How to reduce the halo/blocky effect on karaoke text?
 

Hi,

I'm helping a friend to backup a copy of his DVD Karaoke to a VCD Karaoke. This is my first time doing a DVD Karaoke back and notice there is lots of halo or blocky or haze effect around the karaoke text. The karaoke text is not subtitle but part of the video itself. I have tried both using the CCE demo and TMPGenc. I tried all kinds of settings and searching through forums and guides for the past week already. But still no such luck. Is this normal to have halo/blocky effect around the karaoke text if using VCD? Is there anyway I can minimize or reduce the blocky effect on the text? Any suggestions would be very appreciated. Thanks.

-Kenneth

I am new to using the templates on this Forum and haven't copied any Karaoke Files but since using the 704x480 video setting in TMPG instead of 352x240, I have noticed much clearer Titles and trailing credits in the movies I have tested. My inputs are rips of my own DVD movies. I am surprised that double the x and y size does not produce a file that is at least 2 times if not 4 times larger.
I was using 2 cd's per movie before and have tested 2 so far using the larger size and the quality of the text (tiltles etc...) is awesome and I still use 2 CD's. I could easily get a 90 min on 1 cd (but that another issue).

You may want to make sure the CQ setting is at least 60 - 70.

Someone more experienced may know how to apply contrast/brightness or sharpening filters to your video before conversion in case this is contributing to the haze but I suspect you wont need these is your source is DVD.

Thanks for the tip. I'll do a demo test and see how it goes. But I'm more looking for ways to improve but still a standard VCD than a XVCD.

Another question, I notice in some of the slow scene, it have some jerky. How can I improve it? Any suggestions?

-Kenneth

:D
Standard VCD means you dont get to tweak too much. The compression is mpeg1, a constant bitrate of 1150 (or less) and the audio is 224 (usually). I think you are limiting your options too much. Unless you plan to play this on a VCD player which I haven't seen in my area (Canada), stand alone DVD players have improved and will often accept variations of the standard which is where image quality and file size can be adjusted. I am new to the forum but have experience over the last 2 years with tmpg,flask,avi2mpg (bbmpeg), virtualdub, DVD2MPG, the Panasonic and LSX Stand alone encoders and plugins, CCE, I have tried many rippers incl smartripper ...., recently DVDX v1.8 just to name a few things and forgotten more than I remember.

You say you tried tmpg but how did you extract your DVD Karaoke files? Did you keep the original framerate? Is the Karaoke text black or do the words get highlighted as the song plays?
Did you do any intermediate processing? What is the input frame size and rate etc... Listing the settings, specs and steps you followed may encourage others to comment.

The reason I mentioned some of the tools I have used is because when it comes to default VCD settings with no adjustments I prefer the Panasonic encoder and tmpg. The LSX and CCE left more noticeable traces, smudges and halo around text (titles, subtitles and trailers) but I found that at standard VCD settings they all do to some extent. This size 704x480 is the best idea I have seen and my 2 DVD players (Apex 700 and 600A) have no problems with that format.

When the slow scene was jerky are you sure it was a standard VCD or had you tried to tweak something?

If you want to keep the 352x240 (assuming NTSC) frame size then you could increase the constant bitrate to 1500 or 1600 it will sharpen things up (which could help the Karaoke text clarity) but it wont be standard anymore and I dont believe that slow scenes should be jerky if you used a constant bitrate of 1150.

You could also try mpeg1 (non standard) but use CQ (Constant quality) with min 600 and max 2000 in TMPG but again this will not produce a compliant VCD. I have not seen any jerkiness when I used a min 600 but have seen some at 300.