DVD Rebuilder (CCE One-Click Beta v0.46) Comments and Suggestions

[jdobbs]

Anyone else have any luck with mencoder sizing? I ran a few more discs through the encoder, and they are all dramatically undersized. I looked at the quant values of the output -- and they seem exceptionally small for the amount of compression used, almost as if there was some kind of built-in smoothing before the encode.

I remember seeing something similar to this in FFMPEG encoding of MPEG2 in the past.

[TheCreamCrackerBoy]

A Forum about undersizing problems with mencoder:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=117655

Some newer versions of Mencoder:
http://oss.netfarm.it/mplayer-win32.php

I hope this can help.

[]s
The Cream Cracker Boy.

[Fishman0919]

Undersize ain't the word... I just did FRACTURE_WIDESCREEN R1 with Mencoder and it came in at 2.35 gb where both HC and CCE Basic came in at 4.32 gb. Picture was OK at best... blocky and some grain thru most the movie. Tried to bump the TargetSectors up a lot... pass the max for a DVD 5 to 2300000 but still only managed to get 2.86 gb.

[jdobbs]

I've played with it quite a bit. It's undersizing because of encoder saturation. What I can't understand is how it can saturate with a high bitrate matrix and a low bitrate for encoding. I haven't had any come out that small, though. Mine are ranging from about 3.8gb to 4.2GB. I haven't had one get to the specified size yet.

The saturation is more likely with standard and high quality. The fastest speed selection seems to size better -- and on my dual core system it is actually faster than CCE.

[Fishman0919]

The saturation is more likely with standard and high quality.

Yes, I used Standard... I'll run the movie thru with Fast.

[Fishman0919]

Same thing with fast... 2.84 gb... movie is a lit dark but still thats quite a bit of undersizing

[jdobbs]

If you run the M2V files through Bitrate Viewer, you'll likely find that the average quants are down in 2-3 range. It's almost like there is some filtering to soften the picture or something.

[Fishman0919]

Yes.

I re-did the movie with the FOX matrix... it came in at 4.13gb but doesn't look all that good

[jdobbs]

Interesting. Mine all look pretty good. But may be a little dark, and as I mentioned the picture seems to be a little softened as well.

I assume you changed the matrix in the MENCODER.BAT file, right? Currently the matrices selected within DVD-RB aren't passed to the .BAT file.

[Fishman0919]

I assume you changed the matrix in the MENCODER.BAT file, right? Currently the matrices selected within DVD-RB aren't passed to the .BAT file.

Yes. I added a few diff matrices

I did The Italian Job R1 and that sized better... 4.18gb and look better good. But like you said, it has a soft picture like it's filtered.

[Fishman0919]

I noticed something during the 2nd pass with Mencoder...

"Using all the requested bitrate is not necessary for this video with these parameters"

[jdobbs]

Yeah, I saw that too. It's perplexing that you can reach saturation when the bitrate is this low. Not sure what the example you gave was supposed to be (in terms of bitrate) but it looks like it's outputing at about 2100Kbs. That's not a lot.

Looks like the message is being generated from within the rate control area of the code. Maybe adjusting some of the RC parameters might help.

[Fishman0919]

Sorry, yes the bitrate being that low and the encoder still giving the message and undersizing the file....I did the same file with CCE Basic

Mencoder = 31.3m
CCE Basic = 59.4m

[TheCreamCrackerBoy]

Gave up? :-(

[Fishman0919]

I PM'ed and emailed jdobbs some setting that seem to work very well (To me, comparable to HC and CCE) and size right on target. But it's up to him if he uses them or not.

[chickenmonger]

I did some searching on the archives of this forum, and I found a few year-old or older threads (like this one (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=118063)) started by users asking if jdobbs could implement PAL to NTSC for Movie-only mode using dgpulldown.

From what I gather, it would include a resize to 720x480, an encode to 25 fps, a change of IFO flags to NTSC, and the application of dgpulldown to all affected m2vs. I'm sure I'm missing steps in there, because if it was that easy, other software would do it already.

Is this still just a pipe dream, or can it be achieved with a hybrid of software including DVD Rebuilder?

[Sharc]

SVCD2DVD promises that it can do a jerkiness-free PAL to NTSC conversion. I never tried it though.
http://www.svcd2dvd.com/

[blutach]

The audio also needs transcoding but you've basically got the idea. And the PAL framerate is already 25fps. NTSC is 30 fps.

Regards

[Boulder]

If you use DGPulldown to go the 25->30fps route, there is no need to touch the audio.

[chickenmonger]

Over this weekend, I tried the steps I mentioned in an earlier post. I took a PAL DVD, ran it through the Prepare phase, edited all the AVSs to resize to 720x480, ran it through the Encode phase, used DGPulldown on all M2Vs, ran it through the Rebuild phase, then patched the IFOs (http://forum.videohelp.com/topic221928.html) to be NTSC.

I tried playing the resultant VIDEO_TS folder in MPC, and none of the menus worked, none of the subtitles worked, there was no audio, and the video was jerky every couple of seconds. I was not surprised, considering how much editing was done.

[Boulder]

DVD-RB doesn't work in such cases. If you want to do PAL->NTSC conversions, you have to use some other tool or do it manually. If you have just one clip that you want to convert, manual work is fairly easy if you don't need any menus.

[jdobbs]

Running DGPulldown before REBUILD won't work -- because all the flags are set back to their original state during REBUILD.

[Fishman0919]

I'd like to suggest a new feat for DVD-RB Pro.

I find myself very often when encoding disc encoding the menu and main movie with CCE Basic/SP/SP2, Mencoder or QuEnc but almost always encoding the Extras on the disc with Procoder 2/3/Carbon Coder. Reason is because most of the time I do 25-33% off the extra and Procoder/Carbon seems to do a better job at low bitrate for me.

What I norm do is make one encoding with CCE Basic/SP/SP2, Mencoder or QuEnc. After it finishes rename the D2AVS...then do one with Procoder/Carbon... copy the menu and main movie .m2v file from the CCE encoding to the D2AVS folder of Procoder/Carbon and rebuilt.

It would be a nice feat to be able to pick different encoders for the Main Movie and for the Extras.

[Sharc]

I second this, and if I remember correctly such feature had once been on jdobb's agenda.....

Btw. another possibility for improving the quality of the Extras - if several Extras shall be kept: More than often I have seen Extras with very unbalanced quality. Means when stealing space from Extras of say 33%, some of the Extras come out blocky, some come out in good quality. One can either do corrective bitrate tweaks manually, or steal less space from Extras (say 25%) at the expense of the main feature. Running a separate redistribution pass over all the Extras can do "wonders" in such cases by automatically balancing the quality between the Extras.

[SpazzHH]

It would be a nice feat to be able to pick different encoders for the Main Movie and for the Extras.

I whole heartedly, while jumping up and down, would like to third this. This is the one feature I have been waiting very patiently on. I think it was first mentioned over a year ago, but I know jdobbs is very busy and not getting many donations anymore, so I've hated to bring it up again. So glad someone else did.

Spazz

[archaeo]

I'd like to suggest an option in RB pro to apply the filter editor to extras only. Or conversely, to have the option to exclude the main feature from chosen filters. :)

To be able to seperate out the filtering between the main feature and the extras would give more flexibility in processing and filtering choices. It could allow more clean up on those extras, allowing perhaps even more compression to save space on the main feature.

[JohnGalt]

@archeo:

you can apply a filter only to the extras by using the "e:" prefix before a filter. See changelog (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=909295#post909295) for v1.20.4.

- Added a new feature for prefix recognition to the filter
processor. These are meant to help descriminate on the
usage of filters. Now you can add "E:", "F:", "I:", or
"P:" as a prefix to a line added in the filter editor.
The prefixes represent "Extras", "Feature", "Interlaced",
and "Progressive" respectively. When specified, the prefix
will limit that filter to usage only when the source to be
encoded matches the prefix. For example, if specifying
"E:filter1()" the filter "filter1()" would only be applied
to segments that are determined to be extras. Setting
"e:i:filter2()" limits use of "filter2()" to segments that
are extras -- and are also interlaced. (v1.20.4)

[archaeo]

@archeo:

you can apply a filter only to the extras by using the "e:" prefix before a filter. See changelog (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=909295#post909295) for v1.20.4.


@JohnGalt

Thanks for pointing that out - Missed that one :o