Anything to gain by using higher resolution than the DVD?

[Skywalkerjen]

Hello

I am about to encode all my DVDs using XviD 1.0.2 so I can use my PC as a video jukebox. I hope to be using this jukebox in 15 years time!
I am encoding with 1-pass constant quant 2 - size is not a problem.

All sources are DVD and the question is this:

Should I encode at 640x480 (which gives exact 1.33:1
Should I encode at 720x544 (which is the same as the DVD)
Should I encode at 1024x752 (which is much higher than the DVD)

Is it worth increasing the resolution (anamorphic examples aside)?
Do the filters add information that make the picture look better?
My computer is able to run 1280x928 without a problem.

The reason I was choosing 1024 is this is the largest horizontal resolution when anamorphic DVDs are "stretched"?

Thank you for your time
Skywalkerjen:cool:

[eichlan]

#1 rule of interpolative mathematics: You cannot gain resolution that doesn't exist in the original through processing.

You can increase the resolution, and if you have filters that add effects that you like, then by all means do it. But technically it can not add anything extra. Despite everyone's best efforts you cannot gain detail through "processing" an image...

In fact, since the DVDs raw source is 720x480 for NTSC even when the aspect ratio is 4:3, you're already losing something since the image had to be stretched to fit the new frame, then stretched back to 4:3 when it's played...In which case, by making the image larger along the Y axis, you're creating extra "useless" pixels, since you know that the source that they started with was 4:3 and then stretched horizontally, you can save yourself time and effort by just making the height 480.

...at least, that's my opinion.

[Skywalkerjen]

Many thanks for taking the time to reply eichlan. Have I understood anamorphic correctly? As I understand it:

For PAL:
DVDs use 720x576. If the movie is in letterbox format, then it would be encoded at: 720x288

However, I thought instead of only using 288 pixels for vertical, anamorphic uses all 576 - (so making everyone look tall). To compensate for this, on playback, the DVD player increases the horizontal resolution (to fatten the image out again).

There are 2.5 horizontal pixels per vertical. (288 x 2.5 = 720)
Now the vertical resolution is 576, so the horizontal must be 576 x 2.5 = 1440pixels

So is the DVD player actually outputing 1440x576 in this anamorphic example? Or (worriedly!) is it more complicated than that?

[Didée]

The old question: Is there any point in upsizing a source prior to encoding?

Common answer: Benefits of doing upsizing are questionable - you won't get any more detail from it. If it isn't in the source, you can't invent it out of thin air. So upsizing means only blowing up pixels and bitrate, without bringing something new to the source. Therefore upsizing is pointless, evil, and never should be done by sane minded people.

But then, why are there tools like e.g EDI upsizers, or scripts like e.g. iiP? Well, probably the inventors are pointless, evil, and not sane minded ;)

No, of course not. There's another reason.

The amount of present detail is one thing. The representation of the present detail is another thing ...

An uber-simple demonstration, a little exaggerated to make the basic problem obvious:

Let's assume we have a 720ish source. Let's further assume we're going to play it back on a 1280ish display (being a rather common resolution for several reasons).

Magnification on a small detail of the original source:
http://img35.exs.cx/img35/7281/1_sourcedetail.png

Playback on a '1280, letting the card resize, looks like
http://img35.exs.cx/img35/4242/3_cardresized.png

This is plain bilinear resizing, which most or all cards are supposed to use, more or less.

Then people suggest to use sharpening on playback through ffdshow ... :rolleyes: ... okay, here we go.

source sharpened by ffdshow, resized by card:
http://img35.exs.cx/img35/9340/4_ffdsharp_cardresized.png

source first resized, then sharpened, both by ffdshow:
http://img35.exs.cx/img35/782/5_ffdresizeansharp.png

Ah, yes. Both versions are very nice indeed, lol.

I prefer to invest more time into pre-processing to the final target resolution, because playback on '1280 should look like

http://img35.exs.cx/img35/240/2_processed.png

or should it not?

[Koepi]

Hehe, very nice explanation Didee :)

Maybe you could add as summary:
"Encoding resized instead of anamorph is useful in the case where you want to have control over the resizing algorithm used, as this algorithm is responsible for a good amount of the quality seen."

Regards
Koepi

[Skywalkerjen]

Many thanks for taking the time to explain that Didee - much appreciated. And to Koepi for the summary.
I understand as follows:

By playing the video at higher resolution, I can "enhance" the quality - make it sharper / reduce noise etc.

I can do this by getting the computer to resize and enhance in realtime by using ffdshow.

Or I can add the enhancement/resize to the file itself (giving me a much larger filesize, BUT giving me more control over the enhancement - this is preprocessing.
Can I assume that for better results, preprocessing is the way to go - as it is not done in realtime, more complex calculations can be carried out?

If I am getting the gist of this, the next logical question is should I be using a more complicated resizing algorithm than Lanczos in Gordian Knot?:cool:

[Koepi]

Not easy to tell the answer to that question.

It depends on how much space you can use for the "final" encode.

If size doesn't matter (i.e. we talk about 90 minutes movie in half dvd size), it is most likely the better choice to do the resize and filtering before encoding.

If you have size constraints (i.e. 700MB cdr), you better use anamorph encoding as it'll save bitrate.

You should test both variants and see what you like best, in the end that's what really matters. There is no one-and-only "scientific truth" to this question.

Regards
Koepi

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by Skywalkerjen
Many thanks for taking the time to reply eichlan. Have I understood anamorphic correctly? Not quite...

For a "slightly" more detailed explanation (with very little technical jargon), please look here (http://seemoredigital.net/03_Video_Only_Info/What_is_an_anamorphic_encode.html).

This thread could turn out to be quite interesting. Not so long ago I was wondering if there was a conceivable "top-out" bit-rate for Mpeg2 when encoded to DVD anamorphic pixel frame sizes (ie:720x480/576)... I guess the same "top-out" bit-rate question could ba asked about Mpeg4.

EDIT: Personally speaking. I don't think there is any benifit to be had by increasing the quantity of "vertical" pixels from say, 480/576 pixels to 720 pixels. However, I don't have a problem with the idea of increasing the "horizontal" quantity of pixels....

Meaning, a PAL Mpeg2 source with 720x576 "anamorphic" pixels becomes an Mpeg4 encode with 1024x576 "square" pixels.


Cheers

[Sharktooth]

I prefer 1024x576 pixels to 720x576 Anamorphic.
The reason is for the anamorphic encode the image will be resized during playback to Monitor horizontal x Monitor vertical resolution. So the image gets resized vertically and horizontally to fit the monitor resolution and the correct AR...
In the 1024x576 encode instead, if i set a desktop resolution of 1024x768 (wich i set for movie playback in Media Player Classic) i get no resize at all, mantaining the 1024x576pixels untouched.
In this way i can control wich kind of resize (usually i prefer Lanczos via avisynth) is used to stretch the picture to get the correct AR during the encoding phase. There will be no more software/hardware resizes... and this results in a better overall picture quality.
Another point is at higher resolutions the artifacts will be less visible (coz 8x8 blocks will be smaller)...

[Soulhunter]

Think I should post this again...

http://img115.exs.cx/img115/6343/Source.th.png (http://img115.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img115&image=Source.png) http://img115.exs.cx/img115/7765/Result.th.png (http://img115.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img115&image=Result.png)


Bye

[PiXuS]

@Soulhunter

What do they represent? One is Source.png, the other Result.png... Result.png looks much more detailed... okay... interesting... but... what is the process you used? Or maybe you didn't say because you wanted someone to specifically ask? :)

[Skywalkerjen]

Thanks for the continued help:

Koepi: Size of the file is not a problem - I actually don't mind it going larger than the MPEG2 as I want it out of the MPEG2 format and into the MPEG4 for various reasons.
You've definitely set my mind straight about the first problem - I will resize and filter before encoding - so thanks for that.

SeeMoreDigital: Many thanks for the link - I've saved it for future reference too - good explantation. A further question though:

For Pal:

16:9 (1.77) 576 x 1.77 = 1024x576 for 16:9
4:3 (1.33) 576 x 1.33 = 768x576 for 4:3

What happens with letterbox? Is it the same as 16:9?
For PAL (after cropping the black bars), the picture is usually 288 vertical pixels.
1:2.5 (2.5) 576 x 2.5 = 1440 x 576 for Letterbox?

Sharktooth: Makes perfect sense - if I encode at 1024x576 and my desktop resolution is 1280x1024, there will be no resizing done on the XviD as long as I don't run in full screen?

SoulHunter - thanks for the photos - you can clearly make out the pock marks in Morpheous's face on the larger file - unless the bitrate is kept proportionally high, increasing the resolution will not make the picture clearer? I am using constant quant 2 so that will automatically match the bitrate with the resolution?

:cool:

[lemon]

Well, do what you want, but you will never gain anything from it.

It is a transformation, and you will ALWAYS loose quality on a transformation.
The best quality you can get is storing exactly the same resolution, so 720x480 if it is NTSC. What you can do is crop the black bars if there are, of course.

Every filter you must apply (as resizing, for example) can be done on playback, it should be no problem for a current computer, and less for a computer in five years... but there are always better algorithms, etc. so probably if you store it with maximum quality (no resizind nor filtering), you can get better visual aspect applying realtime filters when playing finve years from now that you would get if you apply this filters now and effectively ruin your sources for always.

[Didée]

Blah blah.

While it is fully correct that every single filtering step inherently looses information from the input source, you cannot draw a dogma out of that. Unless you prefer to make yourself a jester by insisting on that point of view.

In case you didn't notice, I'm not talking of quick'n'dirty resizing here, but of (agreed slow) image processing.

In the source there is not only useful information, there is also bogus information like noise, and other things that can hardly be reproduced anyways but that do confuse the encoder.

I'd say if I process a source, and in the end I've lost 1% detail, but at the same time reduced unrelevant information by 80% and increased compressability by 20%, then there is a "plus" standing under the line, not a "minus".

I'm a little short with public available samples ... look at this (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&postid=518035#post518035) and tell me how utterly bad it looks ;)

[Soulhunter]

@ Skywalkerjen

It shows that with the right filtering the result will look better than the source. The left picture shows how the source would look with normal fullscreen resizing, but the right picture was upsized with lanczos and enhanced with LimitedSharpen!


Originally posted by lemon

Every filter you must apply (as resizing, for example) can be done on playback, it should be no problem for a current computer, and less for a computer in five years...

Ehm, by the way... The processing Ive shown above runs @ 2fps with my Athlon XP3000+ And no, I dont wanna wait for 40GHz CPU's to filter the source realtime while playback... :D


Bye

[Skywalkerjen]

Lemon: Interesting point - I hadn't thought about future processing. However, if I can improve the source now the future processing will improve it even better.

Didée: You're still making perfect sense to me (you a teacher? - the video can be improved far more than the information lost in resizing etc. Thanks for monitoring the thread.

Soulhunter: Thanks for the information on the two pictures - definitely a difference and that's just what I'm after. Doing a search on LimitedSharpen now...

Any info about the letterbox aspect - is it just encoded as a 16:9 with black borders?

:cool:

[PiXuS]

@Soulhunter

Smode=?
Strength=?

@Skywalkerjen

Didée is 'da man. ;) I recommend you do a search for all the posts from Didée (http://forum.doom9.org/search.php?s=&action=showresults&searchid=958454&sortby=lastpost&sortorder=descending). You will learn a LOT from what he had/has to say...

[Soulhunter]

@ PiXuS

IIRC it was like this...

LimitedSharpen(2,2,1024,416,2,100)

But the 100h processing chain was a bit more complex... :D


Bye

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by Skywalkerjen
SeeMoreDigital: Many thanks for the link - I've saved it for future reference too - good explantation. A further question though:

For Pal:

16:9 (1.77) 576 x 1.77 = 1024x576 for 16:9
4:3 (1.33) 576 x 1.33 = 768x576 for 4:3

What happens with letterbox? Is it the same as 16:9?The black mattes that you see in a "letter-boxed" DVD movie, are part of the 720x480/576 anamorphic frame. In actual fact, the mattes could be considered as being "image" pixels too... that just happen to be black ;)

Originally posted by Skywalkerjen
For PAL (after cropping the black bars), the picture is usually 288 vertical pixels.
1:2.5 (2.5) 576 x 2.5 = 1440 x 576 for Letterbox? This all depends on the encoding tool you use. Some will attempt to resize the encoded frame "automatically". But, once you get used to your encoding applications settings, you might decide to enter/use your own settings.

If you refer to Soulhunters images, you will see that he has cropped away the black mattes while keeping all the original "moving video" pixels.... 1024 divided by 416 = 2.46:1 (which is as close as you can get to the movies AR of 2.40:1).


Cheers

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by Soulhunter
@ Skywalkerjen

With the right filtering the result will look better than the source imo !!!

The left picture shows how the source would look with normal fullscreen resizing...

But the right picture was upsized with lanczos and enhanced with LimitedSharpen !!! And if you buy a stand-alone player, with one of the new Sigma chip-sets, you'll be able to play your 1024x576 encodes and view them on your TV too!


Cheers

[Skywalkerjen]

SeeMoreDigital:

"The black mattes that you see in a "letter-boxed" DVD movie, are part of the 720x480/576 anamorphic frame. In actual fact, the mattes could be considered as being "image" pixels too... that just happen to be black"

So the letterbox is just 16:9 or even 4:3 and is resized as such - just requires cropping of the black bars?

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by Skywalkerjen
So the letterbox is just 16:9 or even 4:3 and is resized as such - just requires cropping of the black bars? You have to be careful here. Because not all wide-screen presentations (with mattes) are authored for use with 16:9 TV's. Some are authored specifically for use with 4:3 TV's.... such disc's are best avoided and are thankfully getting less common!


Cheers

[Skywalkerjen]

SeeMoreDigital: Right - I can use Gordian Knot to preview the letterbox movies and to check if they are in 4:3 or 16:9. Fantastic.

Many thanks to everyone who took the time today to answer my questions.

I've got all the information I require (that I can think of!) and am amazed at how quickly everything was answered. Much appreciated.

I certainly got my money's worth today!

Best wishes

Skywalkerjen:D

[lamer_de]

While I don't doubt that stuff that has been processed by iip does look better than the source, I doubt it's due to the increased resolution, but due to the sharpening/contrast enhancing/whatever else iip does. While I have not tested this myself, I guess if you would run iip to output the result at the same resolution as your input clip, it would look just as spectacular. After all, it gets resized during playback again, unless you happen to encode for your playback resolution (and well, i would guess DVDs just offer that resolution for TV playback). And while you might see the difference between bilinear and lanczos resizing in screenshots, at least I am not able to do so when watching the movie from a normal viewing distance and not 10cm away from my monitor spending half a minute comparing smallest details on freeze frames. So pre-processing: definitely positive, upsizing: questionable.

CU,
lamer_de

[LoKi128]

I just want to mention a couple of ideas I have about the whole anamorphic situation, and whether to un-anamoprh before resizing.

Originally, anamorphic compression was used to solve the simple problem of fitting a rectangular image into a square (exagerating here) film frame. It was just not practical to physically modify all of the machines used to process film, so filmmakers used lenses to better utilize the space in a frame. After all, it is better to compress the sides (or stretch the height) of an image than to let that unused space go to waste. This works quite well because of the very high resolution of film.

Nowadays, in DVDs, the only reason anamorphic compression is used is because for whatever reason, we cannot use just any frame size on MPEG2 encodes. We are artificially limited to whatever standards the powers-to-be have assigned, and therefore face the arcaic limits of physical media in a digital world.

HTDV is encumbered in this way as well, with fixed resolutions and framerates. I don't know enough about HD-DVD and Blu-ray, but I expect a similar situation.

As to whether I think that video should be anamorphed or not, it all comes down to pixels per frame. It is what determines the bitrate required for the video if we remove content considerations. If you shrink the sides of the image, you shrink the bitrate, but also the quality, since those pixes that you removed will never come back. They CAN be interpolated quite nicely by some resizing algos, though. The other option, to expand the vertial only creates artificial pixles and needlesly increases the bitrate without providing any extra detail.

So in summary, I believe that anamorphic distortions were/are a necessary evil in the physical media world, but should not be used with digital media that supports arbitrary resolutions.

[PiXuS]

Originally posted by LoKi128
So in summary, I believe that anamorphic distortions were/are a necessary evil in the physical media world, but should not be used with digital media that supports arbitrary resolutions.

Maybe this phrase should have ended with "...that supports arbitrary resolutions AND have an arbritrary capacity."

Has you had pointed in your post, if you encode directly to, say 1024x576, the file size of your video will be MUCH higher than the one @ 720x576.

Or maybe I missed your point...

[scharfis_brain]

please don't forget: 720x576 anamorphic equals to 1050x576

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by scharfis_brain
please don't forget: 720x576 anamorphic equals to 1050x576 ITU 601 and analogue displays - strikes again!

[scharfis_brain]

I know the 601.
or better said: crop to 704 or 702 then blow up to 1024.
analogue displays can't display anything outside 702, I know.

[PiXuS]

@SeeMoreDigital & scharfis_brain

Damn it scharfis_brain! I had specifically used the number 1024 instead of 1050 to make sure SeeMoreDigital wouldn't go on a chainsaw rampage again! :D

1024... 1050... whatever makes people happy...

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by scharfis_brain
I know the 601.
or better said: crop to 704 or 702 then blow up to 1024.
analogue displays can't display anything outside 702, I know. Yes and no!

Have you tried any of my 720x576 16:9 anamorphic "test cards" yet?


Cheers

[scharfis_brain]

okay, I'll set up a filter in my brain:
if (seemoredigital present) and (720 present) and (1024 present) then do not reply :)

[Sharktooth]

Originally posted by Skywalkerjen
Sharktooth: Makes perfect sense - if I encode at 1024x576 and my desktop resolution is 1280x1024, there will be no resizing done on the XviD as long as I don't run in full screen?
Yes, there will be no resize unless you go fullscreen. I usually like to watch movies in fullscreen btw...:)

[SeeMoreDigital]

The proof is in the viewing!

Try this PAL 16.9 "Test Card" (www.SeeMoreDigital.net/51_Test_Encodes/Test_Cards/PAL_16.9_Test_Card_-_720x576_with PAR@64.45_in_AVI.zip). It was encoded using 720x576 pixels with a PAR of 64:45.

Provided you have an Mpeg4 DSdec filter/player capable of handling PAR signalling, you should have no problems viewing the left and right edges of the encode, on both "analogue" CRT and LCD computer monitors.


Cheers

[Skywalkerjen]

Sorry guys - you are talking a little over my head here - how does 720x576 anamorphic equals to 1050x576?
Is 16:9 (1.77) 576 x 1.77 = 1024x576 incorrect (for PAL?)

[Sharktooth]

I always encoded @ 1024...

[SiXXGuNNZ]

these are always the calculations I have used

NTSC

16:9

RAW......: 720x480
Playback.: 864x480 = 1.78

4:3

RAW......: 720x480
Playback.: 720x540 = 1.33

PAL

16:9

RAW......: 720x576
Playback.: 1024x576 = 1.78

4:3

RAW......: 720x576
Playback.: 768x576 = 1.33

HD

Playback.: 1920x1080 = 1.78

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by Sharktooth
I always encoded @ 1024... So do I with some stuff...

The main problem with generating "square pixelled" encodes at 1024x576 was that you could not play them in stand-alones... Thankfully this situation has just (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=459759) started to change.

And to those of you with Mpeg4 DSdec filters/players capable of handling PAR signalling... Could you see the edges of my "Test Card"?


Cheers

[Sharktooth]

Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
So do I with some stuff...

The main problem with generating "square pixelled" encodes at 1024x576 was that you could not play them in stand-alones... Thankfully this situation has just (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=459759) started to change.

And to those of you with Mpeg4 DSdec filters/players capable of handling PAR signalling... Could you see the edges of my "Test Card"?


Cheers
Well, my "standalone" is a modded xbox... so, no problems here :)
Regarding the "test card", yes i can see them.

[scharfis_brain]

hm.. I do not own a MP4 capable Standalone.
(maybe those devices are doing the 720 <-> 704 thing wrong?)

the EBU / ITU recommends (why a recommendation only?) 702 pixels for the active image area.
those 702 (seven-zero-two) pixels equals to 768 pixels for 4:3 and 1024 for anamorphic 16:9

that's exactly the PAR of 1.094 (768/702) for 4:3
or a PAR of 1.459 (1024/702) for anamorphic 16:9

720x576 is actually a little bit WIDER than true 4:3 (or 16:9):
720*1.094 = 788 for 4:3
720*1.459 = 1050 for anamorphic 16:9

seemoredigital uses a PAR of 1.0666 (768/720), which is called generic PAR and is sometimes present on DVD or DVB-broadcasts.

Also all Software MPEG-2 Decoders I know squeeze 720 and 704 to exactly the same width, what is definately wrong.
(720 is sqeezed by 1.066 and
704 gets sqeezed by 1.094 )
in MPC I use to press number 6 on the num-block once to achieve the correct AR with 720px DVDs.

But as I stated before: it is not the recommendation of the ITU/EBU to use generic PAR

but in the end it is up to you, what you are doing with your encodes.

some last words:
What are recommendations/rules for?
To break them! :rolleyes:

[Soulhunter]

Hmm, guess I understood this ITU recommendation wrong then!? I always thought they would recommend it coz TV's have this overscan area... So that the DVD producers should place a boarder at the left/right side, no?


Bye

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by scharfis_brain
hm.. I do not own a MP4 capable Standalone.
(maybe those devices are doing the 720 <-> 704 thing wrong?) They are not doing anything wrong... Neither are DVD player manufacturers!

More and more "digitised" content is being broadcast and encoded filling "all" 720 width pixels with image. And not just 702 or 704 pixels out of the available 720. This is especially the case with DVD content, as very few are encoded today with thin vertical black mattes, to the left and right of the image!

Nobody (not even me) is saying there's something wrong with the ITU standard. It's just that hardly anybody today is following it and it's getting less by the month!

I can only assume that there are a hell of a lot of people viewing DVD and DVB content via their PC monitors (including broadcasters and professional DVD authors). And that a lot of industry tech support guys (like me), got fed up explaining why the over-scan area was there (like me), and decided to dump it (also like me).

So... given that it seems more "industry people" are not following the ITU standard than are, maybe it's time for the ITU standard die hards to modify their views ;)


Cheers

[akupenguin]

Even if you assume that the overscan area is invisible, is there anything wrong with putting more video data there? I'm willing to bet that you can produce lower bitrate per quality by padding with a few more pixels of movie than by padding with black.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by akupenguin
...Even if you assume that the overscan area is invisible, is there anything wrong with putting more video data there? The over-scan is only invisible when viewing via an analogue CRT TV screen ;)

Originally posted by akupenguin
...I'm willing to bet that you can produce lower bitrate per quality by padding with a few more pixels of movie than by padding with black. Actually no!

Encoding in black uses hardly any bitrate. However if the edge between the matte and the image is not "razer sharp", bits will be lost, because the codec finds such transition areas difficult to compress and encode!


Cheers

[akupenguin]

To efficiently encode the black edge, it needs to be more than razor sharp. It also needs to be aligned on a macroblock boundary.
Here's what happens to bitrate if the edge isn't aligned:
(This test was performed in MPEG4, but the same should apply to MPEG2 except that you don't get to use 4mv.)
(Also, this test just misaligned the right and bottom edges. I have to assume that the effect would be even greater if there are borders on all 4 sides, like many DVDs I've seen.)
http://students.washington.edu/lorenm/src/mplayer/lavc_tests/scale_graph1.s.png
http://students.washington.edu/lorenm/src/mplayer/lavc_tests/scale_graph2.s.png

[SeeMoreDigital]

If you have Blade Runner on DVD, run that thru' your tests? It has the worst example of horizontal and vertical mattes I've ever seen!

But in all honesty as long as the matte runs nicely along a line of pixels, you should be okay.

I wonder. Are there any tools out there that can introduce/overlay mattes to Mpeg4 encodes?


Cheers

[Manao]

Akupenguin : instead of padding yourself, let the codec do it. The norm specifies that, if the resolution isn't mod16, a padding shall occur in order to bring it to a full mod16 resolution.

[akupenguin]

@SeeMoreDigital:
I can't test how much you already lost if the source has borders. I can only add my own borders to a clean source.

@Manao:
I'm sorry, that's what I did (lavc padded it by repeating the border pixels, not with blackness. And 466x466+padding took 10% more bits per psnr than 480x480).
Which means my graphs are not exactly applicable to this discussion, since I was talking about black borders on DVDs, not about some padding is.
More data soon, when I run the explicit padding version.

[PiXuS]

Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
If you have Blade Runner on DVD, run that thru' your tests? It has the worst example of horizontal and vertical mattes I've ever seen!

But in all honesty as long as the matte runs nicely along a line of pixels, you should be okay.

I wonder. Are there any tools out there that can introduce/overlay mattes to Mpeg4 encodes?


Cheers

You know there is a problem with Blade Runner when AutoCrop needs 5000 samples to stop changing idea about which Crop parameters should be used. When Deckard's has his dream about the Unicorn, the whole picture suddendly takes something like 40 pixels more on the right and then it is back to normal (normal=picture never stops moving around).

Blade Runner is indeed a terrible DVD (not the movie.. the transfer!).

Can't wait for the remaster to come out (but... I will not hold my breath!! (http://www.brmovie.com/BR_Special_Edition.htm))

[SeeMoreDigital]

Thanks for the Blade Runner update PiXuS... this is indeed a pisser. If ever there was a classic movie screaming to be re-mastered... this is it!

I have PAL and NTSC versions on DVD and both are equally as bad :( That said I have been able to generate quite a nice looking XviD encode, which is far easier on the eye than the Mpeg2/DVD :D


Cheers