KVCD Success Story!
 

Greets All:

To the founder of KVCD, I'd like to wish a very sincere

*THANK YOU !*

This format really does work, and you can put about 2 & 1/2

hours on a single CD this way. Follow the 15 steps listed below to make a 2 & 1/2 hour KVCD single CD that has a neat title screen too !

What you'll need to duplicate these efforts:

+ (HARDWARE) A high end pentium computer
+ (HARDWARE) ATI TV Multimedia Card or similar
+ (HARDWARE) Standard VCR

+ (SOFTWARE) Latest copy of Freeware Virtual Movie Dubber + 2

filters
+ (SOFTWARE) Latest copy of TMPGENC
+ (SOFTWARE) Latest copy of Ahead NERO
+ (SOFTWARE) RealOne (Optional)
+ (PICTURE) title screen of movie (Optional)
I use Window Wallpapers as the quality is
excellent !

STEP ONE (Initializing TV)
~~~~~~~~
Initializing the TV
Click on the TV from the ATI bar, confirm it works, play a

tape, watch tv, etc., close it.

STEP TWO (Selecting Filters)
~~~~~~~~
You bring up the Virtual Movie Dubber,
selecting two filters, CTRL+F, ALT-A
(ADD) Dynamic Noise Reduction by Steven Don - set to 16
(ADD) Temporal Smoother (Internal) - set to 5
SAVE by pressing [Enter]


STEP THREE (Preparing the TV in Virtual Movie Dubber)
~~~~~~~~~~
ALT-F P (Capture AVI) (Press Enter until it finds it)
You should now have a BLUE screen
You need to point to your TV so follow carefully

Press "S" (Source)
(Tab) - Select a video source - change to Video Tuner
If you now have trash on your screen, then Click on TV Tuner,

you should still be in Video Source Menu
If it is on channel 4 change it to 3, press (Enter)
Click OK

If the screen appears distorted press "O" to reverse it to

normal.


STEP FOUR (Preparing the video compression)
~~~~~~~~~
SHIFT+C
Click on Microsoft MPEG-4 Video Codec V1
ALT-C

Change data rate (Kilobits per second) to 6000 (MAX!)
NOTE: We are not going to "keep" this AVI file as the final

movie, but we do want to get a VERY high quality copy low

compression of the video source movie itself.
(Enter) (Enter)

You should be back viewing the capture window again.


STEP FIVE (Invoking the filters)
~~~~~~~~~
ALT-V "E" (Enable RGB Filtering)
Now when we record, the system will automagically :)
apply the filters we have to movie that gets encoded saving
us a step from having to do it later.


STEP SIX (Record!)
~~~~~~~~
When you are all set, hit F6 to start recording !
Let your entire movie record, hit [Esc] when you are done
recording. Don't worry if you recorded too much in the

beginning or too much at the end, we'll truncate that in

TMPGENC. Now you have an .AVI copy of your movie called
C:\CAPTURE.AVI

If this is all you wanted (and I hope not!) then you can
quit now, but if you are wanting to make a KVCD with this
movie, read on ..


STEP SEVEN (Exiting VirtualDUB)
~~~~~~~~~~
You've recorded your movie so ALT-F "X" TO exit your capture
mode. If you wanna view your movie, you can open it from

here and poke around, but we're off to TMPGENC to encode it

now as a MPEG which is the native format for a VCD and KVCD !
Exit VirtualDUB with ALT-F "Q" (Quit)


NOTE - THIS TUTORIAL ASSUMES YOU HAVE ALREADY INSTALLED THE

KVCD *.MCF files under \TEMPLATES\.


STEP EIGHT (Entering TMPGenc and starting up)
~~~~~~~~~~
Bring up TMPGenc
The Project WIZARD should activate,
Go ALL the way down to the OTHER selections and choose:

KVCDx3-MPEG-1-NTSCFilm

Click on Next,
For Video File, (B)rowse and pull up the CAPTURE.AVI file
Note that the Audio File will have it too.
Click on Next,


STEP NINE (Setting the film range)
~~~~~~~~~
If you don't want to trim off the edges of this film, then

you can skip directly to STEP TEN. Failing that, click on

the square [] Source Range, set your range, and click on OK.
You are also welcome to Clip your frame here, but it's easier

to do that in VirtualDUB first with a 3rd filter NULL as the

first filter.


STEP TEN (Change resolution)
~~~~~~~~
Just press the DOWN arrow key once and you should be now
selecting 352x480 resolution
Click on Next,


STEP ELEVEN (Don't encode yet!)
~~~~~~~~~~~
click on the square to turn OFF the checkmark of
[] Start Encoding Immediately. You don't want to encode just

yet.
Click on Next,

Say YES that you do want to create this file


STEP TWELVE (Stream Type)
~~~~~~~~~~~
Use the mouse and click on the far right circle beside
System (Video+Audio) so it is lit, DO NOT have ES (Video

Only) lit.

Ready ?? Click on START and let it run all the way through.
When you're done here, it's ALT-F "X" to exit and we're off
to AHEAD NERO for final KVCD burning !

SUB-STEP

Before you burn your movie, if you want to confirm that your

movie made it into a KVCD format, well don't rely on

VirtualDUB to display it as it will have to de-convert it

first which takes forever ! Just bring up RealOne player and see how you like it there.


STEP THIRTEEN (Lucky step - Insert your Video!)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Before bringing up Ahead Nero, bring up Windows Explorer and
rename the CAPTURE.MPG into the name you want displayed
like Terminator.MPG. If you leave it named CAPTURE.MPG, if
you use the screen title option in Ahead Nero, it will show
up on the DVD player with the text CAPTURE which doesn't
look right ..

Now bring up Ahead Nero, The Nero Wizard should pop up so
go to select CD, Compile a New CD, Other CD Formats, and
Video CD, Finish.

Now, go to select your movie, like Terminator.MPG and

dragging it from the right window, put it in the blank window

on the left.

Now Ahead Nero is not very bright it seems and insists on
analyzing the video. This could take a-while, get another
cup of tea while you're waiting ..

Once it's ALL done, it says it's not standard, well YAH it's
KVCD ! So click on:
TURN OFF STANDARD COMPLIANCE AND CONTINUE
Check to make sure your video does not hit the REDLINE.
It shouldn't as this mode is good for 2 & 1/2 hours.


STEP FOURTEEN (Inserting a brief menu)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Okay, this step is optional but really looks neat if you do
it right. Have prepared artwork no smaller than 352x240 and
preferably 4x3 dimensions, click on the word NEW just to the
right of the CD Icon in the top-left-hand corner NERO window.
and then right click your mouse to bring up PROPERTIES on it.

If Create standard compliant CD is checkmarked REMOVE that
checkmark !

Tab over to MENU, click on Enable Menu and click on the
Browse button to select your neat artwork picture.
Ready to look at it ? Click on the box [] Preview first page
to see it. If it looks good, click the CLOSEBOX on it, and
click on OK to this window.

Notice that a new "Menu Page 1" has been added above your
video with Infinite Pause time.


STEP FIFTEEN (let's buurn !!)
~~~~~~~~~~~~
ALT-F "W" (Write CD)
Check to make sure your write speed is maximum !
Mine is 48x, when all set, run that BURN !!
NOTICE that if you burned movies in here before that there is
NO WAIT TIME for computations as the movie you imported is
already in the correct format of *.MPG. If it was *.AVI, it
takes NERO like an HOUR AND A HALF to think about it first and while I can't put my finger on it, I think it botches the audio on some DVD players. ALWAYS use TMPGENC.


You're done !
Now eject, try it out in your own separate DVD player or
run a good program like Intervideo WinDVD 4 to check it out,
menu and all.

To play the movie, just hit PREVIOUS on your remote.
The movie will start. Enjoy !

Sincerely,
http://www.digitalfaq.com/archives/error.gif
http://dw817.f2o.org
(New Home of Scenario RPGMaker!)

Re: * KVCD Success Story ! *
 

It's better to burn at a slower speed than the maximum of your CD-writer, because there may be errors.

Thanks topaz,

But no file size prediction ( undetermined final size ) :?:
Encoding audio with TMPEG (poor audio quality), instead of HeadAC3HE or BeSweet :?:
That's not advisable here :roll:

-kwag

Re: * KVCD Success Story ! *
 

Hi Edlund:

Errors ?

* None that I can tell .. Nero is very good about this, I think, cause I haven't had any burning errors yet .. :)

Sincerely,
http://www.digitalfaq.com/archives/error.gif

By "burnign error" we do not mean "burning failure".

Your burn goes to its end, but you can't be sure that all the datas on the CD are correct. The problem is that on a video CD (VCD ou SVCD) there isn't any error correction protocol. So every error in the bits burnt on the CD give a bad pixel displayed on the screen.

Or problems with the sound sometimes.
I have this problem with alcohol 120% - when I burn at the highest speed the sound disappears about every 5 seconds.

I´ve had problems too with sound and picture if I burn with 48x speed!
What do you guys suggest for a max burning speed?

12x is really a maximum. But with 8x you are 100% sure of what you obtain.

Hi Kwag:

* I haven't heard of HeadAC3HE ?
How do you make use of HeadAC3HE (Headache?) for KVCD ?

I would like to set it so the kb/sec. quality matches exactly the size of the video so I get a 799meg exact every time ?

Sincerely,
http://www.digitalfaq.com/archives/error.gif

Hi, Topaz
you can use headac3he for converting wav to mp2.
First open the videofile in VirtualDub, set the audio to "full processing mode" and press "Save wav".
Then load the wav file into headac3he and convert it to mp2 with your preferred parameters.
At the end multiplex the m1v and mp2 file with the "simple multiplex" function in TMPGenc->Mpeg tools, or you can use the programs Bbmpeg or Mplex.

Hi Edlund:

* Headache it is then .. I'll bite .. Why do I want to convert a WAV to Mp2 ? All of the KVCDs I've done and burned so far work great so .. ??

Is there a commercial direct MPEG KVCD encoder from a live transmission ? Would save me a step, but possibly at the cost of losing those two great filters (listed above) and I'd hate that unless this commercial software came with it's own set of video filters.

And/or is there a way to build a KVCD MPEG-1 that is guaranteed to fill a CD every time at the expense of size over quality based upon the actual movie time of the original .AVI ?

Sincerely,
http://www.digitalfaq.com/archives/error.gif
http://dw817.f2o.org
(New Home of Scenario RPGMaker!)

The KVCDs that you have made so far have audio encoded with TMPGenc. TMPGenc converts the original audio to mp2 without saying nothing about it:) Most of the people here convert the auido and the video separately looking for better quality.

If I've understood your question correctly - no:) This is the hard thing - prediction.

Sincerely,
http://www.digitalfaq.com/archives/error.gif
http://dw817.f2o.org
(New Home of Scenario RPGMaker!)[/quote]

Hi Edlund:

[quote="Edlund"]* Is it possible to get better quality then ?
I recently encoded a 3 & 1/2 hour movie (Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy) and only after fudging one number to get it to fit, it was great, in stereo, and only a little picture fuzz (due to maxing out the noise-cleanup (picture) in VidDubber since it was from VHS)

Well, I think this works, correct me if not ..
In the TMPGENC, bring up the Wizard (should come up automatically)
select the, KVCD of your choice.

Click on NEXT

Select your Video .AVI file

Click on NEXT

Click on any Source Range, Clip Frame, and/or Noise Reduction if you want it.

Click on NEXT

Okay, here's the neat stuff !
Click on EXPERT and then click on SETTING for Rate Control Mode

Maximum Bitrate !
Neat, fudge the #. Up for a bigger filesize and down for a smaller filesize.

To check your results, click on from here,
OK and OK again.

Look at the ghosted Estimated Max File Size.
I have found you wanna get this as close to 790megs as you can.
If it's too low, go back and change that Maximum Bitrate to where it's closer.

Then click on NEXT

Turn OFF "Start Encoding Immediately"

Click on NEXT

Click on System (Video+Audio) in bottom-right-hand corner

Click on Start and off it goes !
Feed that final .MPG as a non-standard VCD to your NERO and enjoy the movie !

Sincerely,
http://www.digitalfaq.com/archives/error.gif
http://dw817.f2o.org
(New Home of Scenario RPGMaker!)

Hi topaz,

Read here, so you get the complete picture: http://www.kvcd.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2102

-kwag

Hi, Topaz
Kwag gave you a link about the filesize prediction, so I'll tell you about the audio encoding - TMPGenc can do the conversion WAV->MP2, but the sound quality will be better if you use other program like Headac3he or Besweet.
Don't do this. Click on ES (Video only).
Extract the audio from the AVI to a WAV file (with avi2wav or vitrualdub) and then convert the WAV to MP2 (with Headac3he or Besweet)
At the end multiplex the M1V (Video only) file with the MP2 (audio) file with TMPGenc.