.avi to .mpeg: how to improve quality

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Hi I'm new at this. I downloaded some .avi files from morpheus. They were already of not-so-good quality. After converting to .mpeg using TMPGgenc, it's still very grainy.

Can anyone tell me how to improve the quality of the video so that I can burn it?

Thanks.

-- amanda (blahfishcakes@netscape.net), January 09, 2002

Answers

When converting any file from one format to another, the very best you can hope for is a new file with comparable quality of the original. The reason for this is in the encoding process. Depending on the codec used to capture the original file, certain information is left out which often results in a poor quality picture. Re- encoding this file with another programme won't improve the pictures quality, because the info needed to make it better is missing.

Basically it's a bit like doing a jig saw puzzle which has pieces missing. You can take a photo of the completed puzzle and make a new jig saw puzzle out of the picture, but the missing bits are still missing.

Hope this helps.

-- Chris Kenny (findme@cbi.net.au), January 10, 2002.


The response Chris gave is very good. If you really want to try to get the best quality out of TMPGenc, you can go to Advanced settings and check Noise Reduction and Edge Enhancement. Under Noise Reduction, set Spatial to 100, Range to 4, Temporal to 100, Enable Filter to true and High Quality Mo to true. On Edge Enhancement, use Horizontal 127, Vertical 127, Enable Filter true, Fieldwise true. You will have to double click on Edge Enhancement and Noise Reduction to see these options. Warning - it will literally take you days to encode like this, but it will result in the best possible quality. However, like Chris said, it won't improve the source. What's gone from the source is gone and you can't get it back. A lot of stuff on Morpheus was done very sloppily with DivX codecs. DivX is a very lossy codec, which means it throws away part of the video information to save space. If done properly, these losses can be kept to a minimum, but most of the people who have stuff available don't know what they are doing and don't take the necessary, time consuming steps to improve their videos. Even if you do everything I said in TMPGenc, at best your VCD will be exactly like the original AVI. No better, but exactly like it with the exact same quality.

-- Jason (Jason.Shumate@equant.com), January 10, 2002.

There is another way.. first you extract all the frames from your mpeg into a temp folder, irfan view can do this.. then you edit them one at a time.. adjust hue, saturation etc.. I think irfan view can apply the changes you make in one frame to all the frames in the file :) then you make an avi from all the frames :)

-- anyuser (anyuser@hotmail.com), December 09, 2003.

Another way is to use Canopus Procoder, after enter your AVI select CD/DVD and MPEG1-VCV-NTSC(I assume you want to create a cd movie , right?) then under Config tab select Speed/Quality Mode select Mastering Quality.

Eduardo

-- Eduardo (edwais@sympatico.ca), February 27, 2004.


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