Problems with "Fawlty Towers" - NTSC interlaced

[zambelli]

I have the "Fawlty Towers" DVD boxset and I'm trying to back them up on xVCD, with 2 episodes on each CD. The DVDs are NTSC (29.97) and interlaced. I'd like to fit 2 episodes (30 min each) on a 74 min CD, which means my target video bitrate should be 1440 kbps, with the audio at standard 224 kbps. If I use VBR, this should give excellent quality. The resolution is standard VCD: 352x240.

Well, I'm having problems getting good quality. In fact, I've done film VCDs at much lower bitrates (900 kbps) which turned out better than what I'm getting now. I think it's the interlacing that's causing me the most problems.

Can someone give me advice on how to do this? I'm using Flask or Xmpeg with Premiere Video Server 0.93 to frame serve, and TMPGEnc 2.50 to encode. In Premiere Video Server I'm using AVIWrapper mode, to avoid unnecessary hassle with AVISynth. That part works well, so I wouldn't question it too much. It's really the Flask/Xmpeg and TMPGenc configuration that's giving me headaches.

What's the best way to use these tools to get best quality VCDs? Should I deinterlace and resize in Flask and then encode in TMPGenc as progressive? Or should I frame serve "as is" and do all the dirty work in TMPGenc? What exactly would that "dirty work" then be?

[tenebrenz]

Since Fawlty Towers is a British programme, it was therefore recorded in PAL. Since you are experiencing major problems here I expect that the NTSC versions you have were created using a hardware standards convertor. These nasties convert by using mixtures of blended fields, frame, and strange patterns in order to create something that looks smooth when played on an interlaced tv. If this is the case there is no way to get back to anything like the original picture.
I would suggest you stop using flask, and serve tmpg with a dvd2avi project file, then in tmpg do some tests with all the different de-interlace modes.

[zambelli]

Thanks for the tip, you're probably right about the PAL->NTSC conversion.

But anyway, I managed to get good quality with the following technique:

Instead of resizing and deinterlacing in Flask, I used Xmpeg instead (since it supports dual pass) and frame served unchanged 720x480 video with audio (new AVIWrapper supports audio too). Then in TMPGEnc I turned on deinterlacing (Adaptive Blend) and resized to 352x240. In encoding settings I turned on the soften filter and set it to 35x35. I used dual pass VBR encoding with average 1500 kbps, max 2000, min 600.

The result looks pretty damn good on my Apex 5131 player.

[nitro]

Originally posted by zambelli
I have the "Fawlty Towers" DVD boxset and I'm trying to back them up on xVCD, with 2 episodes on each CD. The DVDs are NTSC (29.97) and interlaced. I'd like to fit 2 episodes (30 min each) on a 74 min CD, which means my target video bitrate should be 1440 kbps, with the audio at standard 224 kbps. If I use VBR, this should give excellent quality. The resolution is standard VCD: 352x240.

Well, I'm having problems getting good quality. In fact, I've done film VCDs at much lower bitrates (900 kbps) which turned out better than what I'm getting now. I think it's the interlacing that's causing me the most problems.

Can someone give me advice on how to do this? I'm using Flask or Xmpeg with Premiere Video Server 0.93 to frame serve, and TMPGEnc 2.50 to encode. In Premiere Video Server I'm using AVIWrapper mode, to avoid unnecessary hassle with AVISynth. That part works well, so I wouldn't question it too much. It's really the Flask/Xmpeg and TMPGenc configuration that's giving me headaches.

What's the best way to use these tools to get best quality VCDs? Should I deinterlace and resize in Flask and then encode in TMPGenc as progressive? Or should I frame serve "as is" and do all the dirty work in TMPGenc? What exactly would that "dirty work" then be?

Switch to using Virtual Dub for frameserving, and do the deinterlace in there....works every time for me. Or of course you get hold of the R2 versions of Fawlty which are in the correct format already ;-)