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View Full Version : CCE encode of AVI file noticably softened

Avisynth_challenged
30th October 2010, 22:10
Hey all,

Been out of the SD MPEG2 encoding realm for a while, and I recently updated my PC from an Intel-based MB/CPU to an AMD one.

I just installed CCE and did a test encode of a YUY2 avi source which was encoded in Huffyuv lossless format via ffdshow.

The source avi seems a bit sharper than the CCE mpv output, particularly in fine text. Here are some screenshots to show what I'm referring to:


Source avi *here* (http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h183/partingshot/pic1avi.png)

Output mpv *here* (http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h183/partingshot/pic2mpg.png)


I did a 4-pass VBR encode of the SD source (720x480 @23.976p) with an avg bitrate of 6000kbps, which I think is reasonable.

Is this result typical of CCE? Or are there any tweaks I can do to make the mpeg output a bit sharper like the source? Thanks in advance for your help :)
poisondeathray
30th October 2010, 23:13
what settings did you use ?

do you have low pass filter enabled ?
manono
31st October 2010, 03:48
I did a 4-pass VBR encode of the SD source (720x480 @23.976p) with an avg bitrate of 6000kbps, which I think is reasonable.
Thinking it doesn't make it so. Did you check the average Q? If too high you'll get softening and blurring. As pdr mentions, CCE has a built-in softening filter that should be disabled. Use a better quantisation matrix instead of the lousy default one. Were there any color conversions - was the HuffYUV AVI also YUY2? Or did I misunderstand and the HuffYUV AVI is the source?Was the pic taken of an I-Frame, a P-Frame, or a B-Frame? Do all the nearby output frames look the same?

Pics don't tell the whole story. Samples are much better.
kolak
31st October 2010, 11:48
Turn off all filtering options.


Andrew
TheSkiller
31st October 2010, 16:26
In the main window click "Picture settings..." and then do this:


http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/3298/ccesettingslowpass.png


Edit: Also, like manono suggested, better use a custom quantization matrix, use CQME (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=73666&highlight=jawor) by LigH to import matrices easily into CCE SP2.