Basic questions about Procoder encoding
Quoting these from my other topic:
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Question 1.
At that bitrate, of course, the MPEG is out of spec for DVD-Video, and probably won't play in most any machine. Some players probably can, but not too many. That concern aside, a range of 15,000kbps is a good step, but also consider lowering the GOP (temporal compression) to either all I frames, or IP or IBP. That will help some, too, in keeping it "semi-uncompressed" (or "semi-lossless"). Technically compressed, yes, but not "compressed" as most people think (artifacts, etc). When burning to DVD, remember to use UDF mode. And if I were you, I would keep valuable videos not only burned to disc, but go get yourself a 1.5TB hard drive for about $100-125. I see USB2, Firewire and eSATA drives regularly in that range. I've been posting them a lot in our Daily Shopping Deals forum. As far as easiest way to cut the output file, guess -- with the help of a calculator. You have 60 minutes in an hour, and just over 4.3GB available on the disc. So if a file is 50GB in size, and 150 minutes in size -- just as an example -- then you'd have a simple algebra equation (the only time I ever use it, I wish I could tell my 8th grade teacher!). Looking at 50 over 100 equaling 4.3 over x. 50x = 645, and 645 divided by x (50) is going to be 12.9. So you would fit about 13 minutes to disc. Maybe have to round down to 12 minutes. 150 min divided by 12 min gives you 12.5 new files (each fitting on a 4.3GB DVD), so looking at 13 DVDs for that encode, split across discs. I know -- eww, yuck, math. Anyway, that's the easy way. On a related note, when it comes time to design things, you'll NEVER find me searching Google for some silly template. I pull out my ruler and a calculator, and do it myself in Photoshop or InDesign (formerly Quark Xpress or PageMaker). Question 2. Assuming you just want to watch the videos for an in-motion A/B test, then all you need to do it get the freeware player VLC. Either from the menu, or right-clicking while the video is playing, pick one of the deinterlace modes. "X" or "Mean" often work well. If you want to watch it interlaced, select none. If you want to create still image screencaps, then you'll want to go the VirtualDub route. Use version 1.8, and then run the Deinterlace Area-Based on it, and find a semi-still frame. You can download my full VirtualDub setup (which includes that filter) on the forum, using the link. Question 3. I forget what capture card you're using. ATI AIW, right? Almost ALL capture cards and DVD recorders do top-field capturing. Only DV input and some oddball cards do bottom-field. I don't know that you can ever avoid trial and error, but I try to help reduce the mystery and guessing! Also... Answering these questions takes a lot of time, and is surely more valuable than a magazine would have been. I recently picked up a copy of PC World and it was $11. Yikes! Maybe consider upgrading yourself to Premium Member status? That helps cover the time and costs associated with the site, and you're guaranteed to get in-depth help on a pretty quick turn-around. I've probably gone a little more in-depth than I should have, for Free Members, from time to time. Now would be one of those. Slow morning is to blame. Under normal or heavy times, it may not be as quick or detailed, preference given to Premium Member questions. In addition to Premium Membership and donations, shopping from our affiliates is another great way to support the site. Same prices for you, but we get a tiny % of the profits instead of the store keeping it all for themselves. Trying to budget for some upgrade hardware and software that powers the site right now. Anyway.. Hope all this helps! :) |
I'm still looking for an AIW, but eventually I might stick to the easycap if the AIW turns out to perform the same as my current ASUS version of the card (I still suspect it has some quirks). My caps until now have also been done through the easycap in vdub, problem being that a device like this might be oddball enough to actually cap in bff so I can't be a 100% sure.
Yes, you're right, I do realize I have been taking up quite some of your time here. I just hope the stuff you helped me out with will prove useful for others as well. Besides that, I should tell you that I have of course been considering to donate for some time, but I'm postponing it until I got a better overview of what's left of my budget. When it comes to favorable US-shopping deals, I'm kind restricted by the whole additional VAT and shipping costs involved (not surprisingly, considering the EU-market prices, our VAT tarives in particular don't make life easy for importers), so in most cases I'd probably end up spending more money than necessary on otherwise good deals. Anyway I'll see if I can contact you soon about a way to save some money/donate at the same time in PM. I have to look deeper into my required expenses for hdd's first ;) |
Very true, tariffs can kill a deal. I do get a number of Amazon UK deals, however. Posted some today, actually.
I have what I believe is a generic version of the EasyCAP, and it's TFF. It captures pretty well in Pinnacle Studio 12. I should try VirtualDub sometime. It's purely for testing, not something I'd use for work or personal. |
I see, thanks, my guess is all easycaps are the same, but just come rebundled with fancy sounding software.
(Oh wait, I only just found out premium mship requires as little as 10 bucks currently. Then never mind the above, I'll upgrade soon :) ) |
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MP@ML (main profile at main level) MPEG-2 encoding has a bitrate ceiling of 15Mbps. If you want more, you have to change to a higher level, such as MP@HL.
Beyond 10Mbps, there's not much to be gained, you'll have passed the point of diminishing returns UNLESS you start to remove the temporal compression (lowering GOP frames). But then as you creep towards 15Mbps, you again start to approach that point of diminishing returns. I actually dumped Procoder as my encoder of choice, after MainConcept 1.5 came out. I've since converted entirely to MainConcept Reference. At some point, all you do is bloat filesize. For a datarate as high as 20Mbps, you may as well just opt for HuffYUV compression. |
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