Be carrefull to not mistaken ffdshow for ffvfw. The fist one is a directshow filter (used for playing only) and fir sure you won't do any encoding with that

Hi Karl,

I gave it a shot, but this time using a different video, a XVid documentary. I'll try to check if sampler() prediction is working with FFVFW. My target is 6.4Mb.
Using max quantisizer 25 and 2 B-Frames Quality 100:
No noise gave me 6.2 Mb
Luminance Noise Strenght 6: 6.3 Mb
Luminance Noise Strenght 7: 6.7 Mb
Luminance Noise Strenght 8: 7.2 Mb
The growing is not linear, but it's didn't get as big as my last try with the LawnMover Man. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the Lawnmover man DVD is very noisy...
I'll encode using Luminance Noise Strenght 7 (don't mind overburning if needed ) and let you know if prediction worked as it should.

Hey Phil, ffdshow filters can be used for encoding in ffvfw. You need to install one of the more recent builds of ffdshow and select "Enable Image Processing" in ffvfw. This only affects ffdshow encoding options, if you open the decoding options in the configuration dialog from ffdshow you will see that none of the changes you make in ffvfw are there. As a matter of fact there is an entry in VirtualVCR for "ffdshow encoder", separate from ffvfw.

__________________
-Dano

Prediction went way off...
I needed a sample of 6.4 Mb. Used a 6.7 Mb, expecting the full documetary to be 600 Mb. I ended up with a 491 Mb file. I don't know if this has to do with the fact that the documentary is very compressible (lots of almost static people talking in front of a static background in most of it), but maybe we need new prediction methods...

EDIT: Prediction is Working, read my next post!

Or simply, no prediction at all
Encoding as constant quality ( just like the Panasonic DMR machines do), where it's guaranteed X quality on X space.
That's the way I'm doing it, and for example, I'm currently burning a KDVD which contains Red Planet (107 minutes) and Count of Monte Cristo (127) minutes, and I had 1.4GB of free space left, enough for one more movie
But I just had to burn this two movies, just to see some parts on my HDTV, and see how they look
The way I see it, with wide screen movies, we can easily fit three 2 hour movies on a DVD with full DVD quality. And this is better quality than what we got with TMPEG doing KDVD with a MAX bitrate of 5,000Kbps.
I see peaks of 7,000+ Kbps on the Count of Monte Cristo movie (where I added the noise). Still within the DVD specifications.
This can only get better

I can't get enough of this encoder

-kwag

Well, I am not sure if I understood, but there's still no way to know if any three movies combo will fit, right? I understand that you're saying that in your tests till now this have been happening, but I don't get how this can work since compressibility varies from one movie to another...

I am, like you, really impressed by the quality of this encoder. The only thing missing is the ability to control bitrates... Or maybe it's the freedom to use any bitrate that makes it so good... Who knows

EDIT: The documentary encode was done at the speed 0.36 realtime (took 2:30 to encode a 56 min documentary). I tried to encode the first 10% of it using CCE and went up to 0.47 realtime. I guess the result I had previously is because CCE starts slow and gets faster with time, since I was encoding a small sample it never got faster enough. Anyway, in my machine, CCE is only 30% faster than FFVFW with noise actived. But FFVFW seems to produce same or better quality and it's free.

EDIT2:Preditcion is working! I made a really great confusion! My target, with sound, was 600 Mb! The video was supposed to be 517 Mb, so 491 Mb is good considering that it's a very compressible matherial! That's great!

Here are my experiences with this encoder. I made a script with resize (704x576), temporalsoften, undot, stmedianfilter and mergechroma(blur(1.5)).

Refering to encoding time and file size:

Encoder - Time - File Size
ffvfw - 2:06 - 5842 -> (kwag's parameters, gop 15)
ffvfw (blockb)- NA - 5882 -> (method="noise",detail_min=1,detail_max=10,varianc e=0.3,seed=5623)
ffvfw (noise 5)- NA - 6593
CCE- 1:19 - 5869 -> (Q 40, 16:9)
TMPGenc- 2:01 - 6618 -> (KDVD template, CQ 70, 16:9)

I compared all the samples in a scene where a starcraft explodes. And, to my eyes, in this particular scene, CCE is the less blocky, closely followed by ffvfw with noise (I begun with 8, but the file grew a lot, and didn´t look well).
If you tell me how, I can post some captures.

BTW: I selected in ffvfw a 16:9 aspect ratio in output, but when I tested it later, was encoded in 4:3 aspect ratio. And this happens in every test I did. Am I doing anything wrong?.

I'm processing an NTSC anamorphic Widescreen 235:1 DVD with ffvfw with Kwag's settings (at first of this thread). I wish to produce an NTSC anamorphic Widescreen 235:1 DVD. I will use Forcefilm in DVD2AVI. My avs only contains the mpeg2source line with the d2v file.

Which settings, if any, should I change in ffvfw from Kwag's settings?

I will run Pulldown.exe at the command prompt as: "pulldown myfilmIN.m2v myfilmOUT.m2v".

What settings should I choose in DVDPatcher? The source is 720x480 and the destination will also be 720x480.

With the tries so far, I can mux with mplex, but when I try TMPGEnc Author, I get too large GOP size error [NTSC DVD requires 18]. Any way to fix this?

Even though I'm having some difficulties, the results look very good far. Just need to learn how to work this thing!

Hi Nick,

Set the bitrate to 8,000 which is within the DVD standard.
Remember to just patch the header. You must set the GOP to 18
Maximum I frame interval = 18 Me too

-kwag

wooooow... seems as if I have missed lots of exiting new stuff

I drifted away into mpeg4 as I bought my self an mpeg4 standalone

But as for 2 audio streams I still need mpeg1/2, I guess I'll have to do some reading on the forums

Well, again, if you think it's of interest, and tell me how, I can post the screenshots of tests I did (I posted this before forum update, so maybe you didn't notice it). I don't have a web page to upload them.
About the 16:9 issue, I don't know if I did anything wrong before, but in my last test I got 16:9 aspect ratio.
Have you tested Full processing against Fast recompress modes?. Is it faster?. Does the visual quality suffer?. I think we have to improve the encoding speed, don't know if it's a question of change settings.
In 720x576 size, a noise level of 7 or 8 looks too noisy, don't you think so?. Or is it just a question of high resolution?.
Finally, I processed with TMPG DVD author without patching header, and got a warning about high bitrate, but could go on with the process. Didn't find any problem playing it with PowerDVD. Is it really necessary to patch the .m2v file?
You see, lots of us interested in what ffvfw can do... No answer from the developer yet, I'm afraid, isn't it?.

I've only changed the ffvfw settings to the one's shown in your example, including the changes to "Noise". Since this is anamorphic widescreen, should I leave everything at 4:3 in ffvfw and DVDPatcher ( not 16:9) ?

Just did my second encode, a DivX conversion of "007 - Dr. No". Prediction worked fine: target was 707 Mb, got 718 Mb. This add noise is amazing for DivX conversion! Using the latest Dialhot script plus Noise 8, those annoying DCTs in the source all become noise! Fantatisc picture, about the closest I got to a DVD. I can't believe this free encoder can do a better job than CCE and still be very fast!
Kwag, you're right, it can only get better!

When using DVDPatcher on the m2v from ffvfw (after pulldown.exe), do I set the framerate at 29.97?

This is NTSC forcefilm from dvd2avi.

Forgive all the questions, but ...............

Can you say which is your prediction metod? Thank you.

Ok, I'll try to outline the basic steps. It's like my CCE method adapted to this encoder.
1) Download my calculator here: http://www.jltoca.uaivip.com.br/files/KDVDCalc.exe
2) Open your script in VirtualDub and check movie framerate and movie lenght, in minutes.
3) Open my calculator. Select CCE KDVD Preset. On initial Info, put the same GOP you intend to use in your KDVD. GOP is called "Maximmum I frame interval in this encoder, you can set in the Generic Tab of the encoder. I suggest you use 18 for NTSC or 15 for PAL, to be within the standard.
4) Put the correct framerate for your movies, should be 23.976 or 25 fps
5) On movie caracteristics, put the movie lenght in minutes and the audio bitrate you're willing to use, leave audio size in black. Do this for each one of the 3 or 4 movies you want to fit.
6) Click on calculate. Pay attention to "Desired Sample Size", it shows what is the size of your ideal sample.
7) Get sampler.dll plugin for avisynth and add this line to the end of your script: sampler(length=MAX_I_FRAME_INTERVAL), Replacing MAX_I_FRAME_INTERVAL by your GOP.
8 ) Encode the three scripts with sampler, and check the size of the produced MPG. If the sizes (combined) match the one you got from the calculator, you can take out the sampler line and do the full encode.
If it doesn't, try to vary encode parameters: use less noise (6 or 7 instead of 8 ) and/or quality less than 100. But remember that with this encoder quality drops very fast with the quality setting, so don't put it too low. Encode again till you get the sample size calculed before.

That's it, I hope it has helped. Looks a bit complicated because I tried to explain every step, but it's very simple, and if you have someday followed my CCE guide you'll see that's exactly the same thing.

Hi vmesquita:
do correct me if I'm wrong. I tried your nice calculator, and it seems to me that the sample it calculates is about 1% of the film length. It would be nice to have the option (set to 1% by default) to change this percentage, if we want a bigger sample.
And, yes, I also find this encoder very promising, we just need to know how to adjust parameters (bitrate for instance, or how to get better speed), and it will be THE encoder .

Hi digitall.doc,

The samples have to be generated by taking slices that have the exact GOP length for the prediction to be the most precise possible. But you can try the following: use the GOP parameter in the calculator and in the sampler() line as the GOPxY of the actual GOP, where Y is a integer. So you could use 36 or 72 for NTSC, just remember to keep the actual GOP as 18 in the encoder and always use the same values in the calculator and the sampler() line. Maybe this would lead to a more accurate prediction, but I never tested.

THIS Sucks!

I did a full encode again on Truman show with the latest build of ffvfw!
Quality now is better!! (it was the build, released before, that gave me a headache!)

But even when I demultiplex it and assign a conform max. Bitrate .... when this stream loads into Bitrateviewer, almost at the end of the loading process, Bitrateviewer BOMBS!

I chacked that stream using Restream:

FIrst it gave me an information that thius mpg2 stream gots a nonlinear quantisation! Which is normally a spec. of mpeg1.

And now here it comes: A VBV Buffer of 7!!!
And thats why I cant multiplex it for example in BBmpg where a lot of underflows do occur. I did that encoding using 352x576 and a file came out which fits incl. Audio exactl. one CDR80.

But ... to me it seems that there is no VBV Buffer to set in ffvfw!

I agree. By using the latest build of ffvfw from 2004 things got better although I never ran into the problems you did.
As I said never got bombed by bitrateviewer when I demultiplexed with tmpgenc...
No multiplexing here by now because I'm still getting to know the encoder. Can anyone confirm this info by Inc? I'm trying it tonight also.
Yes indeed it seams there is no way to set the vbv buffer and also there is no way to limit min and MAX bitrates...
This is very sad, because it really seams to be getting better using a static script instead of MA.
This way encoding speed leveled with tmpg's and quality is still superior only inferior than cce that is worth big $/€

@Kwag
Anyway I will convince you to build a WAP version of the forum
Since I'm on the move for the next weeks it's going to be hard to keep up to date because
I won't have broadband Internet access.
But I'll still have my mobile phone
Cheers

__________________
Rui