DV or VHS to DVD-R with CCE (DV500 owners plz read)

[SiC]

I've had great success in re-encoding 2 DVD-9's onto 1 DVD-R and keeping the original 448kbps 5.1 AC3 file. To fit both movies onto 1 DVD-R I had to re-encode the video at an average of 2000kbps with Robshot's tweaked multi-pass method. Believe it or not the videos looked AWESOME even at that low bitrate. Even the Q.Factor was at an average about 8.7 or so.

After backing up my DVD's I decided to put my old DV & VHS content onto DVD-Rs. I first transfered the video onto my PC via my DV500, edit with Adobe Premiere and saved as Pinnacle DV 29.97 NTSC interlaced. Next I put my video into CCE and followed Robshot's method that I used for backing up my DVD movies. Ran the first pass VBR to get the *.vaf file. Then I went into CCE again and started to setup for the multi-pass. When I hit the advanced button in Multipass CCE setting, I was surpised at the high Q.Factor. I couldn't get the Q.Factor below 9.0 even if I raised my bitrate to 8000kbps. The videos that I was trying to put on DVD-R was a bunch of my homemade snowboard videos recorded with my Sony PC100 DV camcorder. My question is, what can I do to get better quality out of my videos (lower the Q.Factor). Should I save the DV as 23.97 de-interlaced in Premiere instead of the default 29.97 interlaced?? Are there any other settings in Premiere or CCE that I should adjust while encoding video from a camcorder or VHS??? The DVD's that I re-encoded at 2000kbps looks better than my homemade video encoded at 8000kbps....
All DV500 & other DV card owners plz tell me your settings in Premiere & CCE.

Thanx!

[mikeathome]

Yes,

that's the nature of interlaced video. It consumes hell lot of bitrate to achieve compareable quality.
Experts recommend to shoot your clips in 16:9 mode to get better result.

Ok, you got your video already, here's my way, remember I am NOT an expert:
- got it in 4:3
- got it into Premiere
- cut and overlay everything
- Frameserve (!) it using the AVIWrapper to avoid re-compression the DV content (this preserves the content as it sticks on the tape and re-compresses only the overlayed transposed content)
- set output UPPER FIELD FIRST, since CCESP has a strange bug which always sets the UPPER FIELD FIRST flag in the encoded video (not visible on the PC but leads to terrible 'jumping' on a TV due to wrong field order)
- open the IPCSource.avi in CCESP
- set 1pass VBR Quality 60, just to get an .vaf file (you can skip this)
- set 3pass VBR, min: 0 Avg: 4.500, max: 8.500
- use mb1 DV Matrix ( http://members.s2u.org/hobby/mb1svcd/dv.htm ) = essential for good results !
- Quality: Image Quality 5, Noise Reduction = Off
- Matrix: mb1-interlaced (see URL)
- GOP 3/4 Closed
- Video Add Sequence End Code, Linear Quantiziser Scale, NO ZigZAG Scanning (not good for interlaced material), Luminance 16-235, DAR 4:3, Intra DC Auto

That's it after a long 4pass way thru the Video I get a great result at resonable file size (upto 2:15hour on a DVD-R). The 'Advanced' way don't work with DV.

Don't forget to Pulldown your NTSC. (wrong !, see below, sorry, I am a NON expert PAL guy ;-).

Btw. I always do a PCM WAV export from Premiere which I encode to AC3 (with Sonic SoftEncode). This gives me the opportunity to CUT my DVD material in Maestro while keeping it sync at minimum effort, remember the Create Sync Audio feature in Maestro!

mike

[mikeathome]

Hi again,

something to add:

For VHS: I always record it to DV Tape first. Much easier to capture into the PC and with a hardware A/D conversion (in the Tape recorder).
Gives an automatic backup as well.
All together much easier to handle.

mike

[SiC]

Thanx alot Mike, I'll try your settings out! One question, you mentioned to use Pulldown.exe, so after editing in Premiere save the project as 23.97 instead of 29.97 for NTSC???:confused:

Thanx!

[Atlantis]

You can not just save a native 29.97 as 23.98. Only native films that have 3:2 pulldown (like NTSC movies on LDs and VHS) can be reversed to 23.98 through pulldown removal, and even that is impossible with Premiere. The best you can do is to de-interlace your 29.97 material. Home movies shot on video are 29.97 interlaced with no 3:2 pulldown.

[SiC]

Wow, that Matrix and your setting is amazing!!! I'm VERY satisfied with the results!!
Thanx for your help Mike!!!

[mikeathome]

Originally posted by SiC
Wow, that Matrix and your setting is amazing!!! I'm VERY satisfied with the results!!
Thanx for your help Mike!!!

Hi,

I'll forward that to mb1. I've seen him answering questions in this board as well, may be he's looking around already ...
There are a couple of good (french, dutch, german) pages regarding MPEG encoding.

Look: at this e.g.
- http://www.uni-kassel.de/~eckhardm/hq.htm (Angels SVCD very good explanations - german)
- http://www.dvd-svcd-forum.de/cgi-bin/dvd_board/topic.cgi?forum=36&topic=20 (German Board - excellent compilation of knowledge for CCESP)
- http://www.dvd-svcd-forum.de/cgi-bin/dvd_board/topic.cgi?forum=38&topic=2 (German Board - excellent compilation of knowledge for TMPEG)
- http://www.media-video.com/svcd_cce_dvd2avi.php (French site - the one and only where I found explanations about the CCESP encoding parameters, apart from the written manual ;-)
- http://www.mb1.de.vu/ (mb1's Home Page - german)

mike

[SiC]

Thanx Mike, I'll check these sites out too! Tell MB1 he's the greatest!! :D

[GlenC]

@mikeathome

Thanks Mike for your insights into improving dv cam quality. I have a few questions if you don't mind...

I tried translating the site link you sent using babelfish, it's tough reading, and it stops translating half way through :(

Is this method suitable for all the capture types with the dv500, ie vhs capture. MB1's site goes into great detail with overscan, etc. Would quality improve further using avisynth on the avi wrapper output from premiere? with cropping and resizing, adding borders, etc.

Can the mb1 matrix be applied only to cce2.5 or can it be used with 2.62 as well.

Thanks

Glen.

[tyee]

I was wondering about the matrix also. I was talking to mike via another post about matrices recently and he said he's using version 2.62 which has easy input of matices. You can use Tsunami's patcher for ver. 2.5 to patch any matrix also, but I'm still not sure it will be decoded properly after, because 2.5 supposedly can't write the patched matrix into the MPEG2 header of your encoded movie/DV, which 2.62/2.64 can!

Maybe we should all just use ver. 2.62 or 2.64 (any problems with this one), and then matrices won't be a problem. I haven't switched over to 2.62/2.64 because I'm wondering this --

If using ver. 2.62/2.64 you must use VFAPI to create fake avi for CCE. In this mode only RGB is used and not YUY2, hence speed supposedly decreases.

Hey, Mike or SiC, do we really need to worry about this speed decrease or not?? Obviously if you guys are using it, it's not that important to stay in YUY2 domain???

Tyee

[SiC]

Tyee
I just switched over to 2.64 from 2.62. I was worried about a problem that some where having with it crashing on multi-pass VBR but it hasn't happened to me yet (I just did three 9 pass VBRs over the weekend). I manually inputed MB1's matrix into it and later found out I could've used Tsunami's patcher.
About the speed difference between 2.5 & 2.6x..... I really can't tell and the quality is still good even if it is RGB. I usually average about 1.3 times faster than real time when encoding DV to MPEG2, it goes to about 1.8 times faster than real time for encoding DVD MPEG2 to MPEG2. So I say you should switch over to 2.6x from 2.5.

GlenC
When encoding VHS video that was captured thru the DV500, I use the same settings expect for Noise Filter. I usually set that to about 10 or so depending on the source quality. VHS videos usually have more noise than DV (from my experience).

[mikeathome]

@Sic:

All correct. That's the way I do as well.
Thx. for answering the questions.

regards, mike

[GlenC]

Hi,

Do you not bother with the overscan areas, and macroblock optimisation?

Glen.

[mikeathome]

Originally posted by GlenC
Hi,
Do you not bother with the overscan areas, and macroblock optimisation?
Glen.

To be honest, NO.

I do DVD-R. So, I don't bother with bitrate. Ok, resize and optimization for overscan would be an option, but I export from Premiere via AviWrapper, which does not simplify the process at all since Premiere's resize quality isn't appropriate, so I don't optimize.

P.S. I know I could do it via Avisynth, but I am fine with the output as it is.

mike

[whosithis]

Two of the characteristics of typical DV video that makes encoding for DVD very very hard are the high contrast of DV video and the mosquito noise that can be introduced by a poor CCD and the compression technique itself.

Has anyone ever tried using a filter to lower the contrast of DV video, perhaps even adding a pure blur to try to make encoding easier? I'd like to hear your results.

What are typical overscan black border values that one can use to try to decrease the image area that needs encoding? They have to be in increments of 16 to account for the macroblocks, right?

[GlenC]

Thanks for answering the questions, I have 1 more..

Within premiere, capturing with the dv500 firewire port, is it best to select the Pinnacle AVI Capture, or to use DV IEEE 1394 Capture.

Thanks

Glen.

[SiC]

GlenC
When capturing DV with the DV500 in Premiere, if you select Pinnacle DV it adds the Pinnacle header and it will be decompressed with the Pinnacle DV Codec. If you select DV IEEE1394, the DV file will have a Microsoft header and decompressed with the MS DV (AVI2) Codec. Although both videos will be identical, you will not be able to get real time transitions & filters with the MS version. If you use RT then you must use the Pinnacle DV.

[GlenC]

Hi,

I've tried following mikes method, but keep getting problems with the avi wrapper or cce.

Just had a thought. Why use the AVI Wrapper at all, why not just the the cce plugin for premiere to output directly.

Am I missing something?

Glen.

[SiC]

I dont use an avi wrapper, I just go straight with the avi that outputs from Premiere.

[GlenC]

sorry sic, do you mean you use the cce plug-in, or do you save the premiere output in an intermediate form then use cce standalone?

Thanks

Glen.

[SiC]

I capture via DV500, edit the original DV file in Premiere, and save the DV file as lower field first Pinnacle DV AVI (just like you would in normal DV files). Then I import the file into the standalone CCE 2.64 to output to MPEG2 (lower field first).

[GlenC]

Ok, I'm getting there ;)

So why don't you just output directly from premiere using the cce 2.64 premiere plugin?

This saves having to create an intermediate file, and possibly some time?

Glen.

[SiC]

I never liked the plugin.... seems slower and unstable (actually Premiere 6.0 is pretty unstable for me). I've heard of may people having it crash during the second pass in VBR with the plugin. Also I like keeping the edited DV file just in case I have to make some minor changes, it's alot smaller than keeping the original un-edited DV file.

[GlenC]

Hi Sic,

Thanks for the advice, working with dv stuff seems so much ssssllllloooooowwwwwwwwweeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrr than dvd.

I am trying to export a 2 hour dv movie from premiere, and it's gonna take 4 hours. Does that sound about right for a dual 1.9gig machine with fast hard drives?

I have checked all the settings, and it doesn't look like it is re-encoding anything.

Then I have to encode with cce, thats gonna take another age I presume.

Any help/advice appreciated

Glen.

[SiC]

The time to create a DV movie varies depending on what kind of transitions & filters you are using. If all your transitions & filters are real time type, then it should finish in real time or even faster. If you look at the top portion of the Adobe Premiere timeline and it shows a red bar instead of yellow, then that means it needs rendering (non-RT). You may have mostly yellow and a few red spots which means that the red part is the only part that requires rendering, in that case Adobe Premiere likes to report incorrect times for "total time left" since some of it is RT and some isn't RT. On my PC (P4 2.0ghz @ 2.2ghz, 512MB RIMM) it usually takes 2 hours or so to do a 2 hour project including some RT and non-RT filters/transitions.

[Arky]

Just as an addendum to this thread, take a look at post number 4 of this thread:

http://www.creativecow.net/forum/read_thread.php?threadid=83688&forumid=55&postid=102156097945681


Arky ;o)