HC encoder v0.20 released

[hank315]

Just finished a new release: HC020

- support for HD resolutions, up to 1920x1152
- added some new functions: *ZONE and *MASK_SHIFT
- improved autogop function with *AUTOGOP command
- higher encoding speed for SSE2 CPU's
- supports latest DGDecode/DGIndex (fileversion 15 & 16)
- GUI updated
- more built-in matrices
- more parameter input
- as usual some bug fixes

*NOTE
This release has a lot of new code so there may be some new bugs :)

And of course, thanks to the beta testers.

[dirio49]

Thanks for the New version.
Cannot wait to try it out.
Thanks :)

[video_magic]

I actually felt my heart give a little 'skip' when I saw this thread for a new version! :D This little program really has been captivating for Me, it's nice and easy to use and the results have mostly been very good - and it's a small standalone program too that I don't have to install and has lots of features - the batch feature is so handy.
I look forward to putting a few videos through this new version - THANKS! :)

[Fishman0919]

Thank You hank315 and just in time for some new movies.

[kumi]

Thank you hank315!

For newbs like me that use it with DVD Rebuilder and don't delve too often into the HC gui or .ini files: can we expect any quality improvements over 0.19?

[Pookie]

You never fail to impress, Hank. Can't wait to test it out on some HD material. Thanks.

[v1rtu0s1ty]

Hi, I have an HD recording of Heroes and I would like to convert it to DVD. Is this the tool I need?

I was using ffmpeg tool before but looks like the my HD recording has some bad data on it. It always stops at 1.3gig on this one HD recording. It doesn't fail on my other recordings. One more thing that confuses me is that, I can watch this same HD recording in mythtv without any issue.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[Oldeman]

Hank,
I just tried HC20 on my 3.0G HT P4 with my standard test movie
(2 hours of camcorder footage massaged by Vegas, 2 vts, 4x3 interlaced).

Using Dvd Rebuilder Pro: with No menu encoding, best mode, multiple HC encoders, encode time was 204 minutes on HC19.01 and 130 minutes on HC20. WOW guess the SSE2 kicks butt.

Haven't checked output yet as rebuild is still in process, but its a GREAT reduction in encode time.:thanks: :thanks: :thanks:

[v1rtu0s1ty]

so guys, is HC20 used for converting HD to DVD?

[Pookie]

9 minutes between bumps ?

[Rumbah]

I tested the new version on some normal DVD material and I got a speedup of about 30% on my P4 3.2GHz. Amazing!
so guys, is HC20 used for converting HD to DVD?

No, HC is used to encode in HD or in SD, it does not do any resolution convertion.

[LiquidLion]

Deleted post since no replies, as expected...yes, i did use the search feature.

[lennu]

Every time i try to run HCenc_020.exe i get
http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/4702/hc020sw5.png

I have 1.33 Athlon and 512 mb of ram. I know this is not that kind of a computer which should be used for video encoding, but still? Or HC is not supposed to run on older CPU's?

[Trahald]

High quality mpeg2 HD encoding for the masses! Great going hank

[Pookie]

1280x720 (all I've done so far) looks terrific :)

[Boulder]

can we expect any quality improvements over 0.19?IMO the rate control is better than in HC019 so I'd say a definite yes to that:)

[kumi]

That's great news :) I was already very impressed by the improvements made in 0.19.

Now, if only I didn't have a lowly Sempron... :(

[foxyshadis]

Every time i try to run HCenc_020.exe i get
http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/4702/hc020sw5.png

I have 1.33 Athlon and 512 mb of ram. I know this is not that kind of a computer which should be used for video encoding, but still? Or HC is not supposed to run on older CPU's?

It's probably the lack of SSE, so that would make P3/A-XP the minimum requirement. =\ (Along with whatever Celeron/Duron models first supported SSE.)

[dragongodz]

It's probably the lack of SSE
actually no it shouldnt be. HC still has a minimum of mmx/isse which an old athlon is of course capable of.

lennu - try running the gui and loading you avs and setting output etc. also go tto the "settings 2" tab and select "MMX" in the "CPU" box. then try to encode. what happens then ?

[lennu]

lennu - try running the gui and loading you avs and setting output etc. also go tto the "settings 2" tab and select "MMX" in the "CPU" box. then try to encode. what happens then ?

Same thing :(

[Boulder]

Every time i try to run HCenc_020.exe i get
http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/4702/hc020sw5.png

I have 1.33 Athlon and 512 mb of ram. I know this is not that kind of a computer which should be used for video encoding, but still? Or HC is not supposed to run on older CPU's?Maybe it's OS specific - what OS do you use?

[lennu]

I use Windows Xp Sp2.

Actually i had some problems with 0.19.1 too. It freezes my computer after 1-2 minutes of re-encoding, but only when i used HC with DVD-RB (free version).
When i load avs file into HCgui_019 - no problems. Therefore i've tested my hardware also (cpu, memory) - everything seemed fine.

And an other note. I can use CCE Trial with or without DVD-RB.

[laserfan]

I'm confused about HC's new HD encoding capability--is the idea to use it to re-encode HD-to-HD at a lesser bitrate, conserving space? What utilities would one use it with to do this?

I have only ever used Hank's wonderful encoder with DVD Rebuilder...

[Lester Burnham]

I'm confused about HC's new HD encoding capability--is the idea to use it to re-encode HD-to-HD at a lesser bitrate, conserving space? What utilities would one use it with to do this?

I have only ever used Hank's wonderful encoder with DVD Rebuilder...

What about the ability to re-encode HD broadcast captures / recordings, to HD-DVD formats?

[Boulder]

Use Avisynth for loading and processing the source. Load the Avisynth script in HC and encode.

[Lester Burnham]

Use Avisynth for loading and processing the source. Load the Avisynth script in HC and encode.

Don't know if that's in reply to my comments, or not - but I didn't make that rhetorical point to request info on procedure - it was merely a counter to questioning the purposefulness of having HC being able to encode HD resolutions.

[Boulder]

I was mostly referring to laserfan's post.

I don't think having a *free* HD-capable encoder is a bad idea at all... ;)

[v1rtu0s1ty]

I tested the new version on some normal DVD material and I got a speedup of about 30% on my P4 3.2GHz. Amazing!


No, HC is used to encode in HD or in SD, it does not do any resolution convertion.

Gotcha. Is there a reason to encode a record show that is already in HD? Or maybe, HC is use for other video sources? Please help.

[Lester Burnham]

Gotcha. Is there a reason to encode a record show that is already in HD? Or maybe, HC is use for other video sources? Please help.

eh? It's an mpeg2 encoder - so it's of use whenever you may want to encode, or re-encode mpeg2.

Now, it's capable of encoding mpeg2 to HD resolution.

So whenever you want to encode to mpeg2, up to HD (as well as SD previously) resolution, you can now use HC.

Most interested people, seemed rather pleased that Hank has upped the ante with HC, so that it can now do HD, too...

[v1rtu0s1ty]

eh? It's an mpeg2 encoder - so it's of use whenever you may want to encode, or re-encode mpeg2.

Now, it's capable of encoding mpeg2 to HD resolution.

So whenever you want to encode to mpeg2, up to HD (as well as SD previously) resolution, you can now use HC.

Most interested people, seemed rather pleased that Hank has upped the ante with HC, so that it can now do HD, too...

Ah, maybe, I can use this tool to reencode an hd recording to the same format. And hopefully, it will fix the issue on the recorded issue. I will use the new output file then for mplex.

However, I tried to use the tool yesterday but I got confused. It was not looking for an mpg file. Looks like it was looking for an avscript. My avscript is not running well too. I reinstalled many times but Microsoft Media Player still fails to play a one liner avs script which contains Version command :(

[Lester Burnham]

Ah, maybe, I can use this tool to reencode an hd recording to the same format. And hopefully, it will fix the issue on the recorded issue. I will use the new output file then for mplex.

However, I tried to use the tool yesterday but I got confused. It was not looking for an mpg file. Looks like it was looking for an avscript. My avscript is not running well too. I reinstalled many times but Microsoft Media Player still fails to play a one liner avs script which contains Version command :(

Well it (like other freeware mpeg2 encoders - eg quenc) doesn't take the video file as source - it expects the source to be frameserved by avisynth.

[Boulder]

Or you can use DGIndex and feed the d2v project file in HC if you don't need to do anything in Avisynth.

[v1rtu0s1ty]

Or you can use DGIndex and feed the d2v project file in HC if you don't need to do anything in Avisynth.

ok, actually I'm just hoping that when I reencode my hd recording, it will help my ffmpeg tool. Ok, I will look for DGIndex and try it. And yes, I don't need to do anything with avisynth. As a matter of fact, it's still not running properly on my machine. :)

EDIT:
Sorry folks, here is what I found. http://neuron2.net/dgmpgdec/dgmpgdec.html
Is that the true home of DGIndex?

[foxyshadis]

Yep, neuron2 is the creator.

[v1rtu0s1ty]

Ok folks, here is an update. I got HC working :) I opened the file that DGindex created then, HC created an m2v file. I'm able to play m2v file in VLC. Is m2v format an mpeg format?

And also, I've been using ffmpeg on linux to convert HD into DVD so I can have a backup. I don't know of any other tool that does conversion so I think that ffmpeg is the best tool out there. Hehehe. Can you guys recommend a conversion tool from HD(1920x1080, 1280x720) to DVD(720x480)?

Thanks again! You guys have a helped me a lot. ;)

[v1rtu0s1ty]

Here is an update. I download a ts 1920x1080 example file from pchdtv.com. I reencoded it using best profile and filesize went down like 65%. However, I can see a pixelization. What do I need to do so that quality is the same as the source?

[MLS]

You can't, MPEG2 is lossy.

I think these questions should be put in the newbie forum or at least in a different thread as they have nothing to do with the new release.

Back on topic: Thanks for all your hard work Hank.

/MLS

[laserfan]

Use Avisynth for loading and processing the source. Load the Avisynth script in HC and encode.Thanks for this... having only used DVDRB before I forgot HC had its own GUI (duh). :o

[hank315]

Some remarks about SD/HD resolutions:
In fact nothing has changed, HC just takes the frames from Avisynth or DGDecode without resizing and re-encode them.
The only difference now it's not limited to DVD (720x576 max) resolutions.
Width and height should still be a multiple of 16 except for 1080 height, this one will be encoded at 1088 with a 1080 header value.

@lennu
As dragongodz already mentioned minimum requirements for HC are still MMX/ISSE so I really don't know why it doesn't run on your CPU.
Actually i had some problems with 0.19.1 too. It freezes my computer after 1-2 minutes of re-encoding, but only when i used HC with DVD-RB (free version).That's not a very good sign also...

@peter100m
The timecode issue you reported earlier should be solved.

This release also fixes an error in the pulldown code, feedback on this is appreciated.

[Smetvid]

I noticed that the m2v files are encoded as main profile/high level which has a bitrate limit of 80mbits/s and 4:2:0 color.

I have encoded a 1920x1080 HD file at 300 mbits/s and 100 mbits/s and they work fine but they still somehow manage to use MP/HL which should be an invalid format.

Are there any plans to add the 4:2:2 profile and with that the chroma 4:2:2 flag?

If not then perhaps the bitrate should be limited to 80 mbits/s to avoid any problems.

[Revgen]

Thanks Hank.

I'll try this out as soon as I can.

[peter100m]

@peter100m
The timecode issue you reported earlier should be solved.
Thank you! I tested and everything seems to be ok.

[techreactor]

Adaptive matrix is an amazing feature, but instead of leaving it to the users to do some coding, it should also have an Auto mode, wherein it should pick up matrices available from the HC package by self analysis on the source.

*ADAPTIVEMATRIX
parameter - type -
Status not required
Default -
Example *ADAPTIVEMATRIX
This command activates the code in matrix.dll. Using this command you can change matrices at
every GOP. This is meant for very experienced users only !!
See the adaptive matrices section in this manual how to create the dll.

[linx05]

Could someone make a DLL which does this automatically at every GOP?

[Boulder]

There are a few dlls included in the HC020 package.

[linx05]

But they are only for dark scenes it seems. I think techreactor was after something like QMATOpt in Autoqmatenc or the one Procoder uses.

It would be very handy.

[Asmodeus]

This release also fixes an error in the pulldown code, feedback on this is appreciated.

I did some encodes with 3:2 pulldown and they are ok. But I didn't have any problem with pulldown on any HCenc pulldown capable.

PS: I encode all via Wine on FreeBSD without problems.

[Nomolu]

When I use the built in MPEG matix with the normal mode I see random 16x16 squares (macro blocks?) spread around the frames.

If I switch to the Fast or Best modes, or choose a matrix other than "MPEG", the squares do not appear. The problem doesn't happen with the HC 19.0.1 encoder either.

My video is at the 23.976 frame rate, but changing other settings, such as pulldown or auto GOP don't fix the problem.

Anyone else see this problem with the built in MPEG matrix and the Normal mode?

[MLS]

When I use the built in MPEG matix with the normal mode I see random 16x16 squares (macro blocks?) spread around the frames.

If I switch to the Fast or Best modes, or choose a matrix other than "MPEG", the squares do not appear. The problem doesn't happen with the HC 19.0.1 encoder either.

My video is at the 23.976 frame rate, but changing other settings, such as pulldown or auto GOP don't fix the problem.

Anyone else see this problem with the built in MPEG matrix and the Normal mode?

Just did an encode with those settings at 3500 ABR and have no problems.

/MLS

[hank315]

@Nomolu
Could you please post the logfile of the encode.