Optimal Settings in TMPGEnc for VCD ecnoding ?

[iparout]

First off, let me tell you that I have read the guides in vcdhelp.com but I still have some Advanced, so to speak, questions.

I have captured an .avi using the PC-VCR utility of my Marvel G450eTV card. The avi is in YUY2 Matrox codec. I now want to encode it to VCD. (The .avi was captured off my VHS at 704x576 resolution)

I loaded the .avi into TMPGEnc and chose the on-board VCD template of TMPGEnc (is it any good BTW?). What I want to ask is how to configure the Advanced tab of the settings in VDub...

To be more specific, the guides say to use Non-Interlace (Progressive), Top Field First (field A), 1:1 VGA and Full Screen (Keep Aspect Ratio).

However the settings I used for encoding to SVCD up to now, where Interlace, Bottom Field First (field B), 4:3 625 line (PAL) and Video Arrange Method = Center

Which are the optimal settings for encoding to VCD which will be displayed on my TV afterwards.

[Sciascia]

Don't know about the field order for the 450, but most Matrox cards are bottom field first. It should be progressive since that is the VCD spec. I would go with keep aspect ratio as well. Definitely use the VCD template to make sure that you are within specs or you may be doing the whole thing over again. Some players are a limit stricter than others as to the spec and may not play.


If you are frameserving it try the temporal cleaner, 2D cleaner and smart deinterlace filters and definitely use VDub to resize. Not too much on each filter, just a little bit to clean it up for the encoder. Then let TMPGEnc encoder using the VCD template. It should look pretty nice when finished. Thoughs were the filters I found the most success with when I used to have my G400TV.

[Dr Mordrid]

First of all understand that YUY2 is an uncompressed analog video format, not a "codec". YUY2 is one of many such uncompressed formats under the general lable of "YUV".

Codecs (COMpressor/DEcompredssor) are tools like HuffYUV, PICVideo MJPeg, DV or MPEG which compress an uncompressed stream to make it smaller and easier to manage. Each has its advantages and weaknesses.

VCD uses a 352x288 progressive (non-interlaced) stream in PAL which can be generated by just dropping a field. When a frame is dropped it doesn't really matter which field is used so the defaults should work fine.

When "resizing" to a half height frame size like VCD it's sometimes better to delace instead of just doing a generic resize so that information from both fields gets used to create a new single field progressive stream. TMPGEnc has a very nice one in its Even-Odd Field (field, adaptation) delace filter. You can find this in TMPGEnc's Settings/Advanced/Deinterlace function (doubleclick on Deinterlace to get the dialog).

When it gets displayed on a TV the DVD deck will line double the 288 line high progressive stream to create a properly proportioned (meaning 576 lines high) "interlaced" stream. Since both fields will be the same it doesn't matter which gets displayed where.

Dr. Mordrid

[iparout]

Thanks for your input guys.

As far as I can understad, the settings you are sugesting are Non Interlace [Progressive], Bottom Field First, (although it doesn't make much of a difference), and Full Screen (Keep Aspect Ratio)

What about source aspect ratio ? Which should I use there ?

To what its worth, the captured file is 704x576 YUY2 Matrox.