You need MaskTools v1.5.8.

Thanks, had wrong version. Still testing.

I would still like to get more detail in the encode. Being a very high quality screensaver, Marine Aquarium really has a lot of detail. I realize that the encoded 720x480 will lose a lot from the 1280x1024 capture, but want to get it as sharp and detailed as possible. Using seesaw seems to help a little, but the final still looks more blurred than I would like. Spline36Resize() doesn't seem to have any effect.

Thanks again. :D

Increase the amount of sharpening in SeeSaw, there's not much else you can do.

Am working with HC now. How is best way to handle avi audio with my concatenated a++b++c,etc files?

Open the complete script in VDub and save the audio as WAV.

Thanks. Haven't worked with avi's for a long time. I have found that Tmpgenc nor HC like too many concatenated files. Either can handle a dozen or so, but bomb out with too many. I wish Fraps would allow larger than 4GB files! But the screensavers to DVD have turned out very good - even as anamophic widescreen on my new Christmas 42" plasma! :D

It could be that it's rather an Avisynth issue because the encoder should see the avs script as one video file even if multiple video files are loaded in it. You could try using tritical's latest v2.5.7 build, download here : http://www.missouri.edu/~kes25c/Avisynth_251106.exe . They are very stable and need less memory.

Yes, surely a memory problem. I already did an encode with 99 pieces of videos merged with "+" in a single script. But it claimed 2GB in memory to work.

(note : all pieces were loaded without audio).

Three questions:

:?: HC with AutoGOP shows GOP 15, even with "Make DVD Compliant". Shouldn't this be 18 for NTSC?

:?: What criteria should I use in choosing between HC 1-pass and 2-pass?

:?: What is difference between "++" and "+"?

18 is the max allowed, but 15 is as compliant as 18 :).
Hank probably not adapt the AutoGOP computing to the nature (PAL/NTSC) of the encoding.

The time you want to spend on the prediction, the subjective importance for you of having a disc 100% full and more other the acceptance you have about the quality obtained. I did not compare 2-pass and 1-pass in HC so I trust Boulder, but generally encoders have difficulty to obtain the same quality in both mode, the Quality based being the better.

RTFM :)
(if your encode don't have audio, the two are the same).

I'm not sure how the gop length goes with NTSC stuff. If you do a pulldown after (or during) the encode, you should probably use 12 frames. If not, 18 is the way to go. 15 is the maximum for PAL. EDIT: if you don't use pulldown, enable autogop, otherwise it might be safest to use 12-2 gops although autogop should work as well. Some people have complained that it doesn't always work but I don't know about that as I don't deal with NTSC encodes.

What do you mean by criteria? Whenever I don't need to worry about the filesize, I use the constant quant mode at q2, vbv check enabled. Whenever I need a specific filesize, I do a 2-pass encode.

See the difference between + and ++ in the Avisynth docs, AlignedSplice and UnAlignedSplice are the same things.

Thanks, guys. You always have the answers.

After updating to Fraps 2.8.2, having more memory problems than ever. There's problems loading the Fraps codec into memory during processing with HCenc, Tmpgenc or VirtualDub. I'm in contact with Fraps trying to get this corrected.

My only "work arround" seems to be to load the avi into Vdub and save as avi with another (non-Fraps) codec, then using this file to encode.

:?: Is (uncompressed RGB) the best Vdub compression choice for this?

I don't care about the file size, as I'm encoding to dvd, just want to change from Fraps codec and keep maximum quality.

*If you don't care about size, then uncomrpessed is always the best choice. Now I wonder about the RGB. May be a YUY2 codec would be better. I would take huffman because I used to it, it is a lossless codec that supports both RGB and YUY2.

Huffyuv v2.1.1 :?:

Also, how is best way to trim this thing for anamorphic? (16x9)

[img=http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/508/fitcdus1.th.jpg]

Yes :o
Turning a 4:3 into 16:9 ? I always considered that there is no "best way". For me there is no way at all.

The aspect ratio of the screensaver is 16:9, but Fraps only allows full screen capture. My LCD monitor is 4:3, so I capture top and bottom borders. I was trying to figure out how to trim the top and bottom of the capture and fix to automatically start as 16:9 widescreen on my widescreen HDTV without encoding large borders and "zooming" on the TV.

In Tmpgenc clip, I show 92 pixels top and bottom.

[quote="nicksteel"]The aspect ratio of the screensaver is 16:9, but Fraps only allows full screen capture. My LCD monitor is 4:3, so I capture top and bottom borders. I was trying to figure out how to trim the top and bottom of the capture and fix to automatically start as 16:9 widescreen on my widescreen HDTV without encoding large borders and "zooming" on the TV.

Then you should use Paranoia insteed of FitCD. It has a "autocrop" feature to detect the black borders and trim them.

... but as you know the border size, just put these values in FitCD (the 2 fields) above and under the rectangle representing your source on the left
+ check "anamorphic" for the destination on the right.