TMPGEnc video source settings & deinterlacing

[nhope]

I shoot footage in PAL DV, I edit in Premiere then frameserve by AVIsynth (AVIwrapper mode) to TMPGEnc 2.51. My export settings from Premiere are regular PAL DV (720x576, 25fps, lower field rendered 1st etc.). In TMPGEnc I make both PAL and NTSC VCD-compliant MPEG-1 files depending on my customer’s country. Sometimes the customer wants the VCD to look best on TV from their set-top player, and sometimes best on the PC (e.g. Windows Media Player). Questions:

1. Am I right to let TMPGEnc do all the resizing, framerate adjustment etc. or should I be exporting differently from Premiere?

2. TMPGEnc sets my video source settings as “Interlace, bottom field first, 4:3 625 lines (PAL 704x576). Are these correct? Where does the 625 come from? It’s 720 isn’t it, not 704?).

3. If the customer only wants to view on a PC should I be de-interlacing? If so in Premiere or TMPGEnc?. If I de-interlace will that screw up the appearance on TV?

4. In theory should a PAL VCD MPEG-1 file look better in Windows Media Player than an NTSC VCD MPEG-1file if the source is PAL? I can’t see much difference but I only have a small laptop screen to look on.

[ulfschack]

1. TmpegEnc is pretty slow with the filtering, resizing and cropping, but it does it well. So if you have the time don't bother changing that. I personally dont frameserve from my editing software, mostly because i can't (Vegas video), but render the fotage as a new avi. After that I do all the abovementioned in avisynth and use only tmpgEnc to encode.

2. Field order must be correct in order to present a watchable video. Go with the defaults and burn an SVCD to see if it looks good (trust me, you'll notice if the field order is wrong) else just reverse it in tmpgEnc. As for the resolution, the 625 is a tv term, ignore that. It just tells you that it is PAL. To find out which res your video has just drag and drop to VirtualDub and check under file->file information.

3. PC-> deinterlace. TV looks its very best with interlaced video. This is the reason we do SVCDs ... to watch them on tv. If you're gonna use pc or a projector connected to a pc, may I suggest the newer and better DivX4.xx codec. It knocks the socks of SVCD at low bitrates any day. PC->TVOut->TV is no good for SVDCs either since it screws up interlacing (99% sure of that).

4. VDC? You're gonna make VCDs? Hell, forget about all that interlace-rambling cause its not supported for VDC. It's progressive, fixed resolution and bitrate, and I havent a clue as to what is the difference in NTSC and PAL.

You should really persuade your customers to consider using SVDCs. You get 40 minutes of maximum bitrate (2700 kbps, audio included) on one CD, perfect for DV home videos.

[nhope]

Thanks for advice and the tip re Divx4.xx. I am using it now and it is brilliant.

However I am still unclear as to whether I should be de-interlacing my DV footage (in Premiere, TMPGEnc or elsewhere) before encoding to MPEG-1 for VCD, which is what I am selling at the moment. Any advice?

I did used to sell SVCD's but I got into too many support issues with MPEG-2 codecs and the file not displaying at the correct aspect ratio on PC etc., so I went back to the best quality VCD's I could make, and the customers seem happy.

[ulfschack]

ok, vcd it is. And then you should definitely deinterlace. But I wouldnt call it deinterlace really, since you should simply discard even or odd fields (same difference).

DV shoots at 720x576 (ok there's also 704, and I'm not entirely sure how the argument goes). This happens to be exactly double VCD resolution. So here's my tip:

In avisynth or virtualDub DO SelectOdd or DiscardOdd respectively and then resize bicubic for correct (352) horisontal resolution.

Or... here's another thing I just though of. I seem to remember that CCE has a check box for halving the resolution in both x and y directions. Supposedly CCE does this very quickly, but who can say how it goes about, right?

good luck