Little help needed with CCE SP!!!

[go4saket]

Hi Guys!

I am using CCE SP to convery my movies in DV AVI format to MPEG2 DVD Format. In the encoder settings I selected MPEG2 DVD Format and Single Pass VBR. Now as soon as I select VBR, the outpur files are automatically divided in seperate Video and audio files. I want only one MPG file to be created with both Video and Audio merged in it rather than having seperate video and audio files. How can this be achieved. I dont want to use the CBR option.

Please help.

Thank you.

[Skelsgard]

For 1-pass VBR, only Elementary output is possible in CCE.
You will have to join it after encoding.

Cheers.

[go4saket]

How can I join it???

[Skelsgard]

You can use Muxman.
TMPGEnc Plus also has some basic muxing features (u can download a trial).

Cheers.

[go4saket]

Which do you think is better, VBR or CBR. Obviously I dont want the size to go very high but again, no compromise with the quality. Moreover, is a bitrate of 3000 in CBR good enough for home videos. Incase if VBR is better, what range of bitrate should I give for encoding.

[Skelsgard]

Objectively speaking, VBR has some more advantages than CBR, except for a major one: with VBR the filesize can be unpredictable, whereas CBR will allow you to more accurately reach a target size.
Of course, the best idea is always to occupy the full size of the DVD. And the amount of space required by your movies will depend on how much hours you want to encode.
Let´s say a decent encode with good quality will allow aprox. 2hs on a DVD5. But it always depends on the footage.
Home videos tend to have a lot of movement as the operator is holding the camera, walking, laughing and what not, instead of using cranes or tripods for fixed position. The amount of motion will obviously affect the bitrate needed to maintain a given visual quality.
Other aspects like the characteristics of the frame (background with to many moving things or too much detail: landscapes, grass, trees, streets, etc) and the overall lighting of the scene, will affect the compressibility too.
So I can´t really say whether 3000 CBR would be enough as I haven´t seen your particular footage. Usually a 4000-5000 CBR is good enough, and allows for 2hs movies with 192 or 224kbps AC3 (good for 2 channel audio) in one DVD5.
Still, the key concept is that it always depends on the footage.
VBR on the other hand, if properly used, will allow you to save bits where not needed and use them where needed, maintaining an good overall quality throughout the movie with the least amount of bitrate shortage (when the scene suffers as is not as compressible as the rest of the movie but the fixed bitrate doesn´t feed it with enough bits to maintain the quality, so degradation occurs).
The downside is the unpredictability (is this a word?) of the final size.
But there´s also Multipass CBR which allows muxed stream output.
Multipass is "like" a middle ground between VBR and CBR. It makes pases on which it analizes the movie to determine the best compression for the given average bitrate. It gives a more accurate (but not absolutely accurate) final size.

I prefer VBR as I consider CBR and Multipass CBR to waste bits on some scenes on which VBR compresses at almost ridiculously low BRs, bits that later will allow me to maintain high quality on demanding scenes (high movement, fast changes, heavy lights), and I don´t mind to make 2 or 3 encodes until achieving the best quality for the max allowed size.
Another important concept is the use of matrices. In encoders (usually), a matrix is basically an array of values (numbers) interpreted by the encoder as the threshold that a given "object" in the frame will have to reach, for a given level of detail, to be kept in the frame instead of being discarded. Look into it if interested.

Cheers.

[go4saket]

Thanks Skelsgard! You have really helped a lot. Thanks again...