Best encoder for anime

[SilentRipper]

Hi all,

I have a question. I have the Record of Lodoss War anime series (2 disc) and want to back it up to AVI. Which codec do you suggest for this. I want to keep the episodes ~50 - 80 megs each, but retain much of the original quality. I also would like a resolution of 360 x 240, 352 x 240, or 320 x 240. Thanks in advance.

[31 Flavas]

You say you want to back up to avi, but there is no way around it. At the filesize you want, 50 to 80 meg, the resulting video is going to be disapointing no matter the codec you use; unless you don't have anything against RealVideo.

Either increase your filesize limit or look into using RV9.

[hoola]

at that 320/240 divx/xvid along side virtualdub may give you a watchable video for that filesize using filters and such.

i have to 100% agree with the above comment. for the filesize your wanting you may want to look at rv9. it can do wonders with anime. infact non-anime as well.you may even be able to increase your res by quite a bit.


so as far as encoders go if you choose to use divx/xvid i would say virtualdub/mod.

if you choose to use rv9 you could look at autorv9 for your encoder choice.

you can also download the latest realalternative program and put that on the disk with your encodes. that way if someone borrows them all they have to do is install that and will be able to watch your realvideo content. that way you dont have to install the real one player. not that i am against that but anyways.

[Atamido]

If you use RV9, you can also put the video in Matroska with the audio format of your choice.

[LeonMcNichol]

IIRC, ROLW OAV (I assume that's what you got, by the number of discs, if you have the tv, then it's HK, you bad bad boy! ;) ), is a rather old anime and not too much detail. So it should be able to compress _VERY_ well with RV9. I was getting great results with Saber Marionette J and RV9. Around 80-90MBs in size at 640x480. You might be able to get 512x384@50MBs or use that size to up the quality to like 80mbs. You can also improve compression by using filters such as warpsharp and convolution3d.

[Sirber]

If you use AVISynth, use Dup(AVS) and DropDupe(producer), or dropdupe alone with default settings and 1 max dropped frame. You should gain around 20% quality for very low bitrate encode (300-400kbps) :D

[31 Flavas]

If you do decide to go with RV9 instead here is some advice.

At 320x240 the picture is going to be really fuzzy/soft just from the (lack of) resolution. I'd go overboard with a sharpness filter in your avs file to try to simulate some sharpness. Encode with RV9 2-pass VBR + EHQ + 2 pass improvements + dupe frame droper (dropdupe).

Total bitrate wise 300k bps will end you up around 50-ish megs. I'd use RA8 44k for the audio which will leave about 250k for the video. That's not a lot for the video, but you're dealing with only a fraction of the pixels you would be at 640x480. Both the audio and video will turn out better than you think.

[ProDigit]

Now, nearly 7 years later,does the above still hold true?

Or is perhaps the 264 encoder better?

For audio WMA 32 or 44kbit / 32-44khz is recommended for low bitrate encodings.

[Dark Shikari]

You won't be able to do this with RV9 (http://x264.nl/developers/Dark_Shikari/Flash/lowbitrateanime.html)

[ProDigit]

You won't be able to do this with RV9 (http://x264.nl/developers/Dark_Shikari/Flash/lowbitrateanime.html)

Very nice!
unfortunately due to using flash I can not determine the size of the video,but if what you say is true,and it fits in 65kbps, is that audio AND video?

The only con I see is the very low framerate (in the likes of 15fps,or lower).
And because the video is mainly low motion compression can be very high.

I know x264 is a superior encoder.Just did not know if the same held true at very low bitrates!

Another thing worth mentioning is that more and more anime is created with Computer generated 3D models; and a variety of shades is applied to the characters; unlike in older anime. That would add complexity to the encoding too.
But for those very old animes, the straight, 2D hand drawn animes of the late 80's, early 90's, would x264 be still the best encoder?
Can video encoded in this format support wma audio? (I find wma audio at lower bitrates (below 48kbit) superior to ogg and mp3).

[Dark Shikari]

Very nice!
unfortunately due to using flash I can not determine the size of the video,but if what you say is true,and it fits in 65kbps, is that audio AND video?

The only con I see is the very low framerate (in the likes of 15fps,or lower).
And because the video is mainly low motion compression can be very high.

I know x264 is a superior encoder.Just did not know if the same held true at very low bitrates!In almost all cases, the gap between encoders grows at low bitrates. If an encoder is 20% better at a high bitrate, it might be 50% better at a low bitrate.

RealVideo is just a bad ripoff of H.264 with a bad encoder, so there's certainly no chance it can compete with a good H.264 encoder.

That video, if I recall correctly, is 67kbps video and 26kbps audio. You could certainly get the video much lower, but the intent of that test was to see how well one could do without downscaling or lowering the framerate. Note how it is still at DVD resolution.

[Nic]

That's pretty impressive DS!

What's the "special extra-magic" with that version of x264? :)

(for others: it is a 2,517,155 (2.5mb) byte file (including HE-AACv2 Audio at 26kpbs) with 3mins 28secs of video at 23.976fps and at 720x480. All looking very good indeed at 67kbps for the video (especially with all the fades and pans)).

Cheers,
-Nic

[sneaker_ger]

What's the "special extra-magic" with that version of x264? :)

Macroblock Tree

[ProDigit]

including HE-AACv2 Audio at 26kpbs..

Interesting,
I've been out of the video encoding business for 15 years, came back about every other 5 years to update myself.
I have so far never seen any audio this good at 26kbit!
It sounds very much like 32-44kbit WMA audio.

In the past I have encoded many audio files (speach) to WMA, it's hard to believe the sound could be so good for such a low bitrate!

About 5 to 10 years ago AAC audio bitrates where much like mp3, very limited in settings; and was not really for low bitrates. They generally used the codec in Sony MiniDiscs, sounded very well (better than MP3), but I remember the codecs I tested had to be set higher than the equivalent of 96kbps; which was too high for my projects. I went with WMA 9 pro for many years instead, and left the AAC unstudied.

With compression levels like this,you could get near to DVD quality @ ~1MB/minute. That's amazing, considering many animes out there are 170MB/25 minutes 480p or 350MB/25min 720P; and many music tracks (just audio) are recorded at about the same, 1MB/min

It's even better than the older real media episodes which where not only worse in quality, but also larger in size 60MB/25minutes, 320x240p.

[nm]

About 5 to 10 years ago AAC audio bitrates where much like mp3, very limited in settings; and was not really for low bitrates. They generally used the codec in Sony MiniDiscs, sounded very well (better than MP3)

That was ATRAC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Transform_Acoustic_Coding). I doubt the quality/bitrate was ever better than what a good MP3 encoder could give.

[Dark Shikari]

That's pretty impressive DS!

What's the "special extra-magic" with that version of x264? :)

(for others: it is a 2,517,155 (2.5mb) byte file (including HE-AACv2 Audio at 26kpbs) with 3mins 28secs of video at 23.976fps and at 720x480. All looking very good indeed at 67kbps for the video (especially with all the fades and pans)).

Cheers,
-NicI should actually re-encode that now, as weightp wasn't around when I did it (which is why the fades kinda suck).

[FlashVideo]

Back up the disc in it's entirety as an .ISO image, or just the .VOB files if you feel you don't need the menus and extra features. Storage space always gets cheaper over time. The Anime Fansub groups are all pretty much on the move to h.264 codec and Matroska container. if you'll compress, h.264 seems to be the favored option for anime/cartoon types of movies.

If you want backups, try Lagarith, its lossless. I usually get 20-35% smaller file sizes than DVD. With a lossless codec, the worst-case scenario is that you might someday transcode to some better, hopefully also lossless, codec. But with a lossy one, if the world moves on and decides it was a bad idea, you'll have to re-import the movies from the original source. I'd go with ISOs, VOBs, or something like Lagarith if you don't mind compatibility issues.

For something of a more managable size (and playable by more devices) look into AutoGK. It's a simple and powerful encoding tool that can utilize Xvid's ".cartoon" mode through it's advanced configuration panal (CTRL-F9).

[Selur]

Lagarith, its lossless. I usually get 20-35% smaller file sizes than DVD.
Nice! I never thought that Lagarith would be smaller than MPEG-2.