How to encode "Friends"...?

[iceman112]

Does anyone have a good profile, or a good idea on how to encode
Friends - the tv series...??
Because everytime I try, they end up bad -> there are small blocks around there heads....I have tried to encode them at 1000kbit with divx 4.11, at 480*352. And I have tried using deinterlacer and so on and so forth....but nothing helped...
Any bright ideas?

[Captain_Nipple]

Use NanDub :)

[temsi]

I make a HQ version of Friends for my personal library every week.
Here's what I do.

Record using Huffyuv at 720x480 (use PICVideo MJPEG if you can't afford the diskspace). Audio at 48khz uncompressed.

Use AviUtl to cut out commercials and do an IVTC (InVerse TeleCine) to take it back down to 23.976 fps.
To do IVTC in AviUtl, just go to Setting > Framerate Conversion, and select 24fps <- 30fps (4/5), and check 30->24fps invoke automatic inverse telecine. Then set the Deinterlace to Automatic inverse telecine.
To make sure it's working, scroll through the file and look for interlaced frames. If you see 3 whole frames and 2 interlaced frames, you'll have to reload the file with the field order changed (go to File > General Settings, to find that setting).
If you see all frames whole, and every fifth frame appears twice, you're in good shape.
Now add a Noise Reduction filter, play with the settings, it depends on the signal noise you get in your reception. In my experience, noise reduction is needed for every tv-cap, no matter how good the signal.
Add a sharpen filter, play with the settings here too.
I also recommend doing a little color correction since the saturation is usually a bit too low, but it depends on your source.

Export the audio to a WAV file (choose no recompress).

Save the project.

Open VFAPI Reader and convert the .aup to .avi (uncheck the sound).

Open NanDub, and open the .avi file you just created.
Select the .wav as the audio source.

Next, I load Demi9od's 2CD profile (which you can find on here somewhere). I then lower the bitrate to 1150 (it's the same as VCD, so you can roughly estimate 10mb per minute). My final filesize is always roughly 210MB.

Add a resize filter: 512x384 (Precise Bilinear)

As for the audio, I use 128kbs, 48khz mp3. If you convert to 44.1, make sure you check the High Quality checkbox in the Conversion panel.

Start the two pass process. It can take a while, as the noise redux can be pretty cpu intensive. Expect at least a couple of hours for each pass, unless you have some kick-ass dual-cpu system.

I attached a sample clip, so you can check it out.
It's really tiny, only 4 seconds, and the zip is only 660KB

For a smaller version, resize to 320x240, and use Demi9od's 1CD profile, and lower the bitrate to 600. The final size will be roughly 110MB. For the smaller version, you can get away with using VirtualDub and a one pass Low-Motion at 600 or one pass Divx4 at 600. There is a slight noticable difference in quality, but if your time is limited, it gets the job done.

For me, the bigger file has excellent quality and looks great whether it's played out to TV or your monitor.

[Doom9]

the ones from pal dvds: sharp bicubic (0.75) to 576x448. Don't use a deinterlacer.. verticalreduceby2 looks just as good, in fact I liked it even more.. and it's way faster. Bitrate around 1mbit.

If you watch it from normal viewing distance it looks pretty good. Using Nandub would be a bit sharper, however you get visible blocks. I did a couple of test encodes and in the end I came up with that.. seems the best solution to me.

Of couse.. stuff from TV is something entirely different.. but that would be a matter to discuss in the capturing forum. This place is for DVD ripping.

[iceman112]

Just to make it clear (which I didn't do in my last post), I am
encoding them from a PAL dvd, and I used the same settings as Doom9.
-But thanks anyway....

(The problem lies in the size, because I have 167 episodes, and if they each are about 200 mb.... thats about 33 gb of harddrive space...)

[Doom9]

well... 33gb isn't much in the age of 100gb hds.. furthermore.. you can't really expect too great results as the sources are really bad. But I'd say for a rip, with that source material and these settings.. you get 4 episodes onto 1 CD, that's 1h26 (roughly) in 4:3 format which isn't that bad.

what are your postfilter settings? I don't really have blocks around heads.. sometimes there are a few but generally the picture looks reasonably well. I tried a lot of combinations of deinterlacing and sharpening / smoothing tools and nothing really improved quality compared to the barebone settings I posted before.

[iceman112]

I know 33gb isn't that much, and its not because I need space, but If one could make a rip that looks nearly as good and save 35 mb per episode, then that’s good.!
-I am trying to get them to be 140 mb per episode, that’s 5 per cd, and they look "as good" as those who are 175 mb (4 per cd)... but anyway, I just started this post to see if there were people here who had a better solution..

I use these settings (PAL dvd):
smartripper->dvd2avi->gordianknot->virtual dub
# CROPPING
crop(11,2,698,572)
# RESIZING
BicubicResize(512,384,0,0.75)
and encode them i Virtual dub, 2-pass divx 4.11...with a bitrate around 777...that gives a size of 140 mb (credits encoded separately at 40% quality)

And yes, you can't see the blocks if you're far enough away from your screen...