I am trying cqmatic and calcumatic again and am wondering which audio setting I am supposed to use in the calcumatic application. Am I to put in the setting for my target file or am I to put in the source audio bitrate. If source audio bitrate is what the input is supposed to be, then what do I put when ithe source is 5.1 channel ac3? Would it be better to just encode the audio first then use it in my project and not worry about it?

You put the target bitrate there. How else could the application calculate the target bitrate for video?

By the way, the number of channels in the track doesn't determine the bitrate in any way.

ok. I also am wondering why it will not raise and lower the bitrate for video. I just ran a test run on the Final Cut and it was set for 80 minute cd in calcumatic. the result was: it just kept the bitrate I gave it and raised the cq level from 80 to 89.73. the movie was going to encode (again) to around 600 mb. I have to raise the bitrate up to 700 min and 3000 max and raise cq to 100 to get around 750 at least with this film. "I know from experience dude"(in my best chris farley voice).

Post your script and settings.

Calcumatic will only calculate the average bitrate for the video based on the values you feed in it. The average bitrate will remain the same whether the movie compresses extremely well or very badly. It's just a simple calculator, CQMatic is the one doing the predicting etc.

ok here goes. I don't use a script. I use only tmpgenc. I am using 352x240 ntsc plus template for kvcd. I have it set for 352x240 reolution. I have video arrange method set for center (custom) 352x144 for this particular film. I have bitrate set for the film at min 700 and max at 3000 i have cq set for 100% I also have inverse telecine set. I am 36% done with my encode and my file is 265mb. With this I can predict pretty closely that my final size will be very close to 736 mb if I continue with the encode as is. I would have to raise the bitrate higher to get any more out of it. I would like to be able to get all my encodes up to 812 mb. I have had to suffice with getting them between 700-812 without gettin into re-encoding many times. Usually I will get to 10 percent and get a pretty good guess as to what the final size will be and then judge from there what to set my bitrate and cq at to get within the 700-812 area. I have gotten pretty good at that but i was hoping cqmatic and calcumatic would be able to get me closer. It looks like a big NO to that though.

I would also like to find a reason for using a script. I have found no reason to frameserve at all and would like to learn more about it so maybe i can understand the reasoning. I have been able to get great picture and sound and size of picture with only the tools that tmpgenc has to offer. I have been able to load every movie source I can think of at it and it encodes beautifully. Is it more colorful or clearer thatn what I am getting? I would like to see a difference so I can judge for myself whether it is worth it to switch over to avisynth. Does the encoding process take less time? I am encoding movies with an average of 1 1/2 -2 hours for 90 minute movie. Is that longer than with avisynth?

In you particcular case, CQMatic can't do anything for you : you use a CQ about 100 and don't reach 800 mB, that means taht your video don't need so much space and can be fitted in 500 MB with excelletn quality.
Using CQ=100 just produce a bigger filesize than CQ=90 with no real enhancement in the quality. For this reason, CQMatic do not predict above CQ=90.

You should use a bigger resolution for that movie, you will have a lot better result AND you will fit your 800 MB.

I know that calcumatic is not the one doing the predicting. I was trying to find out why cqmatic would not raise and lower bitrate to when that is needed to reach a final size of 800 mb. It only takes the bitrate that you have already put in tmpgenc and tries to get a cq value that works for it. It happens to not work for this film I am trying. The bitrate needs to be raised in tmpgenc to higher level. hell, cqmatic gave it a cq level of 89.73 when i had it set to min 500 and max 2500 bitrate. which was only bringing the final size up to around 600 mb.

thanx phil I will try a higher resolution.

You should definitely use a script, at least for resizing purposes. TMPGEnc's resizing engine is not good at all. You can use the GripCrop, GripSize and GripBorders filters to do the math for you.

With Avisynth scripts you can also denoise the video, DVDs are usually not very clean.

Look here phuquehair: http://www.kvcd.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3483

-kwag

Because, no offense, this is stupid. Your video is too short to need a whole disc. There is no interest in filling the empty part with useless bits that won't give more quality to the result. You already encode at the maximum quality !

That is exatly what I told you : CQMatic do not go above 90 because there is no gain between 90 and 100.

The purpose is not to fit 800 MB, the purpose it to have the best quality and stay under 800 MB. Here the best quality is obtained with 600. There is no better quality than 'best" one

Ok. Now, I know this to be false entirely. I can perfectly size any video to the exact size of the source video or to size i choose with video arrange method using center (custom size) setting. If this is the only reason to use a script then i have absolutely no use for it. i was hoping for more of a quality boost or something. I have found that when using this setting you can change the width from 320 to 352, if using 352x240 resolution, and then change the height to whatever fits your video. This can be tested by clicking file/preview and comparing the preview of encode with source, being played in WMP (corporate skin). This skin is best because it has a very tiny border area around the video that is much like the preview window of tmpgenc. Just stretch wmp window to fit the width of the preview window. If the video in preview does not look like the video in wmp then adjust height in video arrange method accordingly. It may take a few tries to get the videos exactly the same but, this process will take no longer than a couple minutes at most. You will find that there are some videos that can be set right to 352x240 and some as low as 352x144. Do not confuse video arrange method with resolution, as they are not the same thing at all.
Phil, I caught on to what you said after I already made that post you mentioned. Hence, me saying I would try a higher resolution.
Karl, I have no idea what any of that stuff means. all that stuff hit me in the face and knocked me off my already partly broken, piece of crap, chair. Linear, STMedian, radius, temporal filter...etc. Man I guess I need to do a lot more reading on this stuff. It is all greek to me and I don't know any greek.

Of course the program can resize, I didn't say that. I say that the program uses some extra crappy resizing method like "nearest neighbour", and using that for going from 720x480 to 320x240 is not a good idea. You're much better off with Lanczos, it will result in a sharper and more detailed result.

Ok, that's what I am looking for. sharpness and detailed. colorful these are the things I want to improve on if at all possible. I really don't understand what I do with the scripts though. Do I just save as an avs then load the script into avisynth somehow and then somehow load the video into the script also then use the script saved as the source in tmpgenc? It is all so wierd to me how this is done and I think I tried to run a simple script I made myself and it looked like tmpgenc was gopnna take like 7 hours to encode the video when i could load it by itself and have it encode in 2 hours. I guess I need a course in doing this cuz I looked on the doom9 forum and cannot make heads or tails out of it.

A script is basically :
- a instruction to load the source (it can be avi or or DVD, but you have to use a intermediate step for that - DVD2AVI).
- some lines for the resize
- some lines (optional) for filtering

The script is used as source in tmpgenc, and it will call avisynth by itself. Don't worry about how this works, finally thi s is not important.

I guess this script was not so simple. And you also have to lower the directshow priority in tmpgenc. Directshow must be the higher prio ! RunAVS has to be the most prioritary one.

You should read all from the start, you will see it is not so difficult :
http://www.avisynth.org/index.php?page=YourFirstScript