What are your settings?

[Difatoni]

I just want everyone's opinion on what they prefer. Just trying to get a general feel.

The goal is to encode movies for backing up standard 720x480 dvds in AVC .mp4 for a home media center that will play in MCE and Front Row.


1. Would you use Nero Recode over x264 programs if both were free?
2. If using Recode, would you encode in Standard AVC, Cinema AVC, or High Definition AVC profile?
3. What bitrate would you encode the movies?
4. Would you auto resize or disable resize?
5. Would you auto crop or disable auto crop?
6. What bitrate would you encode the AAC audio?
7. Would you do a 2nd pass?
8. Would you deinterlace all, none, or some of the videos?
9. Which decoder do you prefer to play these videos?

[Morte66]

1. Would you use Nero Recode over x264 programs if both were free?

For quality, I'd take x264 and the various freeware preparation tools (but you need to learn how to use them to get the benefit). For workflow and productivity, I'd take AnyDVD + Nero over the freeware tools.

2. If using Recode, would you encode in Standard AVC, Cinema AVC, or High Definition AVC profile?

Do your own tests. It depends on your display, viewing conditions, taste etc.

3. What bitrate would you encode the movies?

See 2. Maybe start at 1000kbps and vary up/down. If it's going to hard drive rather than CD/DVD, so you don't need an exact size for every file, use constant quality encoding rather than constant bitrate.

4. Would you auto resize or disable resize?

Crop black borders, but never resize. Encode the original pixels and set an aspect ratio on the final file.

5. Would you auto crop or disable auto crop?

Manual crop if you're fussy, auto-crop if you aren't.

6. What bitrate would you encode the AAC audio?

See 2. Try 128kbps for stereo LC-AAC, vary up and down until happy. A bit less for HE-AAC.

7. Would you do a 2nd pass?

Yes if constant size. N/A if constant quality.

8. Would you deinterlace all, none, or some of the videos?

Always do inverse telecine on material shot on 24fps film and converted to NTSC. For truly interlaced TV drama/comedy shot on 29.97fps NTSC video, I'd deinterlace but you should decide for yourself. Sports might be worth interlaced encoding to get maximum motion information.

9. Which decoder do you prefer to play these videos?

If your PC is slow enough for the decoder to matter at 720x480, you shouldn't be doing a bulk encoding project.

[alec_robertson]

1. Would you use Nero Recode over x264 programs if both were free?

I like mencoder with x264 as it lets you do sound and video encoding and any inverse telecine in one step.

3. What bitrate would you encode the movies?

x264's crf mode does a pretty good job and only requires one pass. try a few encodes and see what works (dark scenes or skies seem the most difficult for x264 so look for these). same goes for bitrate, try a few and see what works (1000, 1500, 2000...)

4. Would you auto resize or disable resize?

I encode my movies for the archos player, which doesn't handle aspect ratio so I rescale to 1/1 sar. If your decoder handles aspect ratio, then you could just keep the original scale.

5. Would you auto crop or disable auto crop?

Crop away any black bars, as this will eat up your bitrate. mplayer -vf cropdetect does a good job of determining appropriate crop values as does handbrake.

6. What bitrate would you encode the AAC audio?

128 or 192. If you use a different container (like mkv) then you could just copy the soundtrack without reencoding.

7. Would you do a 2nd pass?

No with crf, yes with bitrate.

8. Would you deinterlace all, none, or some of the videos?

The dvd's I've seen come in a few different flavors:
* 23.976fps film source soft telecined to 29.97 - encodes at 23.976 progressive without deinterlacing.
* 23.976fps film source HARD telecined to 23.976 - frames sequence is ideally [p p p i i] (p=progressive, i=interlaced) and can be reversed using the filmdint or pullup mencoder filter. Deinterlacing this source is unnecessary unless the filmdint filter has problems with the inverse-telecine, in which case you can use anything from a simple pp=lb to yadif,mcdeint.
* 29.97fps ntsc/25fps pal interlaced content - deinterlace for web, keep interlaced for tv viewing, keep interlaced for pc viewing but use a deinterlacing filter during playback.
* 25fps pal progressive - encodes at 25fps without deinterlacing.

9. Which decoder do you prefer to play these videos?

mplayer or vlc

[Sharktooth]

some crap quality PAL DVDs are interlaced too

[Difatoni]

For quality, I'd take x264 and the various freeware preparation tools (but you need to learn how to use them to get the benefit). For workflow and productivity, I'd take AnyDVD + Nero over the freeware tools.

Does this mean the x264 codec produces superior quality than the ateme codec?

As for the bitrate questions, I just wanna know what you'll would encode them at personally. Thank you

[Difatoni]

Also on the aac would you use high efficiency or low complexity. Just your opinion.

[Morte66]

Originally Posted by Difatoni

Does this mean the x264 codec produces superior quality than the ateme codec?

IMO, yes.

But more importantly, many people do some filtering AviSynth before the x264 encode (denoise, sharpen, advanced deinterlace, colour correction, stuff like that). If you get the hang of those, they make a substantial difference.

As for the bitrate questions, I just wanna know what you'll would encode them at personally.

At a given quality, you trade speed vs compression. With x264 I do 720x576 PAL DVD at about 1500kbps. I use fairly slow/complex encoder settings. With simpler settings, I could get the same quality at roughly double the speed and double the bitrate.

That's fairly high quality for a very revealing display. You might be happy with 50% of that on a regular PC.

Also on the aac would you use high efficiency or low complexity. Just your opinion.

I'm a hi-fi nut and I'd prefer not to encode audio at all, just mix it back in with the video encode. But since I'm usually converting PAL from 25 to 24fps I need to stretch and reencode the audio. So I use LC-AAC at about 160kbps for stereo, which is beyond the point of diminishing returns.

[Difatoni]

I'm personally not concerned with encoding time. But I was under the impression that the ateme codec was better than x264. Is handbrake a sufficient program to encode x264 or is it limited? My concern with bitrate is at what point can you in your own opinion tell a difference from the original quality that is worth increasing the bitrate over.

[Difatoni]

When I say ateme is better I mean strictly picture quality, not freedom to choose settings etc.

[Morte66]

IMO x264 makes better encodes than Nero AVC, though it's not a vast difference like x264 xs DivX or whatever.

Note: there's encoder time and there's user time. If you want to rip a four episode TV disc with DVD Decrypter and then encode it with MeGUI/x264, it will take you maybe 20-40 minutes of intermittent clicking between inserting the disc and leaving the encoder to run. With AnyDVD + Nero it's more like 2 minutes to chose content and filenames then walk away. The encoder might run for ten hours in either case, but Nero takes less of your time.

[Difatoni]

Any one else have an opinion?

[DarkZell666]

I doubt there is much more to say, what has been said is perfectly valid knowledge and advice.

[shon3i]

Originally Posted by Morte66

Crop black borders, but never resize. Encode the original pixels and set an aspect ratio on the final file.

Do you think to use overcrop to mod16 Clever TM, or what, because if you only crop you will get some non standard resolution.

[Morte66]

Originally Posted by shon3i

Do you think to use overcrop to mod16 Clever TM, or what, because if you only crop you will get some non standard resolution.

I take the non-standard resolution to get the whole picture. I might undercrop modulo 2/4 and leave a few black pixels, because various stuff in the chain insists on that. But the picture is sacred, and I'm not going to lose any of it.

[shon3i]

Originally Posted by Morte66

I take the non-standard resolution to get the whole picture. I might undercrop modulo 2/4 and leave a few black pixels, because various stuff in the chain insists on that. But the picture is sacred, and I'm not going to lose any of it.

Very interesting, i not understand only one thing, did you make movie to have mod16 width and height, because encoders are very sensitive on that.

[Morte66]

Originally Posted by shon3i

Very interesting, i not understand only one thing, did you make movie to have mod16 width and height, because encoders are very sensitive on that.

No, if removing the borders from a 720x576 DVD leaves me at e.g. 720x500, then I encode 720x500. I won't overcrop because I want to watch the whole movie, not 95% of it. I could undercrop mod 16, but I was told x264 handles that in the background anyway.

[fofwp]

Originally Posted by Morte66

4. Would you auto resize or disable resize?

Crop black borders, but never resize. Encode the original pixels and set an aspect ratio on the final file.

How do you set the aspect ratio in the final file?

[DarkZell666]

@Morte66: I see we have very different ways of seeing things (litterally speaking again )

I would have chopped the black bars the most precisely that I can (manually, autocrop fails miserably on some sources), and resized to mod-16 afterwards (with correct picture A/R, not visual A/R), which means I have a *slightly* deformed picture, but I don't mind that because I know I won't notice

[Morte66]

Originally Posted by fofwp

How do you set the aspect ratio in the final file?

If it's a tricky one, I do the math manually and specify it in MKVmerge GUI.

{edit: I was one of the few unhappy users when MeGUI went from Pixel Aspect Ratio to Display Aspect Ratio, because PAR doesn't change after cropping.}

[Seb.26]

Originally Posted by Morte66

If it's a tricky one, I do the math manually and specify it in MKVmerge GUI.

IMO : to simplify the job, always only crop top & bottom black borders, and encode (PAL) 720*size_y frames ...
... so the playback aspect ratio is 1024*size_y ( with PC-square pixels ) ...

432 is a common value for size_y ... autocrop() from avs script give it to me ...

NB: This produce anamorphic frames ( like in DVD ) ...