Convert MPEG-1 to MPEG-2

[GParent]

I know this is basic and I've already tried various samples to test the water. I think I am just looking for feedback so I will not chase the wrong path, because many exist.

A friend has made a wedding slide show, with photos and music, that she wrote to a VCD. The MPEG-1 is NTSC 352x240. All my background is with MPEG-2 creation so I am learning.

(1) I simply followed the tutorial that came with VCDGEAR. Extract the MPEG-1 file and input that into Main Concept encoder. Request a DVD compliant MPEG-2 as output and then author the DVD. That all worked, however, the 352x240 pixels were stretched out to 720x480 (DVD standard) resolution. Therefore, a resize took place and also edges were no longer sharp.

(2) I then tried using VIRTUALDUB by experimenting with different resize options. Again, its impossible to resize the frames higher and maintain sharpness. All I can do is play with finding a sweet spot where the images look good enough. However, I'm going to have a (eg Black) border around the 352x240 MPEG-1 frame size.

Let me stop here and get some feedback. Am I correct in assuming its not possible to resize to 720x480 and maintain detail that exists at 352x240? What approcah is recommended?

Thanks,

Pat

[echooff]

No, it is not correct to assume you can not resize to 720x480. It has been my experience that mainconcept doesn't do this easily. Probably my incompetence factor kicking in. The real question is, what for? 352x240 is a dvd compliant size. You can download dvdpatcher from here (http://www.doom9.org) in the downloads section and pass the video thru. The audio will have to be trans-coded from 41,000 to 48,000 to make it compliant. Depending on what authoring program you are useing, you may not have to re-mux. I use tmpg dvdauthor a lot. Gives a quick output and you can load audio and video seperately.

[tluxon]

Before I got my DVD burner, I re-encoded a dozen or more files from MPEG-2 to MPEG-1 so that I could, if necessary, use TMPGEnc (non-MPEG2) to further edit them without having to pay the $49. Most of them have bitrates between 1500 and 2500 kbps and a framesize somewhere in the order of 480 x 480. Also, in most cases the audio was converted to 44.1 KHz.

There is a utility provided on the Replay Forum on AVSForum that can take a DVD-compliant MPEG-2 and make it suitable for streaming on my Replays, so I have a desire to convert these off-kilter files to MPEG-2 with the following characteristics:

Resolution: any valid MPEG-2 width, 480+ height
Framerate: 23.976, 29.97 and 59.94
Bitrate: 2-8Mpbs CBR/VBR
Audio: 48KHz @ 112-320kbps, MPEG-1 layer II

Since I'm going to have to convert a fairly significant number of files, is there any easier way than demuxing each one, using TMPGEnc and BeSweet on the separate video and audio streams, and finally remuxing each fileset? Any other ideas?

Thanks,

Tim

[echooff]

Download tooLame from doom9 downlods. Change your audio encoder to toolame under environmental settings in Tmpgenc. Not the settings menu on the bottom. Its under on of the option to the right of the file menu. Sorry, I'm at work and can't check exactly which one. Toolame is a much better encoder than Tmpgencs native one. Plus no de-muxing.