Xvid result totally different from usuall.

[ChOnG]

hello,

This is my first post on this forum so hello to all :p

I have been making Call of Duty2 frag highlight movies for a few years now and have always been known for my great quality/filesize i acheive. But recently ive started another movie and done a quality test again and im getting the dreaded blockyness. I have been using the same settings for all of my movies ive made down the years by following this tutorial.

http://www.chopshopservers.com/education/video_editing_tutorial_by_commodore/index.html STEP9 COMPRESSION.

Only thing i do different from that tutorial is my bitrate i used is 3500.

I just dont get why its suddenly started going all blocky on me as like i said have been using same settings for a long time now.

I formatted today and gave it another go and to no luck it came out the same.

I do not what causes this i think by looking at the xvid faq's its upsampling problem changing from Y12 to RGB32. Its all good knowing this but i want to know why i have never had this problem and now it has poped its ugly head on me.

Methods to solving it is using ffdshow and adding a converttoRGB32 command but i really dont know how to use the program. Any tutorials for me would be a great help:)

Anyways, thanks for any sollutions/suggestions.

EDIT: Forgot to tell you the way i do my movies.

I use 800x600 res, x16AA x14AF and everything maxes out on my ATI settings. then ingame i so cl_avidemo 30 to record my footage.
Then just open my tga's in sequence in Vegas and away i go.

[shon3i]

settings looks good, but i don't know why you get this, aslo don't upsample to RGB32 (you will loose more on quality), but with that high bitrate, "better" encode @ constant quantizer = 2

[communist]

Are you encoding from Vegas or VirtualDub to XviD?
Anyway the colorspace (RGB/YV12) is not your problem. Regardless of input (yours is RGB) XviD only saves as YV12. Either you convert before or XviD does it.
Its most likely that this particular video requires more than 3500kbps to look as good as you're usual stuff.
You may want to reduce resolution or increase bitrate and see if that helps.

[ChOnG]

Thanks for your replys.

I still dont get what has changed tho, its the same game ive done my past movies with. same gfx settings,same vegas settings same everything tbh lol.

I do a 30second clip at 3500 and it comes out about 11MB which is nice size. Any higher bitrate then my size it getting past the 20/30mb per minute average movie size.

I usually just render straight from Vegas but have tried exporting uncompressed and doing it in Virtualdub but still comes out the same.

EDIT: After formatting i just ran my game and done cl_avidemo 30 again to get a little footage. Now when in vegas the playback is very very stuttery :/ problem after problem lol. Im starting to think my gfx cards are maybe something to do with this.

[ToS_Maverick]

encode @ constant quantizer = 2

if the video is too big, try quant 3 or 4.

[DarkZell666]

did you switch b-frames off for any reason ? if you use b-frames (use 2 instead of 1), you'll get a much more efficient bitrate distribution.

And no, your GFX card doesn't affect XviD's quality (unless you tweaked the gamma settings for ex.) ;)

Personally, I would have used h263 quantization instead of MPEG, but dunno which is the most bitrate-hungry ...

One last thing I can think of : try turning adjusting the movie's contrast/saturation down just a little before encoding, you won't see much difference in the colors but XviD will spend quite a bit less bits on the colors :)

[ChOnG]

Here is an example of what im getting. Ive even tried windows media encoder with a 4000 bitrate and still the same result.

My old movies: http://www.v5-gaming.com/oldmovies.jpg
My new movie: http://www.v5-gaming.com/newmovie.jpg

As you can see by the flash on end of gun, its all blocky. There are parts of the movie where it is much worse.AND both these movies where made exactly the same down to the last settings.

Windows Media Encoder gives me a little better result, but comes out more blurry. but still getting blocks.:/

You think this is a a problem with my settings or something conflicting with my xvid when rendering? i just cant figure out why 2 movies made the exact same containing almost the exact same footage can come out so different.

Thanks :p

[sysKin]

What quantizers are you getting? Use ffdshow to play ths video, open its configuration and activate OSD -> Mean Quantizer (and also Frame Type). Tell us what you usualy get for P frames and B frames, and whether it changes much.

[DarkZell666]

The "oldmovies" picture looks pretty neat indeed ;)

It looks like you used a CQM (custom quantizer matrix) on it (a high-bitrate matrix for ex). Could you remember something about that ? I can't remember XviD giving me such detailed pictures even with a plain Q2 encode =)

[ChOnG]

Nope, all i used is that tutorial and xvid 1.0.3. same as always :p. Totally confuses me to how it can come out different from my other movies. Could it be a hardware issue? ive formatted,ive tried taking one of my gfx cards out and running solo on one but all this has came to no good :/ Does .NET Framework have anything to do with compression? as its the only thing i can think of that ive changed since last movie. I have 1.1 , 1.1 Service pack 1 and 2.0 installed as i need them all for various programs i use.

[ChOnG]

sysKin:

Im getting between 7-9 Frame Mean Quantizer AND getting Frame Type GMC QPEL,B QPEL.P QPEL.

Things seem to be going from bad to worse, just done another test and its even more blocky :/

Cant understand this at all.

Thanks for the replys btw :D

[ChOnG]

Some More screens.This time with higher bitrate 4000.

http://www.v5-gaming.com/SCREEN1.JPG

http://www.v5-gaming.com/SCREEN2.JPG

http://www.v5-gaming.com/SCREEN3.JPG
This one looks not bad at first glance, but then you see the sky all messy.

The game is Call of Duty2 and im capturing screens by cl_avidemo 30 with gfx on DX9. I notice that american maps like screen1+2 i see the blocks more noticeable as they are more graphically intense.

Ive tried lowering my Quantizers Min and Max P,I frames etc and still same outcome.

I think i can safely say its not a codec setting problem.

[foxyshadis]

Maybe you turned AA/AF off this time when it was on before? Or you had filters to simulate its effect before? Because quants should be in the 2-5 range to keep blocks from showing up, unless it's one of the ultra-low matrices.

[ChOnG]

I used x14AA and x16AF with all me movies and this one was the same. And always the same filters used in Vegas. Thats what i mean, ive used the exact same settings from before, and i know ive not forgotten anything. So how the hell can it come out like this lol.

[check]

I think chances are that the problem is simply that this movie is harder to compress than the other movies you have done. You will either need to:
*Bite the bullet and increase the bitrate
*Bite the bullet and accept the lower quality
*Bite the bullet and use a better quality codec (like h264).
Using a better quality codec would be helpful, but then you would need people to install a decoder for it, so it might not be a great idea.

[ChOnG]

Hmm, ive only compressed the whole movie twice and its was blocky. But that past week that ive been trying to fix it ive just been using 1minutes sample clips. Just to try and get a decent quality. I find it hard to believe that its the movie that is hard to compress as this is my 5th movie from this game ive made and its nothing different really from my others.

I dont add any special effects really, no big intros/outros. Most of my movie is just ingame footage which is the same ive always done.

Highest bitrate ive tried is 4000 and thats giving me same blockyness but my size is getting to 30+MB per minute. which is not bad really for a gaming movie but any higher and its just getting silly.

Anyways, my brother is coming through to stay for holidays soon and hes bringing his pc so ill try rendering on his with same settings and see what happens :p

[sysKin]

sysKin:

Im getting between 7-9 Frame Mean Quantizer AND getting Frame Type GMC QPEL,B QPEL.P QPEL.

Wait this is a bit weird - if a P-frame has a quant of 7 then a b-frame should have a quant of 11.

Perhaps you could just post your settings? :)

But really, this is game footage (with sharp grainy textures I see) at reasonably insane resolution (800 x ~450) and with black borders on top of bottom, which have negative effect on compression too. I'm surprised you ever got good results - maybe the footage was darker before? Or on a map without such noise on textures?

[shon3i]

Perhaps you could just post your settings?and sample of original and commpressed video

[ChOnG]

I use the exact same settings in this tutorial and always have. Only thing ive changed is i use a bitrate of 3500.

http://www.chopshopservers.com/education/video_editing_tutorial_by_commodore/index.html

With the resolution. I use 800x600 and just letterbox it in vegas. The blockyness actually gets worse when it does not have a border.

Basically my settings are:

First Pass:
profile@level: unrestricted
quantization type: MPEG
adaptive quantization: off
interlaced encoding: off
quarter pixel: off(ive tried this on aswell, no good)
reduced resolution: off
BVOPS: on (Default Values)
packed bitstream: off
closed GOV: on

motion search precision: 6
VHQ: 4
use chroma motion: on
turbo: off
frame drop ratio: 0
maximum I-frame interval: 300
cartoon mode: off
quantization: 2 for min, 31 for max, all of them
trellis Quantization: on
debug: auto

Second pass: Bitrate 3500

A 1 minute clip: www.v5-gaming.com/NEWMOVIE.rar (26MB) you will notice the blockyness more on the greeny maps especially at the end.

Btw, here is a link to my last movie if anyone wants to see it :p wish i could get my quality back :(.

http://www.up-esports.com/v2/download.php?fileID=1&ws_session=993f0271405d3981ef52c9a3509abbfb (335MB 12Minutes)

[Sharktooth]

try using h.263 quantization or a low bitrate matrix such as jawor's 1cd or EQM V3ULR.
however... just a tought... how many FPS?

[ChOnG]

30fps ive always used. If any of you download my last movie i made you will see the difference in quality. And youlll also notice its basically the same movie (footage,effects,vegas filters) as my new one would be. I dont like change :p

Ive actually tried everything over the past week. from using windows media encoder with a 2pass file a friend sent me (and his movies are really good quality) to changing every single setting in xvid. ive tried it all to be honest. This is whats making me think its a hardware issue or a problem happened when i was capturing the screenshots. All proccessing files/settings ppl have sent me or ive downloaded have all gave me the same result.

[shon3i]

I just downloaded 1 minute clip and this is hoorible

http://img376.imageshack.us/img376/453/untitled4cg1.jpg

avg quant is 9.988

But video looks like have very specific type of noise something like grain with more sharpness (probably some weird filter from vegas) , probably very hard work for XviD (and for other encoders, but i think x264 can beat that)

@ChOnG why you not try to encode with cq=2 or 3, h263 matrix or some of sharktooths url

PS which sondtrack you use for video??, Thanks

[ChOnG]

Well, i add HSL Adjust (Max Saturation and Luminance Boose) and Light Sharpen (0.250), Like ive said, i used this exact setting in all my movies and has been ok before.

Im not all the knowledgeable about terms. what does cq=2or3 and sharktooth url mean? :/

And that sound track is Hoobastank - Pieces :D gotta luv Hoobastank for fragmovies lol :p

PS: I know its alot to ask, but if you have time. download my last movie and tell me if you see a difference(link is in that last post). Ive been looking at so many clips recently i dont even know whats good and whats not now lol :p

[shon3i]

Im not all the knowledgeable about terms. what does cq=2or3 and sharktooth url mean? :/

http://img313.imageshack.us/img313/615/11hs.jpg
http://img351.imageshack.us/img351/1153/21jj.jpg
http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/3516/32zf2.jpg
http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/5342/45wz1.jpg
http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/9708/58ks.jpg

Try with this settings and post results

And that sound track is Hoobastank - Pieces gotta luv Hoobastank for fragmovies lol Nice, maybe you want put Hoobstank - Out of control, my favorite

I know its alot to ask, but if you have time. download my last movie and tell me if you see a difference(link is in that last post). I've put on my download list and probably toomorow i tell you my comments

[ChOnG]

HAHA My last movie your downloading is called Out Of Control and guess what song it has :p great tune

Thanks alot btw, ill give these settings a bash.

EDIT: I done a 30 second clip with those settings and it came out 115MB :/ Quality is amazing tho lol (which you would expect at that size).

Ive been here before also, i know if i raise the Target Quantizer to try get my usuall 15mb per 30seconds(30mb per minute) the quality will be back to where i started. Its all very confusing coz with that it ususally would mean you need a higher rate for your movie but as i said ive done 4 other movies before this one and its came out nice.

Anyone think it could be a problem from when i was capturing the screenshots? maybe they didnt capture correctly and theres some faults in them that aint noticable to the eyes?

Hard to believe but i can get less blocky render when using a uncompressed clip from fraps lol. But fraps tends to dull down the colours/gfx glow.

[check]

Sharpening decreases the compressibility of videos, try encoding without the sharpening.

[ChOnG]

:/ ive always used light sharpen effect. Just tried to render it on my dads computer(its old) and pc shuts down through second pass lol. im getting no luck these days :(

[DarkZell666]

Try setting the max quantizer to 5 or 6, you might overshoot the bitrate a bit (not as much as you might think) but you'll see much less blocks.

And another vote to kill the sharpening, it's really bad :) Some avisynth filters sharpen "properly" but sharpening always screws the compressibility

(downloading the 2 movies right now ;))

Just watched "out of control" : you have a certain number of still scenes, for which the bitrate doesn't need to be so huge,
and the video is 12minutes long. This implies :
- that the codec has more length to decide where to spread the bits more efficiently.
- that having many still scenes (which require less bits), the codec will give back the unused bits to the high-motions scenes.

I believe that when you finish your movie most of the blocking will disappear :)

[ChOnG]

Yeh i kinda thought that and really have always been told "you can judge your quality with 30 second clips" which seems to be the case.

With the sharpen i use, i add it in vegas and export uncompressed to virtualdub, have always done it this way and seems to be ok most of the time.

I just added another filter to my movie in vegas called "brighten brights" and its made a hell of a difference in the blocks. Actually got decent quality again with some nice highlighted areas :p

I used windows media encoder for it with a processing file a friend sent me. So all is well again for now (i think) :D Ill post a little 30 second clip of the movie i just rendered to see if you notice a difference from that last little clip i gave you.

EDIT: www.v5-gaming.com/TESTCLIP.rar (1minuteclip 30MB)

I think it is ALOT better, and that was only me adding a brighten filter in vegas lol :/

[zile]

Uhm, what's that vegas you talking about and where (when?) do you add this filter in virtualdub? Sorry for being offtopic.

[foxyshadis]

http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/products/vegasfamily.asp

It's not a filter, it's an NLE. The video is exported from it as uncompressed video and imported into vdub.