I record my images to .avi files, which seem to have great quality. I also play my tapes right off the recorder on to the television and see great results. But when I try to convert the .avi files to the DVD format, I lose considerable detail. I've been told this was because of the limitations of the television itself; however, that doesn't wash because DV piped right into the TV looks fantastic.

Is .avi my best bet for recording if quality is important?

Thanks!

hey, for all my dvd's that I burn I use the ligos mpeg encoder http://www.ligos.com/lsx_mpeg.htm and it looks great. I dont think this has anything to do with quality, but I use DVD Compleate to author the DVD's (i'll be switching to encore when it comes out) Hope this helps.

Brian

What do you use to create your MPEG-2 files and how do they look before authoring?

David Hurdon

The .avi files look fantastic. The MPEG-2 loses significant detail and contrast. I use Adobe Premiere 6.02 to get the .avi files and have used TMpgEnc to get the MPEG-2 and Ulead's DVD Movie Factory to get the DVD files.

Haven't tried upgrading to Premiere's 6.5, which I understand has a encoder built in to it. But I tend to think it's the format.

Cheers,

John

Hi John.

Unless you have access to a MPEG-2 hardware encoder, you will have always some degree of image degradation.

You can get almost perfect MPEG-2 video using software encoders (i.e. TMPGenc) with high bitrates (8Mb/s) and using motion search precision set at high, but it will take ages to encode and you can have compatibility problems when playing the DVD in some set top players.

In short, my advice is:

If you'r doing DV to DVD just for yourself and you can wait for the results, do a search in the net for "Configuring TMPGEnc for high-quality, DVD-compliant MPEG-2 by Rui del-Negro", use those settings and you will get good results. To author your DVDs use MyDVD wich is as simple as it gets.

If you'r planning on doing professional work, buy a Matrox RT-X100 and you will have realtime (one hour video takes one hour to encode) MPEG-2 encoding with great quality. To author your DVDs use ReelDVD.

Good luck.
Arnaldo

The advice all sounds good, but a friend just gave me the advice I'll probably follow. He said, "Just record it in .avi and put it on a DVD and wait for something better to come along." Actually, I'm in no hurry and strapped for cash at the moment.

I have Adobe Premiere 6 right now. Is it worth upgrading to 6.5?

I understand, but you cannot put much video in .avi format in the 4,7Gb of a DVD. Unless you compress, you'l end up with a lot of DVDs.

If you want a simple and cost efective solution, you can get Pinnacle Studio 8. It will get you from capture to DVD in one program.

Best regards
Arnaldo

John you're giving Bethesda a bad name by giving up so quickly. (I used to live in Avenel ;-)

The configuration settings, and in particular the settings Arnaldo referenced, will give you excellent results. I use TMPGenc all the time.

Will do as you guys suggest. Sure takes a long time to convert, though, but if it works, it'll be worth it.

Thanks!

John

Have you tried upping the bitrate to 6 mbps average, VBR? That usually looks just as good as DV, even on a high definition set, at least using the Vegas MainConcept MPEG2 encoder set at maximum quality.

I've had good results with TMPGEnc myself as well. Also CCE and
ProCoder (one if not the best software MPEG2 [among other things]
encoder out at the moment). Ofcourse these must all be bought.
Premiere 6.5 comes with an encoder but I don't know how good
or bad it is. Personally I'm not using LSX for obvious reasons....

How is the new Nero 6 for authoring? I've read some good things about it.

Stuart, where's Avenel????

(I'm a Virginian trapped in Maryland.)

Thanks again!

Nero 6...I like it!

I used to use Sonic DVDit! (and MyDVD) before Nero 6 came out...I now use Nero 6.

Seriously, it does a great job of authoring. Perhaps one of the best 'bits' I found was adding chapter points in videos...easy (unlike MyDVD which wouldn't add chapter points except during capture, and unlike DVDit! which kept crashing on me).

As you can probably tell...I like Nero 6!

Gary

This is great info on how to configure TMPGE for high quality DVDs!


http://dvd-hq.info/Compression.html

I've tried Procoder(demo version),TMPGEnc,Pinnacle Studio 7, and they all produce pretty much the same results. All i seem to get is a blocky video. It doesn't look quite so bad on the TV, but on the PC it looks awful. Using WME9 at the same bitrate, produces very good results. I've used the websites mentioned for help, but they do not produce any better results.

This is better than the MPEG2 videos(and this is only at 2mbits/s) :-

http://www.fordrs.nildram.co.uk/Videos/RocketRonnie10.4HQ.wmv

You can't compare codecs like that. What looks good at 2 mbps
in one codec might look terrible at 6 mbps at another.

Tell us what EXACT settings you are using for mpeg2 encoding.
I've done some test encodings where I could not see the difference
from the original.... That was with VBR encoding though.

Graham,

Your video file http://www.fordrs.nildram.co.uk/Vid...onnie10.4HQ.wmv

looks great on my AthlonXP nForce machine using an older Windows 7 . Are you talking about another video clip?
Are you sure you have a good MPEG2 decoder installed on the comoputer ?