MJPEG to MPEG2 for svcd

[John Wray]

Originally posted by mrtj1

i tried to make some svcd's out of my caps with the g400 with the cinema craft encoder SP but i cant get it to use all the files i choose. i mean i enter cap.oo.avi and cap.01.avi etc, but it does them one at a time as opposed to using them all. i want to use the VBR option in this and it gives great quality files.

any ideas how to get around this problem? kind of goes against the point of VBR if i have to do each file individually

One thing to try would be to frameserve them using Virtualdub. Virtualdub understands multi-file captures, and will assemble them into a single frameserved object that VFW programs can use as input. Once you're going through Virtualdub, you also have access to all the filters it offers so you can clean up your video en-route to the encoder.

John

[kwmarriott]

Out of curiosity I have just tried the huffyuy codec, using free vcr to split the file into under 2gb files while it is recording (which gets around the 2gb file limit in win 98). A few observations: where as I was used to file sizes of 2gb with divx, 8 gb with mjpeg I was a bit shocked by a 13gb file for 50 mins! First time I tried a short capture and burned an svcd it played with very bad artifacts, I think this is field order so I tried swopping the fileld in the huffyuy codec and that didn't work. Then i captured deinterlaced and ensured that the mpeg2 was field order B and I have to say the quality was very good indeed.]

Whether I can create a 50 minute mpeg2 file is yet to be seen as mspro keeps crashing as it nears the end of the render!

But,, at the moment Iam very impressed with the quality

[kwmarriott]

O.K: there is a GOD and it’s called huffyuv! I appear to have produced a near perfect 50 minute SVCD and after burning about 20 cdr’s (glad they’re cheaper now!) I may at last be able to transfer my aging vhs collection to cdr…And it’s all done with free software. If anyone is interested here’s what I did.

First, you need the following:
The flying dutchman’s YUY2 patch for the G400
Huffyuv codec
Freevcr (or another capture program)
Lots of patience and free disc space.

I have freevcr set as follows (and I know this causes some controversy)

Video format: YUY2 size 352x288
Custom Video Format 480x576 (pal svcd) I know in theory I am capturing at a lower resolution but this works! Because the custom format is sized to svcd there is no resizing of the capture.

Lock audio and video

Deinterlace (get artefacts if I don’t)

Audio set to 32000 16 bit stereo

Compression set to huffyuv

Split video into 16x1999 gb sections (get around the 2gb or 4gb limit in win98)

After capture I am using Ulead mediastudio pro to join the sections and edit out the adverts. I then render a svcd mpeg2 file with the following settings:

Size 480x576, field order B, constant bitrate of 1650 (very low but needed to fit 50 minutes on cdr), audio set to 224, joint stereo.

I then use Ulead dvd moviestudio to burn the svcd straight from the file. The result is very good and certainly doesn’t look like a 352x288 capture. The actual conversion of the 15gb original capture to the mpeg2 took 2.5hrs on an athlon 1600xp-which is also pretty quick.

Worth a try?

[fberger]

Thanks for posting your experience. I have a Marvel G200 (still...) and have been working on the same type of conversion project with VirtualDub. FreeVCR seems to be a good alternative, especially to set the resolution to 480x576 which I never obtained with VirtualDub under W2k

A quick question for you: in FreeVCR, what do you use for field order? Standard or reverse?

[smitty]

have you tried encoding with TMPGEnc?
I get better video with less artifacting and not deinterlaced
I find if I deinterlace it slightly softens the image

[kwmarriott]

I haven't noticed a field order in the version of freevcr I am using. I downloaded an older version which was badged as 'stable'. Just tried to find it on the web and all links are dead so I hope the site hasn't gone.

Don't use tmpgenc to endcode because of the time it takes. Ulead was taking 2.5 hours-tmpgenc was over 5 hours: the shorter the time the less likely my pc is too crash (athlon woes but thats another story).

I watched my first (successful) svcd last night and it looked very good: a little bit of blocking on fast motion but not too bad, especially considering the low bit rate...Now can I find the time to transfer 100's of hours of video.

On another note: it would be nice to have a DVD writer but after my woes at grabbing 1 hour of video at a quality that will convert to mpeg2 I'm not sure my nerves could take it!

[kwmarriott]

One more point: I do find that the data rate for huffyuv can vary wildly. Some times it captures at 4.6 mb per second where as other times it is nearer 6 mb for the same video material.

[Brian Ellis]

In another post I made a few months ago, I mentioned the time difference between Ulead and Tmpgenc, and also the resultant file sizes. There is a good reason for this and if you tweak Tmpgenc to give the same datarate/quality that Ulead uses, the time taken is about the same. It's as simple as that! Yer pays yer money and yer get wot yer pays for!

[kwmarriott]

The other reason I am using ulead is (when it works) I can edit out adverts and produce a continuious video to convert to mpeg2. I am presuming that to do this with tmepgenc wouldn't be so easy-especially as there are 8 2gb files with adverts in various places.

Ulead does have an habit of crashing part through the render though: this could be my athlon setup.

[Bios]

The reason i preffer tmpgenc is the 2 pass option witch gives a very good quallity. Tmpgenc is also mentioned in almost every encoding comperision as the "best of best" plus the fact that it's easy to use and still has lots of options.

What i dont get is why you use a 224 kbps setting when you capture from vhs, it seems way to high!?

[fberger]

In freevcr, the field order option appears when you click on the button for "DeInterlace Settings". I guess based on your answer you did not use it, so it should remain at its default value.
I used the latest version from the web site, I think b09. It is available in French only.

[apolloneon]

I am producing svcd using the following method but I have a problem.

Capture using huffyuv and avi io
Edit in msp 6
Output using svcd template
I have dvd plugin installed
Produce on cd using movie factory

The picture quality is great, but the audio is slightly out of sync but it is noticeable. I really want to use this method as it is easy with great quality.

Please can anyone help.

[apolloneon]

If I play the mpeg in media player the sync is ok. It seems to be happening between using moviefactory to author to cd through to when I play on stand alone dvd player.

[Flying dutchman]

@Brian Ellis:

Brian, you seem to forget that the Marvel natively supports some non-standard resolutions (such as 480x576 interlaced!) that just aren't shown in the dialog windows that Matrox supplies with the vidtools driver. I wrote to Markus Zingg (the avi_io author) about this issue last year wondering how the hell it worked.

In this case it doesn't really matter which resolution you select (as long as it's YUY2), the custom settings in the capture program will override the resolution settings. So it's perfectly OK to select 352x288.

[kwmarriott]

this is regarding the sound sync problem: some dvd players do lose sync on svcd discs, but I use joint stereo and the setting of 224 bit rate because at that setting my audio stays in sync.. I have also found that capturing with freevcr at 480x576 to huffyuv and then converting to mpeg2 seems to keep sync very well