MPEG article please........

I have been watching the Matrox users site , and came across this posting, by Dr Mordrid, and attempted to convert using these instuctions, but substituting the PAL settings, my results were horrid, and I tried to confirm with Doc the correct PAL settings, I can make reasonable VCD's using Avid Cinema and Xing, but I wish to progress to MSP, where I am unable to get as good results.

Posted on the Matrox users Forum under the thread "Mjpeg to mpeg software or hardware............."

The PROPER way to produce clips for VideoCD is the following;
1. Capture at a resolution that has 480 vertical lines. Capturing at 240 lines means you're only capturing the B field and ignoring all the information in the A field (Marvel & RR-G only; for RRS this is reversed).
Of course the larger the horizontal rez the longer the re-rendering later so be sensible with that. I use 352x480.
2. Deinterlace the video. This combines both the captured fields into one frame with all the captured information in it.
3. Re-render the clip to 352x240 using a non-lossy codec to prevent MJPeg recompression noise (Cinepak comes to mind) at the highest quality for a smooth scaling. This is called "resampling". It's the same methodology as scanning at 600dpi and resampling down to 150 dpi to get a more real look to the image.
4. Encode the resulting .AVI to MPEG-1.
If your source material was captured at 240 lines you're missing half of the image. Capturing at 480 lines and then deinterlacing makes sure you are resampling and encoding as much of the original video as possible.
Any deinterlaced/resampled 480 line frame will look less sharp than the same image captured at 240 lines. If you play the 240 line processed clip next to the raw 240 line capture on a TV you'll see that the 240 line capture doesn't play back as smooth as the processed clip does.
On TV a smoother but slightly blurry playback actually makes the video look more "real".
Dr. Mordrid

If we are to pay a substancial increase in the Mag price, may I suggest that it runs an article on MPEG and VCD's, as I am sure like myself, many people who have taken the plunge into Video Editing would appreciate a little help in the complex settings need to create either MPEG 1, 2 or 4.

footnote: I think that Comp Vid is a great Mag, most of it goes over my head, but to have the cappability to converse with the Editor of any Magazine is quite unique, and I feel compelled to by it.

[This message has been edited by Freddy the Fish (edited 21 May 1999).]

[This message has been edited by Freddy the Fish (edited 21 May 1999).]