Anybody done any DV-to-VCD (standard) encodes ?

[vhelp]

I haven't seen a thread topic on this, so I thought to post here.

Has anyone done DV to VCD (standard) encodes ??

I've ben messing around w/ this out of curiosity, and haven't ben able
to make anything acceptable. Again, just playing around out of curiosity.

So far, I haven't ben able to find any sample clips on this.

Any input would be appreciated, thanks.

-vhelp

[Mug Funky]

i put a 90 minute TV capture onto VCD... not the best quality in the world.

i suggest SVCD - it's actually possible to get much higher quality for the same average bitrate (slightly less) as VCD. just so long as it's progressive frames.

the show was captured off VHS onto DV tape, then filtered a little and encoded to VCD standard.

[vhelp]

hi all,

@ Mug Funky..
Sorry, I wasn't clear as to what I was after.

I was aiming at DV home footage. Not something captured off TV or
VCR or anything. Just some plain home footage shoot on DV, and then
firewired over to hd. (but also, not dv-to-vhs and then to vcd)

I'm just curious how people have ben making standard VCD's from DV
home footage. Yes, I know that VCD (basically) sucks in quality, but
I was curious to see if there were peoples out their that still use
standard VCD in their projects from this source, and if there were any
samples done from such, I'd be happy to view them.

And, yes, you're right, you can get better (much) from MPEG-2 encodes :)

-vhelp

[yup]

I use for this aim Avisynth for frameserving and CCE or TMGEnc for encoding. Folowing script:

AVISource("pers0001.avi")# DV AVI
FixBrokenChromaUpsampling()
AssumeFrameBased()
SeparateFields()
e = SelectEven().Undot()# Undot use only for bad quality video
o = SelectOdd().Undot()
Interleave(e,o)
Weave()
SmoothDeinterlace(tff=false, doublerate=true)
FluxSmooth(7,7)
SelectEven()
BilinearResize(352,288)
LetterBox(16,16,16,16)# If you will see on standalone DVD

This way give better result than use only field. Quality video on TV good.
With kind regards yup.

[bb]

Once I made an SVCD and a VCD version of a wedding video (with some nice effects on it :) ), because I wasn't sure if my friend's DVD player was SVCD compatible. So I sent him both versions.

I didn't do very much to the video except for some Convolution3D cleaning and resizing. I must say, though, that the video was shot in progressive scan mode. The SVCD version was much better in terms of picture quality. I wouldn't have created the VCD version if not for compatibility reasons.

bb

[vhelp]

Hi guys,

I've ben continueing my search and also doing other various types of
scenarios w/ DV to VCD.

@ yup,

I tried your script above, but it left a trail of partial bleading remnants
of images ie, red streaks during some minor panning.
What I didn't understand why, after using FixBrokenChromaUpsampling()
this should have fixed it (or I thought it was another alternative to
the 4:1:1 filter elsewhere here, for AVS and VDUB, of which I tried)
I think the 4:1:1 Helper filter that I use in VDUB does a better
job of my home shot DV (when resizing and so forth) Althought, for the
most part, the script worked well.

But, (imo) for MAXimum quality, I felt that when I fed in my 720 x 480
DV source into TMPG, and created my 352 x 240 encodes, then seem to
have come out better, and no Interlace line could be seen, and video
was quite smooth. So, I'm a bit stumped as to why it WAS smooth, vs.
when I de-interlace a 720 x 480 and author as 720 x 480 de-interlaced.

But, of course, nothing seems to beet the true Interlaced encoded though :)

Also, I'm in the middle of another project I started on some time ago
on fps conversions.. ie, 29.970 to 23.976 w/ 3:2 pulldown. Yes, sounds
a bit crazy, but I'm working on perfecting it smoother, if possible
at all. Anyways...

Due to the way we amatures handle and hold a DV CAM and take footage
with, there is no getting around the poor quality encodes during those
amature panning of the CAM. Though, I'm now learning "better" techniques
in tripoding. Deffinate quality booster in my encodes though. Plus,
other techniques in lighting (next step, the 3-stage-lighting technque)
Also, scene change/panning.. and then some. All of which requires lots
of practice, practice, and more practice. In the mean time...

DV to VCD is not too bad, IF one makes an XVCD instead. That is, I
have toyed w/ the bitrate, and have concluded that 2300 bitrate was
sufficiant enough to eliminate the blocks (except during those really
hard panning/jerking the cam around) that I found "next to standard"
VCD tolerable to watch.. they were definately watchable.

But, I don't plan on heading into the VCD w/ my DV source. I was more
or less, getting a feel for home shot movies converted to standard VCD
aka, MPEG-1.
Most us knows, that MPEG-2 is THE way to go w/ DV footage projects.

If any of you all have the Sony TRV22, it truely is a good cam.. much
better than my Canon ZR-10, though the ZR-10 had more/better flexible
control of features.. but I would not give up my TRV22's low-light
abilities for the ZR-10's poor low-light :p
Though, it's really too bad that Sony decided to LOCK out the ability
to record to miniDV tapes, when in Memory mode. This mode (vs. camera)
proves much better quality. Ah, but I have a trick to utilize it anywayzz ;) ;)

Well, thus ends the lesson for today hehe..

My big thanks to all that contributed to this topic.
-vhelp

[ronnylov]

Originally posted by vhelp


So far, I haven't ben able to find any sample clips on this.

Any input would be appreciated, thanks.

-vhelp

There is a PAL DV sample clip you can try here:
http://www.tecoltd.com/enctest/enctest.htm

Go to the part "How did we run the test" and download the 80 MB TEST.AVI

[Mug Funky]

hmm.

the source doesn't matter too much... it's all DV to me.

if you want to be able to use avisynth to deinterlace, you'll need a good DV decoder.

a lot of decoders have a chroma upsampling bug much nastier than the one fixed by fixbrokenchromaupsampling(), which just does the equivalent of a field-swap on the chroma channels in yuy2 space.

what i've been doing recently is using ffdshow to decode DV (you can set it to do this in the config panel), and using directshowsource(seek=true) in avisynth.

you'll need the latest version of avisynth for this, where directshowsource is way more powerful.

so a sample script would be:

directshowsource("c:\capture.avi", seek=true).converttoyuy2(interlaced=true).levels(0,1,255,16,236)

followed by your de-interlacer of choice (i've actually got a monster script to do deinterlacing which gives awesome quality comparable to a progressive mode camera, but way slow)

the yuy2 conversion will hopefully kill any chroma upsampling bugs, but if not, just add the regular fixbrokenchromaupsampling().

the advantage of using ffdshow for this is you can select whichever iDCT you want to use (even reference, but i recommend "simple"), meaning you get just as good quality as TMPGenc gives (which uses its own decoder i think), with the advantage of using avisynth for the dirty work.

[PeterTheMaster]

could you post that monster script of yours?

[yup]

Vhelp try folowing script

AVISource("pers0001.avi")# DV AVI
FixBrokenChromaUpsampling() # can change to ReInterpolate411 Tom Barry filter I in PAL word
TomsMoComp(0,15,1)
Crop(8,0,704,576)
ReduceBy2()
LetterBox(16,16,16,16)
i find that for hand held camera DV footage TomsMoComp work better than Decomb, ReduceBy2 make additional filtering. I try this on two sorces one pure DV second from Hi8 VHS and result very good and fast with combination CCE 2.66.
With kind regards yup.

[vhelp]

hi yup,

I'm always "game" to play w/ other's techniques and then compare them
up against mine :) I was actually playing around w/ some DV - to - VCD
yesterday.

I'll see if I can squeeze your revised script code this evening. But,
right now, I'm in the middle of cooking dinner and also searching through
my miniDV tapes of a scene that I shot footage of a Squiral (spelling)
feeding and runing around. Unfortunately, I didn't have a tripod for
this shot, so I'm a little worried. But, should I find it, I'll give
your script a go in any event.

Have a good day all.
From the Video Workstation of,
-vhelp

[DDogg]

vhelp, while you are in testing mode, you might want to give this a try. I picked up bits and pieces from several folks and used it for SVCD with a very decent result. For svcd I applied pulldown and muxed.

I saw your post and did a short encode in tmpg. I just quickly used the wizard and used VCD film. I was surprised how well it looked for DV on VCD. Maybe it will work for you too. Let me know. You can find the links in this post dated Oct 29 (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&postid=394377#post394377) Oh, just a warning. It is pretty slow.

Import("G:\convert60ito24p.avs")
avisource("G:\NTSCDVTYPE2.avi").converttoyuy2().ReInterpolate411().DoubleWeave().SelectOdd()
jdl_UnfoldFieldsVertical(flip=true)
PeachSmoother(dot=true,NoiseReduction=50, Stability=30, Spatial=200, NoiseLevel=3.5, BaseLine=2.5)
jdl_FoldFieldsVertical(flip=true)
DGBob(Order=1,mode=1).convert60ito24p(2,0)

[vhelp]

Hi DDogg.. :)

Yeah, speed is not an issue w/ me because in actuallity, where Quality
is the main objective. Speed is secondary. Yeah, we all know that
from DV sources (home footage) quality is first.. you can give thanks
to the Interlace for that :(

For me, I've ben sharing my Scrapt Book home footage w/ peoples by
encoding mostly in divX format, hence the need to de-interlace. But,
if I could get a decent VCD (or xVCD) I would go that route, because
most of those I distribute to, only have MPEG-1 codecs installed, vs.
no MPEG-2 on their system. But, for now, I'm still consentrating on
my de-Interlace techniques for either divX or xVCD distribution :) but
maintaining a 2.35:1 aspect ratio in MPEG-2 (for quality reasons) and
demo'ing over on vcdhelp.
.
.
You can see samples I post often on that site here: VHELP's Sample clips... (http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=93852)
and remember to read the note below on powerdvd useage

But, so far, my xVCD testings have shown (in my expeirence) that the
minimunal bitrate to use is 2300 CBR. Again, I'm still testing.

Thanks for contributing on this topic pal, :) and I'll give you snipplet
a try when I get the chance.

From the Video Workstation of,
-vhelp

[peachee]

Well generally VCD are very bitrate limited so I like to use at least 1500 kbps for the video. I've never met a VCD compatible DVD Player or computer that couldn't handle this extra 350 kbps bitrate. But, this is my perference for going slightly beyond VCD official bitrates.

I've seen some gorgeous VCDs from Celestial Pictures with beautiful professionally remastered movie video with compliant 1150 kbps video bitrate. I noticed that Celestial did use some noticeable noise reduction resulting in fewer gradations in color tone and they used 23.97 fps. I think NR and FPS reduction is the key when using official VCD bitrates.

So, you can IVTC your DV footage and use some Tmpgenc's NR in HQ mode (heavily emphasize the temporal NR). If interlaced lines somehow show up afterwards, you can use Area Based Deinterlace (blend mode) afterwards in VirtualDub and also apply a small 4% sharpen filter.

FPS purists can holler all they want about IVTC-ing DV footage but it's hard to notice any stutter. And by reducing the fps to 23.97, you reduce big macroblocks which is the main culprit of VCD poor quality.

You can also try Canopus Procoder for VCD encoding (after IVTC and NR). I like the way it saturates the colors and darkens the image a bit, especially in making black areas black. It feel Procoder gives more life to the video image whereas Tmpgenc's mpegs look faded in comparison (even though Tmpgenc's colors are more accurate). However, Tmpgenc has more bitrate flexibility and fewer macroblocks at lower bitrates so you can experiment and compare. Give Procoder a try. I believe Canopus offers a Procoder Trial.

[vhelp]

Hi guys,

I thought I'd share this clip w/ you all here. (boy, am I tired of
posting this 3rd time) Anyways..

It's my Standard VCD encode of a capture I did several years ago, but
I had the file still on my harddrive (for days like this)
Satellite is not as clean as this clip is, these days. Will it ever
change again ?? Anyways..

Have a lookseez here:
* VHELP's Sample clips... (http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=93852)

Yeah, I'll try and U/L something done in DV w/ my TRV-22 later.

From the Video Workstation of,
-vhelp

[ronnylov]

Originally posted by peachee
You can also try Canopus Procoder for VCD encoding (after IVTC and NR). I like the way it saturates the colors and darkens the image a bit, especially in making black areas black. It feel Procoder gives more life to the video image whereas Tmpgenc's mpegs look faded in comparison (even though Tmpgenc's colors are more accurate). However, Tmpgenc has more bitrate flexibility and fewer macroblocks at lower bitrates so you can experiment and compare. Give Procoder a try. I believe Canopus offers a Procoder Trial.

Regarding the colors you can get the same effect in TMPGEnc by enabling the option "Output YUV Data as basic YCbCr not CCIR601". Procoder has this setting always enabled and it can't be turned off in Procoder. But I agree that Procoder is a very good encoder at low bitrates.

[yup]

Hi vhelp!
Method for conversion 30fps interlaced video (from DV camera) to film VCD 24fps. Script
AviSource("Digit.avi")# Your video file
FixBrokenChromaUpsampling()# if You use old canopus fre DV decoder for Main Concept DV decoder not needed
ConvertToYV12(interlaced=true)
Bottom=AssumeFrameBased()
Top=Bottom.SeparateFields.Trim(1,0).weave
Interleave(Bottom.TomsMoComp(0,15,0),Top.TomsMoComp(1,15,0))#Convert to 60fps noninterlaced
Unfilter(0,-15)# Vertical filter
FrameDbl(128,3)# Doubling framerate 120fps
SelectEvery(5,3)# 24fps second parameter may be in 0-4 range
Crop(8,0,704,480)
ReduceBy2()#352x240 frame size
ConvertToYUY2()
LetterBox(16,16,16,16)# Border if You see on TV

Try it. It is better than IVTC. With kind regards yup. Unfortonatelly it is very good for NTSC world, not for PAL.