MPEG Source files - how to encode?

kdenninger wrote on 12/16/2003, 7:44 AM

I have a Happague capture device that produces MPEG streams from TV.

I've edited one of these down to get rid of commercials and such, and now wish to burn it onto a DVD.

The problem I'm having is that I can't seem to find the correct settings for the field order!

If I get it to "progressive", motion is fine on my small TV with older player, but jerky and nasty on my widescreen with a new model DVD player.

If I use Lower field first (as I would for DV) then I get nasty jerkiness in either mode.

How do you take an MPEG file from a capture system like this and actually make it work on a DVD?

Thanks in advance.

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 12/16/2003, 7:55 AM

You can't. It's the codec. By the time it's transcoded, resampled, color corrected, then rendered back to mpeg, it will look pretty poor, even though it might play back somewhat smoothly. For the most part, it's a losing battle.
You could try:
Different encoding rates
Different media
Slower burn

All of which affect the playback stability of any DVD, but you'll find that it's not as much the interlacing/deinterlacing as it is the codec itself.

kdenninger wrote on 12/16/2003, 8:41 AM

Thanks.... Oh well. I guess this is just reality for any PVR eh? Barf.

TheHappyFriar wrote on 12/16/2003, 10:21 AM

You can use TMPGenc (www.tmpgenc.com) to chop out your show segments then re-combine them. That would work. The program costs $80 though (worth it in my opinion).

kdenninger wrote on 12/16/2003, 9:05 PM

I think its probably easier to just have the PVR record at a higher bit rate (which I can do) to avoid some of the quality loss, then handle it in VV.

VV is very handy and QUICK for slogging through and cutting out the commercials; I can go through a two-hour TV movie in about 20 minutes, splitting before and after the breaks and just slicing them out, right down to the offending frame. Re-rendering takes a good long while, but that can be done while I'm off doing something else or sleeping, so who cares?

Once its cut to a DVD I don't need to mess with it again - this is just for those programs that I want to keep around, like Made-For-TV movies that aren't available commercially. Stuff I time-shift usually gets dumped almost immediately once watched.

TheHappyFriar wrote on 12/16/2003, 9:22 PM

Re-rendering in Vegas WILL lower the quality of mpeg-2 though. If you want to go that way, use TMPGENC to convert it to a DV AVI (all non-mpeg-2 stuff is free in that program). Then work with that.

I've done some stuff that way and it's worked out pretty good.

RBartlett wrote on 12/17/2003, 12:16 AM

If the MPEG-2 is already DVD compliant, and is a pgm stream .mpg. Then if you have Vegas4+DVD you could render the audio out of Vegas (.ac3 or pcm.wav) and dump the entire movie into DVDA. Then use DVDA to edit out the adverts. Which it'll do without re-rendering if the original is truly compliant.

If it isn't compliant you may be able to tweak the Hauppauge capture into that precise mode for your next run.

www.showshifter.com is a very mature PVR that captures, well it used to be natively, in PICvideo MJPEG format. The bought version has perfect lip sync and allows AVI files. It supports most analogue cards and some MPEG-2 ones where they have analogue sections. MJPEG is pretty darn editable, it is higher bitrate capable than DV, 4:2:2 but doesn't do some of the post DCT math that DV does.

PICvideo on showshifter captures PAL 576i as upper field first. NTSC 480i as lower field first (like all consumer DV).

If the original isn't DVD compliant, then using TMPGEnc will be little different quality wise, as both it and Vegas have to re-encode to make it compliant.

nugent wrote on 12/17/2003, 6:11 AM

I have a Creative VideoBlaster MovieMaker, which also captures directly to MPEG-2. It's highest resolution is 352x576 (PAL), which is a valid DVD format. I have tried using VV to edit, and DVDA to burn, these captures, and have had the following issues:

1. Apparently my capture file is "Upper Field First", so I have to override the default VV rendering setting. If you do this, jerkiness is eliminated.

2. Editing the mpg's in VV is easy, but my rendered result has the audio progressively out of synch - see my other discussion thread on this subject. The best solution for me has been MPEG Video Wizard (www.womble.com) - a great program if you only need simple editing. It is very fast if you only need to re-assemble your mpg, rather than re-render.

3. Even though my 352x572 capture is a valid DVD format, DVDA will only accept 720x576. I have had better luck with TMPGEnc DVD Author (http://www.pegasys-inc.com/en/product/tda.html) which accepts all valid formats.

VV is a great product, but is not good at handling mpg's. Let us know how this works out for you.

kdenninger wrote on 12/17/2003, 10:30 AM

Uh, no it won't.

It appears that DVD+A can only set one "inpoint" and "outpoint" in a given file.

Thus, I can't cut the advertisements. Attempting to set a second inpoint doesn't work.

The stream I have is a fully-complient stream, but I want to get rid of the commercials... and I can't find a good way to do that.

kdenninger wrote on 12/17/2003, 10:35 AM

I haven't had any problems with the audio going out of sync - and I just got done doing 4 hours from one MPEG stream, so I think I would have found the problem if I was going to have it... :)

While the quality isn't perfect, its better than my SVHS deck, so I guess I can't complain much. NTSC video is only so good to start with.

Spot|DSE wrote on 12/17/2003, 11:01 AM

Odd to even discuss this here. On the Tivo and other PVR websites, it's specifically forbidden to have this discussion. I won't even go into the why's... :-)

TheHappyFriar wrote on 12/17/2003, 11:11 AM

Now it makes you winder if Tivo won't let you talk about it because they want you to buy their Tivo+DVD burner, huh? :)

RBartlett wrote on 12/18/2003, 1:51 AM

> Uh, no it won't

Yes it will, with your workflow shaped slightly differently.
DVDA loves a big fat file, especially if it is a valid DVD MPEG-2.

Choose a menu'd project.
Start by creating a menu object, visible (you can make them invisible later if you have too many chapters/adverts), and when it comes to choosing the media that you want, drop the same original MPEG-2 onto the object/picon. Click on the object to get the timeline and for each respective chapter, put a new "chapter 1" marker on it. DVDA will work out where all the starts/ends of chapters are. If you get an extraneous chapter 2, draw it into the side of the chapter 1 marker and it will disappear. repeat, lather - rinse. Every menu object will have a chapter 1 on it until you compile your target - where it will play through or chapter/track jump just as you intended it to.

In some countries timeshifting a movie isn't illegal or even a grey area, even if you remove the adverts. I guess it is reasonable to expect it to be destroyed after you've timeshifted/watched it once, again in countries where it is legal to use a VCR for aired programmes.

Good luck. (I hope you get more from your purchase of Vegas+DVD than advert skipping DVDs!)