Most of source is filmed underwater

[Budginator]

Hi,

I'm currently trying to rip 'The Blue Planet' 3 Disc set, which is almost all about the oceans and what lives in and around them.

Seeing as alot of the episodes are almost full of underwater shots, can anyone recommend an encoding method to achieve good underwater quality? I'm using nandub on the same setting i have used for most of my other rips. Anyone done alot of underwater stuff and know what to use to get the best?

cheers

[diji1]

Howdy - nice to see another aussie round here :)

can't say that i have ripped something with as much water in it as that doco ( damn good one it is tho ) but here's my $0.02 anyway. basically, even though i use 3.11;-) almost always, it leads to a blockier ( but more detailed ) picture than xvid or divx5. so being that water scenes generally lead to a blocky, pixellated mess in all the worthy codecs i'd try xvid or divx5. i think that that series would really beat down any codec though to be quite honest, going with xvid/divx5 would just be the lesser of two evils ...

[Budginator]

Ok, so DivXv5 or Xvid...

Anyone else have any recommendations or the like?

Cheers diji1, we may be fucked over geographicaly but we can still get into these forums (damn shitty aus net access...) :)

[diji1]

yes, don't u just love jiggy ziggy and the rest of the crew at telstra ... not.

[Budginator]

Also, i intend to put each episode on a seperate 700MB CDR (about 48mins each) as i want the best possible quality, also keeping the AC3 sound, which is only 2channel 192 anyway...

My first encode with nandub-

http://members.optusnet.com.au/~big_em/budge/eg1.jpg
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~big_em/budge/eg2.jpg

640x368
1,800Kbp/s with 16% symetric compression.

Anyone recommend any nandub settings that chould help with the fast motion underwater 'fish swirling' that occurs?

High pass is set to 550 and low 2500.

cheers.

[Acaila]

I would definately put a smoother filter in. A Temporal, not a spatial one, as the spatial would completely wash out (:)) the water details here.

Or you could just use DivX4 since it already blurs everything by default without having to use smoothers.

[Budginator]

Originally posted by Acaila
I would definately put a smoother filter in. A Temporal, not a spatial one, as the spatial would completely wash out (:)) the water details here.

Or you could just use DivX4 since it already blurs everything by default without having to use smoothers.

At what stage would you recommend i put in the temporal smoother? I'm using Avisynth so, after the encode? or after cropping? I'll run a few tests and see whats best :)

[Budginator]

Ok, i selected a specific range of the file and encoded this small clip the same way i have been, and i also used tempsmoother to encode the exact same section of video.

This is my normal Avisynth script-

LoadPlugin("C:\Program Files\DVD & DivX Applications\mpeg2dec\MPEG2DEC.dll")
mpeg2source("E:\The Blue Planet\Episodes\Episode1 - The Blue Planet\project.d2v")
Crop(9,2,700,572)
BicubicResize(640,368)

And this was my TempSmoother enabled script-

LoadPlugin("C:\Program Files\DVD & DivX Applications\mpeg2dec\MPEG2DEC.dll")
mpeg2source("E:\The Blue Planet\Episodes\Episode1 - The Blue Planet\project.d2v")
Crop(9,2,700,572)
BicubicResize(640,368)
TemporalSmoother(2)

Here are the results in two screen grabs of the clip-

http://members.optusnet.com.au/~big_em/budge/notempsmoother.jpg

http://members.optusnet.com.au/~big_em/budge/tempsmoother.jpg

I can easily tell the differance when viewed full screen, the clip using temp smooth does not have macroblocks that are as hard and sharp, and does not seem to blur that much in the 'above water' sections of the clip.

What setting should i change to direct more bits to fast motion areas of the encode in nandub?

cheers again! :)

[Budginator]

BTW, here is a really BAD frame from that short clip...

It looks like this with or without tempsmoother.

http://members.optusnet.com.au/~big_em/budge/yuck.jpg

[Acaila]

At what stage would you recommend i put in the temporal smoother? I'm using Avisynth so, after the encode? or after cropping? I'll run a few tests and see whats best
Always place it before resizing, unless you have some special reason not to.

What setting should i change to direct more bits to fast motion areas of the encode in nandub?
I wouldn't know, I've never used Nandub that extensively.

[Budginator]

I just encoded Episode 1 of the set using this script-

LoadPlugin("C:\Program Files\DVD & DivX Applications\mpeg2dec\MPEG2DEC.dll")
mpeg2source("E:\The Blue Planet\Episodes\Episode2 - The Deep\project.d2v")
Crop(10,2,699,572)
TemporalSmoother(3)
BicubicResize(640,368)

Looks ALOT better, and there is only a slight loss of detail (being mostly underwater, alot of detail is diluted by the actual water anyway :)). 1,830Kb/s / 16% Compression... using BeSweet 128Kbps VBR MP3. Final size 699MB, thank for the help guys :)

cheers!