The Sopranos, prob. been done to death but have to ask

[jdobbs]

That's what I'm trying to tell you. It doesn't apply.

[mrwhitethc]

man remind me next time to drink more coffee I re-read your post and saw exactly what you were saying now after a cup and a half of the good stuff. I did find something hopefully that will help, I'm using CCE 2.5 and in the Doom9 guides it says that qual prec for 2.5 is X*64/100 so setting it to 16 or 20 was actually setting it to 10.24 and 12.8 respectively. I'm going to try it at 32 which actually means 20.48 with undot().Deen() in the mix. Hopefully with this it might start to be looking like what everyone else has. Is there any merit to deinterlacing this? If my thinking is correct you would loose some sharpness and detail but encoding just the frames and loosing the interlaced fields should help compression or have I know drank too much coffee? Plus going to back to the original I'm seeing just how much compression there is already on these around edges and such looking at them on my monitor.

[jdobbs]

I think you may have that backwards. v2.50 uses the 1-100 scale. So 16 would translate to 24.

[mrwhitethc]

Wouldn't it just be easier to say in the guide for CCE 2.5 X*1.5 = Qual Perc Value? Now that that is cleared up, any thoughts on deinterlacing?

[jdobbs]

I can't comment on the guide(s) -- as I didn't write them. As for deinterlacing --- I recommend against it.

[mrwhitethc]

It's really looking like UnDot().Deen() and vbr 30 qual prec 20 is the best approach. I'm just going to have to accept the output with such a low bitrate, I'll probably up it to 4 passes just for my peace of mind. Can anyone comment on why another post said that vbr 10 and qual prec 4 was the best for majority of movies? I know to each his own but are those low settings suppose to capture the most detail when high bitrates are available like above 3500? Anything really damaging going with those low settings? Thanks for everyones input on this series. Too bad all these HBO discs have so much noise, I just did a test of Star Trek Voyager, 4 eps at about 8gb per disc each and with the default settings in DVD-RB and 3 passes it came out very nice. Source material was very clean and the backups had only a very slight hint of blockiness every so often not bad for 50% reduction.

EDIT: Or in my case with CCE 2.5 qual prec 12, thanks jdobbs

[Boulder]

If it's interlaced material, you can't just use UnDot().Deen() . You must first bob, apply all filters and then re-interlace the video. Otherwise you'll ruin it.

For a particularly tricky material, I recommend resizing to 704x480/576. If you have a display device that has an overscan area, you could use

AssumeTFF() # assuming TFF video
Bob(0,0.6) # or better yet, a smart bob
Crop(0,4,720,568)
UnDot()
Deen()
LanczosResize(672,544)
AddBorders(16,16,16,16)
SeparateFields()
SelectEvery(4,0,3)
Weave()

for PAL or

AssumeTFF() # assuming TFF video
Bob(0,0.6) # or better yet, a smart bob
Crop(0,4,720,472)
UnDot()
Deen()
LanczosResize(672,448)
AddBorders(16,16,16,16)
SeparateFields()
SelectEvery(4,0,3)
Weave()

for NTSC.

[mrwhitethc]

Thanks everyone for all the help, I tried Boulder's method and did it at 4pass, CCE set to natural and the KVCD Notch Matrix and the blocking was slightly decreased, I think that is how I'm going to leave it. It took a whole day to complete but I think it is not going to get better than this at 50% reduction. Thanks again everyone.

[Boulder]

On second thought, The Sopranos is very likely progressive. Maybe you have the same situation as someone had with Six Feet Under, see that thread.

Also it's been verified by many that you don't need to do more than 2 passes so that'll save you a lot of time. I use OPV myself. You might also want to try RemoveGrain().RemoveDirt() instead of UnDot().Deen().

[mrwhitethc]

Ok I'll give the Remove Grain & Drit a try, and here I thought I was done! Also I happened to be reading about someone compressing a movie off laserdisc, long story short they indicated a very low Q value because of the softness of the picture. Now since this is very low bitrate 2.1-2.5 would there be any benefit to soften the picture slighty, and if so what filter would accomplish this. Also I'm now using CCE 2.70, with what seems like an insane amount of options, I'm assuming that I should do 3 pass since when I set it too 2 pass, in DVD-RB it does a VAF sweep, then does a final pass and moves on or am I missing something.

[Boulder]

A slight UnFilter might help, try something from (-7,-7) to (-3,-3).

DVD-RB probably calculates the vaf pass as one so three passes would mean vaf + 2 passes, which has been found as the maximum you should ever need to do.