by sending you alerts when new stuff is available.

Are you also using any overclocking?

Although there is some inevitable quality loss when transcoding from AVI to MPEG-2, you shouldn't be seeing the effects you describe. There must be some underlying problem or conflict. You could try a test encode with another program - there are other free trials available - and VS should give results as good as any of them when working properly.

steffche · Post by **steffche** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 7:39 am

Thanks for you response...however I have been using Adobe Premiere Pro which I must say produces excellent results...so it aint the pc...one would assume...