Encoding animation/cartoons

[Hrungnir]

I guess animation and cartoons are the same but heck, just wanted to be safe.

The question is how do I reach optimum quality when encoding animation? I've encoded Family Guy Season 3 with the normal settings, each DVD encoded for two 700mb CDs, two-pass and the quality is terrific. But, now I'm doing Family Guy Season 2, I used the same exact settings yet the final quality of it is not as good as I had done with Season 3.

I'm wondering if I should be using a different filter, I used the Lancoz (I think it's called), I basically leave everything untouched. I just can not for the life of me figure out why there is this big difference between the two Seasons, as I used the same exact settings.

Any ideas? I tried to search for a discussion about this but I couldn't see one that was exactly about this, but if I missed it it would be greatly appreciated if you could paste me the URL.

-Hrungnir.

[jggimi]

Most animation/cartoon discussions can be found using the keyword "anime" when you search. While all sorts of animation gets encoded, Japanese Anime is probably the most popular, in terms of discussion.

If you set your search for that keyword, search just the DivX Encoding forum, and search for the keyword in titles only, you'll find 35 threads. That should get you started.

[Soulhunter]

Imo there is a huge difference between cartoon and anime content...

You should lurk for filters like Deen, HQDN3D and SmartSmootherHQ !!!


Bye

[Hrungnir]

I agree that there are differences between types of animation, South Park is, for an example, totally different from Simpsons and Futurama from Studio Ghibli-esque movies.

I'm rather new to this so I have no idea how each filter works and what might be suitable for this and that etc. I don't even know how to implement filters in the .avs script, if it isn't there on the menu in Gknot.

Can I add more filters than those already in Gknot, or am I talking nonsense now?

Thanks for the tip jggimi, there must be answers lurking somewhere in all of those posts!

[jggimi]

Gknot generates AviSynth scripts, and many Gknot users take advantage of these scripts as the basis for custom encoding, often outside of GKnot.

You can find examples of Gknot AviSynth scripts in the same folder where you find your completed .avi files. AviSynth scripts are .avs files -- they can be edited in any text editor, but when opened in a video player (or video encoder), they act like .avi files and produce video, and sometimes, audio.

You can edit scripts inside of Gknot by using the Edit button, and add any filters or special processing you want.

You can also edit them outside of Gknot by using Save rather than Save & Encode. You can later encode those .avs files by using the Add Job button on the Gknot Encoder tab, or, encode them manually in VdubMod.

There are plenty of built-in AviSynth filters, the external filters that are often used for noise reduction are available as plug-ins .dll files. If you look at any of the AviSynth scripts that Gknot creates, you'll see a whole bunch of plug-ins referenced in the top section.

Note that many of the lines in Gknot .avs scripts are comment lines, these all start with a # character. Gknot enables and disables filters (and plug-ins) by adding and deleting # characters to change which lines are comments, and which are active commands.

For much more on AviSynth, including an online manual, visit www.avisynth.org. And, there is an AviSynth Usage (http://forum.doom9.org/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=33) forum here as well, which will be helpful once you've had a little experience with AviSynth scripting.

[pogo stick]

Originally posted by Hrungnir
But, now I'm doing Family Guy Season 2, I used the same exact settings yet the final quality of it is not as good as I had done with Season 3.
You can try DeDup (http://students.washington.edu/lorenm/src/avisynth/dedup/). It’s Avisynth filter based on Dup. Very good for animation with many duplicate frames. I didn't encode Family Guy, but I think it must be very similar to Simpsons. DeDup did very good job for Simpsons! It removes a lot of frames (30-50% - depending on episode) and creates vfr video in Matroska, which, by the way, can be muxed to mp4 if you use MPEG-4 codecs.
Also if for some reason you want very low bitrates look at the RealVideo. From my experience, it may still look not too bad where other codecs fail (though I didn't try to compare it with H.264 codecs).

[suspiciousBob]

For me (Region 2, PAL) the difference between Family Guy season 2 and season 3 was that season 2 was interlaced, and season 3 was progressive. Which means of course season 3 will be much better quality when it comes to encoding (no de-interlacing artifacts).

The other thing that I find DivX/XviD does when it comes to encoding interlaced cartoons, is that many times they place a keyframe in between scene changes that are only half de-interlaced. This means instead of having a high-quality I frame that is totally deinterlaced, the I frames are half of one frame, and half of the previous scene's frame, which is not good from the quality viewpoint.

What region are you in and is there a difference between how your original DVDs are encoded?

FWIW I found XviD's cartoon mode to be excellent at encoding such material.

Aside: Anyone know a way round the keyframe deinterlaced problem I see? If I could place keyframes such that they weren't half one frame and half another frame I'm sure this would improve quality even more.

[Shinigami-Sama]

ok I need a bit of help with an anmie called "Kai Doh Maru"
hers what happens...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`
and no matter how much i alter or defualt the etting it would encode *sweatdrops*
" cannot start video compression
source image format is not acceptable
error code -2 "
this is the log

~~~~~~~~~~~`
11/30/2004 11:25:54 PM: Job " 1" started.

o DivX5-First Pass: C:\movies\kaidohmaru.avs
o DivX5 - Pass 2: C:\movies\kaidohmaru.avs
o DivX5 - Pass 3: C:\movies\kaidohmaru.avs
o Mux Audio.
End of Job 2 ( 1).
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Gordian Knot -
Encoding Job Data:

Type: EncD5_All
Number: 2
Name: 1
Platform: WinXP (5.1.2600).2

Files:
VirtualDubModExe: C:\PROGRA~1\GORDIA~1\VirtualDubMod\VirtualDubMod.exe
NandubExe: C:\PROGRA~1\GORDIA~1\nandub\Nandub.exe
AviFinal: C:\movies\kaidohmaru_1.avi
AviMovie: C:\movies\kaidohmaru_1_Movie.avi
AviCredits: C:\movies\kaidohmaru_1_Credits.avi
MovieFS: C:\movies\kaidohmaru.avs
CreditsFS:
Log : C:\movies\kaidohmaru_1.log
Stats: C:\movies\kaidohmaru_1.stats
Ecf : C:\movies\kaidohmaru_1.ecf

Options:
Quality/DRF: 0
CreditsStart: 0
UseEcf: 1
CreditsIVTC: 0
CreditsAppend: 0
DeleteInterm.: 0
EnforceBitrate: 0
AntiShit: 0
~~~~~~~~
sorry if this is the wrong section but it doesn't look like it
going for nth pass divx encode
tell me what other info you need and I'll provide it
oh this is the forst time I've encoded anything using gknot that I got last week
and have been trying to get working for the last week
so this isn't just a newb who tried onced and asked for help
I don't lie asking for help if I can help it...
Also I havn't found any usfull anime encoding guides...
Maybe I'm going to have to ask friend who make fansubbs for help this eh?

[jggimi]

Error code -2 is described in Answer #3 of this FAQ:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=48936

It's a YV12 colorspace issue, not an animation issue.

[Shinigami-Sama]

oh thank god
that makes it soooo simple :)
thanks so much man :)

[Slogra]

Originally posted by suspiciousBob
For me (Region 2, PAL) the difference between Family Guy season 2 and season 3 was that season 2 was interlaced, and season 3 was progressive. Which means of course season 3 will be much better quality when it comes to encoding (no de-interlacing artifacts).


Also, season 1 & 2 are full of noise, while season 3 has a totally clean picture (like futurama).

[Shinigami-Sama]

well I gave up for now
apperantly it didn't like my avs
and keep spitting error messages out at me about video width height ect...
now I'd like to know
is there a way to make a for ntsc res rip?
it doesn't seem to want me to:angry:

[jggimi]

..apperantly it didn't like my avs and keep spitting error messages out at me about video width height ect...

Probably because your resolution is not valid. GK defaults to modulo 16/32; return to those defaults and you won't have any problems.

...ntsc res rip?

Can you explain what this means? :confused:

[Shinigami-Sama]

full ntsc sorry
full 720xXXX
I can't remember what the exact resultion was...
so I gave up
I throw me 20 errors before I gave up
and the funny thing was that I changed nothing other than the resultion module things to get it as close to 720xXXX but it never gave me the 4:# ratio I want :(

[jggimi]

NTSC D1 is 720x480, to resize that to a 4:3 aspect ratio using square pixels would be 640x480.

If you were to keep the width at 720, and improperly resize height beyond 100%, 4:3 would by 720x540, but 540 is modulo 4, a bad size to use. Instead, one could use 720x528, which is modulo 16, with a small aspect error. But exceeding 100% is not a best practice, since it is wasteful of bitrate

Please, either use GK defaults, or use AutoGK instead. AutoGK will take away a lot of custom control from you, which, considering your apparent procedural problems, is probably a good thing.

This recommendation is guesswork predicated on what little you've shared with us: 1) a partial log, and 2) vague comments about some AviSynth errors.

If you want more guidance than this, you'll have to provide more information, such as: a complete log file the actual error message(s) you received the .avs script

[Shinigami-Sama]

Originally posted by jggimi
NTSC D1 is 720x480, to resize that to a 4:3 aspect ratio using square pixels would be 640x480.

If you were to keep the width at 720, and improperly resize height beyond 100%, 4:3 would by 720x540, but 540 is modulo 4, a bad size to use. Instead, one could use 720x528, which is modulo 16, with a small aspect error. But exceeding 100% is not a best practice, since it is wasteful of bitrate


eeehh?:confused:
how is it not possible for me to use 720x480?
I've heard of and seen ohters use 720x480 or is that use another codec of a non-square pixel?
anyways I may have mis-understood the 4;# seeing as how I'm working with limited slepp :(
to re-phrase
Is there any way for me to encode with out lossing pixels?
becuase I know I've seen and heard of them before.

[Sharktooth]

Yes, you can encode the full 720x480 frame and then set the picture aspect ratio in the mpeg stream with MPEG4MODIFIER (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=78050&highlight=mpeg4modifier).
But you will need the latest FFDSHOW (CVS or this (http://ffdshow.sourceforge.net/ffdshow-20041129.exe) build from milan) or xvid 1.1 beta decoder coz divx decoder doesnt support PAR in mpeg stream.

[jggimi]

Or, you can use a player that can adjust aspect ratios manually, such as BSPlayer, since you want non-square pixels. There are also other containers (mkv, mp4) that can support anamorphic flags.

What do you mean by "4;#" or "4:#"? Do you mean 4:3?

720x480 is D1 size. But with square pixels, that is not 4:3 (1.33:1) and it is not 16:9 (1.78:1). With square pixels, it is 3:2 (1.5:1).

See Aspect Ratios Explained (http://www.doom9.org/aspectratios.htm).

[jggimi]

To set 720x480 in Gknot, set the input Pixel Aspect Ratio to 1:1, and set the width modulo to 16.

[Shinigami-Sama]

why thank you
I have mos of the pixel ar guide before and forot that d1 is differant:(
but that helps thanks :)

[yidaki]

To set 720x480 in Gknot, set the input Pixel Aspect Ratio to 1:1, and set the width modulo to 16.
Shouldn't input pixel aspect ratio be 4:3?
That's how I always did it, and that's how I thought the samples at matroska.com were set up (because when you go from "derived aspect ratio" to "source aspect ratio" in Zplayer, it fills my 4:3 TV)