Cce Sp Optimal Bias, Prec. And Iterations.

[apfraats]

What can people tell me when using CCE SP, are the optimal settings for:

- Precision (I choosed highest 64)
- Bias (I choosed 50)
- Passes (I choosed 3 , so CCE does double pass)

Anybody recommendations ?

Goal: Best quality without excessive time consuming.
Best adaptive bitrate for action scenes (high) and black images (almost 0).


Please tell me youre recommendations,

Thx,

Antoine Raats

[Fishman0919]

What can people tell me when using CCE SP, are the optimal settings for:

- Precision (I choosed highest 64)


I would say that 64 is a bit high for just about any encoding, 16 is the default and 16-25 is a good mid of the road setting... for a real high bitrate (5500k and up) 30 would be good (but that just my option) and 12-16 would be good for real low bitrates (2000k and down)

- Bias (I choosed 50)


The default is 30 and again is a good mid of the road, for real low bitrates (2000k'ish) lowering the Bias (closer to 0) can help with quality... and for high bitrates (5000K'ish) raising Bias (I would go no higher then 40) can help.
VBR Bias is a limiter to how high and low the encoder can go with the bitrate, Setting Bias to 0 is FULL VBR.. the encoder has no limit to how high or low it's bitrate swings can go (IMO, most of the time better quality).... setting the Bias to (say your setting) 50, limits the encoder to the amount of high bitrate to can use for high demand scenes and how little of the bitrates is can take away in the low demand scene .

- Passes (I choosed 3 , so CCE does double pass)

IMO (I have done what seems like 100's of test and posted here in this Forum) 2 passes is more then enough (1 vaf pass + 1 encoding pass) but for some real low bitrate, hard to encode movies... 3 passes can help

Hope this helps :D

P.S. For more help... please read the CCE SP guide.. found HERE (http://www.cinemacraft.com/files/doc/ccs_27020e.pdf)
It's the guide to CCE SP 2.70.02.01 but should gave just about the same info for all their encoders ver.

[apfraats]

Thanks at first for answering.

First if what you say about encoding passes, there should be no need for CCE SP, couse CCE BASIC does alreade 1 Vaf and 1 mpg ?? Or am I wrong here ?

(I use CCE SP TRIAL with some little genius program, not meaning ecl support :)

I am thinking about really buying CCE SP when it has CLEAR advantages over CCE BASIC, but if I get what you say, it isn't worth it.....

The BIAS however, seems to be just to other way around.
100 looks if it gives the highest bitrates changes, while 0 keeps it more like CBR ! Am I completely seeing something that's not true ?
I.E. Are you sure a Bias of 0 gives the best VBR accomodation ?

If I want highest QUALITY and be stupid and set Precision to 64 is CCE SP taking any longer to decode ? Because if not if go for the highest setting.

Thx,

Antoine Raats

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Finally convinced CCE & DVD-RB deliver much better results dan DVDSHRINK, which I only use to remove layerbreak (have to test that although).
But DVD-RB needs lots of improvements in functionality in my opnion.
Just alone the DVDSCHRINK option to blank TITLES with a still picture is a fantastic feature I use on episodic DVD's, to mention one.
Also the error reporting of DVD-RB can be greatly improved.
The author makes me think it will not be freeware anymore in the future, but then he has to do lot's of work. Programs that are not freeware should have certain quality-levels DVD-RB is not up to yet. But dispite these I really like DVD-RB !!
And finally it would be nice if DVD-RB can remove layer breaks also, preventing the movie from stopping something like a second with no sound, which is kind of amateuristic...
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:readrule: I'm trying to.

[apfraats]

Ok, I've tried BIAS 0 en 100 now. I don't see much difference.

I looked at the BITRATE whilst ENCODING in respect to the AVG bitrate.
Sometimes I see BITRATE goes up to even 8000 en down to 0.54 (at the beginning of the movoe where the screen is mainly black with some letters for a number of seconds.

I see this behaviour using BIAS 0 and USING BIAS 100, do I wonder what the real impact is. Isn't it so big as excepted ?

So in fact it's just a fine-tune adjustment.

What I really want is to see NO BLOCKING in action scenes , even when looking at them in still-player mode, or picture by picture mode (step forwards/backwards at 1/8 or so).

So the way I see it, a bias of 0 would be ideal. Because the action-scenes get's the most 'headroom'.

If I set it to 100 hower, I see almost the same bitrate changes, but there is not a big difference. My material has an average bit-rate of about 5000.

With 0 it swings from 0.xx to almost 8000 too, so what's the big deal here ?

Still don't get it. I've red the CCE SP 2.7 manual.

It indeed says 0 gives you the highest swings but can lead to 'blocking' in slower scenes, because the bitrates go down too much.

If this is a problem you should rise to BIAS.

On the other hand, if the action scenes are blocking somewhat, it's best to lower the BIAS.

Is this true ?

(trying out lasts forever any time...)

Who tells me ?

[Fishman0919]

The BIAS however, seems to be just to other way around.
100 looks if it gives the highest bitrates changes, while 0 keeps it more like CBR ! Am I completely seeing something that's not true ?
I.E. Are you sure a Bias of 0 gives the best VBR accomodation ?


From the CCE Sp guide:

2.9.4 V/C (VBR/CBR) : Fluctuation of the bit allocation

In VBR streams, Cinema Craft Encoder SP performs bit allocation
balancing the quality of image on its own valuation basis. The valuation
basis can be changed by V/C value between 0 and 100. The
initial value is 30. As V/C becomes smaller, a stream becomes more
like VBR keeping the quality of the image with heavily up and down
in bitrate. As V/C becomes larger, a stream becomes even like CBR
keeping the bitrate constant but without stability of the image quality.

So 0 is Full VBR and 100 is CBR

I see this behaviour using BIAS 0 and USING BIAS 100, do I wonder what the real impact is. Isn't it so big as excepted ?

CCE SP will still show on the GUI the big swings in the bitrate when it is encoding but the adjustment are maded to the stream and the video stream will be more and more like CBR with a higher Bias

So in fact it's just a fine-tune adjustment.

No, 100 is pretty much the same as a full CBR encoding and 0 would be a full VBR encoding just like any other encoder ( Procoder, TMPGEnc, MainConcept, HC, QuEnc, NuEnc and AQE)... I look at it like Bias is a course turning and Precision is fine turning from what I read from the guide and have tested

Hope This Helps

PS You can download Bitrate Viewer (http://www.tecoltd.com/bitratev.htm) and see the diif between an encoding with 30 or 100 and 0 very easily

[apfraats]

Thanks a lot. I also readed the guide and just got more in doubt, even about the fact the guide was ok.

But sure it is.

My fault was looking at the bitrate swings from de display window.

I thought I would give a real bitrate for every second of processing (=not evry second of movie, just take in account speed factor!).
But even this isn't true.

Then they should left this out, it's of no use to see bitrates that are derived internally and have noting to do with actual bitrates. Just some stupid counter to fill the display with, I suppose.

Ok, I'll get the bitrate viewer, and will do analysis with it ON THE FINAL OUTPUT.
I don't want CBR cause the original DVD (you don't believe it) was CBR at 8000 !!!
So the stupid movie of 90 minutes, which almost anytime fits without any compression, wouldn't fit in no way anymore.
DVDSHRINK messed up the DVD, it can't handle this. It was blocking at action scenes. Probably because of transcode algoritm used.
So the best is 0, IF I DON'T GET BLOCKINGS IN SLOW SCENES !
Otherwise I have to turn it up a bit, like the default 30 or so.

Thx very much. Now I understand.

Antoine