Which sequence to use? Progressive or Interlaced?
 

I just encoded a 23.976 fps frame-based/progressive Divx/Xvid video to MPEG-2 using CCE 2.67. I assume I should add progressive flags but what about the sequence? Should it be progressive or interlace? I've heard conflicting answers. I'm gonna use pulldown.exe.

You better stop using CCE as your only reason to do taht is the speed !
With tmpgenc you will have FAR BETTER QUALITY and the pulldown will be done automatically.

But the speed of CCE is 5 times of that of TMPGEnc, it's too good to let go. It would be cool if there is a guide for making KDVDs using Mainconcept, it's as fast as CCE. TMPGEnc is just way too slow, 6 hours of KDVD footage will take 30 hours to encode, it's unbearable.

BTW, will using the option -drop_frame true reduce jerky pictures?

The drop frame option is only to sync subs when authoring with maestro/scenarist.

@ rs008f

Pleas do use the "edit" function to add something to your threads if needed![/list]
2times yes but not more .... if yes, you did set something wrong in TmpgEnc

It's more than 2 times for MPEG-2 encoding. TMPGEnc is extremely slow in MPEG-2 encoding but pretty fast in MPEG-1. CCE encodes MPEG-2 close to real-time. Last I check TMPGEnc takes 6 hours to encode a 1.5 hr anime video from Divx to MPEG-2.

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That's a urban legend. One more ! Tmpegenc is as fast (or slow) in mpeg2 than in mpeg1. Except perhaps when you have a interlaced job to do like you have here.

Times is NOT A MATTER.
Sorry but personally I won't lose any second to help someone to do a crappy thing. Tmpegenc is far better, it can do everything you need for your current project, we give you hints on how you can do that with tmpeng, so now you have no reason to not use it. So if you want to do a decent KVCD, use tmpgenc.

Moreover, talking about a commercial product that cost $1950 where there are other solution far better and almost free, that's not a good thing for KVCD.net.

You are right about one thing, I can speed up TMPGEnc close to real-time when I select "lowest quality" under motion search precision but at highest quality it's 6x of real-time.

See here: http://www.kvcd.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9307

For some people, time YES IS A MATTER. I think you need to understand that.
Finally YES IS A MATTER for you.

I think that rs008f want KDVD.
Many people has the money for that. Can't they visit KVCD.net, and learn with us?

:!: :!: :!:
Never use higest ! Use "Motion estimate" when you use the MA script (for DVD) and "High" when you do an avi. For sure with "higest" things are very slow ;-)

The matter for me is while I am on the forum helping people to have the best of their encode, I do not do mine.
It's not a problem for me for me if my time is really used to achieve THE BEST. But CCE is NOT the best when talking about KVCD. That's why I tell that time is not a matter.
If you want to encode fast (but uggly), use "fastest" mode. Or do VCD.

I fear also but if so, my answer will be in the same order : NEVER DO A DVD FROM AN XVID.

I know that Vmesquita did a tool for that (DIKO) and I don't want to flame anyone's work. But I won't put my agreement on this. Never. That's only a personnal choice for sure. That's why I do not answer to any question related to Diko.

People that can buy CCE can buy DVDs and surely never do anything from an Xvid source ;-)

Note also that currently, I use myself CCE for my KDVD. But I use it to back up my DVDs, nothing else. And I will switch to an other encoder as soon as possible (memcoder seems to be a good candidate).

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@rs008f
Please, do a little effort to use the forum correctly ! WHy do you ask this question here insteed of into the thread where Prodater64 did his guide ?
It's hard for people to follow your requests if you do not post them in the correct place.

"NEVER DO A DVD FROM AN XVID"

He may be like me, NEVER burning cds anymore, DVD-Rs are cheaper than CD-Rs sizewise, not to mention having 4-5 movies (avi source) on a disc is an advantage.

Well he can still do MPEG1 if his player supports it.

Also I like CCE quality better for MPEG2, I only use MPEG2 for >2200 avg bitrate though.

All my AVIs are either Divx or Xvid, and I need to convert them to KDVD regardless.

Lagoon,

do you encode Divx/Xvid to KDVD using CCE? If so what are you CCE settings?

Just curious. What does "MA" stands for? I know it's a form of optimal script.

I rarely encode xvid to mpeg2, but I use DC precision 8 and progressive frames simply, nothing special.

I usually do 2-pass encoding to get precisely the exact size I want.

Motion Adaptative.

It's the optimal script for DVD given in "optimal script" section. It is called like this because the parameters of the filters aren't constant but adapt themselves to the motion in the scene.

OK looks like I'm convinced to give TMPGEnc a try over CCE. I realize now if I select "Motion estimate search" the encoding speed is comparable to CCE (though still not as fast) but I hope I'm not downgrading the quality of my MPEG-2 since I'm converting Divx/Xvid to KDVD. Another good point is that TMPGEnc automatically do the pulldown.

You can use "ME search" even if you are doing Xvid using my V4 script. Results are less efficient than in "Hight" but the quality of the encoding will be far better than CCE, even if you are doing MPEG2.

Note : what is the resolution you use ?

Have you even encounter jerky pictures during panning scenes when converting Divx to KDVD?
Also why do you say never convert Xvid to KDVD but say yes to Divx?

Xvid or Divx is exactly the same here. Xvid is a little better than Divx but they are both crap. No need to make any difference between the two.

Note about your jerking pictures : probably due to CCE. Not sure (I never had such problems in avi->kvcd convertion using tmpgenc).

I found the link to your scripts
http://www.kvcd.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7223
It's for KVCD but I assume applicable to KDVDs too. My Divx/Xvid video is 640x480. My script is very simple since I don't know much about filters for cartoon AVI videos and I don't want very slow encoding times (very close to real-time is required since I'm fitting 5-6 hours per DVD)

AviSource("K:\WUTemp\ABC.avi",true,"YUY2")
BicubicResize(672,448,0,0.6,0,0,640,480)
AddBorders(24,16,24,16)

I hardly burn CD-Rs these days, only DVD-Rs, so i've never made a KVCD before but I have many KDVDs. Quality of KDVDs are better too.

Dialhot, I'm using your V4 script but I have an error
Convolution3D(1, 6, 12, 6, 8, 2.8, 0) gives me an error saying it needs YUY2 so I added
ConvertToYUY2() above it. This is the right way right?
The encoding time is very slow however so most likely I won't use any of the filters and just use my simple version.
BTW, is your V4 script compatible with Divx?

I don't care the dimensions of the source ! I wanted the ones of your TARGET !

If you talk once again about time I just turn off all discussion with you.
Either you ask for my assistance and apply my hints without taking the time in account, either I won't bother to type such long messages that you won't even follow "because of time".

Do we have a deal ?

WHY THE HELL DO YOU FORCE COLORSPACE TO YUY2 ???
Avisynth is 35% slower in YUY2 than in YV12 :!:
And after you complain about TIME :banghead:
You should also turn off sound processing (change the true to false) as this is time consuming.

672+24*2 = 720
Didn't you ever consider to use 704 ? The quality will be better as you will have less data to encode.
Other thing : 24 is equivalent to overscan = 3. Lot of TV set will show a thin black border on the right and left sides with this.
I suggest you to use these parameters :And you should use filters ! You are doing EVERYTHING (usage of CCE + no filters) that leads you to have KDVD that are less than 50% of the quality they can have JUST FOR A MATTER OF TIME !

Why do you bother to make KDVD so ?

Last thing concerning time : did you turn of all post processing in the Xvid codec (and in the Divx one, to be sure) ?

With all what you are saying about your encoding methods, yours KDVD are certainly far worse than my KVCD :-D

You have the wrong version of C3D.
There is a version call "Convolution3D_YV12.dll". And as you guess, that is the one you need to have.

Are you kidding me ?

:arrow: Where did you find the script :?: The name of the forum section ?

You still didn't understand yet that concerning KVCD encoding, Xvid and Divx ARE EXACTLY THE SAME THINGS !

I never ever had jerky picture with CCE.

CCE yields better quality than TMPEG for MPEG2 encoding, that's my opinion.

Also dialhot you obviously never saw a very good xvid compression.

A friend showed me a 4.3GB Xvid 2.3mbits encode of LOTR TTT extended on one DVD-R @ 960x540 Anamorphic, he used various avisynth filters to make it look like pseudo-HDTV.

The result is actually better than the DVD itself, though it took a LONG time to encode.

OK Deal I won't mention time again. :oops:
I usually use YUY2 because some Divx3 videos comes out all blue but knowing now it hinders speed, I'll use YV12 instead.
Here is where I found your script
http://www.kvcd.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7223
I have a question about TMPGEnc. I see in task manager that memory usage peaked at 500MB, is this normal? I have 1.5 GB RAM, so I guess no biggy.
It's Priority level is set at Low but I feel Windows responds slower (CPU is at 100%) Maybe it's my environmental setting, I checked everything under "CPU setting" and "Multi-thread" setting, set "300 Mo".

I have another question.

What should be the value of "DC Component precision"? The KDVD CCE template is set at 8 but the TMPGEnc template is set at 10.
As for field-order, if the source is frame-based(progressive), it doesn't matter if TFF or BFF is chosen, right?

Also a border of 24 is not TV-Overscan 3 according to FitCD, it's more like 1.5, I tested it on my TV and the black borders are just barely visible, if I use 16, a small portion of the video will get cut but no biggy. I'm in USA(NTSC format), don't know if things work differently in Europe (PAL).

This is how my script looks like now. My video is an anime/cartoon.

AviSource("C:\ABC.avi")
ConverttoYV12() #I had to add this because I got an error
BlindPP(cpu=4)
Blockbuster(method="noise",detail_min=1,detail_max =3,variance=0.1,seed=1)
Convolution3D(1, 6, 12, 6, 8, 2.8, 0)
BicubicResize(672, 448, 0, 0.6, 0, 0, 640, 480)
AddBorders(16, 16, 16, 16)
Undot()
TemporalSoften(2,7,7,3,2)
DCTFilter(1,1,1,1,1,1,0.5,0)

Was surfing the net, found this cool link but I think most people know about it already.
http://www.tecoltd.com/enctest/enctest.htm

CCE is second to TMPGEnc and got same rating for their quality output, and everyone wishes TMPGEnc to be faster. :D

I think #1 you do not know my resume, #2 you do not read me carefully enought recently.
I always said that MPEG4 THE WAY IT IS USED IN WAREZ ACTIVITY ON THE WEB is shit. And do not tell me that everyone making KVCD from Xvid used perfect encoded Xvid they did themselves from the DVD they own but don't want to use it as source.
Do you copy me ? ;-)
That's the kind of line that would disqualify you completly from any discussion about quality.
The encoded picture can't be better than the source (you are talking about a quite perfect source, I agree it would be different with some badly encoded DVD but not this one).

Stay in YV12 and add "SwapUV()" just after the avisource line. It will be okay.
I knwo where you found it :!:
But can you PLEASE read the name of the forum section where it is BEFORE asking if it's compatible with Divx ?

Is there something on you PC that make you think you have 2 cpus ? If not REMOVE multi-threading !

And I won't answer to the others questions for the reason I explained in an other thread.

Note: overscan=1 is 8 pixels. Do the maths to find how much 24 is.
Note2 : the tests you saw uses encoder version that are more than one year old. Things change A LOT since there. And tmpgenc is far before CCE now for low bitrate. CCE is equivalent/better for hight bitrate (avove 2300 in average).

I don't know why here these Themes are bumped up again which have been proofed that much in the past already ;-)

1) ... "look like pseudo HDTV"?? Well HDTV gots specs and is not only defined on its "look"

2) Outside encoder tests are 99% made under total standard specs, means GOP 15 (pal) Gop 18 (ntsc) and std. matrixes. And on of the "handycaps" according to true KVCD specs in CCE is that you CAN'T go with the Goplength over 15! And we do our KVCDs encode using mpeg1 and CQ mode cause mpg1 does compress a bit better - CCE doesn't accept that Q/mpeg1 combination in the way we need it.
DialHot does recommend TmpgEnc cause its better at LOW Bitrates, if you're going to encode a KDVD and choosing an avg Bitrate where the Quantizers won't go over 4 CCE is also a good choice.