Encoder settings for high-motion interlaced source?

[FredThompson]

I've tried HC, CCE (2, 3 and 5 passes) and ProCoder on high-motion interlaced source of about 7.5G. Sources are various WWE and WWF pro wrestling discs with lots of motion. HC and CCE yield a high blockiness. ProCoder gives great results.

Has anyone had success with this type of source and something other than ProCoder, preferably something which runs faster than ProCoder? If so, what?

Note: If you're tempted to reply and haven't tested against this type of source video, please don't. This stuff is very, very visually complex with lots of motion. If you've never seen this stuff, watch the opening title sequences of Smackdown or Raw and you'll see what it's like.

[manono]

Hi Fred-

Procoder is said to be the best for this sort of material. Why? Because it has some kind of filtering built in. It's said to be a Low-Pass filter which can't be turned off. I expect you could get similar results either with AviSynth filtering, or by fooling with the Low-Pass and Vertical filters in CCE. I have no idea though, if DVD-RB will keep any of the CCE filtering settings you've made in advance. If not, then it's back to the AviSynth filters. I don't know of any that will do just high frequency filtering, though. You might know more about that than I. You could probably also accomplish the same thing with a low bitrate matrix which will filter the high frequencies. There are several available for use in DVD-RB Pro in the Rockas Matrix Editor.

Note: If you're tempted to reply and haven't tested against this type of source video, please don't.

Hehe. Too late.

[FredThompson]

Given ProCoder's "parents", it's no surprise it does stunningly well on interlaced material. It's dog slow, though.

I thought of another good source for this type of footage, falling confetti like in a sporting event or Kiss concert. Smoke, water and fire are typically mentioned as being difficult but those all have soft edges which is very different than rapidly-changing CG.

[writersblock29]

@FredThompson

You might try using Undot for this sort of thing. If you used the installer for Rebuilder, you should already have this filter at your disposal. All you'll need to do is open Rebuilder, go to Options/AVS Options/Filter Editor and add this line:

Undot()

Save it, and run your project. Filters will slow down regular encoding times, so don't be too surprised if it takes awhile longer to run. And don't forget to remove the Undot line once you're finished... or you'll be forever running this filter on each project you do. I just did the Kingdom of Heaven bonus disk -- which is largely video interview footage and interlaced material -- running both Undot and Deen in conjunction with "Deinterlace with Decomb." It chopped my encoding time massively (normally 2.5X-2.8X with CCE) down to something like 1.7X... but I ran it at night while I slept and woke up to a BEAUTIFUL copy. A little softer of a picture, yes... but absolutely stunning in comparison to what you'd expect from DVD Shrink Inc.

If you decide to try the same route as I did with Kingdom, then the line you'll add to filter editor will look like this:

Undot().Deen()

I beleive Deen only works on progressive sources (I may be wrong, and will hear so, shorty), so if you use it you'll have to deinterlace using decomb. Try just Undot first, though, and see what you think.

[FredThompson]

That might work if there were no single-frame flashes from photography or lighting effects. Those tend to really screw up drinterlacing routines. Nice idea, though. Thanks for the reply.

[FredThompson]

I forgot to mention that deinterlacing reduces the effective frame rate by 50% so it's not an appropriate thing to do with high motion sources. Personally, I never deinterlace unless I'm converting to 15 fps MPEG1 for PowerPoint of the web.

[Video Dude]

Fred, try scharfis_brain's method for applying filters on interlaced video: bob() -> filter() -> reinterlace().
I use it all the time on wrestling and it works great. Deen really cuts down on the blocking.

The video will remain interlaced.


LeakKernelBob(order=0, threshold=7)
ConvertToYV12()
Deen()
ConvertToYUY2()
AssumeBFF() or AssumeTFF() #whatever your source is
SeparateFields()
SelectEvery(4,0,3)
Weave()

[FredThompson]

I can't check because DVD-RB Pro is running right now but I'm guessing this would be added to a global AviSynth script.

Which encoder do you use with this and have you compred to ProCoder?

[Video Dude]

I use CCE Basic 2.70.
I never tried ProCoder, it is too expensive for me.

There is still some blocking, but it is less noticeable. If you have CCE SP, using a low bitrate matrix should achieve better results.

The script is a bit slow. I don't know how it would compare with ProCoder's speed.

[FredThompson]

I'll try with HC. It seems to give better results on this stuff than CCE. CCE had larger blocks.

My hope is to find something faster than ProCoder using the freeware encoders. Running ProCoder on my fastest computer takes about 12 hours per source disc. If something faster, or even equivalent speed but not using a protected encoder, can be found, it would allow running multiple encodes in a batch as a farm over night. I have 3 computers here which aren't used for much outside business hours so that would be nice. Can't tie them up during the day and don't have $$$ for super-fast rigs just to make backups.