how to select key frames

[bendagr8]

2 questions:

1) what criteria should I be looking at to select keyframes? It seems nandub and GKnot like to automatically select frames where there is a scene change, but I can't quite comprehend why this is beneficial. I assume it's because they are usually motion scenes, and the lowered quality isn't as noticeable.

If anybody can shed some light I would appreciate it.

2) since i dont know how to write my own .stat files, I use GKnot to edit my .stat files after i do 1 pass in Nandub. Are there any other things worth chaning in the stat file that gknot is capable of changing. I don't mind reading through the whol graph and manually selecting things, I'm just not so good at reading the graph yet.

3 *BONUS QUESTION) What exactly is an .ecf file, and how would you write your own (ie. not having gknot generate one.)?

nandub is the sword in the stone... once you can get it working, you can chop off anyone's head.



Thanks for the help.

[Captain_Nipple]

1) I think you will find the answers if you read the guides carefully.

2) You could use the search feature on the forum too. Wow

3) *Bonus point) Good luck writing your own ecf ;)

Honestly, all these questions could be easily answered from the guides. Print them if you have too.

Captain:devil:

[diji1]

Hi there :),

without being technical:

1) - one of the ways the mpeg4 codec compresses is by only storing the differences in between a sequence of frames. say u have a scene that starts with a headshot of someone talking and the camera wasnt moving. the background would not be changing so the codec would compress the first frame fully ( keyframe ) and for the rest of the scene it would use the first frame to display the parts of the shots that arent arent changing and not compress thos parts of the subsequent frames. so u need a keyframe at the begining of a scene change to base the rest of the scene on if u see what i mean.

2) - i generally only use gknot's keyframe distribution tool - what are you doing atm ?

3) - ecf file just tells nandub the bitrate, keyframes etc. etc. to use for every frame in the movie - u really only wanna use a app to write one i think ;)

hey capt'n - i honestly think u were a little harsh here in ur post - there's actually very little infomation to be found about manually editing keyframes around the place ... god knows theres enough newbie posts from ppl that quite obviously haven't read the guides or forums but i dont think this is one of them. welcome to the forum btw bendagr8.

[bendagr8]

I've read the guides more times than you can count... I've been reading these forums as a lurker for at least a year...and I've been encoding things with divx for almost twice that long. I'm really glad nipple that instead of taking some time to answer my question, you took enough time to generate a totally useless response.

It's just the guides sometimes don't explain some things as well as other
1)diji, you answered my question perfectly. thank you
-followup
so if i were encoding a really bad source, where there were color changes and fuzz and all sorts of bad noise everywhere; I would want to make a lot of keyframes?

2) I mean things like scene change, can we manually switch that, although I guess there is no point for that? And what does that "push" button do in gknot (I really looked hard to find this one, but i just couldnt find it for some reason)

3) that's what i figured I just wasn't sure.

thanks diji.