-= How can I convert to Mpeg2 with Perfect quality? =-

[J Crew]

alright, you may have seen this post question by someone else, and i have the same basic question but from a different source. i'm capturing via firewire to my hard drive from my sony DV. i just burned my first DVD last night and was very upset at the quality that i got. i used adobe premiere 6 to do my editing and then exported to .avi. after that i encoded to mpeg2 using uleads moviefactory... and i encoded at the highest quality (8000 or something?), and then burned the dvd with uleads moviefacory. my problem is that everytime there are fast movments or when i zoom in or out... everything gets blocky or i get little lines through everything. how can i fix this? is it possible? i mean i paid out my ass for all this equiptment that i have and then purchased a dvd-r drive and editing programs... and what i've produced is crap. i've read about tmpegenc... and have considered downloading it and trying to use it, but am unsure what i put the setting at. i've also heard mixed reviews about it. i've read a few places that have said if you're burning to DVD, that tmpegenc isn't any good... that you should use a different encoding program. any truth to this? please let me know how i can get really great video quality. it doesn't have to be perfect, but i do expect "great" quality with all the money i've spent. thanks

ps -
* your source? ie, capture or dvd - sony dv camcorder / firewire card
* your settings, vcd or svcd? - DVD
* viewing on a TV or PC? - TV
* resolution - 720x480
* what R U'r quality issues, ie, blocks, etc. - blocks during even semi fast motion and streaks or lines in motion too.

[Xenobyte99]

never ever use premiere to export the avi. Its shit. Find a nice lossless codec like the huffyuv codec and clear 40 gigs of space for a 90 minute movie. You can export it with that codec from premiere. Then use ccesp to encode the mpeg2 stream with a 3 or 4 pass encode. Then use dvd maoestro to make menus etc and a playable dvd.

[auenf]

ok, in premiere when you export to avi, export to a DV avi, or use a losseless compressor, like huff, but DV will normally do. then use ccesp and do what www.robshot.com says.

Enf..

[J Crew]

thanks for the info all, but where can i download ccesp from? i went to their website and the only thing available for DL was the help manual. i searched google and couldn't find anything either... any have a link to download this file? also i've been exporting the captured video as "dv avi", but would this huffyuv codec be better? would it provide a better quality picture? i'm willing to try anything to get a better picture. thanks again for the info, it's helping me alot. peace :)

[GlenC]

Check out this thread, really useful for dv stuff...

There is a demo of cce in the doom9 download section. This has a large watermark on any video you create.

This is not the board to ask for warez, the demo is useful to see if you like the product. If you don't want to pay $2000 for cce, then ask elsewhere!

Hope this helps

Glen.

[jdobbs]

If you can't get a copy of CCE use TMPEGEnc -- it's quality is close (not as good) but it is slower by far, and it's price is FREE.

Just make sure you keep the source files in the original DV format until you are ready to encode to MPEG2, don't reencode during the editing process. DV is very outstanding quality and converting to anything else cannot improve it and very likely will decrease it.

Use more than one pass in your encoding. Camera input has a lot of quick movements that require larger bit allocation.

[J Crew]

thanks everyone for the help. i found a demo of ccesp and downloaded it. but when i import an .avi file into ccesp... it won't enocode the file properly. i hit the encode button and it ask if i'd like to save and i select yes, then it acts like it encodes for like one second at the most. i then check the folder that i encoded the file to and it's there but doesn't work. it also only reads 0kb in size.

so i then tried the plugin for adobe premiere 6, and it acted like it encoded because it took a couple of minutes for a few small clip that i was testing. but it did the same thing once i tried to run it, and it's size was also 0kb. if anyone knows what this is from, please let me know. thanks :)

[Jestorius]

CCE has a very smart encoding workflow. Fist it makes a profile curve using the avarage bitrate. This is the vaf. During the encoding it is the referance to the final calculation.

Try to download CCESP again from Visiblelight, www.cinemacraft.com has a link to the site. And try to encode your video again.

Actually, Tmpgenc isn't slow anymore.