720p Mpeg ----> HR.HDTV XVID?

[jthunder]

I'm having difficulting finding guidance on converting recorded 720p MPEG2 w/AC3 sound to HR.HDTV (960x540 @30FPS) XVID files.

I am capturing the 720p files using my DVB card to disk, and I would like to reencode these files to xvid to enable my modded xbox running xbmc to play them back using HR.HDTV files without dropping frames. I'd also like to keep the original AC3/digital sound with the xvid.

Is there a simple peice of software that can do this easily or do I need to perform a few steps to achieve this? What software is ideal? I also have a new ATI X1600XT video card, I've heard that this has some encoding hardware optimizations that might help.

Thanks in advance for the help.

JT

[Zep]

I'm having difficulting finding guidance on converting recorded 720p MPEG2 w/AC3 sound to HR.HDTV (960x540 @30FPS) XVID files.

I am capturing the 720p files using my DVB card to disk, and I would like to reencode these files to xvid to enable my modded xbox running xbmc to play them back using HR.HDTV files without dropping frames. I'd also like to keep the original AC3/digital sound with the xvid.

Is there a simple peice of software that can do this easily or do I need to perform a few steps to achieve this? What software is ideal? I also have a new ATI X1600XT video card, I've heard that this has some encoding hardware optimizations that might help.

Thanks in advance for the help.

JT


HR is actully 960 x 528 because 540 is not mod 16


use projectx and edit and demux from there.
then run the m2v file through DGindex and access it with an avs script like

loadplugin("c:\Program Files\dgmpgdec\DGDecode.dll")
mpeg2source("D:\myVideo.d2v")


after the video is encoded the ac3 you demuxed earlier
will be in perfect sync so simply use an app like VirtualdubMod
to mux the video and ac3.

good luck

[Pookie]

Still, he'll need to halve the frame rate.

Add the following:

SelectEven()

[Zep]

Still, he'll need to halve the frame rate.

Add the following:

SelectEven()


i was just showing him what apps to use and how to do a basic source in.

[dukey]

the reason for 960x544 is because its half the resolution of 1920x1088i
By having the res or by using even field deinterlace or reduceby2 in avisynth you get a perfect deinterlace

if you have 720p content which is full progressive
why not encode at 1280x720

[jthunder]

Thanks for the help guys;

HR is actully 960 x 528 because 540 is not mod 16

Would 960 x 544 be better than 960 x 528? as it is closer to the original aspect ratio?

if you have 720p content which is full progressive
why not encode at 1280x720

The hardware specs of the xbmc/xbox are only PIII733/64MB RAM. This limits the resolution and framerate of the video/audio.

Back to part of my original set of questions, is there any special codec to encode with that will take advantage of the ATI X1600 GPU encoding capabilities?

Thanks again.

JT

[JnZ]

Still, he'll need to halve the frame rate.
Add the following:
SelectEven()

I think (and i'm using it), better be to add fdecimate() after mpeg2source..., (if source is 60fps). You've get 23.976 fps, because lots of 720p's had many doubled and some tripled frames.

[FreQi]

Give theeo a try. I just posted it today (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=789288), but the default for my ABC and FOX template is to do HR.HD. The method it uses for IVTC is actually a combo of what you're talking about. I first SelectEven() which takes 59.96fps down to 29.97fps then I Decimate(cycle=5) to bring it to 23.976. You can change the template to use whatever method you prefer or use whatever avisynth plugins you want, but it should set you off in the right direction.

[Emp3r0r]

first SelectEven() which takes 59.96fps down to 29.97fps then I Decimate(cycle=5) to bring it to 23.976

Be careful using this method as it doesn't always work. For example, I have some ABC Lost recordings that it fails on due to the cutting of the commercials. I've had a little bit better success with

SelectEvery(5,2,4)

Which selects the every 2nd and 4th frame out of 5 frames which is IMHO better since a bitrate starved encoder has at least one duplicate frame to catch up.

[FreQi]

That kinda sounds like a manual decimation without frame comparison. Dropping a frame without looking at the frames around it could lead to dropping the wrong ones and you still get duped frames or dropping too many of the ones you want leaving you with jerky playback.

I admit SelectEven().Decimate() is a bit of a cheat, but in the event it doesn't work I've found I needed to use neuron2's multidecimate() to get it right (which incidentally requires three passes, one to find the pattern, one to do xvid pass1 and another to get xvid pass2). I've only had maybe 3 times I've needed to use something other than selecteven().decimate(), but if you want to avoid the arbitrary blind dropping of frames, neuron2's fdecimate() is the way to go, imo.

[Emp3r0r]

Your right that it doesn't do frame comparison. I did this manually by eye to make sure things were working right. I think works because the pattern doesn't really change, it is usually just a missing frame somewhere from AA or BBB in the AABBB pattern. So instead of taking the 2nd A and the 2nd B, a missed frame may change it to the 1st A and 1st B until the next missed frame.

I remember trying fdecimate() and it working only 60% of the time in that clip.

[jthunder]

I'm going to write a howto on converting HD files for use on xbmc, and I need to include the optimal settings for xvid. Can someone point me to a thread with xvid settings that would work well with the xbox cpu/mem limitations (733/64mb) ? Here is the link to the post over at xboxmediacenter - http://www.xboxmediaplayer.de/cgi-bin/forums/ikonboard.pl?;act=ST;f=2;t=18085;

Thanks

JT

[FreQi]

I would not necessarily claim it to be anything optimal, but this is what I have used (http://freqi.net/theeo/xvid/) for a very long time and find the results to be very satisfactory. XBMC is able to process HR.HD with 5.1 AC3 with no problem, but it does not seem to like full res 720p; it stutters on mine.

Are you using theeo (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=798660) in your guide?

[jthunder]

Yes I plan on using Theeo for the guide, it does a great job of setting up the mpeg2/ac3 file for editting and encoding! If you could somehow build the encoding function into the app, it'd almost be a one-two click solution to the HD --> XBMC problem!

Great work!

[FreQi]

Work on theeo v1 has kinda of stopped for the moment as I am re-writting it in DotNet2 from scratch, but I do plan on implimenting some sort of encoding queue management. I'm just wrestling with the options I have available. I can use avs2avi which is a pretty simple command line app to encode any AVI codec like XviD or DivX or whatever. I can also use EclCCE to encode DVD's (MPEG2, or M2V's), but CCE is not free, and QueEnc looks like a good alternative. MeGUI also seems like a possibility, but I am not familiar with either app, so I have a lot of research to do before theeo deals with actually encoding the video.

Then I have to deal with muxing the video and audio back together... I know some people that encode DVD's don't want to mux them since their DVD Authoring app wants the Video and Audio to be seperate... Like I said, a lot of research yet.

[jthunder]

Sweet, sounds like quite the project!

I would be very excited if your project could automate the steps to encode/mux the divx/xvid as well. My vote is for avs2avi or any other command-line driven encoder, so that it can be more scripted, and easier to manage settings from within your app.

On the dvd side of things, I don't do much encoding to mpeg2 but it sounds like if the option to mux or not mux existed this would work well for these people.

I wouldn't mind if the app also cleaned up a bit after itself, and deleted the temporary files it creates.

Thanks again.

JT

[FreQi]

I wouldn't mind if the app also cleaned up a bit after itself, and deleted the temporary files it creates.

I have theeo leaving behind all of it's scratch work so it could be reviewed or changed or used later. For example, sometimes the method theeo might use to fix the AC3 by default might not work, so I leave -demuxed.ac3 so you can fix it yourself with a different app. But I agree, theeo typically leaves quite a few scratch files laying around. Maybe that'll be another option I should add:

[X] I'm not your mother (clean up scratch files).