To use, do I:

Rip with Decrypter?
Use AVS script with Telecide,Decimate,Filters as usual?
What do I load into VDub?

I know how to set up in VDub, just don't understand how to create the source.

@ Nick

No hard to treat captures now, please! We are not at that step in the state here right now.

Just do a test on a clear and very good NTSC DVD Source using "forced Film" in DVD2Avi to obtain a 23.976 fps stream and by this generating a simple script WITHOUT telecining etc. further explanations you see in some posts more above (read the thread from the beginning to the end).

Ok, just to be complete:
Tmpgenc gave me a SSIM of 81.33. Higher than CCE, but still below FFVFW. Maybe CCE got so low score because somehow softs the picture, making it different from the original.

I encoded my sample from the Lawnmover man using the noise parameters Kwag suggested on FFVFW. The file got real big, jumping from 33.594kb (without noise) to 67.112kb (more than double). Quality is better, but at this cost, I think it's not worth it.

Try to play with blockbuster() as yesterday (ok, I was working with that older build of ffvfw) I figured out that it cooperates very good with the ffvfw engine.

Find the optimal settings in blockbuster that stairs won't appear after encoding and also that most of the added noise will be quantisized off during encoding, means filtered out! By this my resulted filesizes did only grew up by ca. 1-2%.

As I also see in Kwags and mine samples, that ffvfw engine produces excellent edges/Details, but gots its problems in areas mention by me above. And thats a quatisation problem. We could say "ok, so the encoder does allocade more! quantisation to fast/complex parts within a whole frame, where on the other hand he provides less quant. on low movement picture parts within a frame" (which you also can set in CCE), but thats not logic as plain surfaces and dark/dark gray plain surfaces do sometimes also suffer. And thats I think the "secret" of that engine as it allocades quantisation in a different way as TmpgEnc or CCE ... so it could be just a matter of priority of quantisation where every encoder gots its on specs. and ways

When I attempt to load simple avs for force film output from DVD2AVI:

## DLL Section ##
LoadPlugin("c:\video\dlls\MPEG2DEC3.dll")
mpeg2source("h:\ff\sw2.d2v"

I get "Couldn't locate decompressor for format 'YV12' (unknown)" from VirtualDub.

Should I download a YV12 codec and install? Where can I find this?

If I load a single VOB rip, it seems ok. Only when I try to use AVS script.

Also, as the source is 16:9, I am setting to this in ffmpeg. The DVD is anamorphic. Should I be setting to 16:9 and is there anything else I should be doing?

With DVDPatcher, what settings should I use?

You never did any DVD before ?
Yes you need a YV12 codec and Xvid is a perfect one. So even if you do not plan to do any xvid in your life you must install it.

Even you never did reencode a DVD, your PVR250 mpeg2 captures also come out as YUV 4:2:0 means YV12 to avisynth, and thats what I also don't understand like Phil above!
Sorry, but first this is NOT ffmpeg, we're talking here about ffvfw. And you should use Moviestacker as THAT one is responsable for correct 16:9 or 4:3 resized outputs via Avisynth code.

By using Moviestacker you will open a moviestacker generated avs in Virtualdub and safe there (as AVI) the new mpg by using fast recompress and the ffvfwmpeg4 codec at mpeg2 settings and data output to external mpeg file only. As explained some postings more above.

As explained by Kwag, you only use DVD patcher AFTER demuxing that outputted mpg to m2v to set a DVD compilant max bitrate in the header so the DVD auth. appl. does accept the stream.

Exactly
And BTW, you might want to drop the noise value I suggested above by one or two points, to 7 or 6. I encoded the complete movie without noise and with noise, and without noise the video stream is 1,268,647KB and with a noise value of 8 it's 1,840,642KB. But the quality is AWESOME with noise Yep. Visually, ffvfw's encode is the most pleasing picture
And again, the motion estimation and colors of this CODEC are just EXCELENT

-kwag

Hi Vmesquita,

Drop the noise to 6 or 7.
But I'm sure that when you encode the complete movie, the final size will not be twice the size of the same encode, without noise applied

-kwag

YEP! But there's still the problem that most of the participants do not match your quality of quantisation even when using same settings, well as said, two possibilities could be responsable for this:

1. Update to the newest build of ffvfw needed (and that I'll figure out this evening)

2. For a good quantisation the weather is too cold in europe now compared to Puerto Rico or Brazil

@incredible,

I retract from my previous comment about 3 B frames being better quality that 2.
The last sample screenshots, and the Sample #3, were encode with 2 B frames.
With 3 B frames, I can see more visible DCT blocks.
So it seems 2 B frames (IBBP) is the best overall quality setting for this CODEC.

-kwag

LOL

Of course I do DVD and KVCD (using a lot of your advice!). I have never before installed Xvid and have had no YV12 problems using any avs script going into TMPGEnc. I just downloaded Xvid and installed. Now VirtualDub will accept the AVS. Thanks.

Incredible, I think this is the correct thread and I'm not talking about MovieStacker. Thanks.

I do totally agree afterwards as my samples yesterday showed best quality and compression when using 2 B Frames. Or my outputs do change every day in their behaviour

Or we should do try using 1 Bframe as it to me seems that in fast moving scenes I frames in some cases come out smooth and detailed where the following B Frames (sometimes) in these cases got Blocks.
This normally stays for a very hard Non-Intra quantisation of B and P Frames! So we also should figure out those B and P Frame parameters

Here are a couple of screenshots from my previous encode. One fast action scene, and one dark scene.




-kwag

This encoder is sweet. I did an encode of a PVR-250 cap of Earth Final Conflict (from the SciFi channel) and the result was the best looking encode I have ever done, including DVD backups. I used Kwag's settings with 2 B frames and the MA script using lanczosresize at 704 x 480 with 2 blocks of overscan. I was shooting for a one cd encode and ended up with a 550 Mb .m2v even at 100 quality. I have been trying for a long time to get acceptable quality from STNG caps from Spike TV channel but the noise from this channel and the complexity of this show made me give up after a long time of trying all sorts of things. I was so impressed with the quality from the SciFi channel (which is a very clean source) I figured I would see what ffvfw could do with a noisy source. I know this might be hard to believe but the quality of the STNG was actually better than the EFC encode The only problem was the file size was over so I am reencoding it by adjusting the Quality to 95 based on sampler results. This should result in a slightly undersized file but I think greater accuracy can be gained by adjusting the quantisizers as well. This encoder seems to really like Kwag's MA script.

__________________
-Dano

Hi Dano,

How about simply running ReJig (Requant) on your .m2v
Then, you don't have to re-encode
Worth a try Yes it does, and even without the MA script, just with the notch the matrix, it seems to compress very well
BTW, forgot to say that the last sample (Sample #3) and the last screenshots (taken from that encode), were encoded without the MA script

-kwag

How did you turn on "Enable Image Processing"?

I downloaded and installed ffdshow-20020617.exe from the site given on the "Input" screen, but still cannot enable.

@nicksteel
Visit this thread and grab the latest ffvfw and ffdshow:
http://www.kvcd.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8824