Thank you Doom9, and programmers too!

[SiliconJon]

Well, though I would have liked to post earlier, I had to wait in case I would post anything silly :sly: I do understand!

Thank you for the guide and the softies. I had quite a few gears in the works before I got it up and running, but this site covered most if not all of my issues. A personal thanks to Microsoft for screwing up the codecs with one of their updates for XP! [Anybody else find it ironic they used a dead-man symbol, like X| ]

I am ripping our (the family's) DVD's to AVI so I can just keep them on the hard drive for easier lengthy viewing & origianl DVD preservation. So far, I have been unsuccessful in getting satisfactory results from XVID, though I must say I have only tried twice. I've been playing with settings in Divx & Gknot. But little seems to change. I have noticed that unless I set Divx to deinterlace all frames, I get nasty lines in all my transcodes (or do we call them encodes). Upon inspection, these lines appear to be coming directly off the DVD's as previewing the VOB shows the lines throughout. I have not tried to preview them with PowerDVD or WinDVD to see if the problem is definately in the ripped VOBs. Is something being ripped incorrectly? I'm using Robot4Rip as I enjoy it's smooth sailing ripping. If this question is answered in another post, please disregard as I have more digging to do tonight.

When I increase the file destination size, and the Bits/(Pixel*Frame) increases, I notice little difference. I.E. Spongebob episodes: went from 140MB to 233MB per ~11min ep, all w/160kb audio. There was less pixelation, but still noticable quality loss. Yes, perhaps I am being too anal! It is still very good quality, and when watched on my TV via my TV-Out, it is hardly noticable. But any suggestions would be most appreciated. I will continue to dig deep withing the site & forum for pointers.

Now to go check out that thread about ST:TNG again, as that is my next planned project...

Thx again. Had I not found this place, I would have likely procrastinated my venture another year!

:devil:

Windows XP Pro
XP1700+
512MB PC133
Gordian Knot MegaPack
Plextor 24x12x40 CDRW

[manono]

Hi and welcome to the forum-

The chances are good that the artifacts to which you refer are interlacing lines, and you'll have to perform IVTC to get the .avis to look at all decent. Maybe read This Tutorial (http://www.doom9.org/ivtc-tut.htm) to get a better understanding of what's going on.

And I would suggest that you do a few easy-to-encode Hollywood type movies to begin with. And I would suggest that you keep as far away as possible from ST:TNG until you know what you're doing.

[SiliconJon]

Got the deinterlacing thing down mostly, though I didn't know that field deinterlacing could be tweaked. I'll have to look further into that. Thx for the link, as it has some excellent info (of course!). It's the other artifacts that remain that I need to tweak down or out. Smudging, small pixelation, etc. The BIG pixelation was easier to tweak out. I see many of these covered in that link. I'll return after a few more days of play.

But I am a newbie...give me a few months and a few teras of experience... :sly:

[manono]

Hi-

It's the other artifacts that remain...

Perhaps you're not giving it enough bitrate. Have you been running compression tests through Gordian Knot so you can get an idea of the final quality, before doing the encoding?

[SiliconJon]

No, I have not. Though I just now started playing with dropping the target resolution. That has helped a million. Trying to keep the original resolution (640x464) was proving to require far too large of files. This would be fine if I had a DVD burner, but I'm still stuck in the stoneys with my CDRW, so ~820MB is my limit and splitting is not an option. But my most recent experiment with a Spongebob DVD dropping from 640x464 to 320x240 and using "Seperate Fields" for my field operations (as it is 2X as fast as the others and I noticed in the link above it mentioned good operation at half the resolution) and switching between Lanczos & Sharp Bicubic. This has been quite successful, though my file sizes are not ending up optimally size, ranging from 125MB - 180MB with a target size of 175MB. Still more playing to do to try and figure out why, not sure if the resize filters had anything to do with it as looking at that now...

Anybody have any pointers on the text files containing
seq deltaT type total_bits motion_complexity texture_complexity modulation
?

Anything in here I may use to help progress?

ALso, I am going to play with "The Ring". I noticed while previewing that it appears not a single frame is interlaced. Before i jump head first, any pointers on getting a nice 700MB AVI? So far everything else I have done has been interlaced or had that appearance.

[manono]

Hi-

file sizes are not ending up optimally size

If you had done a compression test as I had suggested, that wouldn't have happened. The chances are good that you maxed out the file size with that low resolution, something a compression test would have tipped you to. Then you could have raised the resolution and the file sizes would have gotten larger. However, with a larger resolution, "Separate Fields" might not have been such a good idea. "FieldDeinterlace" or "SmartBob" would have been better choices at higher resolutions.

I noticed while previewing that it appears not a single frame is interlaced.

That's exactly the kind of film you should be starting with. Just Force Film it in DVD2AVI, no interlacing problems, and easy to compress to 1 CD. And it's a pretty decent film, also.

[SiliconJon]

I've only been using seperate fields since the res drop. before that I was using Field Deinterlace or Toms MoComp.

On my compression check I get 162.2% [IN RED] of .571 in the main Gknot menu when I use the vdenc file. I get 214.8% of .337 when doing the check from the preview window.

So, The compressibility check gives you a rough indication of how good a movie can be compressed. The 3 values shown above are related as follows: the 0.338 is the value that the compressibility check returned. If the Bits/(Pixel*Frame) the first value, right above the Load button matches this value you have perfect quality, going for a higher value would be overkill as the movie wouldn't look any better.. The limit of the codec has been reached. The 41.7% value tells you the relationship between the optimal case and what you're going to get at the currently selected resolution. 60% or higher will pretty much guarantee that you'll get pretty good looking results. Going over 80% is a serious overkill and you should rather increase the resolution. Values in the range of 50-60% still look pretty good and 40-50 is still OK, especially when you activate B-frames. The darker a movie gets and the cleaner the source the more you can compress a movie. Using B-frames certain movies will look good even at a 0.12 Bits/(Pixel*Frame value).

Time to redo...

tis phun, u c

[SiliconJon]

Ahhhh...very nice on the last one. Did 90% on the compression for "The Ring" using Encode as Progressive with Sharp Bicubic and no field operations, anamorphic NTSC FILM. Turned out wonderful. Did it twice with the first being around 79% and the first was only fair quality.

Did the spongebob again, this time at 80% and it turned out fair. Going to increase it to 90 and see how it does this time...

Using Lanczos doesn't seem to be producing the quality I'm looking for. Is there something I need to do for that resize filter to work better? Sharp Bicubic seems to work great so far. Where around here might a find a in-depth description of these filters.

Also, wanting to make me a custom CD for this halloween using some parts of movies' soundtracks, all from DVD of course. Any suggestions on what to use?

[manono]

Hi-

Did 90% on the compression for "The Ring" using Encode as Progressive with Sharp Bicubic and no field operations

Force Film in DVD2AVI is a field operation, so I guess you meant no field operation in GKnot. I'm glad you got a nice looking movie out of it. At least now you know it can be done.

Using Lanczos doesn't seem to be producing the quality I'm looking for.

It's less compressible than Neutral Bicubic (by maybe up to 10%), but about as compressible as Sharp Bicubic, and better in my opinion, as it won't produce the ringing that Sharp Bicubic does sometimes. But if you prefer Sharp Bicubic, then by all means continue to use it. But if something isn't compressing well, then you might try Neutral Bicubic.

I've never worked with SpongeBob. I don't even understand why children like it. So I can't give you any firsthand advice with that one. However, often a less sharp resizer will work better with cartoons. And perhaps the DVDs themselves aren't of such good quality. So maybe some sort of denoiser might help with them.

Can't help with the Halloween CD. Sorry. Maybe someone else has some ideas.