Loss in quality after rendering avi to mpeg

lenni · Post by **lenni** » Thu Aug 11, 2005 10:41 am

Can anyone tell me the optium settings should be to render an avi file to mpeg without loosing quality which I am suffering from at the moment.

GeorgeW · Post by **GeorgeW** » Thu Aug 11, 2005 10:51 am

can you tell us what the current properties of your source .avi videos are

lenni · Post by **lenni** » Thu Aug 11, 2005 10:55 am

I will be able to in about 1.5hrs, I'm capturing the movie again. I tried capturing to mpeg originally and the picture keeping shaking whenever there were movements in the scenes of the movie. Sounds weird huh?

heinz-oz · Post by **heinz-oz** » Thu Aug 11, 2005 12:05 pm

Not really, lenni, you would get a shock if you see good quality DV AVI, with a lot of fast motion, converted to mpeg with the wrong field settings

As for the best settings, well, that depends entirely on what the source video is and the target media. To convert analog VHS to mpeg at anything more than about 4700 kbps is a waste of DVD disc space. If you are thinking VCD or SVCD, you are limited by the relevant standard.
If you have good quality DV AVI source material, with a lot of motion, around 6000-7000 kbps VBR two pass encoding should get you good quality mpeg. However, if you expect to get as good as DV AVI, you are bound to get disappointed. In order to get the necessary compression to fit the video onto the disc, some quality is bound to be lost, but not much if everything is spot on in the process.

DVDDoug · Post by **DVDDoug** » Fri Aug 12, 2005 12:34 am

So many things to consider...

If you use AC3 or MPEG audio, you can use a bitrate of about 6000 kbps and fit your 1.5 hour program on a (single layer) DVD. This should give you reasonable quality.

When I've squeezed 2 or more hours onto a DVD (maybe a bitrate of 4000 kbps) I've really noticed the loss of quality (from a VHS tape).

...avi file to mpeg without loosing quality...

MPEG is a lossy compression technique. Some quality will always be lost. Some MPEG encoders are better than others. (The trick is to "loose" the least-important data.) I assume that professional encoders are better than the Ulead encoder... I assume that some are worse.

Assuming you are copying analog tapes... Some quality is also lost during the analog-to-digital conversion.

Even though DVD (MPEG) has better resolution than analog tape, it does have limitations. When you copy a tape, you combine the limitations of both formats and the resulting DVD copy is not as good as the original tape.

If you are a "critical viewer", and if you have a really good video set-up the loss of quality will bother you!

...anything more than about 4700 kbps is a waste of DVD disc space.

You can waste that disc space by leaving it blank, or waste it by filling-it up with higher-bitrate video!

I vote for using the highest bitrate that will fit. (Although, you can end-up wasting time if you guess wrong, and you have to re-do it 'cause it won't fit.)

lenni · Post by **lenni** » Fri Aug 12, 2005 12:55 am

Guys, I don't mind wasting space if what I get in the end is a high quality DVD. My hardisk is 400Gb and I can burn onto dual layer DVDs. All I want is good quality. It's a shame to see a high impact movie output to an ordinary DVD.

maddrummer3301 · Post by **maddrummer3301** » Fri Aug 12, 2005 1:46 am

You need to post the "Properties" of the avi file your converting to mpeg2.
Load the avi file into the timeline and right-click on it, select "Properties"
then post back the properties to this thread.

If you followed the sticky post at the top of the forum you should already
have under "Preferences" -> video resampling quality = BEST. (yes?)

MD