True black in CCE

[Mac Sidewinder]

I apologize if this is old hat but I've search quite a bit on finding a solution.

On some older movies (both dvd and satellite captures) when I encode with cce, the black color doesn't come out pure black. It sometimes seems to sparkle and waver and is very distracting. It doesn't matter how much bitrate I throw at it either. Is there an avisynth filter or a setting in cce that i can try?

Mac

[RB]

Increase Flat Part Priority (CCE 2.50)/Quantizer Characteristics (CCE 2.66+) in Quality Settings.

[Mac Sidewinder]

Thanks RB, I will try that. Right now (I usually leave it there) it is set to 27. How high should I go. I will try a few clips and see. Is there a limit I should stay under?

Mac

[RB]

What version of CCE-SP are you using? Note in CCE-SP 2.50 this setting is 0-100 whereas in CCE-SP 2.66+ it's 0-64. Generally, what you are describing sounds like color banding and a higher value for quantizer characteristics/flat part priority reduces this effect, but also tends to generate more mosquito noise especially at low bitrates. And the black areas are OK in the original source?

[Mac Sidewinder]

I'm using CCE v2.67.00.23. The black areas are fine in the original dvd. The black color in the .mpv looks washed out and has white sparkles in it. This only occurs on black and white dvds. I have no problems with color dvds. My bitrate for black and white usually is around 4500-5000 so I don't think its a low bitrate problem.

If i encode a letterboxed dvd, the border area is this way also, so I crop off the border and use the add border command to put them back.

Mac

[RB]

Assuming you are using AVISynth to frameserve, are you sure you are setting the 'interlaced' parameter of ConvertToYUY2() correctly? Read the CCE FAQ, Q14.4.

[Mac Sidewinder]

I am processing a satellite capture so its interlaced and I am putting the interlaced parameter of converttoyuv to true.

You can't see the problem in the capture but in the mpv file it appears as a black shadow the shimmers but only in certain dark areas. I've noticed now that not all black areas are affected. In my latest capture, a man who has on a black leather jacket appears fine but a guy standing next to him who has on a black fabric jacket has the black splotches/shadows on part of his jacket. The area affected isn't always one size either, it is constantly getting bigger and smaller ramdomly.

I've tried throwing alot of bitrate (8500 as a test) at it, tried the luminance switch both ways. I even tried switching back to cce v2.50 and it does the same thing. I've tried putting the flat priority switch pretty far up the scale (40) in cce 2.67

These video clips are captured using vdub sync off of a personal video recorder (sat receiver with a hard drive) using the svideo output. And as I said the source looks fine.

Any ideas?

Mac