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Getting Best Quality out of MPEG2

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I just recently did an analog rip of ANH from the 93 definitive edition laser discs. I did a quickly put together mpeg2 render of the movie and when i'm done the movie ended up being fuzzy and/or blurry as compared to the original recording from the laserdisc. Can anyone point me in the right direction to improve the quality of the mpeg2 render? Like mpeg2 settings, i'm actually using Ulead's Media Studio Pro 7 -- But just anything in general about mpeg2 settings I could use.

Thanks.
Keith Weatherby II
Uhfgood -AT- verizon -DOT- net
Uhfgood's Blog:
http://uhfgood.artoo.net
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What format was your original capture file? Resolution? Did you check the quality before encoding the MPEG-2 video?
What bitrate did you use for the encode? Did you use a multipass VBR method?

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I guess logically I should see if I can try to duplicate the conditions of the source file.

Source file was VBR, 15mbits/sec max, 9.93mbits/sec target (so i'm thinking it's around 10mb)
interlaced. I don't think the source was multipass.

So I guess your advice would be to check my source try to duplicate it.

Thanks


Keith Weatherby II
Uhfgood -AT- verizon -DOT- net
Uhfgood's Blog:
http://uhfgood.artoo.net
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Wait....your source file was MPEG? Do you know what format you captured in to begin with?

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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No I meant I actually captured it in mpeg2 - ergo my "source" - sorry I said 'source file' - I just meant that was the original captured file. :-)
Keith Weatherby II
Uhfgood -AT- verizon -DOT- net
Uhfgood's Blog:
http://uhfgood.artoo.net
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You would be better off capturing with huffyuv or MJPEG if you have the disk space. Encoding to MPEG-2 on-the-fly is convenient but lossy.

Can you post sample screenshots of the source and the "fuzzy/blurry" file?

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Uhfgood, you stated it correctly, I just wanted to make sure that what you were actually saying was that you captured in MPEG, which I would agree with my esteemed colleague is not a good idea. MPEG takes a lot of horsepower to do well even from the timeline on a video editor, much less on-the-fly.

Find a spot in your video that has the worse results, and try recapturing that portion of the film in Huffy. I think the difference might amaze you.

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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Hmm i'll get a couple of screencaps soon...

As far as HuffyUV - I have that installed but, A) a majority of my diskspace is dedicated to fellowship of the ring for a project i'm doing... B) How much space would a full let's say 3 hours, there's the 2 hour movie, the bonus features and then the space around which i start and stop the laserdisc player... so i'd say 3 hours worth of video in huffyuv, C) I would have to capture it with virtualdub as ati all-in-wonder software (ati tv) will not use external codecs...

I'm not really that limited, but there were reasons I chose to just capture it in mpeg 2 (not one of which is the dvds coming out soon -- I stll wanted this laser disc version for archival purposes).

Keith
Keith Weatherby II
Uhfgood -AT- verizon -DOT- net
Uhfgood's Blog:
http://uhfgood.artoo.net
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3 hours of Huffyuv-compressed video will take up around 100-120GB.

Higher compression (smaller files) can be gained by using an MJPEG codec. The PICVideo one is good but not free, there is also a free MJPEG codec included in the ffvfv project but I've not used it.

Or you could try a DV codec; the one from Panasonic is free, and would probably give smaller files than MJPEG but you would have the chroma subsampling effects on NTSC captures.

However, if you are really struggling with HDD space, and can live with the quality limitations of capturing direct to MPEG-2, then it shouldn't be that bad. It's worth noting that DVD recorders use this format.

If there is a severe drop in quality between your MPEG-2 raw capture, and the final MPEG-2 encoded output, then there is something wrong. But more details are required to diagnose the problem.

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The original capture is fine -- but putting it together, when creating a new copy is a bit blurred. What i'll do is probably try to create another copy with as close to the originals settings as I can get. Also could you tell me how to get vdub to do mpeg (If i remember right it just does avi's, but there was some sort of mod that allowed it) -- Because I could probably use vdub to use a direct stream copy after I edit them together - also if I need to I could get/use avisynth -- although I don't know how to use that.

Keith
Keith Weatherby II
Uhfgood -AT- verizon -DOT- net
Uhfgood's Blog:
http://uhfgood.artoo.net
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There are two modified version of VirtualDub that will read MPEG-2 - VirtualDubMod and VirtualDubMPEG2 - but they will only save to AVI.

You need to use an MPEG encoder.

Unless you are just making simple cuts, in which case you could use Womble.

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A) ulead media studio pro 7 can do mpeg2 encoding, but appearently not very well, or at least I don't have that much control over the settings anyhoo... B) I thought you had to buy womble, this is why i've been staying away from it. and C) yes just simple cuts for this, as i'm just putting the parts from the laserdiscs together.

By the way here's the difference between the original capture, and the newly encoded mpeg files...

Original #1:
http://www.gamesafoot.com/srcimage.png

Encoded #1:
http://www.gamesafoot.com/dstimage.png

Original #2:
http://www.gamesafoot.com/srcimage2.png

Encoded #2:
http://www.gamesafoot.com/dstimage2.png

Appearently that is the VBR encoding via MSP - not too good... I had better results with constant bitrate... however I haven't gone that high on CBR

Anyhoo let me know any tips :-)

Keith
Keith Weatherby II
Uhfgood -AT- verizon -DOT- net
Uhfgood's Blog:
http://uhfgood.artoo.net
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Appearently there's a setting for media type... and one of the options is mpeg-2 the other which is what it was setup originally as was NTSC-DVD which may be affecting the quality. So i'm going to do a few more test renders before jumping to anymore conclusions.

Keith
Keith Weatherby II
Uhfgood -AT- verizon -DOT- net
Uhfgood's Blog:
http://uhfgood.artoo.net
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Originally posted by: Uhfgood
I thought you had to buy womble, this is why i've been staying away from it.


You do have to buy Womble, but it has a free trial period (30 days, IIRC) that you can extend a few times if you're clever. I used it for about 4 months before buying it, but if you deal with MGEG-2 a lot it's well worth the price.
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"Appearently that is the VBR encoding via MSP - not too good... I had better results with constant bitrate... however I haven't gone that high on CBR"

Have you played with the bit-rates, or are you just going by the defaults?

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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default was at 6k er that is 6 mbits/sec (it displays it as 6000 but that's 6000 kilobits per sec, or 6 mega bits per sec -- unless i'm totally screwed up - i'm still a newb) So i've been playing with it, 10, 8... i was about to do 15 however it seemed a bit high, I do eventually want to get this onto a dvd, but first I just want a good solid copy that's pretty close the original clips as I can make them...

But we'll see how this current one is doing... I set it back to 8, VBR, however I chose the mpeg-2 media type instead of ntsc-dvd.

Keith
Keith Weatherby II
Uhfgood -AT- verizon -DOT- net
Uhfgood's Blog:
http://uhfgood.artoo.net
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Looking at the images, it would seem to me that the blurring has nothing to do with the MPEG-2 encoding.

It might be caused by an over-aggressive application of a noise reduction filter. Or maybe a destructive deinterlacing filter is blending the fields together. Take some time to explore all the settings in the application, so you understand what's happening to the video.

To fit on a single layer DVDR, the bitrate should be somewhere between 4 and 5 Mbps (best to calculate the exact target size you want to aim for, to make maximum use of available space). VBR should give better results than CBR.

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with this particular software it seems VBR is overly aggressive in places and compresses more than it needs to. I've had it as low as 6k before and that was really blurry. I guess i'll keep playing around with it.
Keith Weatherby II
Uhfgood -AT- verizon -DOT- net
Uhfgood's Blog:
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Well appearently I got a decent version now. I tried to duplicate the settings exactly. However I made sure the bit rate was 15mbits/sec - this resulted in a movie that was twice as large, so it can only fit on a dl dvd if I want to do that at all. I'm going to attempt again to do another encode later. I just can't seem to get the right results. Of note there is a setting called "Upper field first" and "Lower field first" it was set to lower, and the source video was upper, so that may have had to do with my decent results this time. Really I just wanted a direct copy with the pieces edited together. Oh well.

Keith
Keith Weatherby II
Uhfgood -AT- verizon -DOT- net
Uhfgood's Blog:
http://uhfgood.artoo.net