POOR MPEG4 FILES ON VIDEOSTUDIO 10+

[GAZ]

I'VE A PROBLEM THAT HAS RECENTLEY STARTED WHEN I CONVERT FILES TO MPEG4 FOR MY PSP OR IPOD. THE OUT PUT FILE IS VERY LOW QUALITY NOW, UNWATCHABLE. IT'S OBVIOUSLY NOT CAPTURING THE DATA PROPERLY BECAUSE THE FILES ARE A FRACTION OF THE SIZE I'D EXPECT WHEN COMPARED TO PREVIOUS SUCESSFUL CONVERSIONS.

RECENTLY INSTALLED ITUNES SO WONDERING IF THAT HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH IT. ALSO NOW SEEIGN THE SAME PROBLEM WITH MY PSP MANAGER SOFTWARE.

ANY IDEAS??

[lancecarr]

HARD TO TELL GAZ! CAN'T THINK WITH ALL THIS SHOUTING GOING ON!

Hehehe! Little joke there! Caps on forums such as this are interpreted as shouting, please use lower case.

Please read the sticky at the top of the forum that says "Read this before posting." We need all that kind of info to hazard a guess as to the problem.

Also, scroll to the top of the screen you are now viewing and click "Profile," then fill in as much of your system specs as you can, this helps too!

[GAZ]

sorry thats very rude of me. i should have known better.

Updated what i know.

[lancecarr]

Well Gaz we are two thirds there!
1. You're not yelling at us anymore!
2. We have some computer specs.
3. Remember the other bit about the "Read before posting?" Oh well here are the relevant bits we need:

Properties of your source files (format, file size, where did you get it?):

What devices are involved and their mode of connection?:

Project Settings (important):

[DVDDoug]

Probably, the most important factor is bitrate. Video compression is "lossy". Higher bitrates (bigger files) mean that less data is thrown-away during compression/re-compression.

The iPod Specs allow MPEG-4 at up to 2500kbps@ 480x480 resolution, which should result in reasonable quality. (I don't know off-hand what the Video Studio iPod defaults are, but you can generally tweak the settings.)

[GAZ]

Don't want to make it too easy for you

Files are .vob files aready stored on my hard drive. I though it might be due to the size of the files as they can be over a few gig. Even though it;s all worked perfectly in the past. So tried with a smaller pieces of less than 50meg. No difference. Also, now noticing that another piece of software I use to convert vob to my PSP is also havign he same problem. Seems like something has changed somewhere.

[DVDDoug]

Files are .vob files aready stored on my hard drive. I though it might be due to the size of the files as they can be over a few gig.

OK... Those are your source (input) files. They are MPEG-2 files from a DVD*. You need to tweak the MPEG-4 (OUTPUT) settings. You haven't given us the MPEG-4 bitrate, or any clues, like MPEG-4 file size and playing time... But, you did say the files were a fraction of your previous conversions. So, your MPEG-4 bitrate is most-likely the problem.

If you use the maximum iPod bitrate of 2500kbps, a 90 minute movie file will be a little more than 1.5GB in size. (I don't know if Video Studio allows this setting, and I don't have it on this machine, so I can't check right now.) I think ~1000kbps is more common for "movie quality" on an iPod, which means the same 90 minute movie would shrink to less than 1GB.

MPEG-4 is more efficient compression than MPEG-2. You should be able to get the same quality in a file less than half the MPEG-2 size (i.e. half of the MPEG-2 bitrate). You don't need full DVD-quality on the small iPod screen, but if you squeeze it down to 1/10 of the original size, the quality loss will probably be noticeable. (And, there is always some quality loss when converting from one compression scheme to another.)



* Note that Video Studio has a DVD Import feature. It will allow you to import the VOBs as one continuous MPEG-2 file. (Assuming it's not copy-protected.) If any movie/program on a DVD is more than 1GB, The program will be split into VOB files that are about 1GB. (The main movie on a commercial DVD is typically split into 4 or more VOB files.) If you try to splice VOB files "manually", you will usually not get a smooth splice.