Highest quality for CD-R on a standalone player?

[Richmix]

Hey folks, I'm looking to create a short video (editable to between 4 and 10 minutes long), but I'm somewhat limited in the media I have available to burn it on. In order to cut costs, I want to keep the video to a CD-R (because a DVD would be a terrible waste for a 6 minute video), but SVCD seems to be the best I can do for that. I'm using TMPGEnc to encode it to standard SVCD format with motion search precision on highest quality, but the picture is still jumpy. The source video for this was VHS, so I'm guessing the search precision isn't working very well. Is there an alternative? Or maybe a way I can jack up the bitrate on SVCD? DVD format seems to work fine, but most standalones don't support miniDVD.

If anyone knows a way around this, please do share. It would be much appreciated.

[drcl]

the encoder shouldnt introduce jumpiness.

does it play jumpy on your computer? if not then its most likely that the bitrate is going above what the DVD player's drive can read.

not sure on the exact maximum but its approx 2750Kbit/s including your audio. check the bitrate in bitrate viewer

its a 6 min video so i assume you are using a 1 pass. not so familiar with tmpgenc, anymore but on a noisy source like VHS bitrate spikes are entirely possible.

jumpiness from a VHS is not unknown, capture cards have trouble locking on to the sync on old tapes, so it could be that. check the original capture.

try a different encoder.... HC is my current fave, should be easy enough to figure out if you been using tsunami, but i'm not totally sure its suitable for SVCD. failing that QuEnc0.59 or better. both are superior to tsunami but you will of course need to read up about AviSynth.....

[jggimi]

I have done VHS -> SVCD before.

Without knowing your detailed procedures, or actually seeing a short sampling of your "jumpy" frames, its is only conjecture that we can offer to help you solve your problem.

It could be something in your capture process, or something you're doing in post, such as drcl's suggestion of bitrate spikes.

Can you help us, by outlining your procedures in more detail? If you have the technical skills to show us a very short sample of the captured source and the same sequence as encoded .... that would be nice, too.

[Richmix]

I'll come back with more details in a little bit, but for now I can say that the VHS tape was recorded to DV AVI type 1 and runs perfectly on my PC (so the source isn't the issue). For encoding to mpeg, I'm using TMPGEnc with CBR 2520 and highest quality motion search precision. All other settings conform to the SVCD template in the program. I then use Nero to burn the mpeg, but that shouldn't be the issue because the file is already encoded (I know Nero is infamous for choppy encodings sometimes).

I'll get you a more detailed process in a bit. Oh yeah, audio bitrate is 224kb/s.

I might try a different encoder, but TMPGEnc seams to have a huge amount of support. I doubt that's the problem. And my source file plays just fine on my computer. The bitrate, too, seems to be within SVCD specs. Maybe I need to get the source file into a different format first? I've heard some gripes about DV AVI-1, but could that really be the problem?

[jggimi]

Hmmm.... with constant bitrate, you won't have spikes.

The only difference between Type-1 and Type-2 AVI is audio layout within the container. If TMPGEnc can open Type-1, and you're not having audio troubles, then your source being Type-1 is not the issue.

Is your SVCD jumpy in both your standalone player with TV, and a software player?

[Richmix]

Is your SVCD jumpy in both your standalone player with TV, and a software player?

Yes. In a standalone player, it's significantly less jumpy, but it still stutters on particular scenes with lots of motion (because the camera was shaking slightly, for example). My PC has more trouble with it, but I think that's because I'm using poor media player software (WMP and Nero Showtime). I'll search for some better player software and let you know if that handles the playback better on my PC.

[jggimi]

If your encoded SVCD is "jumpy" both on your TV and on your PC, then I think whatever problem you are seeing is in the finished product, and is not due to a particular player, or particular display (since the TV is likely interlaced, and your PC is progressive).

I'm going to take a wild guess, just like drcl did. Perhaps you've used Inverse Telecine on non-film content. Is your SVCD's framerate set to 23.976 fps, perhaps?

Otherwise, would you be willing to extract and make available a few frames of both your .avi and your .m2v/.mpg for us to look at?

[Richmix]

The problem isn't as far-gone as a framerate issue. The image isn't terribly, horribly, drastically choppy. It just seems as if a frame or two is being "skipped over" while the file is played. I've downloaded a new media player program and the mpeg is playing just fine, no choppiness at all. I gather this means that there was either a) a problem with the burning process, b) a problem with the framerate, or c) some other hardware/software issue(s) independent of those two. Since the mpeg plays fine on my computer now, I doubt extracted frames would help in determining the problem. My best guess is a bitrate issue, but I'm not sure how that would fix it. Lowering the bitrate for CBR would produce a poor quality image, if I'm not mistaken. Any ideas?

[jggimi]

Post encoding logs. It's time to stop guessing. :)

:logfile:

[Richmix]

Here's (part of) the log file. For some reason, the output window is only capturing one screen of the log, and the whole log file is too big to attach to a form post anyway.

[ammck55]

Richmix--I've validated your attachment. I really can't help you with with your main problem, here, and jggimi is off for the weekend and probably won't revisit this thread until Monday, or Tuesday.

As far as media players, click the Doom9 link at the very top of this page, then click on the "Download" link. Scroll down and find "Media Players" in that first bulleted list. Gabest's "Media Player Classic" is rock solid and a forum favorite; it might not handle your encoded file any better than WMP, but it will handle many files that WMP chokes out on.

ammck55

[jggimi]

I haven't left quite yet; I should be packing, but I'm procrastinating instead.

This isn't quite the "log" I was looking for; this is the tail end of a frame-at-a-time analysis of the content (showing one line per frame). I'm looking for the output log that shows all of the encoder settings, input formats, output formats, etc. Since I'm not a TMPGEnc user these days, I don't know what that file name is, but I'm 99.999% positive that one is produced.

[Richmix]

If one other than that is produced, your guess is as good as mine as to where. It's not in TMPGEnc's install directory, nor is it in the directory I saved the output file to. Figures.

Ammck: Thanks for the tip. I've been looking for a good video media player for awhile now. WMP 10 works fine for most of my needs, but it seems to have problem with compressed video. I'll give Gabest's player a try. Thanks.