DVD 2 H264 + GKnot and keeping original video size

[TrigunXBox]

I am trying to convert a DVD to H264 using GKnot. I noticed that the size of the video changes at each step. I am trying to keep the same size/quality as the original. This movie has awesome color and contrast and I want to keep that. File size is not a huge issue, it's just making it more playable.

Here is a still capture of the VOB video using VCL. It's what I want the video to look like. Zoom is 100%.
http://4096k.net/gknot/vlcsnap-6200178.png


Here it is after I loaded the VOB into DG-Index.
http://4096k.net/gknot/dg-index-vlcsnap-6200178.png


Here is the video (without cropping) in GKnot with the size as large as it can go, without going over 100%. Aspect Error of -0.6%
http://4096k.net/gknot/gknot-vlcsnap-6200178.png

What is going on here?
I have not tried making the finished file because that will take 6+ hours, but it should be the same as the gknot version. I think.

Thanks for any help.

[jggimi]

I'm not sure what you're asking about -- resolution or bitrate. So I'll try to answer several different questions, and hope that one of these answers matches what you're looking for. If not, please try again.

As you know, DVDs have a fixed resolution (720x480 NTSC or 720x576 PAL), and two different Display Aspect Ratios -- 4:3 or 16:9. Software DVD players will resize on playback to match the appropriate DAR, since, unlike DVDs, PCs have square pixels.

If by keeping "original video size" you mean to say "keeping original resolution" of 720x480, you can certainly do that with GK. Set the PAR to 1:1, and move the slider so that your resolution is 720x480. Or, edit the .avs and comment out or delete the resizing filter. Your player will need to resize to 16:9 on playback, and some of the popular players can do that. (I don't use VLC, it might be able to. If not, MPC, BSPlayer, and ZoomPlayer can.)

If, instead, you meant you want the output size larger than the original (as in your resized 853x480 still), you could do that too, though best practice is to do such upsizing on playback rather than during encoding. Upsizing before encoding will increase filesize/bitrate without adding image detail.

If, yet again, you meant you wanted the maximum possible bitrate, as file size is not an issue, just consider doing a quality based encoding at 100% in a single pass.

[TrigunXBox]

Thank you for the detailed information. Sorry I am not very clear. What I am talking about is keeping the original resolution. (before I crop for black bars.)

I set the PAR to 1:1 and it helped, but then I noticed something.
Take a look at this screen shot.
http://www.4096k.net/gknot/screenshot-crop-1.png


At some point in time, the original video is getting cropped on the left and right.
In the screen shot above, I have the PAR set to 1:1 and all cropping disabled, but yet, I am missing a pillers on each side.

I don't think I have seen this before in GKnot. What is cropping the image?

Oh, and the original looks the same size when played back on both VLC and MPC.

Thanks for the help.

[TrigunXBox]

Oh, and it looks like GK does not support single pass mode with H264. Says "Sorry, not working yet.".

I set it to single pass in the codec anyway. it will just do it twice. I will see if it worked in 18 hours. :)

[bond]

its not recommended to use gknot with x264 anyways, as it uses the vfw version of x264...

try using megui, which you can find in the avc forum

i guess your problem is caused by some automatic resizing gknot wants to do. if you open the .avs created by gknot you will see some line saying something about resizing
you either have now the possibility to delete this line and set the correct sar during encoding with x264 (so the output stream has the same resolution as the input one and needs anamorphic resizing during playback) or you set the resize values to something that fits your resize needs without the anamorphic resizing

[jggimi]

...I don't think I have seen this before in GKnot. What is cropping the image? I don't know, since I'm not looking over your shoulder. If the PAR is 1:1, crop is set to 0, and the rez is set to 720x480, the cropping and resizing filters should effectively be nullified. Failing that, you can edit the avs script as I mentioned in my first response....Oh, and the original looks the same size when played back on both VLC and MPC. As I mentioned above, software DVD players will resize based on the DAR.

When I mentioned MPC/BSPlayer et al, I was referring to resizing to 16:9 on playback of .avi files, which are expected to have square pixels. If you retain 720x480 in your .avi container, you must resize to 16:9 or 4:3 on playback.

[CWR03]

First, you can test a section instead of doing a full encode by using the selection tools in DGIndex and only selecting a few seconds of video.

Second, as jggimi said, if GordianKnot is set to no cropping there's really no way it could have cropped the video. It's probable you're not on the same frame, since the VOB source will indicate 29.97fps, while GordianKnot will say 23.976 (assuming you selected "Force Film" in DGIndex).

[TrigunXBox]

Thanks for all the help.
I may not be on the same frame, but I am close and the camera does not move in that shot. I cleared everything out and tried it again, and this time, it was without cropping. So I don't know what went wrong.

I checked out megui. Looks like a cool program, but it's beyond my skill level to create avs scripts and spend the hour or so getting everything ready before I encode.
I know it's just me, but I can't seem to get a video with h264 that is a lot smaller and/or higher quality then I can with xvid. I will mess with it more later.

Thanks for the help.