Settings for mpeg2 capture with Ulead Video Studio 6

[ebina]

Does anyone out there have a lot of experience with mpeg2 capture settings, particularly with Ulead Video Studio 6? I want to capture with the highest quality so I won't have artifacts all over when I write my DVD. The problem is whenever I capture a scene where the camera is panned over a complex background the picture gets all jittery and pixelated.

I'm currently using the default 'DVD NTSC' template provided by Ulead, but I wondered if messing with some of their "advanced" custom settings could improve the movies I get.

I tried upping the bit rate to 8Mbps with no noticable improvement. There is a "Performance" value which ranges from 1-14 and defaults to 2. If I crank that up it starts dropping frames. Then there are a bunch of other advanced options like frame order and stuff. I can't find any good description of what these options do so I don't know where to start in trying to improve the quality of my captured mpeg.

Anyone out there who understands these options and can help me?

[drmpadilla]

this reply is just For Your Information as they say.... 8 million bitrate should be very good, even if you look at commercial DVD's often times the bitrate is only 5 million bitrate and fast action with pans, explosions, fire smoke lights etc looks good. my DVD player has a function where i can see the bitrate of what is played.

i have captured in 4 million and very rarely see pixellation. at 5 million VBR bitrate i have NOT seen any pixellation at all, with very fast action, lights, strobes, etc, special effects.

it's when the image is very complex with fast changes, flashing lights, fast action, for example fight scenes, car chases/crashes, explosions, fire etc, that you MAY see pixellation, depending on your bitrate.

ANOTHER THING that may be occuring is artifacts due to cheap DVD-R. in this case i've seen blockiness rather than pixellation, but those things occur for only a fraction of a second, occassionally thoughout a DVD. if the bitrate is moderately high, it looks pretty good otherwise.

FYI i have used Ulead DVD MovieFactory to author mpg2 with very good results, and capturing at 5 million bitrate can fit 2 hours worth on 4.7 DVD-R, with extremely close to original DVD quality.

in conclusion i believe you may be seeing artifacts introduced by cheap DVD-R. so far i've used Memorex general DVD-R also and on that brand have no blockiness at all.

unfortunately i don't know Video Studio 6 at all but would imagine capturing at those higher bitrates (from 5 million up to 8 million) should give you very near original results. i find that capturing in CBR usually gives better results than VBR. for my own purposes i have found that around 5 million CBR bitrate is the best compromise for file size to fit 2 to 2 1/2 hrs on a 4.7 DVD-R.

hope the info is somewhat helpful. by the way i am using Dazzle Moviestar II hardware/software to capture DVD from S-VHS input.

[ebina]

I think the difference is you are using the Dazzle hardware for real-time video capture.

My video capture board doesn't have hardware mpeg2 encoding, so it is being
done on the fly by Ulead Video Studio.

When using Video Studio to edit and render an mpeg, it takes a long time and I believe produces a high quality mpeg2, but I think in order to keep up with the video in at capture it is producing a sub-standard mpeg2, and that is where I am getting the artifacts..

I've tried high quality DVD-R blanks, that is not the issue, I see the artifacts long before writing the DVD by just playing the mpeg off my hard drive.

I wondered if there was a way to tune the software mpeg2 creation parameters in Ulead Video Studio since I don't want to pay $300 for the hardware mpeg solution.

[drmpadilla]

yes you are right, my hardware allows me to capture directly in high quality mpg2 format.

before that i was using an All In Wonder ATI PCI card, to capture in AVI VCR1 format. i was able to capture at very good to near excellent quality that way. you are then left with an AVI file, very large.

they can be converted to mpg2 with TMPG3Enc. the problem is with that big AVI format you can only capture up to 4096 Mb. what i did was i captured movies in 40 minute segments, then used TMPG3Enc to convert to mpg2, and then again with TMPG3Enc to merge the mpg2 files together. you can very precisely edit the AVI files with Virtualdub so you can cut the file exactly at the start frame and end frame of the avi, so when you merge the separate mpg2 files with TMPG3Enc it all appears with seamless edits.

the options at that point are to burn SVCD or author to DVD. for particular issues, the mpg2 has to be generated with the right parameters for either SVCD or DVD compliance, but again, TMPG3Enc can be used to do whichever format.