Neutral Bicubic worth it?

[SnotRat]

I've been doing some 1 cd encodes and noticed i usually get about 8% better compression with soft bicubic than i do neutral allowing me to go to higher resolutions. Comparing the two i really don't see that much of a difference and find myself wondering if neutral bicubic is really worth it. It does appear slightly sharper but then i notice more artifact than i do with my soft bicubic rips. I'm having a hard time deciding which to choose. Would most of you rather watch an encoding at 576w neutral or 608w soft?

[JensG.]

I'd take the one with less resolution error :-)

[jonny]

This is really subjective, i usually prefer neutral, but i target for high resolutions too (i go always for 2 cd)

[N_F]

Originally posted by SnotRat
Would most of you rather watch an encoding at 576w neutral or 608w soft?

This is a tough question that you spend a lot of time on. Personally I am confident I couldn't tell the difference between them so I may well go for the resolution with the least AR error just like JensG mentions. Though I may also go for 576W just because it's a nicer number :)

[theReal]

When I started encoding with Gknot, I liked soft bicubic better, but as I encoded more, I suddenly began to feel it was not sharp enough.

I always aim for the best quality, so I rarely do 1 CD encodes - and I'm mostly using LanczosResize now because it delivers even sharper pictures than BicubicResize (and better colors, imo).

If I really had to do a 1 CD rip and needed all the compression I could get, I think I'd consider BilinearResize more than Soft Bicubic because it compresses even better (but also makes colors look a little washed out).

btw try using Convolution3D (with something like the HQ movie preset or a little stronger) before Neutral Bicubic. It makes a lot of artefacts go away without losing sharpness.

[crahak]

I almost never make 1 CD Rips either. I aim for usually 640x480 for 4:3, and 704w if it's widescreen (height depending on letterbox). I use neutral all the time (I see no difference at all with lanzcos). Then, I shoot for the amount of CDs it takes, depending on what audio I want and how compressible the movie is. Looks very good with neutral :)

[SnotRat]

Is there a way to get rid of that ringing effect i notice around moving objects and subtitles that are encoded with the movie?

[hakko504]

Originally posted by SnotRat
Is there a way to get rid of that ringing effect i notice around moving objects and subtitles that are encoded with the movie? Use soft bicubic. Lanczos might give you a litle less ringing also, but that will depend on the movie.

[SnotRat]

Originally posted by hakko504
Use soft bicubic. Lanczos might give you a litle less ringing also, but that will depend on the movie.

Even with soft bicubic i see some ringing especially around subs. Is there a denoiser or smoother good for that? Or is ringing something that most people just learn to live with?

Also, can somebody please tell me what the difference between TemporalSmoother(2,1) and TemporalSmoother(2) is?

[Brandon]

If you find that you can't get rid of the ringing completely, you could try using FFDShow's (http://cutka.szm.sk/ffdshow/) postprocessing filters...