Best capture codec/settings for conversion to VCD?
 

Hi,
I have read most everything I can find from all over the Web and have been experimenting for a while now. I eventually determined that Kwag's KVCD template (NTSC) does not work well on my Apex 1100W with the 352x480. The audio has brief cut-outs every few seconds. I played with audio encoding settings first, but finally just went down to 352x288 and I *think* that fixes it. So now I am ready to just start capturing, encoding, and burning.
Most of what I will be doing is off DishNetwork, capturing movies off of premium channels, etc. I need a little help understanding the effects of different choices in capture codec and other settings. :roll:
I am using an AIW Radeon. Let's assume that Huffyuv is not a practical option (disk space), MJPEG may be sometimes. I am mostly interested in MPEG1 and MPEG2 captures with ATI MMC. I can do both at decent bitrates without major frame droppage.
My system is Athlon 1.2Ghz with 256MB DDR, 2 (20 and 30GB) partitioned ATA-100 drives.

Assuming I will probably convert mostly to VCD (maybe play some with SVCD) is it best to:

Capture at high (4 or more mbps) bitrate VBR MPEG1
OR
Capture at high (" ") bitrate VBR MPEG2?

I'm using something like motion estimate 98-100 also. The captures look good with either MPEG1 or MPEG2.

I had thought that maybe MPEG2 would be better as it can capture interlaced. Is this an issue, though, when downsizing to 352x288 for VCD? And do I need to deinterlace when I am downsizing, or would I need to if I went to 352x240 instead?

OK, now I'm running into ENCODING stuff, but...
In encoding, I'd use avisynth or dvd2avi as a frameserver, for speed. Would I need to deinterlace *and* IVTC? And how do I know what would be IVTCed? Would television shows be original FILM, only live broadcasts being video, or not telecined?

I probably have other questions about this, but I'm not at my home computer now.

Thanks!

Geoff

Re: Best capture codec/settings for conversion to VCD?
 

Hi gvarney:

If you have to capture to MPEG, then use MPEG-2 at 4Mbit or higher.

The best way would be with the Huffy CODEC, but I see it's not an option.

Also try to capture at 352x480 to get both fields. If you capture at 352x240 you're loosing a field.

If your Apex didn't play at 352x480, you might try one last option, and that is leaving the template at 352x480 but increasing the MIN bit rate from 300Kbps too 600Kbps.

If that doesn''t work, then drop back to 352x240. And increase the CQ to 74 to compensate for the loss of resolution.

I don't know about Dish Network transmissions, but I assume they're like my 4DTV receiver, and I do IVTC on my movie captures to bring them back to FILM.

Then I use AviSynth with decomb.dll to do IVTC automatically.
There's no need to do De-Interlaceing, because decomb takes care of producing the original progressive image and discards the duplicate frames.

The results are extraordinary :D

Read more here:
http://www.kvcd.net/forum/viewtopic....36953a13b697de

kwag

Re: Best capture codec/settings for conversion to VCD?
 

Thanks for the advice, Kwag. I forgot to mention the minimum 600kbps thing. I did do that before, didn't seem to help. It is helpful to know that using the decomb in avisynth to IVTC takes care of the interlacing too.

Thanks,
Geoff