Files still too big!
 

After many scores of hours encoding, I finally got one 103 minute movie on a CD. I had to switch to 2-pass VBR with an average bitrate of 913 fps!! I also switched it to 352x240.

It looks *okay* but it's quite blocky.

Where are these success stories? Where can I see that sample of the Matrix to know if that's as good as I can get?

Should I turn off "Full Screen" when I change the vertical resolution?

I started testing the new 704x480 templates but it wanted to take over 30 hours to do it. (Athlon 800 128MB!)

Any pointers?

Re: Files still too big!
 

Here's a matrix 704x480 high action sample, encoded with the KVCDx2 1-CD template, as is.
http://ns1.shidima.com/kwag/matrix.mpg
At that quality, I put the complete movie in one 80 minute CD-R.

This is the AviSynth script I used, as generated by FitCD:

LoadPlugin("C:\encoding\MPEG2DEC.dll")
mpeg2source("F:\THE_MATRIX_16X9LB_N_AMERICA\VIDEO_ TS\matrix.d2v")
BilinearResize(704,352,0,0,720,480)
#TemporalSmoother(2,2)
AddBorders(0,64,0,64)
#Trim(0,196155).FadeOut(150)
#ResampleAudio(44100) # CCE 2.5 'crashfix' for Athlons
#== If you want this 'fix' permanently, edit the INI-file:
#== Under [AVSscript] set the CCEcrashfix-option to
#== CCEcrashfix=1

kwag

BLOCKS blocks blocks.
 

I did a 13 hour encode, and actually got the 103 min to about 420 MB! 8O But, the thing is terribly blocky.

I redid it with CQ at 70 (it was 50 before) and got pretty much identical results, but 530 MB with more jumpiness. Oh yeah, I turned off noise reduction to get the encode down to 4 hours.

Could it be the source? I captured from VHS, but I'd like to at least get as good as the VHS quality again...

I'm going to re-encode and soften the block noise, but this is really eating a lot of my time...

I have the RCA 5240P, could that be an issue?

Re: BLOCKS blocks blocks.
 

Hi BoxOfSnoo:
If you captured a movie from VHS, did you do IVTC, to return the movie to it's original 24fps?

kwag

IVTC
 

Nope, IVTC makes everything worse. Very jumpy.

I can only capture at 352x240 (or 288) with my AIMS Lab VHX, but my DVD player doesn't like x480 anyways.

Re: IVTC
 

If your source is a VHS movie, it was shot at 24fps. You have to IVTC, otherwise you're loosing quality and increasing your file size.
You should IVTS with an AviSynth script using the decomb.dll.

Read here:
http://www.inmatrix.com/articles/ivtcsynth1.shtml

kwag

AviSynth
 

Thanks, I'll have to try that. Not that I really understand AviSynth... what does IVTC do in AVS that TMPGEnc can't do?

The IVTC in AviSynth runs rings around TMPEG's internal IVTC :o
It does IVTC real-time. TMPEG has to read the complete mpeg to decide what to do.

kwag

D'oh! Found the blocks
 

I found the source of blockiness, it's the SOURCE AVI. However, this leads to a success story of easily fitting Toy Story 2 on a CD, in fact it comes out to about 530 MB at CQ 70. I had it at CQ 50 before and not a real noticeable difference, except of course 200 missing MB. :D

I didn't try the *full* movie with credits and extras, because the original problem was low disk space, so the source was unwisely compressed, etc. etc.

Thanks for your help & suggestions, Kwag, you've been a great help!