Challenging hybrid 720p material - suggestions wanted

[patja]

I am having some trouble encoding hybrid material from Ken Burns' The War, captured at 720p / 59.94FPS from PBS and am hoping for some suggestions or insight.

The program is a mix of archival footage and still images with the hallmark "Ken Burns" pans, and film interviews.

The film portions inevitably get out of synch or are choppy/sped up when I process. I am a bit stumped.

I've posted a short sample of the material here: http://rapidshare.com/files/85239535/ShortWar.mpg.html (apologize for its size...720p mnaterial doesn't come small even for short clips)

[patja]

My method thus far has been to create a d2v with dgindex 1.5 beta, demux audio to .wav, and use this avisynth script:

LoadPlugin("C:\tools\dgindex15\DGDecode.dll")
v=mpeg2source("e:\mpg\ShortWar.d2v")
a=Wavsource("e:\mpg\ShortWar T80 3_2ch 384Kbps 48KHz.wav")
Audiodub(v,a)
Lanczosresize(320,180)
colormatrix()

I've tried different combinations of selecteven(), decimate, fdecimate, and telecide without satisfactory results on the film/interview portions staying in synch with audio

[Rodger]

I´d advise you too use Xvid for some time to come.
The easiest things are currently Impossible, very tricky to be done or super userunfriendly...to say it nice.

Using Xvid would bring you early success.

[patja]

While I usually encode in wmv, I can and do sometimes encode with xvid...but always from an avisynth script.

Is there a tool you use for xvid encoding that you find handles this kind of source material well?

I tried megui but it didn't work too well...using its avisynth script creator's "analyze" feature yielded "Source detection couldn't detect the source type!"

[Rodger]

It´s all about the source(s)!

VirtualDub is pretty good...but as soon as it comes to Mpeg2 you need a tweaked version of that program, but it´s avaiable.
Pretty much is possible with that thing, but it´s a bit on the compicated side compared to my second suggestion.

Second to that I always like to suggest the usage of TmpgEnc Xpress 4.x
It really EATS EVERYTHING and is almost capable of anything I can imagine ;)
Biggest harm is that it doesn´t support mkv, but with the usage of MKVtoolnix its easy to repack to MKV...Yes even x264 material.
But this one is not freeware!

[setarip_old]

@patja

Hi!

Playing back your sample, it seems to me that you've got dropped frames throughout it (many visual hesitations) but, whatever your capture program, it's been set to maintain synch for playback - which is then lost upon conversion ( did a quick conversion to DivX v.3.11, using MPEG Mediator)...

BTW - The purchased SD DVD set is of far higher quality than your captured sample ;>}