Cartoon Video (interlaced) -> use HC or Procoder?

[Pabloz]

Using dvdrebuilder i really cant make a choice on this.

I got a cartoon video, that is interlaced
and I really cant make my choice on what encoder to use.

should i use HC or PROCODER?

Should i use deinterlace with decomb too?

[blutach]

I'm not a mod, but this is close to asking "what's best?" Read rule 12.

Regards

[feedback]

If you have DVD RB Pro. you can use the RME to check out each encoder with the same segment and with/without decomb to judge for yourself.

If you have the freeware version burn to a DVD-RW or just play from your HD and again judge for yourself.

Some people swear by HC, some CCE and some Procoder. Some people deinterlace everything, some people never deinterlace...depending on source and how they are going to view the movie ie. on their computer, on a CRT, LCD, or Plasma TV.

It is a determination you will have to make on your own as no one can see with your eyes.

That being said, I have heard that some people (just their opinion) get better results with both HC and Procoder on lower bitrate interlaced material over CCE.

So, in the end, asking if you should use HC or Procoder is like asking someone what CPU you should use AMD or Intel...it depends.

Regards,:)

[TheSeeker]

I think you will be much happier with the output from Procoder for that particular source. Of course it will take like 3 times longer than CCE or HC.

[FredThompson]

I use both and highly advocate both over CCE, QuEnc, ffmpeg, whatever.

ProCoder does a far better job on high-motion sources. Tested against the rapidly-changing, dynamic title sequences of WWE Wrestling, everything but ProCoder yields blocky output. HC is less blocky than CCE, but it is still blocky.

I'm not sure why and I've been unable to come close to ProCoder's results using HC and any filtering combination I've tried. For that matter, I'm going to ask hank tonight if he'd like some source to see this for himself. It would be fairly easy for me to provide a couple of minutes of this type of source and the results using both HC and ProCoder. Maybe there's something he can find by really digging into the resultant MPEG. If he is able to come close to ProCoder on high motion, it will be a wonderful day.

I do, however, use HC for just about everything.

If processing time is not an issue or you you have horses to burn, you won't go "wrong" with ProCoder.

[writersblock29]

@Pabloz

I'm wondering... what disk are you processing? Is it jam-packed, thereby requiring a low bitrate... or can you get a decent bitrate for your copy? I ask, because if your source is clean and you can get in the neighborhood of at least 3K, you may not notice a difference between your source and your copy. To find out, run a Prepare Stage with Rebuilder, and post what it says. Bitrate alone won't guarantee great results, but it may serve as a useful guide here.

As far as deinterlacing... I personally do, to all projects, because I play them back on many different players/monitors and hate the effects of some hardware deinterlacers. Having said that, I will state that you DON'T need to do this if you're just going to watch it on a televison set. In fact, you'll take part of the image resolution away if you do. There can easilly be an argument as to whether deinterlacing allows you to use a lower bitrate (meaning there will be people on both sides of that fence), and some filters only work on progressive sources (not a concern if you're not going to run filters), but there's always tradeoffs that may not be worth your while for your situation.

There's really only one way, in my opinion, for you to settle this for yourself. Create two output folders. Run a prepare stage while in Procoder mode, and allow Rebuilder to process (and encode) a bit of the disk... Abort the process before it finishes. Now do the same -- only this time, with HC -- into your second output folder. That should give you some good material to back-and-forth while deciding which encoder gives you the better output. If the best of the best still isn't good enough, let us know; there may be certain filters or encoder settings that will clean things up for you.

[Clawz]

Procoder is my preferred method. Now since everyone is complaining about it's time, I thought I would point out that Procoder 2.0 and EclPro .52 work great with RB Farm 1.7. You just need to get USB@nywhere from http://www.intellidriver.com and share the Hasp key. I have not tried Procoder Express. I have had it working across three Athlon 64 X2 systems. You just have to point the ECLCCE path to your EclPro directory and type in \ECLPRO.EXE on the line after the path.

[FredThompson]

Interesting. The comments for RB Farm say it is only for CCE.

[Clawz]

Interesting. The comments for RB Farm say it is only for CCE.

I was playing around with CCE Basic and RB Farm on the dual cores. It had me excited since doing a movie only of Aviator took only 18 minutes to do the encoding, I thought I would try it with Procoder 2.0 in the same manner as you have to with CCE Basic. And surprise, it worked. I do not know if Legacy mode (for Procoder 1.5 and Procoder Express) work. Moving from a single core to the dual core was nice. Moving to three dual cores is a dream. So far, I have backed up 6 movies this weekend with Procoder.

[FredThompson]

Wow. That would be a dream. Paying for it would be a nightmare, though ;)

I've posted the offer to Hanc of the high-motion samples. Maybe he'll be interested and maybe he could give the same high-motion results to HC. From all I've seen, that's the only thing where ProCoder did a better job. The stuff I have is high-motion interlaced NTSC video which is an effective frame rate of almost 3x film. I'm guessing the difference is the amount of motion vector detection.

[TheSeeker]

@Pabloz
As far as deinterlacing... I personally do, to all projects, because I play them back on many different players/monitors and hate the effects of some hardware deinterlacers. Having said that, I will state that you DON'T need to do this if you're just going to watch it on a televison set. In fact, you'll take part of the image resolution away if you do. There can easilly be an argument as to whether deinterlacing allows you to use a lower bitrate (meaning there will be people on both sides of that fence), and some filters only work on progressive sources (not a concern if you're not going to run filters), but there's always tradeoffs that may not be worth your while for your situation.



I cant believe you interlace everything. You do realize that by deinterlacing progressive sources you are seriously degrading any sort of quality you might have been able to acheive. Im glad I dont have to watch your backups. Sometimes I just dont get what some people are thinking. Contrary to your beliefs, deinterlacing everything isnt helping your resulting movie quality. Just thought someone should clue you in.

[feedback]

What version of ProCoder are you guys using, Express, 1.5, or 2.0?

I do see Clawz is using 2.0.

I don't know if you can compare the output with Procoder Express with Procoder 1.5 or 2.0 output.

Regards,:)

P.S. How big an issue is this information I found concerning Procoder..."One major drawback is the proprietary format of the file used to save the projects, which makes difficult (or impossible) to integrate it with other tools".

[Clawz]

What version of ProCoder are you guys using, Express, 1.5, or 2.0?

I do see Clawz is using 2.0.

I don't know if you can compare the output with Procoder Express with Procoder 1.5 or 2.0 output.


Supposedly, both Procoder Express and Procoder 2.0 have the same engine, but Express cannot do the Mastering Quality. The interface also differs so you have to use the legacy mode with Express. The interesting thing is that a large number of people visually prefer the Highest Quality (Setting 3) mode over the Mastering Quality (Setting 4). In a similar manner, this same group of people also prefer Procoder 1.5 over 2.0. I do not own Procoder 1.5 and have not done an extensive test to see if I agree. I just end up running it on Mastering Quality and have been happy thus far.

[writersblock29]

@The Seeker

:rolleyes: Conclusion-jumping and launching personal attacks are good exercise, aren't they? I deinterlace, INTERLACED, footage. Where ever I may find it. Pabloz stated that his footage is interlaced, and asked whether he should deinterlace with Decomb. But since I also realize that not everyone has the same circumstances nor personal tastes as I, I added the disclaimer "Having said that, I will state that you DON'T need to do this if you're just going to watch it on a televison set. In fact, you'll take part of the image resolution away if you do. There can easilly be an argument as to whether deinterlacing allows you to use a lower bitrate (meaning there will be people on both sides of that fence), and some filters only work on progressive sources (not a concern if you're not going to run filters), but there's always tradeoffs that may not be worth your while for your situation."

There's no reason to try and deinterlace footage that's already progressive; we both agree on this. Jerky video and ugly images are the price paid for such practices. Perhaps what my post lacked was that specific clarity, and I appologize for confusing you if that's our case.

Good day to you.

[manono]

I wouldn't mind some evidence that this cartoon is really interlaced. Far too many times people have claimed something to be interlaced when it's only encoded as interlaced, but the source is really progressive (PAL), or claimed that it's interlaced when it's really telecined film (NTSC). So how does Pabloz know it's really interlaced? And is he PAL or NTSC? Personally, I've never heard of a truly interlaced cartoon. Field blended from a bad standards conversion maybe, hard telecined maybe, but not interlaced.

Not to denigrate what Pabloz said, but we have visitors here with all levels of knowledge, and sometimes it's hard to tell at which level they're at.