Best Settings for Pioneer 444 DVD Player and DVD2SVCD

[christian_stuppy]

Hi there,

I am using a Pioneer 444 and DVD2SVCD to play / convert DVDs. So for I used the following settings without any problems:

- Complete Standard (4:3)
- Audio 192, Max Bitrate 2408

I had Problems (frame freeze, blocks) with:

- Audio 192, the Rest Standard

Which settings have you guys using a Pioneer 444 tried successfully ? Do you have any hints for using that DVD Player and Encoding with DVD2SVCD.

Is 128 Bit Audio enough for a real good quality ?

Thanks a lot

Christian

[markrb]

128 bit audio blows to put it bluntly plus some players will not play it correctly.

I have the Pioneer 343, a close cousin, and the only thing different is I have my max bitrate at 2500, but no higher.

I use only 192 or 224 audio depending on if it will make me drop the video bitrate or not.

Mark

[christian_stuppy]

Thanks for the quick reply.

I will try setting the bitrate to 2500. Just to see if it is working or not with the Pioneer 444. But I don't think, because the Standard is Max is 2530 which did not work for me with 192 bit Audio...

Christian

[markrb]

Best way is using a combo of CDRW discs, CBR and one chapter.
CBR makes sure you hit the max bitrate all the time and don't have to guess if you actually have a seen that requires the max. CDRW is of course so you can just erase it and don't waste discs and one chapter is for why waste an entire encode for a simple test.

Mark

[delly01]

Another hint: I have had a problem with the minimumsetting in DVD2SVCD on a Yamakawa 780 (Raite-clone): The standard for SVCD is imho a minimum of 500, while DVD2SVCD suggests 300 as the default. Some frames had a really nasty network of miscolored squares and there were some short freezes. They vanished when I set the minimum to 500.

The Pioneer 343 is a very good player, however it is bad for testing SVCD-compatibility, because it plays everything except Wagner-pizza (too large for the tray). I had this with my former girlfriends Toshiba: Discs with every kind of synch-problems on her Tosh would play just fine on my Pioneer 343.

Bye,

Detlev

[TheeeGod 3]

for my 444, i use max bitrate 2600 and 128 audio. My ears cant tell any difference. If you are doin a concert or musical, you are better off sticking with a higher audio bitrate. But in any other case, I rather have crisper and better picture quality.

[Franklin2K]

Hi there,

after a lot of testing, I decided to use the following settings:

- Video: CBR 2450-2500 kbps
- Audio: 224 kbps

Other settings:

- BicubicResize 0/0.60
- No audio downsampling
- No TemporalSmother
- No AntiNoise filter

What settings do you use?

Greetz, Franklin2K

[markrb]

This is what I use, but be forwarned it is kinda advanced and you will need to learn how to edit the avs file and it slows you down about 30% or so.
Make sure to read the whole thread very good info in it and if you want to try it you will need the new dll linked in it.

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=22696

Mark

[anarco]

for the DV-444 (european edition.. there seem to be different types)
I noticed a lot of glitches on bitrates below 500, some on bitrates below 1000 so I decided to set the minimum to 1150 for now (maybe I´ll go up to 1200) for the max rate I am not sure yet but I have problems with movies that go to the max ( I guess as said on vcdhelp.com it doesn´t like bitrates over 2600 )

no clue if the chapters harm the playback (except for the time display, for which I actually don´t give a flying f*ck ;) )

for dvd backups i do in most cases bilingual sVCD´s... but that doesn´t seem to be a problem for the player, except that the videorate has to go down a bit then...

My theory for best bilingual is min.1200 max.2184 +224 +192
Someone can verify this ?

It is hard to find the best setting if you don´t note down the
setting for the movies you did *sigh* :-/

Maybe we should do a list which settings work and which not ?

i.e.

fabolous amelie divX, one audio with:

EncodingMode=CCE Multipass VBR / 4
AvgBitrate=1617
MaxBitrate=2530
MinBitrate=1150
AudioBitrate=240

did not work out too well, prolly cause max bitrate got above 2700.
However the movie played with some little stucks. I´ll try again with
min. 1200 and max 2300...


anarco

[djc]

Originally posted by christian_stuppy
Hi there,

I am using a Pioneer 444 and DVD2SVCD to play / convert DVDs. So for I used the following settings without any problems:

- Complete Standard (4:3)
- Audio 192, Max Bitrate 2408

I had Problems (frame freeze, blocks) with:

- Audio 192, the Rest Standard

Which settings have you guys using a Pioneer 444 tried successfully ? Do you have any hints for using that DVD Player and Encoding with DVD2SVCD.

Is 128 Bit Audio enough for a real good quality ?

Christian

Hello,


The best setting for my 444 are:

I couldn't make good results with Cinema Craft to i use TMPEG encoder. This doesn't mean that CCE is not good.

My settings:

TSUNAMI encoder with Constant Quality, CQ value 100, min bitrate 800 or 1200, max 2200, audio 192 (or 224 if a music film), bicubic resize 0.00 0.55, no tempsmooth. 12 hours for a 110 min movie with not much motion.

This settings endup with 80% CQ value and it is good for my eyes, much better if you set 2300 the high bitrate (and you get 76% CQ). Why i lower the max bitrate? To have a better final CQ value.


The only problem i have from time to time is:

* When a scene "changes" from dark to light, somekind of square blocks for a while. I'm trying to fight that also, when i undrstand why this happens.

Be aware that those are for specific kind of movies. If you have a high action movie maybe you will need other settings.


djc

[djc]

Originally posted by anarco
for the DV-444 (european edition.. there seem to be different types)
i.e.

fabolous amelie divX, one audio with:

EncodingMode=CCE Multipass VBR / 4
AvgBitrate=1617
MaxBitrate=2530
MinBitrate=1150
AudioBitrate=240

did not work out too well, prolly cause max bitrate got above 2700.
However the movie played with some little stucks. I´ll try again with
min. 1200 and max 2300...


anarco


Hello.

What has helped me a lot (and took me a while to find out) is that if you use TMPENcoder, you can actually view ALL frames (an option in the menu o fthe decoder) and not only a few and also you can have a full screen view. That way you can watch the process and see what is wrong (or not). And of cource you can abort any time.

This test is much better than encoding a chapter or two for testing purposes.


djc

[anarco]

hmm I´m not going to watch 4-8 hours if a movie gets encoded well ;-)
show all frames slows it down additionaly

besides my encoded mpegs always work pretty good on PC so I doubt it has got anything to do with the encoding it has to be either in the muxing or in the chapters...

what I indeed noticed is that tmpgenc encoded mpegs in CQ burned directly with nero (without chapters) have less/no problems

but I like to have chapters and the quality of cce is slightly better :-/

and NO I don´t want to do all the stuff manually .. that ticks me off cause I got better things to do than wasting all my time on converting movies ;)

[djc]

Originally posted by anarco
hmm I´m not going to watch 4-8 hours if a movie gets encoded well ;-)
show all frames slows it down additionaly

and NO I don´t want to do all the stuff manually .. that ticks me off cause I got better things to do than wasting all my time on converting movies ;)

Hello.

You don't have to watch the whole process. If you watch 10 minutes you will notice if something is very wrong and abort.

Also, after having converted about 20 movies, i haven't found a single way to make them all perfect. You MUST change settings if you want to have the best result.

djc

[anarco]

okay

I now verified that muxing with tmpgenc and cutting with m2-edit works flawless even if the bitrate is above 2600 !

sadly tmpgenc doesn´t support 2 audios :(



p.s.
ahh stop, i forgot that I muxed only with 1 audio so the max total bitrate is probably not above 2600 now

[anarco]

is there a *#*#*+@ program that does m2v mpeg2 cutting as it should ?

tmpgenc produces files which aren´t readable with i-author


What I recently tried was preparing two audios +1 audio for a test with i-author. I cut a 7 minute piece from the audios for the test
with headac3he. This worked well.
Now I chopted a piece from the CC_encoded mpv with tmgenc mpegtools
(since I get m2v_dec "error during decode" when trying to chop a muxed mpeg I decided to chop the pieces before muxing) sadly the generated piece is not readable with i-author :(((


anyone with a solution to this ?

[avdmb]

I just posted a thread related to experiments to solve DV-444 DVD player issues (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=23887). Can maybe of help for you.

[ev]

I have the Pioneer 344 and the only thing I do is change the max bitrate to 2498 and the audio to 224. I've done many conversions and all play perfectly.

[anarco]

I think the architecture of the pioneer 444 is different than the other models since it is a progressive-scan DVD.

A co-worker got the 343 and this one stalls on some movies above 74 min, 444 doesn´t so I think they are hardly comparable.