N-E Special Anime Settings for DVD2SVCD?

[GtMustangJim]

Hello,

I know I've aked this a few times in the past but with DVD2SVCD becoming better all the time I was wondering if any knew of any special settings for interlaced Anime for use with the newest build of DVD2SVCD

Thanks in Advance...

[GtMustangJim]

<Bump>

Any one?

[GtMustangJim]

<Sigh>

I guess there are no fellow anime lovers out there :(

[DDogg]

I am moving this to advanced. GtMustangJim, has been patient and followed the rules so lets try to get him an answer. I don't do anim so I can't help much.

[DDogg]

Well I can only suggest the obvious. D2S supports the decomb filter by Donald Graft (see aviSynth forum). It is designed for anim. In theory D2S should sense the odd interlace structure and apply decomb. As there have been many new versions of DeComb out in the last few weeks, Build4 may, or may not, apply the proper filter settings.

Have you tried an encode on your anim? Maybe you can help the group by reporting your experiences. This tends to draw participants into the thread. Try something and get back to us. Make sure the decomb.dll is used in the filepath in the frameserver tab. It will be the second line entitled Inverse Telecine.

[MadManMund]

I have done a couple of Anime encodes. The video looked wonderful with little or no artifacts. The need for IVTC was automatically detected. I am pretty sure that you will almost always require this. I think that the video looks better when the bitrate is higher. Anime is usually not too lengthy so it will probably span across two disks with a decent bit rate. I was attempting to do selectable subs with 2 audio tracks. The subs took a few tries to get working. But in the end it turned out well with all the audio tracks and everything. DVD2SVCD definitely makes this task much easier.

[Kedirekin]

The only thing I would add is that you crop away the overscan, especially if you watch your SVCDs on a TV.

Adding this simple one-macroblock-wide border (that you normally can't even see on a TV) virtually eliminates a whopping 118 macroblocks (for NTSC, out of 900). That gives approximately 13% more bits for the remaining 782 macroblocks, which can improve quality significantly.

I've seen multiple threads that say you have to set the top and bottom borders to 17 pixels to take full advantage (because of a bug in CCE). However, in my testing, I couldn't tell any difference in quality between 16 and 17 pixel horizontal borders. I believe the bug doesn't affect the left or right borders.

[FYI: for PAL, the figures are: saves 128 of 1080 macroblocks, or a little less than 12%]

[GtMustangJim]

@everybody

Thanks for all the posts guys. The last time I tried a Anime encode was 1.0.6 build 1 and it didn't turn out so great. Yes there has been many new versions of DeComb out in the last few weeks. This Decomb filter is a god send to us anime encoders.

@Kedirekin,

Could I get you to go into a little more detail on how to crop thr overscan? I would be interested in learning this techniqu.

PS I have a NTSC TV.

@MadManMund,

Did you select automatic or IVTC?

Thanks Again...

[Kedirekin]

Make sure you have one of the 'edit AviSynth script' setting selected.

When the AviSynth script pops up, add a crop command before resize (you want to crop 24 pixels from both sides, and 16 from top and bottom). You also need to adjust your resize, and add an AddBorder command.

Here's an example (for full screen encodes, which is typical for anime):

/* some plugin and mpeg2dec lines */
...
Crop(24,16,672,448)
SimpleResize(448,448)
AddBorders(16,16,16,16)
...


For letterboxed encodes, it's a little more complicated, but IMO there's little point in cropping overscan on letterbox - a lot of the picture is black already.

PS. You can usually add the Crop command before TemporalSmoother and before Telecide and Decimate as well. Since the Crop leaves a resolution that is a multiple of 4, the filters generally work okay. Cropping overscan has the hidden benefit of speeding up your encoding ever so slightly.

Be sure to confirm your edits in vDub or a similar tool before letting DVD2SVCD continue. That last thing you want is to spend 16 hours encoding only to find out you made a typo in the avs file.