2.55 ignores target file size now...

[Maxx2206]

hi,

i've been using autogk to convert my own streamed media to xvid for a while now.
at some point i started creating 560MB sized tv series files. 560 because i found it to be the ideal combination of filesize and audio/video quality (results in 8 episodes of near-dvd quality video combined with 2 channels 128kbit mp3 audio per disc).

however, i was happy to see the announcement of a new release, so i immediately installed it. since then, autogk started ignoring the target filesize and produces variable length movies instead. with the otherwise same preferences the output varies from 368MB to something over 420MB depending on the supplied episode.
i havent installed or changed anything manually after updating autogk since its sudden change of behaviour and since i couldnt find any reason or solution im now falling back to 2.52 for the time being to continue/finish my unprocessed files.

any ideas whats happening and how to fix it even with the latest release?

[Maxx2206]

Hi,

i was a bit disappointed that no one apprently had any answers why this is happening or if i should care at all until today.

however, since i cant get hold of a 2.52 package anymore and other alternatives that seemed to be a good "replacement" also give me other issues (namely staxrip which seems feature loaded and still being developed, but for some reason doesnt extract both of the 2 audio tracks which i seem unable to fix myself^^) i'll give it a nother try.

here's a full log of one of those episodes i was talking about:

[20.02.2010 16:32:21] AutoGK 2.55
[20.02.2010 16:32:21] OS: Windows Vista (6.1.7600).2
[20.02.2010 16:32:21] Job started.
[20.02.2010 16:32:21] Input file: D:\Grabs\11 - Familiäre Überreste.ts
[20.02.2010 16:32:21] Output file: D:\Grabs\11 - Familiäre Überreste.avi
[20.02.2010 16:32:21] Output codec: XviD
[20.02.2010 16:32:21] Audio 1: PID 00C1, MPEG Audio Stream
[20.02.2010 16:32:21] Audio 2: PID 00C0, MPEG Audio Stream
[20.02.2010 16:32:21] Subtitles: none
[20.02.2010 16:32:21] Format: AVI
[20.02.2010 16:32:21] Target size: 560Mb
[20.02.2010 16:32:21] Audio 1 settings: CBR MP3 with bitrate: 128Kbps
[20.02.2010 16:32:21] Audio 2 settings: CBR MP3 with bitrate: 128Kbps
[20.02.2010 16:32:21] Started encoding.
[20.02.2010 16:32:21] Demuxing and indexing.
[20.02.2010 16:32:54] Processing file: D:\Grabs\11 - Familiäre Überreste.ts
[20.02.2010 16:32:54] Source resolution: 720x576
[20.02.2010 16:32:54] Found PAL source.
[20.02.2010 16:32:54] Source aspect ratio: 16:9
[20.02.2010 16:32:54] Analyzing source.
[20.02.2010 16:35:36] Source has percentage of interlacing in motion areas: 0,00
[20.02.2010 16:35:36] Source is considered to be progressive.
[20.02.2010 16:35:36] Output will contain 60888 frames
[20.02.2010 16:35:36] Encoding audio.
[20.02.2010 16:39:17] Encoding audio.
[20.02.2010 16:42:56] Using VAQ in XviD
[20.02.2010 16:42:56] Audio1 size: 38,975,616 bytes (37.17 Mb)
[20.02.2010 16:42:58] Audio2 size: 38,975,616 bytes (37.17 Mb)
[20.02.2010 16:42:59] Overhead: 1,446,144 bytes (1.38 Mb)
[20.02.2010 16:42:59] Video size: 507,805,184 bytes (484.28 Mb)
[20.02.2010 16:42:59] Running compressibility test.
[20.02.2010 16:42:59] Writing the following script to D:\Grabs\agk_tmp\11 - Familiäre Überreste_comptest.avs
===========================================================
LoadPlugin("C:\PROGRA~2\AutoGK\DGMPGDec\DGDecode.dll")
LoadPlugin("C:\PROGRA~2\AutoGK\filters\autocrop.dll")
LoadPlugin("C:\PROGRA~2\AutoGK\filters\RemoveGrainSSE3.dll")

movie = mpeg2source("D:\Grabs\agk_tmp\11 - Familiäre Überreste.d2v")
cropclip = autocrop(movie,mode=0,wmultof=4,hmultof=4,samples=10,aspect=0,threshold=34,samplestartframe=0,leftadd=0,rightadd=0,topadd=0,bottomadd=0)
fixed_aspect = 1.42222222222222
c_width = width(cropclip)
c_height = round(height(cropclip) / fixed_aspect)
input_par = float(c_width)/float(c_height)
input_par = (input_par > 1.4) || (input_par < 1.25) ? input_par : (4.0/3.0)
out_width = 640
out_height = round(float(out_width) / input_par)
hmod = out_height - (floor(out_height / 16 ) * 16)
out_height = (hmod > 4) ? (out_height + (16 - hmod)) : (out_height - hmod)
new_aspect = (float(out_width) / float(out_height)) / fixed_aspect
autocrop(movie,mode=0,wmultof=4,hmultof=4,samples=10,aspect=new_aspect,threshold=34,samplestartframe=0,leftadd=0,rightadd=0,topadd=0,bottomadd=0)
LanczosResize(out_width,out_height)
RemoveGrain(mode=2)
SelectRangeEvery(300,15)
===========================================================
[20.02.2010 16:43:49] Duration was: 49 seconds
[20.02.2010 16:43:49] Speed was: 61,21 fps.
[20.02.2010 16:43:49] Compressibility percentage is: 169,73
[20.02.2010 16:43:49] Using sharper matrix
[20.02.2010 16:43:49] Switching b-frames off
[20.02.2010 16:43:49] Chosen resolution is: 720x416 ( AR: 1,73 )
[20.02.2010 16:43:49] Predicted comptest value is: 74,97%
[20.02.2010 16:43:49] Running first pass.
[20.02.2010 16:43:49] Writing the following script to D:\Grabs\agk_tmp\11 - Familiäre Überreste_movie.avs
===========================================================
LoadPlugin("C:\PROGRA~2\AutoGK\DGMPGDec\DGDecode.dll")
LoadPlugin("C:\PROGRA~2\AutoGK\filters\autocrop.dll")
LoadPlugin("C:\PROGRA~2\AutoGK\filters\RemoveGrainSSE3.dll")

movie = mpeg2source("D:\Grabs\agk_tmp\11 - Familiäre Überreste.d2v")
cropclip = autocrop(movie,mode=0,wmultof=4,hmultof=4,samples=10,aspect=0,threshold=34,samplestartframe=0,leftadd=0,rightadd=0,topadd=0,bottomadd=0)
fixed_aspect = 1.42222222222222
c_width = width(cropclip)
c_height = round(height(cropclip) / fixed_aspect)
input_par = float(c_width)/float(c_height)
input_par = (input_par > 1.4) || (input_par < 1.25) ? input_par : (4.0/3.0)
out_width = 720
out_height = round(float(out_width) / input_par)
hmod = out_height - (floor(out_height / 16 ) * 16)
out_height = (hmod > 4) ? (out_height + (16 - hmod)) : (out_height - hmod)
new_aspect = (float(out_width) / float(out_height)) / fixed_aspect
autocrop(movie,mode=0,wmultof=4,hmultof=4,samples=10,aspect=new_aspect,threshold=34,samplestartframe=0,leftadd=0,rightadd=0,topadd=0,bottomadd=0)
LanczosResize(out_width,out_height)
RemoveGrain(mode=2)
===========================================================
[20.02.2010 16:55:29] Duration was: 11 minutes 40 seconds
[20.02.2010 16:55:29] Speed was: 86,97 fps.
[20.02.2010 16:55:29] Expected quality of first pass size: 80,02%
[20.02.2010 16:55:29] Running second pass.
[20.02.2010 17:09:07] Duration was: 13 minutes 37 seconds
[20.02.2010 17:09:07] Speed was: 74,50 fps.
[20.02.2010 17:09:07] Job finished. Total time: 36 minutes 46 seconds


thanks to a friendly pm that pointed me towards VAQ being the cause of the filesize issue i have at least something to start looking closer at...

its not like i wouldnt appreciate smaller files, i just want to be sure the target file consists of the same visual quality in the end, but with up to 200MB less on a bi-lingual 40minute 720x576 i doubt that.

cyas...

[Maxx2206]

oh come on!

guess what.. ive tried and verified this with at least 4 different source files on 2 computers running 2.55 and my target file size of 560MB has always been undercut up to 200MB.

i just ran this test again to get a logfile, same file i used before which resulted in a 368MB file and now i find a perfect 560MB conversion.

i havent changed anything on this computer except for uninstalling autogk some time ago and reinstalling it today for the logfile test.

any clue whats going on here? could it be just some weird updating issue i could resolve by uninstalling and reinstalling autogk again on the other pc as well?

i must admit im getting frustrated even if i might have just "solved" my problem, simply because im weeks behind my converting with gigabytes of source files to process and i cant see a specific reason what the cause was at all :(

[mariush]

VAQ is good for encoding, it makes xvid smarter by making it give more bits where it's needed and less where user wouldn't notice the difference anyway. Overall, the quality of the video improves.

In your case, it could just be that the video is very compressible, meaning it has a lot of scenes where there's not much motion, and combined with the fact that you give it a lot of bitrate (by my calculations 1700 kbps), it could be that the encoder just thinks there's no point in allocating more bits to some scenes where there's not much motion, so the end result video is undersized.

Also, I'm not sure what computer you have but 86 fps is pretty high, which makes me think maybe you're not using the highest quality settings - if you set the settings low enough, xvid won't even make an effort to use all the bits it has available to give you the best quality.

[Maxx2206]

Hi,

main pc is a dualcore 3ghz amd box running vista 64bit.
2nd machine and the one i made the last test with is a core i7 quadcore 1.6ghz running windows7 64bit.

the video in this test ended up with 560mb, but i resulted in much smaller files during the various other tests i have done back then when i originally posted about the issue.

i dont know what made them render at target size this time for sure yet. i completely deinstalled autogk on the main pc in the meantime including manual deinstallation of the xvid, avisynth and vobsub apps. installed 2.55 from scratch there and the first video also perfectly rendered in 556MB now.

im not sure what settings you refer to since so far ive only used the target size along with fixed audio settings and it always worked well.
i just noticed that rendering files from a different source (480x576) doesnt fit into target filesize still (ended in 446MB for example) and comparing input and output theres a noticable loss in video quality.
all source files are usually mpeg transport streams, 2 mp3 audio tracks. about 650mb source file size for the 480pixel videos and usually around 1gb for the 720pixel ones. occasionally i also use cutted dvd rips (projectx to split the 4 episodes).

anyway, these are my usual source files, my preferred target size is 560MB with 2 mp3 audio tracks included. if theres additional parameters/settings i should adjust which still allow me to batch process multiple files without too much hassle i would happily learn about them, so feel free to post suggestions ;)