Moving on. A little help requested

[kakomu]

Hi all,

I'm moving on from Xvid and I wish to try my hand at X264 with MeGUI. However, I'm finding the codec options within MeGUI to be a bit cumbersome to figure out. I've done a bit of searching through the past 2 months of threads in both the GUI and H.264 forums, and I've not found a lot of general info. Are there any guides that explain the different options for the codec? I don't want to be relegated to using the pre-defined video profiles.

[berrinam]

Possibly the best place to look is within MeGUI itself. In the configuration dialog for x264, there are tooltips which explain most of the options.

[Sharktooth]

you can also use my profiles which are made to make the newbies life easier :)

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=101813

[kakomu]

I just encoded a few movies with x264, and they all came out looking terrible. VDubmod reports apporixmately 50 errors for the Matroska file. For my encode of Metropolis, it took MPC apporximately 20 seconds to open up the movie (usually takes about 1-2). I used the AE Good Quality profile for Metropolis (1354 kbps) and the CE-high profile and CE-main profile (approx 1000kbps) for a few clips. I feel like I'm missing something here.

[Sharktooth]

Virtual dub CANT open MKV with native AVC.
Try the HQ profiles (unless Metropolis is an anime), also can you post some screenshots or clips of the "terrible looking" encode?
What x264 revision/build you used?

EDIT: I've updated the profiles... check them out.

[kakomu]

I appear to be using an older version (408 vs 440). I'll make another encode today and post some shots tomorrow.

Edit: Why does mkv list the video stream as: MPEG2 Video 3x922?

[kakomu]

Here are a couple of clips from the fight club DVD:

https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/methomps/www/b1.mkv
https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/methomps/www/b2.mkv

1 uses the "CE-High Profile" profile, and 2 uses the "1P-maxspeed" profile (both at 1000kbps). As you can see, the CE profile fails miserably in comparison to the 1P profile for this short clip, producing seemingly disgusting results.

Now, if the CE require high bitrate, or some other requirement, I didn't know this, which is why I'd like to contruct my own profiles. THe descriptions that pop up when you hover over the options are typically quite untelling and don't give me an idea of what they actually mean. So, I'll ask again: Is there a thread or a good place that gives a good explanation of what all of the options mean? Or am I going to have to fumble around with the options for hours like I did with nandub?

[Sharktooth]

Uhm... what decoder you use?

[kakomu]

FFDshow 12-21-05

[Sharktooth]

files seems to be a little b0rked...

EDIT: Nevermind, i redownloaded the files with a download manager...

[kakomu]

Hmm, it appears that the February FFDshow decoder has cleared things up.

[Sharktooth]

good... coz i watched the clips several times and i wasnt able to spot that big difference you were talking about... :)

[kakomu]

Since VDub Mod is unable to read Matroska Files made from MeGUI, is there any way I can open up files and do the same sort of editing I used to be able to do with VDub mod (such as direct stream copies between keyframes and that sort of thing)?

If that's not possible, am I required to demux all the streams separately and reassemble them in Vdub?

[berrinam]

It's probably too late to be helpful now, but you should really do your editing before encoding. That way, you can use AviSynth to do frame-accurate cutting, you don't waste time encoding stuff you don't want at the end, it's much more powerful than VDub (even if less accessible), etc ...

If you just want to cut sections out, and you are happy to re-encode it, then consider doing this:
[list=1] Open your *.avs script in VDubMod
Make your cuts in VDubMod
Go to Tools->Script Editor
In the script editor, move the cursor to the last line and go edit->insert frameset as trims
Save your script and encode!

If that's not possible, am I required to demux all the streams separately and reassemble them in Vdub?AFAIK, yes.

[foxyshadis]

Well, you can remux to mp4 and edit the video with one of the new mp4 gui editors. Depending on your audio format you may lose it, however, and have to make changes in a dedicated audio editor.

[kakomu]

This usually has to do with wanting to pull clips from movies, or re-encoding a file I find that's really bloated (where I believe that it would look just fine at half the file size).

ANyways, how do I demux an X264 video stream into an AVI? Or, if that's bad, I've yet to figure out how to frameserve an MKV through AVIsynth. Obviously the frameserving would be good for videos I find online that are bloated, but if I want to make a clip, I can't think of a better way than to just demux everything, slice then remux it all later.

[foxyshadis]

Use mkvtoolnix, mkvextract gui, and avc2avi. However, editing will be quite frustrating because the frames will jump around like an xvid on crack, being anywhere from 1-5 behind if you used enough b-frames.

To frameserve, just use DirectshowSource(). You can frameserve in combination with mmg (mkvmerge gui) to find the frame to cut at, then enter that into mmg and it'll make a new vid, split at the nearest keyframe.

Do not bring online video into the discussion, it's one of the primary rules here.

[kakomu]

I've tried MKVextract GUI. I can either produce MKV files which still can't be loaded into Vdubmod, or I can produce AVI files that aren't recognized by any player.

Can you give an example of an Avisynth script so that I can get an idea of the usage of "DirectshowSource()"?

As for online video, there are clips abound on this website. Trailers everywhere, etc. It's not like I'm talking about acquiring illegal videos. I know the idea behind limiting the talk of piracy and otherwise illegal activities, but when the last thread I visited was offering, for download, trailers in 1080p (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=107791&highlight=1080p+trailer), it seems like "downloaded videos" is hardly synonymous with "illegally downloaded videos" anymore.

[foxyshadis]

It's still a touchy subject with some mods. Anyway, usually what you extract with mkvextract gui isn't an avi, even if you give it an avi extension; it's a raw .264 file. It should extract it to something like "Track1.264", which can be muxed into avi with avc2avi from the x264 package. May only come with sharktooth's, I'm not sure.

DirectshowSource("file.mkv") is sufficient for non-hybrid mkv, but if it's at all hybrid you need DirectshowSource("file.mkv",fps=29.97,convertfps=true) [changing fps as required].