What setttings work best for homeshot DV to MPEG2 using CCE2.66?

[rapjp2001]

Hi Guys,

About to break the rules a bit here, so please excuse me..

I have read the FAQ and a few other threads and it got quite overwhelming...Here is the question:

I have some video I shot of a jazz band at a club and now we want to make a DVD off that footage. I shot is using a Sony MiniDV(NTSC) camcorder.

Now, I have a Philips standalone 985 recorder and I get very good results when I use the HQ mode(maxed out bitrate - 9.8 Mbps), but I want to see whether I get better results by capturing the video as a DV AVI and compressing via CCE on my desktop.

I have CCE 2.66 version and I was wondering what settings generally work best when making a DV to MPEG2 for homeshot footage rather than commercial footage (a.la. a movie) that most recompress to fit onto on DVD-R...

if someone can give me some general tips on what aspects of the video settings to click, it would be most appreciated...I am just overwhelmed and each thread throws a new variable to some arguement for doing something and I don't know where to start...

Thanks in advance

Rajiv

[Bugsy]

Check this thread:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?threadid=55832

Bugsy ;)

[Mug Funky]

CCE is such a high quality encoder that all you really need to do is figure out how high the bitrate can be (like how long your footage is and how high a rate you can get away with fitting it on 4.7gb DVD-R).

9.8 megabit should be able to handle anything, really. in a lot of cases commercial DVDs even go over this for short spikes.

if you're a quality Nazi, then use 2 or more passes (depending on how much time you have).

the hardware encoder you've got is probably enough. the only reason i can see to get it on the computer is so you can post-filter it (i like to give DV a temporal soften like Peachsmoother in avisynth).

bottom line is, DV footage is usually pretty gross to look at, so any extra noise from encoding will probably go unnoticed. if the MPEG2 you got from the hardware encoder looks just like the DV footage, then there's no reason to re-encode it, unless it's too big to fit on a DVD-R

[rapjp2001]

Thanks Mug Funky for that input...

You are right, in most cases, the hardware encoder is fine...it is *identical* to the DV footage on the tape...however, the only reason I wanted to do the desktop compression was to reduce this graininess of the footage since this is dark footage shot in a jazz club at a concert.

I have tried all I could with CCE and I cannot seem to reduce the grainy look no matter how much I change the quantization characterstics...I myself also feel that perhaps AVISyth is the answer to do some pre-filtering before CCE gets the footage..

Your recommednation for the smoothing is a good one -- Would you mind sharing the script you have with me, I can go from there and tweak it further? You can send it to me offline at pandeyrajiv@yahoo.com.

Many thanks!

Rajiv

[Mug Funky]

here's the code... i used it for something i did where the footage was too dark (i was losing the light, and i forgot the cam was set to fixed exposure...)

avisource("magic_2.avi")

convertbacktoyuy2() #--------this is if you're using one of those codecs that decode DV in RGB24...

levels(16,1.33,200,0,255) #--------this setting works for very dark footage... prolly best to ajust this

peachsmoother(noisereduction=35, stability=20, spatial=100)

you'll need to download the Peach smoother. it's pretty nice.

i also like to use TomsMoComp, but haven't included it here. it just makes it look more cinematic...

[SeeMoreDigital]

rapjp2001

This is not related to your question but could I ask you if your Philips standalone 985 recorder can playback RAW Mpeg1 and 2 files?

[rapjp2001]

SeeMoreDigital, My Philips 985 does not play any Raw MPEG1 or MPEG2 files, as a matter of fact, it does not play the DVD-formatted, VCD or SVCD formatted VOB or DAT files if they are not fully compliant...so it is quite a stickler for standards

Hope that helps