A few short notes about 1/2 D1

[Trahald]

Since I use 1/2 D1 on my extras, I wanted to give a few tips that I have come up with everyday use of it. Some people may already be aware of most if not all of them. This is just FYI for those that do not.

1. Script issues with 1/2 D1 material --
--BBWoof told me that you do not have the change the resolution in the script for 1/2 D1 material to 352x480. Scenarist complains on import but actually compiles just fine. This is tested and does work on 2.x, I havent tried 3.0. This works on 16:9 as well as 4:3 material. 16:9 1/2D1 may not be totally compliant so use at your own risk (My player accepts and plays it flawlessly)

2. Not integrated into DIF4U
--Easily remedied. Many people individually edit all the extra files' .avs scripts to add resizing(and often croping) for 1/2D1 material. What i do is go into the .avs script editor in DIF4U and in the 'Footer' section I add as the top few line(s) my resizing line(s) for 1/2 D1. That way i only have to edit it OUT of the main feature (one edit) instead of into the the extras which may vary from 1 - 30 edits. For certain DVDs it doesnt work out (episodic DVDs usually have few or no extras.) For most of my DVD's it saves me alot of work.

3. What resize script should I use for 1/2 D1 material
--DOH! Don't get me started. ;) Anyways.. here is TuRiSOft's suggestion -LanczosResize(352,480,8,0,704,480) This crops to 704x480 (removes overscan from the sides) then resizes to 352x480 which is the correct way to do it. I just resize directly to 352x480 [LanczosResize(352,480)] because i cant tell the difference. Substitute 576 for 480 for PAL obviously.

thats all i can thing of at the moment.

[SiliconSoul]

using 1/2 D1 on the extras allows lower bitrates with better quality?
so that we can use a litte better bitrate on the main movie?

have you looked at any of these 1/2 D1 extras on big ws hdtv?
i watch some of my backups at friends house sometimes... he has one im not lucky enough or rich enough to have one yet! :(

[atropos]

Can a movie encoded at 1/2 D1 resolution support subtitles?

atropos

[Trahald]

Originally posted by SiliconSoul
using 1/2 D1 on the extras allows lower bitrates with better quality?
so that we can use a litte better bitrate on the main movie?
Well.. it depends on what bitrates you are using now. I use 1800kbps for progressive and 2200kbps for interlace . If you used the same bitrates for your full sized extras then you wont gain bitrate benefit, but the extras will look alot better (less blocks and ringing albeit at the cost of sharpness.) Some people use 3000 kbps for full size extras.. this would allow them to go with a lower size.

have you looked at any of these 1/2 D1 extras on big ws hdtv?
i watch some of my backups at friends house sometimes... he has one im not lucky enough or rich enough to have one yet! :(

Nope.. I have a 19" TV and monitor. I will have to defer that question to someone else

Originally posted by atropos
Can a movie encoded at 1/2 D1 resolution support subtitles?

Yes. from what ive heard you can leave them at the origional size and most standalones will handle them fine. they dont display correctly on powerdvd it seems. i would again put that in the catagory of 'use at your own risk'. fortunately most extras do not have subs so its generally not an issue.

[wmansir]

Slightly OT: Regarding the editing of .avs files:

This can be a real pain with a lot of extras, even if your only removing the '#' comment marker at specific parts. Using a "multiple file search and replace program" is much faster (and I think essential if you want to edit DVD-RB .avs files).

I use to use a program called "Simple Search & Replace" it does a good job and is easy to use. However, it doesn't do multiple lines, or advanced pattern matching. Pattern matching is overkill for our needs, but multiple line insertion or replacement is often needed.

So I recently started using another free program "InfoRapid Search & Replace". It does multiple lines, and pattern matching using regular expressions, but can be set to do 'exact matchs" too. I wish the 'exact match' mode meant that the replacement text was inserted literally, but instead you still have to escape special characters So instead of :

LoadPlugin(C:\myplugins\plugin.dll")

you have to write:

LoadPlugins\(C:\\myplugins\\plugin.dll"\)

because \ and () are special characters. But there is a convenient button next to the text box that will insert any special characters as literals, so it's easy to see what characters need to be escaped.

It also has a great results display with links to any matchs found, and when viewing the files in the program you can hit F9 to open them in there associated program (I have .avs files associated to Vdub, so I can preview them easily and check for script errors).

It's an easy recommendation for those that know regular expressions (perl, grep) and I would also recommend people that are limited by the simple programs to give it a try too.

[SiliconSoul]

Originally posted by Trahald
Well.. it depends on what bitrates you are using now. I use 1800kbps for progressive and 2200kbps for interlace . If you used the same bitrates for your full sized extras then you wont gain bitrate benefit, but the extras will look alot better (less blocks and ringing albeit at the cost of sharpness.) Some people use 3000 kbps for full size extras.. this would allow them to go with a lower size.


this is exactly what i was wanting to know. I use a bitrate of about 1500-2000 depending on how important the extras are or how crappy they are :p
because right now at 1800 full D1 they do tend to look kinda bad when using 1800. but i assume that the bigger the TV they are viewed on they will look worse also because of the less lines on the newer hdtvs'

[Trahald]

Originally posted by SiliconSoul
this is exactly what i was wanting to know. I use a bitrate of about 1500-2000 depending on how important the extras are or how crappy they are :p
because right now at 1800 full D1 they do tend to look kinda bad when using 1800. but i assume that the bigger the TV they are viewed on they will look worse also because of the less lines on the newer hdtvs'

In my experience the smoother look of the lower resolution is way better than blocks and mosquito noise with the higher resolution.

[hendrix]

Originally posted by Trahald
In my experience the smoother look of the lower resolution is way better than blocks and mosquito noise with the higher resolution.
i second that...and i have tested half D-1 material with subs and they look misplaced when using windvd but they look fine when viewed on my settop...whenever i author a dvd from a VHS source i use half d-1, plus progressive compresses better than interlaced.

[Master Yoda]

I not sure how i done it but ive just done a test on a extra at half d1 and the sub titles all play on screen in power dvd...

I re-encoded a extra, the only thing i didnt do was use a script from on of the other programs.I inported the mpv video,the one audio track and the two sub tracks manually.Then after out puttiing the vobs i played them in power dvd and the subs where all centred on screen.

In powerdvd i went configeration > information and under video attributes > video source resolution it says 352x576, but the ifo says 720x576, if i change the ifo to say 352x576 and save it, the get vts sectors then play it in power dvd under configeration > information video attributes > video source resolution it says 352x288 but still the subs are all centred.

But last time when i tested the extras at half res using a script from RA the subs where off the screen in power dvd.


You can also use this to resize pal extras ..

crop(8,0,-8,0)
bicubicresize(352,576)

Thats what i use.

[hendrix]

"Taken from the avisynth.org website"

If you are magnifying your video, you will get much better-looking results with BicubicResize than with BilinearResize. However, if you are shrinking it, you are probably just as well off, or even better off, with BilinearResize. Although VirtualDub's bicubic filter does produce better-looking images than its bilinear filter, this is mainly because the bicubic filter sharpens the image, not because it samples it better. Sharp images are nice to look at--until you try to compress them, at which point they turn nasty on you very quickly. The BicubicResize default doesn't sharpen nearly as much as VirtualDub's bicubic, but it still sharpens more than the bilinear. If you plan to encode your video at a low bitrate, I wouldn't be at all surprised if BilinearResize yields better quality.

LanczosResize was created for AviSynth because it retained so much detail, more so even than BicubicResize(x,y,0,0.75). As you might know, the more detail a frame has, the more diffiult it is to compress it. This means that Lanczos is NOT suited for low bitrate video, the various Bicubic flavours are much better for this. If however you have enough bitrate then using Lanczos will give you a better picture, but in general I do not recommend using it for 1 CD rips because the bitrate is usually too low (there are exceptions of course).

more information here (http://www.avisynth.org/index.php?page=Resize)