What cpature/edit/convert process retains the best PQ?

[Pntgrd]

I have a college football game recorded on my PVR. It does not have digital out so I must use an analog source. I tried capturing with VD using Pic video at 19 at 720 x 480, PCM CD quality at 48000. The captured avi looks great. It is the edit conversion that is giving me fits. I edited out the commercials and saved as 2 avi files of the 1st and 2nd halves. The avi's will play fine. Ihave tried all kinds of ways to convert, frameserving, dinterlacing, etc. using both TMPGEnc and CCE. I always get errors with CCE. I have tried using VD to frameserve, AVIsynth (I need a step by step, bad) it just never works. I even tried using D2S but still no luck. I can get output fine with TMPGEnc, but even with 2 passes VBR at high quality there is still some pixelazation showing on my Hitachi. I used AVIsyth to frameserve to TMPGEnc with "temperalsmooth" and "Bob" filters enabled. I am ready to start all over from scratch. There are so many different guides and methods I don't know what one to use. I don't care if it takes a long time to encode PQ is more important than time.

[trevlac]

Pulling the hard drive out of the PVR and copying the files to your computer retains the most info. What PVR do you have? PQ may possibly be increased by the use of filters, but PQ is kinda subjective.

If you are going to watch on your TV, I'm not sure deinterlacing gets you much. Is that your intent? For filters, the Avisynth or VDub forum may be a good place to look.

[Zap_Bee]

if i get your right, your problem are the CCE errors.
there are known reasons for CCE crashes or freezes. you might find the CCE FAQ Q8 and Q14.1 helpful. audio encoding with a program other than CCE (like toolame, HeadAC3he) helped for me.

Regards
Zap

[Pntgrd]

trevlac, my PVR is a 510 Dishnetwork satellite receiver and I don't know if I want to start dismanteling it for this. About deinterlacing, are you saying that there is no need? When I watched TMPGEnc encode, I could see all kinds of horizontal lines in the picture. That is why I figured that I needed to deinterlace before encoding. You are right about the other forums for filters but I was at the point of starting over with my capture with my end goal stated so that all processes could be optimized for the end result. Like a) should you capture at something besides 720x480? b) should you use a different video codec besides PicVideo? c) etc. I know I definately need to find a good tutoral on using AVISynth. That looks to me to be the BEST way to go, but my results so far have not been the best, and I realize that is all probably my fault, whether it be wrong settings in the encoder of not getting the script right to start with.

Zap_Bee, Thank's for the info. Either one of those could be part of the problem. I am thinking of maybe trying CCE 2.67 and see if it is not a wee bit more "dumb user" friendly. Like in the answer above, I think it all boils down to a complete lack of knowledge of HOW to use AVISynth with CCE. I will just have to keep trying until the "light goes on" and I get some understanding of the process.

Anyway, thanks to both of you for your info.

[Zap_Bee]

Originally posted by Pntgrd
When I watched TMPGEnc encode, I could see all kinds of horizontal lines in the picture. That is why I figured that I needed to deinterlace before encoding.
this is NOT a preview of the resulting movie. or it is, but squeezed in both directions, so you should not see these effects in the resulting movie.
AVISynth is not that hard to understand. Just play around with some commands and see, what they do.
you say, the captured avi looks great? So most of your work is done. maybe you should crop borders (with crop(left_border, upper_border, right_border, lower_border)) and cut the commercials (with trim(start_frame, end_frame)). then you concatenate the trimmed parts (part1 + part2 + ...) and load that script into CCE. there you go!

Have Fun
Zap

[Pntgrd]

So most of your work is done. maybe you should crop borders (with crop(left_border, upper_border, right_border, lower_border)) and cut the commercials (with trim(start_frame, end_frame)). then you concatenate the trimmed parts (part1 + part2 + ...) and load that script into CCE. there you go!

You know you made that sound a lot easier than it is. I had done the cutting and editing in VD before. Maybe that screwed up the resulting files. At least a 720x480 capture won't have to be resized much. I need to find a step by step for AVISynth. I have read enough to get an idea and I follow what you are saying, I just cannot picture it in my mind. A lot of the examples get way too complicated for me I guess and I am a bit overwhelmed by all the options. But, I will get it.

[trevlac]

Originally posted by Pntgrd
my PVR is a 510 Dishnetwork satellite receiver

So is mine :)

TVs are interlaced displays. PCs are not. If you don't have a field order problem, interlace will look much better on a TV.

[Arachnotron]

Software DVD players will de-interlace on playback, so there is not really a problem with leaving it interlaced on the DVD for PC playback too.

[Pntgrd]

That is why I never noticed the lines playing it back in either PowerDVD of WMP, just in the preview windows of an encoder. I told you I am a Newb at doing this without some suite of programs doing this for me. I guess what I am seeing that is making the output look bad is a croma problem. I also sometimes get an error trying to author the file saying that the framrate is 57 somthing. What causes it to basically double from the 29.97 that it was captured at?

trevlac, you say you have a 510 also. Do you try to convert from it to DVD. If yoou do, what do you do to achomplish this?

[trevlac]

Originally posted by Pntgrd
trevlac, you say you have a 510 also. Do you try to convert from it to DVD. If yoou do, what do you do to achomplish this?

1) Pull the hard drive and copy the files to my PC.
2) Fake the headers of the video so my dvd author program does not complain
3) Author
4) Change the headers back to match the original frame size


Sorry to be vague, but there are guides for this. The yahoo dishrip group is a good place to start if you want to do a direct file copy.

I can't say I've ever tried to get rid of digital macro block problems. May be in the source.

[Pntgrd]

So, the hdd in the 510 is the same as a regular hdd? Thta sounds easy enough. I have ran across people asking about what formats DVR's record in. I will checkout the Yahoo group you mentioned. Thanks