Nero Recode Decision Control [Archive]

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a1677c

29th June 2007, 05:49

I was just curious where people are setting their decision control in recode? Is it best to leave it where it is “default” or slide it all the way to the right? I have looked at the info in expert settings on the pdf user’s guide from Nero and it doesn’t give much info about it.

mediator

29th June 2007, 15:29

Slide it to the right, if you want to have maximum quality.

"Extra" does enable extended motion search, full rate-distortion optimization for B frames and at all other levels of the decision process.

PuzZLeR

29th June 2007, 22:58

This slider's default position is just that - a default setting according to median assumption.

Some of the older and slower PCs would take a very long time to the extreme right, so Nero assumed this position to be a good balance between speed and quality in general for all computers.

If you have a late model computer you shouldn't feel a difference in speed between the two. I would just go extreme right and enjoy the extra 2%-4% extra quality (from my estimations). This is what I do.

If you have a PC that is not multi-threaded, the extreme right would be horribly slow and may not be worth it for you if it can take you two days to encode something that is 90 minutes (especially with 2-pass since Nero's 1-pass is, as of today, horrible).

a1677c

30th June 2007, 06:56

I concur the 1-pass is terrible. I am backing up some of my blu-ray discs to 720p & was getting a little jerkiness in the video. I didn't know if this was caused from me turning the decision control all the way up or not. Usually if I redo the material again the jerkiness disappears. It takes a long time of course to do this. Thanks for the info & I'll keep the slider to the right!

PuzZLeR

30th June 2007, 11:27

Yes, if you have a fast PC, then keep the slider to the right for highest quality and use the multithreading option.

I would bet big $$$ that the slider's position has nothing to do with this jerkiness or jumpiness you're getting.

It could be one of three things:

1-The fps is off. You are probably using a different framerate from the source. I know that BD video can have an fps of as high as 59.94 fps so the translation to something like 29.97 or 25.0 is giving you problems. I don't think the current edition of Nero was made for this conversion.

2-It could be an interlacing problem. I know that Nero also sucks in this department too. You may also be changing fields from "top field first" to "bottom field first", or something like that. Then again, BD is a different animal, so it could be something beyond...

3-Now I don't know how the m(2)ts containers work in BD, but I know that VOBs from DvDs sometimes have a segmentation that can be tricky with some converters. However, as far as these next gen discs are concerned, ATM, I don't know my elbow from my butt when it comes to these things. There is simply very little, if any, info on these things in our present age...

The simple fact of the matter is that, as of this writing, you are struggling with a relatively new technology that has little documentation and support today. I'm sure in three years time you won't have these problems with the latest apps to assist, but for now, all I can say is good luck. Personally, I would hang on for a bit and wait instead of losing my hair over it today.

I hope you solve your problem nevertheless. Maybe you can even revive this thread to inform us of your progress.:)

JohnV

1st July 2007, 17:25

2-It could be an interlacing problem. I know that Nero also sucks in this department too.Can you please provide some example which can be reproduced and verified, so that it can be fixed if there's a problem. Saying that you know something sucks doesn't unfortunately help much.

Also, I just tested the 1pass AVC normal and extra decision quality@1Mbps with the latest release, and there's strong blocking couple of seconds in the beginning of stream, but after that the quality is good, so I wouldn't describe it as horrible, although the blocking issue should be taken care of.

PuzZLeR

2nd July 2007, 00:39

Hello JohnV, thanks for your reply.

Don't get me wrong, I love Recode. It's just that it has some limitations that are only a couple of updates away from being resolved.

Maybe I am a bit harsh in using the term "sucks", but let me explain.

Apparently it's a well-known issue that Recode is not ready for interlacing prime time ATM. Results are terrible whether maintaining interlacing or de-interlacing through the app itself. Many clips come out looking all blurry with the interlacing or seem to have "rake marks" in them from the de-interlacing. I'm not alone in this feeling. What I do to circumvent this is de-interlace the material beforehand in my editing software before I load it into Recode. This in itself improves the quality of the encodes.

And about the 1-pass. The exact reason you mentioned, where there's a blocking in the first few frames/seconds/minutes is exactly the reason why I said it's terrible. This is unacceptable. Recode isn't adjusting fast enough when searching for the right quantizer for the particular frames/scene and it hurts the video at the beginning.

I encode alot of music videos for example, which are about 3.5 minutes long average. It would be very annoying if 90% of them had bad video for the first 20-30 seconds.

Maybe a movie that I only want to watch once and delete, that is bad for the first minute is Ok, but not in the general sense.

But when using Nero in 2-pass with progressive material beforehand, Recode is top-notch. No doubt about it.

JohnV

2nd July 2007, 01:20

Hmm, for me the blocking lasted maybe 5 seconds, but maybe it can take longer then. I've made a bug entry about this so that it would be examined.

Do you happen to have a small source where this de-interlacing problem is especially noticeable with rake marks/blurring?

a1677c

2nd July 2007, 07:19

I still get occasional jerkiness in the 2nd half of the BD-50 from Kingdom of Heaven it’s not very noticeable on my 46” but is more apparent on my dual 16 x 9 21” PC monitors. I have re-ran it through Recode 3 times now: decision control to the right & 2-pass @ 720p. The quality is very good so no complaints there in fact it’s hard to tell it from the original 1080p. Once I extracted the DTS from Kingdom of Heaven & made it into a mpeg-2 audio stream Recode accepted it with no problems. I do hope recode makes some fixes and adjustments to accept the various m2ts files since we have VC-1, Mpeg-2 & AVC mp4 Blu-ray DVD. I haven’t purchased a Blu-ray AVC mp4 yet but I have a feeling Recode will accept it. John V what is your status with Nero are you still on staff?

PuzZLeR

2nd July 2007, 07:45

Hmm, for me the blocking lasted maybe 5 seconds, but maybe it can take longer then. I've made a bug entry about this so that it would be examined.It can be longer in some cases, not sure, because I gave up on Recode's 1-pass a while ago. If it's video you wish to just watch once and delete it's not a big deal and worth it for a quicker encode, but not for video that is worth archiving or keeping.

Do you happen to have a small source where this de-interlacing problem is especially noticeable with rake marks/blurring?Absolutely. I will prepare it, upload it on MediaFire, and post a link in this thread by tomorrow (although it's a Canadian holiday, it's late now in North America on this side of the ocean...:() . Thanks for following up.

a1677c

2nd July 2007, 09:13

PuzZLeR if you get a chance check your pm box I sent you an email & query in regards to the multi-thread settings which I am not familiar with. The quality in single pass isn’t worth archiving but watch & delete absolutely. I used to use DVD2SVCD so 2-pass is not a big deal to me. I also wanted to clarify that I did answer your 2nd reply to my post. For some reason It doesn’t seem to be there so 1. The framerate seems to be the same as the source material usually around 23 fps. 2. The material I have been encoding has so far has been progressive from BD. By the way what is your Holiday?

JohnV

2nd July 2007, 18:13

I still get occasional jerkiness in the 2nd half of the BD-50 from Kingdom of Heaven it’s not very noticeable on my 46” but is more apparent on my dual 16 x 9 21” PC monitors. This is not telecined content or have you applied the stutter fix?
Does the clip go through import analysis ok?

a1677c

2nd July 2007, 21:19

John V Interestingly enough when I run an m2ts file through "that which Recode will accept" it analyzes but never shows the green graph as with dvd content. The few scenes which have a little jerkiness probably wouldn’t be apparent to many people. I just thought possibly there was something in the settings I need to tweak. Yes it is telecined content it’s just a BD-50 from Kingdom of Heaven. The video quality ended up around 6 Mbps in Recode. I am very pleased how it turned out.

JohnV

2nd July 2007, 21:40

a1677c: I wonder what could be causing the jerkiness. Can you try to cut a small clip, and if the problem is reproducable with it, PM to me?

a1677c

4th July 2007, 09:51

Yes I could but since I don’t have high speed internet connection it takes along time. It is pretty much negligible and only in a few instances that it occurred. I have included here a few screen shots of the 720p.

a1677c

5th July 2007, 00:24

I do have a question for both of you guys. Sometimes when I do regular dvd to mp4 in Recode my audio gets out of sync towards the end of the movie. Any ideas what causes this and have you had the same experience?

JohnV

5th July 2007, 12:29

a1677c

5th July 2007, 23:16

I just actually started doing regular dvd to mp4 a few days ago with Nero. I’ll get a perfectly good mp4 conversion then I might get one with out of sync audio towards the last 1/3 of the video or the video is not smooth. I did just update Nero today so I don’t know if there were any fixes for Recode in this ver. 2 5 5 0. My pc is a dual core with 2 GB of memory with an 8800GTX Nividia video card. However I don’t think the gpu/video card is involved in any of the processing with Recode.

PuzZLeR

6th July 2007, 04:23

Hello JohnV,

It took a while, I know, but I have some samples prepared. (Holiday weekend madness). I had to find them first...

You will notice the streaks and raking from the interlacing and how horrid it looked. Hopefully it helps in research.

But!

I’ve fully tested my Nero Recode with interlaced material and it works fine now! I can only conclude I’ve had this problem with a previous version 6-8 months ago when I was first experimenting with Recode, or maybe the trial version from the site, so I sent you some older files from some stuff I still had on my hard drives back then.

I didn’t know this issue was fixed because I stopped trying Recode with interlaced material months ago, but I still have some of the older test files for you. You'll see the nasty problem I had then for all it's worth.

Anyhow, since this is an older Recode issue, I’ve sent you the download link in your PM box. I also don’t know which version caused this. The trial version can’t work any more because it’s expired now. But I’m sure there’s metadata inside the file that will give you some answers.

Hopefully it helps. Let us know any of your thoughts on this.

JohnV

6th July 2007, 17:20

JohnV

6th July 2007, 17:35

PuzZLeR

6th July 2007, 18:35

Ok, good thing you found no big problems in deinterlacing in the recent release. I don't wanna sound like a wiseguy, but it would have been better to check again if your latest experiences were from 8 months ago or so.. ;)Ever hear the story of the elephant that had his leg attached to a heavy ball and chain so he wouldn't be able to run away? He tried, and tried, and tried to run away, only to be discouraged and give up.

True story: One day this elephant's ball and chain got replaced by another much lighter ball and chain - easy enough for the elephant to drag. Yet still the elephant did not run away.

Why?

He simply stopped trying from previous habits... He simply didn't even think of the possibility of being able to finally do it.

So even when Recode developed better interlacing, I simply didn't think of this possibility...

Discouragement sucks doesn't it?

At any rate it's nice to know it works fine now. This actually is changing a workflow of mine that's been a certain way for months. More habit changes...:p

hansolos

6th July 2007, 23:38

JohnV

7th July 2007, 00:10

@JohnV sry to interrupt (hope you don`t mind) what I realy hate is not the deinterlacing, but the audio encoding with recode 2 since 3 versions. Still if you use ND AVC HD and you want 5.1 from DVD AAC Audio there is a bad noise in every file...when will you fix that???
Sry
I've addressed this already in couple of threads here. It is fixed, but I don't know exactly yet when the fix will be out. But for sure in the next update after 4-6 weeks, hopefully earlier.

a1677c

30th July 2007, 14:52

Since this last Nero update I haven’t had any new material to test with it. However if I do get issues with future dvd’s I’ll check using DGIndex & report back to you.