Would anyone be kind to help me ?

I'm very new in this VCD making. I have very old Creative IE500 Video Capture Card, which allow only 320 x 240 max resolution. I capture my VHS with ULead VS ver 4.0 to make the MPEG-1 (352 x 288).

Then I use WinOn CD 3.7 for burning, but I'm very sad as the quality of my VCD is veeery poor, I don't know in English, but the Video has some little squares just like when you zoom still pic too many times. Is it because my card only capture at 320 x 240, and then Ulead expand it to 352 x 288 ? Then goes worse when I play it on my VCD player with TV full screen ?

Is it because my DVC Creative IE500 ? or my Ulead Video studio (which dropped more than 50% from the captured frames and Lips-desync, too ? or is it because WinOn CD ? or is it because 8x write to Image file and then 8x write to create CD ?

I will be very thankful if anyone can help me.

Kind regards, Sunar.

Thank you.

-- Sunar Karjadi (rekotomo@denpasar.wasantara.net.id), March 27, 2000

Answers

Sunar,

The problem you are describing is called blockiness in your VCD. This issue is widely known throughout this forum. Majority (~85%) of your problem has to do with video source, and the other (~15%) is your hardware & codecs that drives it.

First of all, what is your hardware configuration is like? CPU speed, memory size, and Hard drive speed and size. Below are the minimum system hardware requirement you must meet before proceed to the next step:

CPU Pentium II 233MHz or equivalent

64Mb

10Gigs ATA66 7200RPM Hard drive

Second, If your video capture card limits you to a lower end frame size during capture and drops frames, then it's time for you to switch that card out for something better. You can't improve your mpeg vcd quality if your hardware is operating at its max and not perform well. Here are a few hardware choices you have: ATI AIW128 16Mb or 32Mb ($200.00-$300.00us) hint: for VCD get the 16Mb version. (digital input works great here, VHS depends on source- may need encoding process) Dazzle DVC ($250.00us)(digital input works great here on the fly, VHS depends on source and may need encoding process) RT-6 & M-filter combination ($1100.00-$1500.00us)(anything works great here)

Note: These are the hardwares i have in my current inventory, so I can only recommend them, since i know what their limitations are. There are others hardwares on this forum...so read up to see if they are what you need.

Third, what is your plan with the capturing process? Capture straight to VCD bitrate and write to CD or you plan to process it through an encoder? If you are using VHS source, which greatly depends on the quality of your recording, I would recommend to capture to either AVI or high bitrate mpeg1 and encoding it back to VCD bitrate using either LSX or Panasonic encoder. This process is time consuming and it depends on your CPU speed (my experiences in upgrading from 500Mhz to 600Mhz and to 750MHz, which gave me a max of ~1:4 ratio; 1 hour of video equals 4 hours of encoding process). The alternative is to change your video source for something better quality or to acquire high end dollars hardwares for capturing process (I am sorry for making this statement, but it's what i have to deal with).

-- lnguyen (wingstarzz@hotmail.com), March 27, 2000.

lnguyen, I have all the hardware/software you are describing, yet still end up with "blockiness." Could you be specific about the bitrate and how to set with ATI 128?

Thanks.

-- Dave Webster (davew@direcpc.com), April 08, 2000.