Pumping up you MPEG movies

BillyBoy wrote on 5/4/2002, 3:10 PM
Alright already, I couldn't wait any longer and since the DVD +R drives are now a reality (see other thread) I wanted to see if or not it would be worth the effort to redo otherwise "good" quality VCD's and SVCD's I've made in the past and convert to DVD. A qualified yes.

This will be of primary interest to those that have made either VCD's and/or SVCD's and weren't that happy with the quality. As you probably know the main issue with burning VCD's and SVCD's is the standard only supports comparitively low bitrates. While you can tweak the bitrate and make so-called none standard burns how well or even if they can be played depends on the make/model DVD set top player you have.

Tweaking every last bit of detail using TMPGE and/or extensive use of filters it is possible to make big improvements, still it was fairly common to still see artifacts and in general a denagradition of the quality as compared to how it looked in the Vegas Video preview window. The reason works in progress look "good" when viewed in the preview window is you are viewing the file in an uncompressed state. However once you render to MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 with the limitations of VCD and SVCD bitrates, the quality can go down fast. How much or how objectionable it is of course depends much on your original source material.

So if you will be in the market for a DVD burner soon, one project worth doing would be to redo videos already burned to VCD or SVCD formats. To be successful there is one simple but time consuming step. First convert the old VCD/SVCD file to AVI, then render to a DVD template and you should see enough of an improvement along with elimination of most artifacts to make the job worth doing.

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 5/4/2002, 3:40 PM
Billyboy: that won't work. If you convert that VCD or SVCD file to a .avi file, then you'll also have included all the defects that file had, and you'll just be including all that in the new version. In order to see the improvement you'll have to go back to the original project and rerender to MPEG-2 at a higher bitrate from the original source material.
BillyBoy wrote on 5/4/2002, 8:46 PM
You are incorrect. It does work. I've done it several times. It is the only solution when all you have as source files are MPEG's to begin with. Of course nothing beats a prestine source file, however using the method I described can result in a superior end result with a better overall image and far less artifacts. Before being so quick to say it can't work, actully try it. In fact the main reason I purchased Video Factory and later upgraded to Vegas Video was to redo a bunch of old family videos that started life as super 8 film. They were in pretty horrible shape being from the 60's-70's and only in MPEG format. I'm not saying you can take any old MPEG and render it out to a AVI then to some DVD format and get a DVD quality video, however with careful attention applying filters and then re rendering to a DVD format the effort is worth it. I did the same thing just rendering back to a fresh MPEG format but because of the low bitrates they weren't as good as I would have liked. So while the "improvement" was very noticeable, only in the preview window or if saved as a AVI or extremly high Real MEdia bitrate. Now that I've repeated the process and burned to a DVD the improvements do transfer to the media and look much better when viewed on my DVD player.
Stiffler wrote on 5/5/2002, 8:21 PM
When you say you are redoing your videos, are you taking that file from your old VCD or from a file left on your computer?

BillyBoy wrote on 5/5/2002, 9:09 PM
From a computer.