Faster AVI - M2V Conversion?

[ShadowSpawn]

Ok, I've searched these forums as best I could, and I couldn't find the answer I'm looking for, although I've probably just missed it :)

I'm trying to convert some TV episodes (Sapphire and Steel. Mmmm, British Sci Fi...) from Pal to NTSC. I'm doing the frame rate conversion with AviSynth (Xesdeeni, your script Rocks! Thank you).

My problem is, I'm using TMPG, and the three episodes I've done so far have taken roughly 5.5 hours each (for a 25 minute episode, that's insane). There has to be a faster way. I know CCE should be faster, but I can almost match the bitrate settings in TMPG, something I can't seem to set up correctly in CCE.

The thing is, Since AviSynth outputs in AVI format, I have to convert it back to MPEG2 format. If I'm thinking correctly, I don't have to re-encode the file, as I don't need/want to change the bitrates.

Is there a program out there that will do this fairly quickly? Is there a "Direct stream copy, no processing" setting in TMPG or CCE that I'm missing? I'd really like to get this process worked out by September (When Blake's 7 gets released :) ).

Thanks in Advance.

[Xesdeeni]

In order to do standards conversion, you have to change at least the resolution, and usually the framerate of the video. There is no way to change these things without completely uncompressing the video and recompressing it. The "MPEG-domain" (my name for it) converters you see for backing up DVD-9 to DVD-5s don't change these things, they just throw out some (carefully selected) data to reduce the bitrate.

We'd need more information on what your specific setup is to see how to speed it up. Are you doing multi-pass? Is the source actually video (interlaced)? What are the spec's of your computer? Can you explain in more detail what you mean when you say you can't get the exact bitrate in CCE?

Xesdeeni

[ShadowSpawn]

There is no way to change these things without completely uncompressing the video and recompressing it.

That's what I was afraid of, which is why this question may be a moot point. :(

We'd need more information on what your specific setup is to see how to speed it up. Are you doing multi-pass? Is the source actually video (interlaced)? What are the spec's of your computer? Can you explain in more detail what you mean when you say you can't get the exact bitrate in CCE?

Here's my computer setup:

Athalon 1600XP, 512MB RAM, 20GB hd (Will be 80GB soon), Win2000.

The source is actual interlaced PAL video, I'm doing a 2-pass VBR while frame serving from AviSynth using your script, converting it from 25fps PAL to 29.97fps NTSC (On the test clips I did before, the 23.976fps conversion jittered more than the 29.97. I don't know why).

As for the bitrate comment, I was figuring that, in episode 1 for instance (5110Kbits/sec avg, 8816Kbits/sec peak), since I don't want to change the bitrate, there was hopefully a way that I wouldn't need to have TMPG process the video *again* to those same bitrate settings. With CCE, I was using the arrows on the setting boxes (they change the bitrates by 500Kbits). I have since realized that I can type in my own values.

Hope this helps.

[Xesdeeni]

Sometimes when doing multi-pass, it's useful to save the processed video as an intermediate file so the conversion doesn't need to be done over for each pass. Of course you have to have enough hard drive space, and the codec you choose must not add more overhead, compressing and then decompressing, than the conversion itself. Also, you want to use a non-lossy codec, like HuffYUV, so the file will get pretty big.

I didn't understand your comment about 23.976 fps. Did you mean you tried to go from 25i fps to 23.976 fps? Ech! That would definitely be bad. You are going from 50 "instants of time" per second to 24. Much too much information is lost.

Xesdeeni

[ShadowSpawn]

Sometimes when doing multi-pass, it's useful to save the processed video as an intermediate file so the conversion doesn't need to be done over for each pass. Of course you have to have enough hard drive space, and the codec you choose must not add more overhead, compressing and then decompressing, than the conversion itself. Also, you want to use a non-lossy codec, like HuffYUV, so the file will get pretty big.

Hmmm, that will probably need to wait until I have the new HD then.

Did you mean you tried to go from 25i fps to 23.976 fps? Ech! That would definitely be bad. You are going from 50 "instants of time" per second to 24. Much too much information is lost.

Yea, that's what I meant. I wasn't thinking about it too hard at the time. Then again, I had been up for 32 hours :(

I'll play with it some more, do a few clips (of a full episode) with your suggestions and compare times. If nothing else, I'll just have to deal with it and schedule accordingly.

Thanks for your help.