Looking for comment/suggestions on my DVD backup methods...

[RogerWilco]

Hey everyone,
First I want to say that I am extremely impressed with the community here. I feel a little bad even creating this post because I might have missed something I could've searched for myself, but I really want to dial in some awesome settings for my collection. I've been a HTPC user for a long time and I recently bought a monster system for the task. I am now in the process of trying to convert my entire library of DVDs to the hard disk. I have accumulated quite a number of dvds over the last 7-8 years (my wife doesn't seem to want me to forget the "obscene amount of money" I have sitting on my DVD shelves)...

I've already done a ton of reading through these forums (which are an invaluable resource) for proper settings and the like, but I still feel a little overwhelmed. Getting a specific size output is not a priority, although I would like to keep the space to around 1-1.5GB per hour including the AC3 soundtrack. Time is also a factor since I have so many damn movies to rip. I've already gone through about 40 of them so far.

These are the settings I'm using:

Here is an example of my AVISynth script:

mpeg2source("D:\dvd_rip_temp\Star Wars IV - A New Hope.d2v")
colormatrix()
crop(0,56,718,364)
LanczosResize(768,320)


DVDs I care about the most (these filesizes may reach slightly higher than the 1.5GB/hour target):

Single Pass
Target Quant: 2.5 or 3
MPEG custom matrix: Didees SixOfNine
Adap Quant: Disabled
Quarter Pixel: Enabled
GMC: Disabled
BVOPS: 1,1.00,1.00
Packed Bitstream: Enabled
Aspect Ratio: Square Pixel
VHQ: 1 (I don't see much of a difference between 1 or 4 except the encoding time)
MSP: 6
VHQ for B frames: Enabled
Chroma Motion: Enabled
Turbo: Disabled
Quantizer restrictions: Mins = 2 Maxs = 31
Trellis: Enabled

DVDs I don't mind some mild quality reductions on (My wife's movies mostly :) ):

Single Pass
Target Quant: 3.5
MPEG custom matrix: Didees SixOfNine
Adap Quant: Disabled
Quarter Pixel: Enabled
GMC: Disabled
BVOPS: 2,1.50,1.00
Packed Bitstream: Enabled
Aspect Ratio: Square Pixel
VHQ: 1 (I don't see much of a difference between 1 or 4 except the encoding time)
MSP: 6
VHQ for B frames: Enabled
Chroma Motion: Enabled
Turbo: Enabled
Quantizer restrictions: Mins = 2 Maxs = 31
Trellis: Enabled

Are these acceptable settings? I'm concerned that I may be getting some sub-par quality in certain scenes. There is one scene in particular that I have been doing a lot of testing with to try to find optimal settings but it seems any and all combinations of settings create a low quality scene to my eyes compared to the source. I can upload this scene (from Castaway) if anyone is interested. It is a VOB about 13MB in size.
I'm not really sure what type of quality to expect from Xvid. I know there will be some inherant degredation, but I would like to minimze that while still maintaining an acceptable file size. I also realize that even the MPEG2 sources I'm using will have flaws as well, especially when viewing on my 50inch TV.

Bottom line is that I can't stand the thought of not getting optimal results basd on my contraints.

Anyone have any advice/suggestions/tweaks?

Thanks a lot!

[Caspar]

If getting a specific size isn't your priority, what is? If I assume your priority is quality, I wouldn't use a 1 pass encode. Also, I would use LanczosResize(720,304) and add filters to do the IVTC. Progressive material compresses better. Here's what my settings would look like if I were to do a movie encode:

Script:
mpeg2source("D:\dvd_rip_temp\Star Wars IV - A New Hope.d2v")

#------------------
#If FILM content, use force film
#------------------
telecide()
decimate(cycle=5,quality=3)

#------------------
#Filtering goes here if required
#------------------

crop(0,56,718,364)
LanczosResize(720,304)

Two Pass VBR
MPEG custom matrix: Didees SixOfNine
Adap Quant: Disabled
Quarter Pixel: Disabled
GMC: Disabled
BVOPS: 2, 1.50, 1.00
Packed Bitstream: Disabled
Aspect Ratio: Square Pixel
VHQ: 4
MSP: 6
VHQ for B frames: Enabled
Chroma Motion: Enabled
Turbo: Disabled
Quantizer restrictions: Mins = 2 Maxs = 4
Trellis: Disabled

You should notice that I have disabled most of the advanced features because I would like to have maximum compatibility on stand alones.

[Teegedeck]

Hi, Roger Wilco, your settings are absolutely OK. Nothing to change, really. Just a few comments:


If you want to keep the original DVD's quality you shouldn't resize but only crop to mod-16 resolutions and use XviD's Pixel Aspect Ratio feature
For the movies you want to compress more strongly, in case you mind filesize more than speed, you could set VHQ=4 which saves quite some bitrate and disable Turbo (which is an inverse of VHQ).
You can try whether b-frames 2/1.63/0 gives you a more even quality on the avg. quant=3.5 movies


Can you perhaps post screenshots from the Castaway scene that is giving you trouble?

Caspar, excuse me if I comment on something unasked for: you should better enable Trellis. It optimizes quantization which has the effect of filesize-savings at unchanged quality. Still, if filesize is not an issue your settings are certainly fine. (Also, Quarter Pixel could be a good idea for high-quality encodings but it is a matter of taste.)

[RogerWilco]

Wow! Thank you both for your quick input. It is greatly appreciated.

Teegedeck: I've noticed that enabling deblocking in the Xvid codec will remove a lot of the problems I see with the Cast Away scene (but sacrificing a little bit of the detail). The native Xvid decoder deblocking seems to do a better job of this than ffdshow postprocessing, although I may not have the filter tweaked properly in ffdshow. I will post some screen shots tonight using different settings just to show you what I was talking about. The majority of the encodes are very nice looking but I just notice a few scenes here and there that look a little funny. It is mostly scenes with a fairly static camera view of someone's face. It kinda makes the face look spotty and blotchy. I think it just may be the nature of the Xvid codec trying to preserve sharpness in a low contrast scene. If I use the "Home Theater NTSC" profile the effect is reduced but I think this is only because that profile tends to blur images a bit whereas sixofnine tends to sharpen a bit.

As for removing the resize and using the pixel aspect ratio. I assume I could just google "movie aspect ratio" to find the proper ratio and input this into the pixel AR settings? Will pixel AR be followed in most players nowadays? I suppose I can test this out on a small sample... I remember reading a post that stated you should always resize a little bit (at least 16) to offset the inherant flaws in the source... or something like that. Is there any truth to this?

Anyway thanks again to you both for trying to help a newbie out. You guys are awesome!

[Teegedeck]

You only need to set 16:9 PAL or NTSC as Pixel Aspect Ratio for movies. Nothing else. And for correct playback you need to configure the 'output' tab in ffdshow to 'use hardware overlay' and to 'allow format change during playback' or something like that (excuse me, I'm at my Linux machine ATM and cannot look up the precise wording).

As for quality problems, posting screenshots of the source vs. the XviD-encode would help.