Good ideas. I will work on them next week-end as I have a new work and lesser time.


Yes. You can check it easily once finished the sample(s) encoding, do change your audio values, and all other values will change at same time.
Of course, I think across next week end, I will end to fix all this issues.


I will change it also. It is the easier thing Im going to do.

Take your time

Hi,

First of all, I know what is drag&drop, and a windows interface ! :P

The problem is that I can't add more than one file to procalc: it always sustitute the only file I have in the list...

And one small bug: if you change a path (hc path for example), i don't take effect until you restart procalc.

Thanks,
Fabrice

I added my 8 files in a single drag'n'drop operation and that works.
As there is no "clear the list" button, I think that Luis do not think about adding the files one by one.

But I drop the app because of some results I found weird. For instance in full mode I dont understand why a movie that is twice long as the other should have a bitrate doubled ! There is really no reason to do that.
I have to verify more closely the "complexity" mode but I will do that with fewer movies.

In fact there is and you know why there is phil .
Let's think of 2 movies.
Movie A - 120mins. mainly very low action movie with a lot of long dark scenes.
Movie B - 90mins. mainly very high action movie with a lot of very bright scenes.
It is reasonable to say that movie B will require more space on the DVD to have the same visual quality of movie A.
So maybe you could end up with ~2.8Gb (minus audio size) for movie B and ~1.5Gb (minus audio size) for movie A.
I have seen this happen with a couple of movies of mine.
And visually compared, they seem to have the same visual quality when I watch them on a 16:9 32" TV.

__________________
Rui

The problem is that you do not understand what really happens.

I have two movies that have the SAME complexity (pure theory).
One is 120 minutes, the other is 60.

Let imagine that in pure "time" mode, the avg bitrate should be 3000.
With this, movie1 will use 2 GB, movie2 will use 1GB (still pure theory, this numbers are not the real ones).

In pure complexity mode, the two movies will receive also 3000 as their complexity is the same. File size is still 2GB and 1GB.

In "full" mode, ASPA will allocate a bitrate to movie1 that is the double than the one for movie2 !!
(4000 and 2000).

With this movie1 will take 2.5GB and movie1 will have only 0.5.
But they still have the same complexity. Movie2 has no reason to be handicaped like this.

This is what happens to my movies yesterday : 1 episode is 1h23, all 7 others are 42 minutes. Complexity is quite the same (let say that is 1 is the complexity of first episode, complexity for others is in the range 0.8-1.2).

• Average bitate in time mode was 1370.
  In complexity mode, all goes from 1100 to 1500.
  In full mode, first episode receive a bitrate of 2001 and all the others had less than 1000.

Do you still think that is normal ?

According me, "full mode" is a bad idea, or there is something badly implemented into it.

And, and that is what complexity mode will do. Length of the movie don't have to enter into consideration.

Putting in more straight words the question is : why a 2 hours movies should receive a better bitrate than a 1 hour movie ?
This can be easily tested :
Take a movie, create these scipts :
Enter this into ASPA and see what is found in each mode.

Now do a calc with three time the first script. The result on the DVD of script1 + script2 or 3x script1 is the same. But ASPA won't give you at all the same quality to your two DVDs.

Phil,

could you test my spreadsheet with your samples? Encode a 3% sample of each episode with SelectRangeEvery(500,15) and fill in the values. Number of frames means the total number of frames in the clip. You need to fill in that, the avg bitrate of the sample and the audio bitrate.

http://www.saunalahti.fi/sainki/kbps_eng_multi.xls

(Of course, you can test your theory as well )

I'm currently doing the test I suggested in my previous post, and I will do yours just after (or this evening).

Note: HC reports BIG peaks in its window. Can we trust that ? Currently it shows 18195 as max !!!

And the result of my suggested test are :

Aspa results with script1 + script 2 (movie - minutes - seconds - avg bitrate)
---------------------------------------
Full mode :
script1 40 59 2465 (can you imagine the quality ?)
script2 81 59 5545

Time mode :
script1 40 59 4519
script2 81 59 4519

Complexity mode :
script1 40 59 4394
script2 81 59 4581 (quite the same as time mode and both values near the same -> that is normal as both movies have the same complexity but the samples are not exactly the same)

Aspa results with 3 times script1 (movie - minutes - seconds - avg bitrate)
---------------------------------------
Full mode :
script1 40 59 4519
script1 40 59 4519
script1 40 59 4519

Time mode :
script1 40 59 4519
script1 40 59 4519
script1 40 59 4519

Complexity mode :
script1 40 59 4519
script1 40 59 4519
script1 40 59 4519

(as you can see, the formula used by Luis are correct -> all the figures are the same, this is not an error )

If CQ_maxbitrate is the mode that is being used, it's a bug. The encoder should automatically raise the quantizer if the set max bitrate is exceeded. CQ_maxbitrate should be used anyway because the avg bitrate of the sample might not be correct otherwise.

Yep, now I see what you mean .
Could you check Boulder's spreadsheet too?
That's what I've been using and it hasn't failed me once.
Just so that we can compare both methods.
That is, if you have time and a bit of patience .
Cheers

__________________
Rui

I never dig into HC and I use the ini modifued by luis :
I guess the cq_maxbitrate mode is used ?

Beside this, does "SelectRangeEvery(500,15)" select exactly a 3% sample length for a NTSC 29.97 source ? or is it only for PAL source ?

CQ_maxbitrate does not compensate bitrate allocation when it has to suddenly raise the Q for keeping the maxbitrate.
So if you would encode the same movie clip in regular CQ and with CQ_maxbitrate, both should end up with the same avg bitrate.
And that doesn't happen because CQ_max does not use the spare bits where there is no need for more bitrate.
Hank has that in his to-do list but I guess he is now focused on compliancy and he will implement such features later on.
So regular CQ is sharper on the avg bitrate needed but unfortunately it doesn't take care of spikes.
That's why we have to use CQ_max.
Cheers

__________________
Rui

No, a CQ mode without max bitrate capping is being used - there is a space before *cq_maxbitrate which disables it.
Just tested, it does. Of course, it's not exactly 3% but very close to it. If you use a GOP length of 12 frames, it would be (400,12) I think as 1% is (1200,12).

Could you post a link where Hank says that? The pdf docs state that the quantizer is raised temporarily if max_bitrate is met. I've never seen CQ go above the max but very, very close to it. In fact, for DVD compliance, the max bitrate must be respected all the time.

Sorry Boulder I had a typo.
Please re-read my edited post.
Cheers

__________________
Rui

Okay. But now I don't understand your speadsheat : am I supposed to calculate the average bitrate of the encoded sample by myself ?
We use Excel and it should do that better than me. Currently I can give you the time, fps and filesize of the sample, that should be enought . Can you do the calc yourself with these informations ? I don't have time for understanding your formulas now (i'm at the office )

Just tell me what data you need.

Exactly, and that's why CQ_maxbitrate should be used when encoding the samples as well. In fact, the settings should be as close as possible to the actual encoding.

I use Bitrate Viewer or MPEG Stream Analyzer to get the avg bitrate. The method doesn't matter as long as you use the same way for all files that end up on the same DVD. Automatic calculating in Excel doesn't work because the samples aren't exactly 1%, 3% etc.
Yes, bring them on

I don't have either of them on my PC. Probably on my home's one. This will have to wait for tonight.

Hum... length in minute of the sample, the fps and the filesize, that's all what Excell needs. Having the length is as easy as opening the encoded movie in a media player

If you have time :

script1 :
total length : 40'59" (73704 frames)
sample length : 1'14" (2219 frames)
fps : 29.97

sample filesize : 54.145 MB

script2 :
total length : 81'59" (147408 frames)
sample length : 2'27" (4424 frames)
fps : 29.97

sample filesize : 111.776 MB
(with a peak up to 31450 in HC )

For audio bitrate I used 384 in my test with ASPA.