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06-20-2002, 01:58 PM
davelanton davelanton is offline
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So far I have had great results capturing NTSC episodic TV shows with AVI_IO and rendering with KVCDx2 2-cd template. Now I'm ready to capture letterboxed content. Is there something I should do differently? Is there any advantage to cropping out the black bars in the capture, and then adding them back somehow? Or am I just overthinking this?
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06-20-2002, 03:01 PM
kwag kwag is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by davelanton
So far I have had great results capturing NTSC episodic TV shows with AVI_IO and rendering with KVCDx2 2-cd template. Now I'm ready to capture letterboxed content. Is there something I should do differently? Is there any advantage to cropping out the black bars in the capture, and then adding them back somehow? Or am I just overthinking this?
Capture the same way you're always capturing. This way you don't loose your aspect. When you encode, add the black borders so that you are masking off the area without information completely and match your actual movie, and the encoder only "sees" black in these areas.

If you don't, the encoder will see a full screen input, and even you're encoding for a wide screen, If you didn't set borders, the encoder will encode noise and some low level grays on the areas that are supposed to be black. And your file size will be larger.

CORRECTIONS . Read my next post.

kwag
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06-20-2002, 03:43 PM
gvarney gvarney is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kwag
Quote:
Originally Posted by davelanton
So far I have had great results capturing NTSC episodic TV shows with AVI_IO and rendering with KVCDx2 2-cd template. Now I'm ready to capture letterboxed content. Is there something I should do differently? Is there any advantage to cropping out the black bars in the capture, and then adding them back somehow? Or am I just overthinking this?
Capture the same way you're always capturing. This way you don't loose your aspect. When you encode, add the black borders so that you are masking off the area without information completely and match your actual movie, and the encoder only "sees" black in these areas.

If you don't, the encoder will see a full screen input, and even you're encoding for a wide screen, If you didn't set borders, the encoder will encode noise and some low level grays on the areas that are supposed to be black. And your file size will be larger.

kwag
Hey Kwag,
This is pretty much the same as what I have been trying to do the past couple of days. See this thread http://www.kvcd.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=38&start=30).

I captured the King and I off DishNetwork at 352x480 (MPEG2 with ATI AIW Radeon). It is Panavision, so I think it actually *is* 2.35:1 or something. The original cap looked like about that.

I DVD2AVI'd it, then used FITCD to get the AVS script. I then wanted to set borders in Avisynth, but was having a heck of a time getting it right. I did use the cropping in DVD2AVI on a 2nd try, but it didn't seem to modify the project at all, but I did learn that the movie itself was about 352x248 or something. To complicate matters, I am using Slab's idea of using a PAL resolution in the NTFS Film template (which WORKS without skipping!). Finally, I just loaded the AVS in VDub and used it's NULL TRANSFORM to add the borders. This seems to work. I got a 2:16 movie in something like 820MB (according to Windows Explorer). This with the original CQ70 template, I think.

Is there an *easy* was to add the borders with Avisynth?
Also, it gets confusing (to me anyway) on setting the different aspect ratios in TMPGEnc. Usually NTSC 525 line works on both for my full screen caps. But now we've messed it up with a 352x576 video size on the Video tab.... My King and I looks OK in test clips, but not sure the aspect is quite right throwing in the new size...

Thanks,
Geoff

EDITED:

Doh! I think you just answered my question about the ADD BORDERS part in another thread. I guess I could use the CLIP FRAME in TMPGEnc and also select MASK for the top and bottom, right??
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06-20-2002, 03:46 PM
davelanton davelanton is offline
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Is there a way to set a border in Tmpgeng? Currently I capture in AVI I_O, edit, add filters, and frameserve with Virtual dub, and encode with Tmpgeng. If I do it in Virtualdub, what filter should I use to create the 'true black' borders?

edit: just saw gvarney's "null transform" idea, posted while I was writing my response. I love the fast replies on this board!
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06-20-2002, 04:08 PM
kwag kwag is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gvarney
Quote:
Originally Posted by kwag
Quote:
Originally Posted by davelanton
So far I have had great results capturing NTSC episodic TV shows with AVI_IO and rendering with KVCDx2 2-cd template. Now I'm ready to capture letterboxed content. Is there something I should do differently? Is there any advantage to cropping out the black bars in the capture, and then adding them back somehow? Or am I just overthinking this?
Capture the same way you're always capturing. This way you don't loose your aspect. When you encode, add the black borders so that you are masking off the area without information completely and match your actual movie, and the encoder only "sees" black in these areas.

If you don't, the encoder will see a full screen input, and even you're encoding for a wide screen, If you didn't set borders, the encoder will encode noise and some low level grays on the areas that are supposed to be black. And your file size will be larger.

kwag
Hey Kwag,
This is pretty much the same as what I have been trying to do the past couple of days. See this thread http://www.kvcd.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=38&start=30).

I captured the King and I off DishNetwork at 352x480 (MPEG2 with ATI AIW Radeon). It is Panavision, so I think it actually *is* 2.35:1 or something. The original cap looked like about that.

I DVD2AVI'd it, then used FITCD to get the AVS script. I then wanted to set borders in Avisynth, but was having a heck of a time getting it right. I did use the cropping in DVD2AVI on a 2nd try, but it didn't seem to modify the project at all, but I did learn that the movie itself was about 352x248 or something. To complicate matters, I am using Slab's idea of using a PAL resolution in the NTFS Film template (which WORKS without skipping!). Finally, I just loaded the AVS in VDub and used it's NULL TRANSFORM to add the borders. This seems to work. I got a 2:16 movie in something like 820MB (according to Windows Explorer). This with the original CQ70 template, I think.

Is there an *easy* was to add the borders with Avisynth?
Also, it gets confusing (to me anyway) on setting the different aspect ratios in TMPGEnc. Usually NTSC 525 line works on both for my full screen caps. But now we've messed it up with a 352x576 video size on the Video tab.... My King and I looks OK in test clips, but not sure the aspect is quite right throwing in the new size...

Thanks,
Geoff
Hi Geoff:

Isn't this a great "hair pulling" topic
This is what I did, as an example, from a captured clip.
I captured an anamorphic DVD "The Green Mile" via S-Video with my WinTV GO card.
I open the AVI with FitCD and set the input aspect to 1:1 640x480, which is the resolution I captured. I also checked "Anamorphic" on input, to get the correct borders added. FitCD calculated a resize of 352x360 for a destination of 352x480 and AddBorders(0,64,0,56). Now these black borders are "dirty", because they will not be black on your final mpeg. This is what you do:
I open the .avs with TMPEG, and I change the input aspect to center(352x360) from the information given above by FitCD. Go to clip and crop the image by clipping the top black and bottom black bars. The resul will be that you see the complete frame without black bars. Now encode and look at your output. It should be a perfect aspect ratio with nice and clean black bars.

kwag
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06-20-2002, 04:09 PM
kwag kwag is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by davelanton
Is there a way to set a border in Tmpgeng? Currently I capture in AVI I_O, edit, add filters, and frameserve with Virtual dub, and encode with Tmpgeng. If I do it in Virtualdub, what filter should I use to create the 'true black' borders?

edit: just saw gvarney's "null transform" idea, posted while I was writing my response. I love the fast replies on this board!
My previous post shoud apply to that!
It gives true black borders.

kwag
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  #7  
06-20-2002, 06:26 PM
davelanton davelanton is offline
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Quote:
Doh! I think you just answered my question about the ADD BORDERS part in another thread. I guess I could use the CLIP FRAME in TMPGEnc and also select MASK for the top and bottom, right??
I just tried this. YES it works!! I'm going to use this to clean up the top edge of my captures as well, instead of cropping in Virtualdub and dealing with an incorrect picture size.
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  #8  
06-27-2002, 11:34 AM
gvarney gvarney is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kwag
Quote:
Originally Posted by gvarney

Hey Kwag,
This is pretty much the same as what I have been trying to do the past couple of days. See this thread http://www.kvcd.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=38&start=30).

I captured the King and I off DishNetwork at 352x480 (MPEG2 with ATI AIW Radeon). It is Panavision, so I think it actually *is* 2.35:1 or something. The original cap looked like about that.

I DVD2AVI'd it, then used FITCD to get the AVS script. I then wanted to set borders in Avisynth, but was having a heck of a time getting it right. I did use the cropping in DVD2AVI on a 2nd try, but it didn't seem to modify the project at all, but I did learn that the movie itself was about 352x248 or something. To complicate matters, I am using Slab's idea of using a PAL resolution in the NTFS Film template (which WORKS without skipping!). Finally, I just loaded the AVS in VDub and used it's NULL TRANSFORM to add the borders. This seems to work. I got a 2:16 movie in something like 820MB (according to Windows Explorer). This with the original CQ70 template, I think.

Is there an *easy* was to add the borders with Avisynth?
Also, it gets confusing (to me anyway) on setting the different aspect ratios in TMPGEnc. Usually NTSC 525 line works on both for my full screen caps. But now we've messed it up with a 352x576 video size on the Video tab.... My King and I looks OK in test clips, but not sure the aspect is quite right throwing in the new size...

Thanks,
Geoff
Hi Geoff:

Isn't this a great "hair pulling" topic
This is what I did, as an example, from a captured clip.
I captured an anamorphic DVD "The Green Mile" via S-Video with my WinTV GO card.
I open the AVI with FitCD and set the input aspect to 1:1 640x480, which is the resolution I captured. I also checked "Anamorphic" on input, to get the correct borders added. FitCD calculated a resize of 352x360 for a destination of 352x480 and AddBorders(0,64,0,56). Now these black borders are "dirty", because they will not be black on your final mpeg. This is what you do:
I open the .avs with TMPEG, and I change the input aspect to center(352x360) from the information given above by FitCD. Go to clip and crop the image by clipping the top black and bottom black bars. The resul will be that you see the complete frame without black bars. Now encode and look at your output. It should be a perfect aspect ratio with nice and clean black bars.

kwag
OK, I am still confused, can you believe it?

This could get long, but let me take you through another one I'm trying to do. I am a little confused by some of your settings described above.

Here's what I've done:

I captured off DishNetwork Apocalypse Now Redux at 352x480 29.97fps MPEG2 4Mbps

I ran DVD2AVI. Here I can see this film is letterboxed. I used the CLIP tool to resize the picture. I saved the project.
1st question: Should I *not* clip the "borders"?

Opened project in FitCD.
2nd question: For your *capture* or the DVD of "The Green Mile" you chose 1:1 and anomorphic. What should I do for this capture? It seems like the "resize" that is calculated for this comes out to 228x480 or something weird.
I also selected to "format conversion" to get the output to 352x576 (1/2 DVD). (I'm using that trick for my Apex to play 23.97fps).
Saved the AVS (tried both anamorphic and not, 1:1 and *actual* capture size of 1/2 DVD).

Now, to TMPGenc:
3rd question: Since I have loaded the KVCD NTSC(Film) template but have changed the video size to 352x576, what adustments do I need to make in regard to aspect ratios, etc.?

Another thing that I am a little confused about is the CLIP FRAME and Center (custom size). Depending on what I did with FitCD (trying to remember this, not at home right now) I think I would get a "preview" in the CLIP FRAME that either had borders top and bottom or didn't. If it didn't, I couldn't add them. You stated above that you used a custom size of what FitCD told you. But...

4th question: if I have a full screen preview showing black borders top and bottom (which I can "overwrite" with the clip frame, then my aspect must be 352*576, right? But what does that do (576) to the aspect of the actual movie? It was capped in 352x480. If there are no borders showing (ie. just the 352*348 (that's what DVD2AVI had left after clipping), then how would I get that to center in a 352*576 screen and add the appropriate borders? (and, since the output is 352*576 instead of 352*480 would I need to scale the custom aspect (of the movie itself) up to 1.2 times or 352*418??) If I had been able to use the usual 480 vertical resolution the aspect part wouldn't seem to be as much of an issue.

Finally, can I encode only the actual movie and not the black bars, then have it display properly on my TV, in the center with proper aspect?

Now I've probably confused you too I just wanna get this stuff straight in my head so I can just capture, make project, make script, load, encode, be done with it. With full screen it is easier, but this letterboxing adds a new layer of confusion for me..

Thanks!

PS. I do still have some hair left...
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