Encoding SD material in multiAVCHD

[Dino71]

Hello there, a question if anyone can assist.

Can you encode SD material without it looking a bit "crappy"? Any time I've done this so far, it just doesn't look right - it looks as if an attempt has been made to upscale it, with disastrous results (sorry that I'm not explaining this technically).

Why am I encoding SD in a BD authoring system in the first place..? Because I don't like PAL speedup, so am using multiAVCHD with 25fps material in order to avail of its PAL slowdown.

Let's take a PAL DVD I've bought - I'll lift a copy out using MakeMKV. I'm left with a 25fps 720x576 MKV.

Can I get it to look more or less exactly as it already looks, albeit slowed down thanks to multiAVCHD?

Thanks

[Ghitulescu]

You can put SD material with multiAVCHD quite "naturally". I am not sure what you do, but it looks to me you're doing a reencoding or something ...
I use it more or less currently to put whole series on BDRs (I know I could use an USB stick in 2015 :) ) ....

[hello_hello]

Can you encode SD material without it looking a bit "crappy"? Any time I've done this so far, it just doesn't look right - it looks as if an attempt has been made to upscale it, with disastrous results (sorry that I'm not explaining this technically).

You're not still encoding with Xvid are you?
There's lots of other factors involved. In theory you should be able to get fairly transparent encodes with x264, and with the right filtering when applicable, sometimes the encoded version can look a little better, but resolution and bitrate also play a big part. You'd need to supply some more specific details.

Why am I encoding SD in a BD authoring system in the first place..? Because I don't like PAL speedup, so am using multiAVCHD with 25fps material in order to avail of its PAL slowdown.

How do you even notice it? I live in PAL-land and I use ReClock to watch everything at 25fps with a 50Hz refresh rate.

Let's take a PAL DVD I've bought - I'll lift a copy out using MakeMKV. I'm left with a 25fps 720x576 MKV.

Can I get it to look more or less exactly as it already looks, albeit slowed down thanks to multiAVCHD?

You could probably keep the existing video and change the frame rate when the AVCD is created, although you'd still need to re-sample/re-encode the audio to match. Actually no.... scrap that. Thinking about it, AVCD probably only supports mpeg4 video.
I don't know much about multiAVCD (because it's 2015 and I have a USB hard drive) so I don't know how to go about slowing PAL down, but is it possible to create a standard Bluray disc instead? Because maybe then you could keep the original video. Just a thought.....

It'd be very easy to extract the audio from your ripped MKV, re-encode while applying a PAL to NTSC slowdown, then use the re-encoded version to replace the original audio. It's also fairly easy to apply the same to subtitles if need be (I think) and then it'd just be a matter of changing the video frame rate as you remux the new MKV with a program such as MKVMergeGUI. No re-encoding required.
Whether authoring a Bluray or AVCD disc would be a lot more complicated, I've no idea. I've never created a Bluray/AVCD video disc in my life (once again, because it's 2015 and I have a USB hard drive).

Does your Bluray player play MKVs? If so, you could try the above suggestion and burn the MKVs to discs as data files, assuming it doesn't have a USB input and assuming the player supports mpeg2 video in an MKV container. If it doesn't, that won't work. I can't remember if mpeg2/MKV support is fairly common because it's not something I've had to worry about much.

[Dino71]

Hey, thanks for the replies - very useful, it made me think about what I was actually doing.

I was able to get what I was looking for last night, sort of by accident.

I used Multiavchd to slow down the video file - then, instead of building it into an ISO, I just went into the files and folders and lifted out the reprocessed video file. This was at the new speed.

And I was able both to play it via USB, and burn it to DVD! Result! This is by far the best quality I've ever got trying to slow a PAL video file down to its correct speed.

The only quality degradation I noted was a slight tendency to introduce "jaggies" into the equation - but they're not that bad at all.

I'm sure there are a number of ways to slow down video, but it's taken me years to find them. As I said, this is the best I've found yet.