My (no longer) personal recomendations for DVD2SVCD DVD conversions

[markrb]

I have seen many threads asking "what is the best setting to use?". Well it really isn't a simple answer. Everyone has their own opinions on what is good and what is acceptable. I tend to favor a higher quality image over speed or size. Not long ago I listed my personal settings and this became a wonderful thread that ended up resolving an issue with Avisynth. I have since done further testing and tweaking of my personal settings. So keep the following in mind when reading them.

1. DVD to SVCD only. (Not for AVI's or VCD's)
2. I often use 90 or 99 minute discs to be able to push the bitrate higher.
3. These settings are not official and are not endorsed by DVD2SVCD.


---Audio---
48 not downsampled.
224 or 192 only. I will not go lower.

---Video---CCE 4 Pass VBR---
Avg bitrate never below 2000. I adjust the number of discs or disc size to make sure it is always above 2000.
Sharpen filter on all DVD material at a setting between .3 and .6 mostly at .4
Image Quality Priority at between 22 and 24
CCE Anti-Noise filter at 12.
For personal reasons I increase the contrast and brightness using Donald Graft's Tweak filter. I have yet to fully test the DVD2AVI built in luminace settings that may make the Tweak filter unecessary.


The biggest change is the Image Quality Priority setting. I find that a higher setting then the default 17 reduces the amount of noise around the edge of foreground objects to a great degree. I was always wondering why to my eye I thought TMPG was better in this regard until I remembered a post by Kedirekin that he said he always uses a higher setting. I meant to do some tests at that time, but got distracted and forgot about it. I have to give him the credit for the settings I tried and liked.
As soon as I am able I will make an FTP server and create 2 short mpg images one at the default 17 and one at 22 and you can see for yourself. If you would rather simply do a short chapter test yourself and watch it on the PC in fullscreen mode.

All the other settings I leave at default.

A quick note on AVI's. I do not do many and my tests are limited at best, but I have seen no difference when using sharpen on an AVI source. I would not bother using it unless it is a high bitrate AVI. Most downloaded AVI's are not high enough quality to have it matter, even up to 800mb multiple files. On multi gigabyte captures I bet the results would be better.

For information on the Image Quality Priority setting, what it is and what it does, download the CCE manual from the CCE homepage. It is a pdf on 2.64, but most all the information applies to 2.50 and 2.62 as well. If you want to know more about what CCE does I highly recommend it.


Mark

[chainsaw135]

Yeah mark i'd say sharpen is one of my favorite addons so i must thank you for that:) The way we all stumbled across the reason why it was crashing will go down in doom9 history as a great moment for sure. I myself have noticed a huge improvement with that alone, but the other settins you have put down i've been using except for the image quality Priority setting now i'll play around with that setting a little bit more.

[pacohaas]

just a guess here, but this would apply to simpleresize too?

I know Bicubic is what was discussed in the last thread, and it's widely considered the best resize method, but honestly simpleresize looks fine to me and I'm just wondering if you think these sharpen/CCE anti-noise/image quality changes would help simpleresize as well.

For that matter, does the resize method effect these "special markrb" settings?

[markrb]

When I did my first major round of testing of over 100 encodes I found that with a close eye I could see a difference between Simple and Bicubic. With that said when I was moving the files into the good and bad directories after viewing them to sort them more then a few of the simple resize encodes ended up in the good directory as well. It was only in the further rounds where I was much more critical that they started to fall off. Everyone was compared against the same VOB chapter and not each other. All were done on the computer monitor and never tested on the lower res TV until much further along.

From what I saw the sharpen does as much good for simple as it does for Bicubic. You may want to up the strength by .1 since I find simple to be a little less sharp as a method then Bicubic is.

My biggest surprise on these second tests was the considerable drop in edge noise when raising the Image Quality Priority. I wish I would have listened to Kedirekin much earlier. I would like to redo those 100 encodes all over agian using this higher number, but I just don't have the energy or the will to go through that again. Weeks of looking at nothing, but the same 30 seconds.

Mark

[mrbass]

you do know that a Image Quality priority of 25 is the default in CCE as it states in the manual. In my tests bicubic looks better than simpleresize and it's worth the extra encoding time for me.

[pacohaas]

excellent to hear, all I wanted to know was that this method will improve quality regardless of the resize method.
just out of curiosity, what clip were you using?

[markrb]

mrbass I didn't remember that 25 was the CCE default. What I meant by default was the DVD2SVCD default. I did see that in many guides on doing it manually the setting was set at 24.

The clips I used to test were in the original encodes a short chapter in Ghostworld and in the latest test I used From Hell. I kept them both low movement to try and keep the tests alike.

I have done many movies with the sharpen filter and the lower setting of 17 for Image Quality Priority.

Mark

[chainsaw135]

bump

[pacohaas]

can we make this a sticky?

[chainsaw135]

I think thats a great idea pacohaas.

[mkanar]

For those that do not know, I think that is should be noted that 48KHz audio violates the SVCD standard and hence, will not produce a true SVCD-compliant disc.

That said, it is true that the majority of SVCD-supporting DVD players will accept the 48KHz audio. Personally, I like quality, but SVCD-compliance is also very important to me. It should be important to those that do any sort of trading as well. I am still able to get incredible (and dolby pro logic surround compliant) quality after downsampling to 44.1KHz thanks in part to the very good software that does the downsampling.

I also insist on 224kbps audio.

[pacohaas]

mark,

care to add to this thread based on the placement of Sharpen?
what I mean is, you recommend 0.4 (generally), but this is with sharpen before the resize, correct? Would we then lower the sharpen value if we do the resizing first? I just suggest this in case you're up for some more encoding sessions ;)

[markrb]

I have always used Sharpen before the resize. In my reading of the forum and other places it has been suggested that a filter that alters the video (Like a sharpen or a smoother) is best to be placed before the resize. The thinking is that any extra noise or artifacts introduced into the film will be reduced when it is shrunk. Made sense to me so I have always done it that way.

Mark

[markrb]

I am unsticking this thread as I am now not so certain of these results. In some heated conversations I went back and retested this method. While it worked well for some videos, others showed no real improvement. Mostly this concerns the Sharpen filter. When I have more time and get a real monitor again I will do some further testing. I am also expecting to be picking up a much better projector in the not to far off future.

As of right now I do feel Sharpen has it's place as a good filter, but not for all or even most videos. At best it's a case by case basis and no longer a blanket statement.

This is my personal opinion only.

Thanks to Bach for making me look closer at these tests.


On a side note. I have been away for sometime now and will still need some more time away, but soon my life will return to some sort of normal way and I shall return.

Mark