Star Trek TNG PAL to svcd

[ux-3]

Searching through your posts, I found several posts concerned with this task. Apparently, there is a problem with deinterlacing which seems to remain unsolved according to the posts. The Author of DVD2SVCD said that he would look into the matter, being equipped with ifo and vob. (Which reminds me, I still search for the chapter times or ifo of Shrek, which our beloved program deleted a bit too soon)

I have not found any follow-up on his announcement, so I wonder if the settings for encoding said DVDs are found or if someone could at least share part of his findings with me. I haven't even started yet, but don't want to reinvent the wheel from scratch.

I understand that the field order changes with scene changes, but then the treads end. This could mean the new version of DVD2SVCD solves it perfectly, with no need to parlor on. Or everybody grew tired and has given up.

Please give me a short briefing on how to do it or what is the current level of exploration.

As I read, the source is somewhat noisy. I plan to take one CD per episode, so I will have a good bitrate. Should I use a noise filter, and what setting(s) should I set it on. I usually encode 5pass, bicubic, no noise, no temporal smoother, but I simply don't know any better.

Thanks for any helpful input or link
ux-3

[sharky98]

I have converted a region 2 (PAL - 25fps) to a NTSC complient VCD (23.976fps)..

I could post how to do this here in this forum or in the advanced forum.. Just let me know!

BTW: You use Gknot to make the script and a VDUB Filter... You also have to re-encode the sound (stretch/pitch) to keep the audio in sync...

Let me know what forum to post to.


Thanks!

Only 1 post - I guess my stats were reset.. Oh well!

[markrb]

Why don't you just post it where the question was asked?

Mark

[ux-3]

I was looking for a simple solution within the frame of dvd2svcd, which others have attempted before. Perhaps there is one that will work?

But thanks for your kind offer, though I hope I don't have to fall back on it!

[ChickenMan]

I'm converting PAL R4 to SVCD at this moment. I'm up to episode 19, only a few to go.

I'm using latest 1.0.9 build 2. To deinterlace I've set it to Telecine (PAL) and only doing 3 pass. No filters, no nothing fancy. I have DVD Chapters ticked, there are 8 per episode but end up with either 4 or 20 !

I find the DVD's themselves playback a little jerky and not ultra sharp, and the SVCD's come out much the same. Trying to encode the 4 extra features on Disk 7, well I've change interlacing to Smartdeinterlace for better results. Leaving it at No Deinterlacing gives shocking PC playback.

[Arianos]

Im on Season 1, episode 113, PAL, R2. dvd2svcd 109b2. I have used Smartdeinterlace and Telecide(Pal). The latter gives marginally better results, watchable, if one is not too picky (and I am :( ). Chapters show ok.
But other problems have risen: Avisynth script goes kookoo (adds borders, for one..), bbmpeg crashes looking for audio files, no matter what the storage folder is named, Winsubmux says bbmpeg file is 0, and muxes...nothing, VCDXBuid says CD image creation finished, but nothing is there. In sort, problems that independetly have occured on many users on other encodings. Using the infamous search button, I managed to find ways to solve all of them manually, but are rather annoying, and render my beloved batch conversion useless. Other movies, made between episodes, encode ok, and that's the reason I haven't reported anything. Is there no rest for Trekkies?? :)
But, I was wondering if the same problems exist for the NTSC (R1) version, as I can get my hands on one set.

[ux-3]

I have only done test runs on one chapter and I have also decided that telecine looks best. I currently run my first episode for a trial version.

It seems that when you select telecide, you need to tell 4:3 again, otherwise it defaults to "add borders".
I also noticed that specified directories sometime only take effect on the run after the next run, to mess things up. Came across this when doing different deinterlace to different folders, and it was allways somewhere else....

I am doing 5pass, bicubic, no extras, image-qual about 21 (whatever that may be good for, but in ST certainly there is little action).

I am doing one episode per disc, with two languages. I'll see my first result in an hour. Oh well.

[ux-3]

I've found that telcine produces a couple of jerky scenes, one being an Enterprise flyby almost at the very start of the episode (disc one vts 02). I've redone it and used seperate fields, select every, which is much better, but has problems too.

From all I read here, I suppose that I need to understand why one cannot encode the SVCD similar to the DVD. Why is the DVD not jerky, but the SVCD is? Doesn't the DVD feed 25 images? Is there a good explanation to read somewere?

There is one more option I like to know about. In the CCE advanced settings, there is an option "progressive frames". Could this be related to the above.

I suggest that we struggeling trekkies exchange our knowledge here, to benefit each other and the rest of space...

[rbergero]

I successfully ripped and processed all 26 episodes of Season 1 using the following method. This process is for NTSC and minimizes the jerkiness to an acceptable (and pretty much unnoticable) rate. One has to remember that the DVD transfer for Season 1 is horrible compared to other truly Digitally Remastered DVDs on the market and the fact that TNG did not have a ton of money pouring in at first to create dazzling special effects. Also, my Pioneer caps out at about 2500 bitrate so this method is designed to stay inder the 2500 limit.

Using DVD2SCVD 1.0.9 build 2 (will cover all tabs):

bbmpeg: No adjustments (overlap will not matter since all episodes are in the 45 min range.

Subtitles: I don't do subtitles so this panel did not apply to me.

CD Image: Entered CD and Movie titles as well as created my own title pics for each episode. Other than that, I used the defaults (including the DVD chapters and VCDXbuild)

Finalize: Nothing

Misc: Set my default output folder, everything else default

Conversion: Selected IFO file and appropriate angle depending on what episode I was ripping. Since it is interlaced, I use BlendFields and Aspect Ratio 4:3.

About & Log: Nothing

Pulldown: Default

Encoder: Using CCE 2.5.
Video Encoding mode: One Pass VBR (Create vaf File checked)
Image Quality Priority: 5
Q. Factor: 5
Advanced settings: Uncheck Progressive Frames
Everything else default

Bitrate: CD size 800 for all
Max: 2498 Min: 1900
Max avg: 2350
Everything else default

Frameserver: TemporalSmoother checked
Strength: 2 Radius: 1
Everything else default

Audio: tooLame mode: Stereo
Audio1 bitrate: 224
I do not downsample to 44.1

DVD2AVI: NTSC Field Operation set to Automatic

DVD Rip: Activate DVD Rip, using Internal Routines

Hope this works for you. I use the One Pass VBR / Temporal Smoother combo almost exclusively instead of the 3-5 pass VBR and cannot tell the difference in video quality. It also cuts from 1/2 to 2/3 processing time on each episode!

Enjoy!

Thanks DVD2SVCD for your incredible work!!!!

[ux-3]

Well thanks a lot for your reply. We are coming from different sides though, because the "mess" that it is in NTSC is further messed up by taking it to PAL, it seems. I could and will try blend fields too, but am not certain if this makes sense with PAL. I think I am in for a lot of reading in the future, cause I have a tendency to want to understand what I am doing, which in fact I am not. Its basically VOODOO right now. I am pushing buttons and be surprised by results.

There are some settings that I am curious about. Perhaps you or someone else could shed some light on it.

You set image quality priority to 5 instead of 17? Or do you mean the Q-Factor, which is default 5? Since TNG is mostly without action scenes, I even increased the priority to 21.

U use the Temporal smoother as a complement to encoding 1pass, not to enhance deinterlace, don't you?

[rbergero]

I almost forgot - you need to uncheck Progressive Frames in the Advance Settings on the Encoder tab as well - sorry!

By lowering the Image Quality Priority to 5 (closer to 0) it will allocate more bitrate to the action scenes where it needs the most help (the Space scenes).

The Temporal Smoother is a complement to the 1 pass. If I am using multiple passes (4 or 5), I do not use Temporal Smoother.

The Temporal Smoother/1 pass VBR procedure comes from another post that I found here (plus a few minor adjustments of my own) so I cannot take full credit.

On interlaced video/film, I always use BlendFields and Temporal Smoother instead of the other Deinterlace options.

Hope this helps

RB

[ux-3]

Thanks again,
I read part of the CCE Manual and figured I should try without all advanced settings, so no zigzag, no progressive frames, no linear quantizer. I even went up to 25 for that image quality priority. I am just toasting a CBR result (I just recover the encode with different settings to avoid wasting time on all the stuff, that doesn't change).
once I know what I'll do, I'll probably give it a 4 or 5 pass overnight.

I am not sure about the deinterlacing method. I looked at the preview and found that your blendfields gives blurry drawn out images on PAL source, whereas telecine and seperate fields yields sort of sharp images. I so far am under the assumption that the later is preferred, but perhaps I should look at the results too. The author DVD2SVCD said in another post that he tries smartd., seperate fields and telecine and compares when doing interlaced PAL. I was following his advice and got the last two CDs ready. But now I am sidetracking the optional settings.

[ux-3]

I just looked at the result, but could not see any difference with Progressive Frames off. I'll try to disable the field order automatic next.

[rbergero]

I'm guessing from your feedback that PAL is quite different than NTSC. Using the above method for me produced clear images. When I don't use BlendFields, I get jagged edges.

One thing I also noted during the course of testing over time is that you cannot burn your CD-Rs at a very fast rate without data loss.

Even though I can burn at 12x, I never burn at anything higher than 8x (most of the time I use 4x). I found that sometimes when I burn movies that are true 4:3 at 12x it causes jerkiness that I don't see when burning at 4x.

Also curious why you keep increasing the Image Quality Priority? According to the manual, the closer it is to 0, the more bitrate it will allocate to the action scenes (which is the real root of the problems you are having). Have you tried lowering it?

[ux-3]

to rbergero:
The q value gives how much of the bandwidth is given to the still part of the picture. Default is 25. Well, since the episodes don't have much action really, the still part seems quite important, so why pass much to the moving part. This is just my theory, so if you've done tests, by all means, believe your eye! I just read here that some people prefer to up on the 17, to which dvd2svcd defaults. And this is after their heavy testing.

to Arianos:
Its od, but from the episode I used, I found seperate fields /select every more tolerant than telecine. It had a lot less troublesome scenes, though some scenes that did well with telecine were jerky now.
Still, with the episode tested, it has very few.

to all:
Where can I read up, why I can't take the interlace handling of the DVD 1:1 to SVCD? Why can't I just scale it down?

[ux-3]

Ahhhh...this might help.
I just tried the obvious. As I asked before, I wondered why I couldn't just leave it the way it is. So I set to NO DEINTERLACE, but also _unchecked_ the output as progressive. This in theory should leave everything as it was, and hence should not make things worse.
During my encode, I also found some posts by a guy named mb1, which stated that the best way to deal with interlaced stuff is to leave it as such, which sort of seemed logical to me too. He claimed this to be the great advantage of mpeg2 (admittedly, aside from standalones, I wouldn't know many others compared to divx), since it has provisions to tell the decoder that the material is interlaced.

And the result?
SALVATION!!!

Please try these settings (Advanced Encoder, _no progressive_, no zigzag, no linear) and Conversion No Deinterlace and give me a feedback of what you found.

[rbergero]

I've had quite a bit of experience with Interlaced movies. I've found through many hours of trial and error that if I select one of the other Deinterlace options other than BlendFields or leave it alone, they look fine when there is no motion but if the camera pans too quickly, the picture can become a complete blur.

Not that I am the king of converting porn movies but the blurriness is very evident in these types of movies. For porn movies, I also uncheck Zigzag but it still have to use BlendFields. I also found that using the BlendFields options on "live" events like the Chris Rock specials produces very clear and crisp images for me (on live events I usually do not uncheck ZigZag though).

I also do some home movie capture and it is essentially interlaced as well. I treat this the same way and use a similar process to DVD2SVCD (although it is a manual one) to encode the movie.

But then again, I'm talking about NTSC and do not have any experience with PAL.

[ux-3]

Well, I suppose that this method should actually work on all DVD interlaced sources. Just TRY to turn both deinterlace and progressive output off when encoding. The prewiev is no guide for the results, because you won't see those frames together when the player plays it interlaced. Give it a try. It is just like the real thing - whatever personal taste dictates...

The main point is, that if you do deinterlace, you have already opened pandoras box. As I noted myself with TNG, you can do whatever you want, it will only get to a certain point. From then on, it is a pain.

Just don't deinterlace but tell this your player by setting the output stream not to progressive but to interlaced.

Seems to solve all problems with interlaced material...(so it seems)

[Arianos]

Uhm, you mean you can watch it ok on your PC (Power DVD or WinDVD?)
How would one select interlaced stream on a standalone?
You haven't tried this method on a standalone, have you?

[ux-3]

Tried both standalone and WinDVD 3.x.
I don't think you have to bother about it. When you play a DVD, you don't bother either, do you?
I'll try to find that episode you mention...giving disc number would help!
You are using cce, don't you?

[ux-3]

I now see what you are talking about. When I did ifo2 on CD1 of Episode 1, I get perfect results. What I see now could perhaps be cured by disabeling the automatic field order. I'll try. I am pretty sure that my suggestion will work with above ifo with you too. I watched the entire episode on the standalone, and it did not get odd anywhere.

[ux-3]

I just experimented a little further.
I just completed an encode of the last episode of CD1 (ifo3). My initial attempt with my posted settings yielded almost the entire first chapter in a strange strobelike result on my standalone. A similar strobe effect was aparent in a few scenes in chapter 1 of episode 105, so perhaps we talk about the same thing now.

Yet skipping through it with the STEP button of the remote made it look just perfectly smooth. But on PLAY, it strobed like mad. However, the pictures themselves were fine and the strobe chapter played without strobe on WINDVD.

I then reencoded the first chapter of "my" encode with the setting Field Order B Bottom (took a peek with dvd2avi and noted a B down in the info), and the strobe effect was gone! I haven't checked the entire episode, but again I am under the impression that the way ist the right one to go. All that has to be done is to disable the automated setting and force the field order to B perhaps?

[Arianos]

stng 105 Haven is on cd2.
I did the first "test" chapter with your revised settings (CCE, Bottom Field first(field B), no deinterlacing, etc, and the result certainly looks promising :) Minimal motion shortcomings, which I'm almost sure pass unnoticed for someone who isn't looking for them.
I leave for work now, but I'll leave the PC to do the whole episode with these settings and will report tonight.

[markrb]

@rbergero I personally disagree with your Image Quality Priority setting. 5 is way too low. I prefer a setting of 22 to 24. If you read what the CCE manual states you will see why.

Quote from CCE manual:
When the value is close to 0, the mosquito noise at the edges (noise causing hazy part along the edges, looking like flying mosquitoes) is less outstanding,but the contouring noise (noise which looks like contour line patterns, which appear in flat and wide areas, such as a dark background) is more outstanding. The opposite occurs when the value is closer to 100.

Pay attention to the bolded section. As you can see it says there is a trade off for each kind of noise. While mosquito noise is reduced artifact noise around objects is increased when you lower the number. Using a setting of 22 to 24 virtually eliminates the contour noise while not drastically increasing mosquito noise. The CCE default is 25 and there is a reason for this. Personally I disagree with the value DVD2SVCD uses as default.

If you want to see for yourself what I am talking about make a chapter encode at both your setting of 5 and my setting of 22 then watch the video in fullscreen on your monitor. Watch closely around the edges of people and foreground objects. You should see very apparrent blockiness around the edges at the lower setting while this almost disappears at the higher number. You will notice this much more clearly on your monitor then on the TV, but the image improvement is also seen there.

Mark

[rbergero]

@markrb

I've read the CCE docs and understand the tradeoffs but will try your settings tonight to compare (I have always run at Quality Priority 17 or lower, never trying to go up in value even though CCE's default is 25). When I pass home video AVI through CCE, I usually lower the default 25 to 17 but I am still new at the video capture thing and am experimenting at this point.

Not to disagree with your suggestion but I lean toward DVD2SVCD's philosophy in lowering the default from 25 to 17 but only for personal preference. I personally do not watch movies on my PC because it's hard for me to get past the quality flaws that appear when viewing it on a PC monitor vs watching it on a TV (plus I have a surround sound system in my living room that kicks)!

The mosquito noise as it is referred to drives me nuts when I see it so I sacrifice other noise to get rid of this (this is my preference). While I do admit that a setting of 5 may be extreme, I don't really see too much if any of the other noise referred to as contouring noise on my TV (again, I do not watch the movies on my PC). A setting of 5 virtually eliminated the mosquito noise on my TV which was my goal and may not be what others are looking for.

[markrb]

I watch all my encodes on my projector and not on my PC.
I find with a low Image number I get way to much noise and blocks around forground objects that drives me nuts, much the way the mosquito noise seems to bother you. Mosquito noise also bothers me to, but when I encode I also raise the CCE noise filter to at least 12 and add the sharpen filter at about .4. I find these enodes to be outstanding and almost DVD quality.

Try a quick chapter with these settings and burn it on a CDRW. See what you think.

CCE Noise filter 12
CCE Image Quality Priority 22
Sharpen .4

For an AVI source these settings don't work. They are only good for a DVD source. Also Sharpen will drop your speed by about 1/3, but it's definately worth it for me.

Everyone has their own likes and dislikes that's why those "what are the best settings for doing a DVD?" questions are almost impossible to answer.

Hope you like my settings.

Mark

[rbergero]

B]Everyone has their own likes and dislikes that's why those "what are the best settings for doing a DVD?" questions are almost impossible to answer.[/B]
- I agree

CCE Noise filter 12
CCE Image Quality Priority 22
Sharpen .4

- I'll try these settings tonight (in a few hours)and let you know as I am always willing to take suggestions for sake of improvements.

I'm guessing that viewing from a projector would really amplify any kind of noise you might have. If your settings work on a large scale, it should look even better scaled down.

Thanks.

Randy B.

[rbergero]

markrb

BTW - Do you use multi-pass VBR as opposed to single pass + temporal smoother? I always used 4 pass VBR until I tried "the new way". I'm trying a single pass VBR with temporal smoother + your addiions - will let you know the results.

RB

[markrb]

All my encodes are 5 pass VBR. I would do just a 4 pass since it really doesn't make any difference, but I am asleep when I encode so I don't care it takes 8-9 hours to finish.

Mark

[chainsaw135]

I notice a difference between 4 and 5 pass when i do dark movies or real bright movies, so i always do 5 passes myself. Also my image priority is set at 24 and sharpen with some lumination cuz my dvd player plays movies a little dark.

[rbergero]

I tried 1 pass VBR w/ temporal smoother and could not really tell the difference. I'll try 5 pass VBR and compare.

A few more questions - I'm assuming you do not use Temporal Smoother? When I use 5 pass VBR, I do not use TS.

What about resize method (SimpleResize)? I usually use Simple but I am playing with the resize filters and was going to try bicubic with b=0, c=.60 (instead of the default .75). Maybe with the sharpen triggered, the bicubic may be overkill?

[markrb]

No TS and Bicubic of .60. Simple is too blurry for my eyes although it is faster, but I would rather have quality over speed.

I have a whole thread on all my settings in Advanced if you want to look over them. I did over 100 test encodes to come up with my settings and all were compared against the original source on a PC since the computer is higher res and shows defects better then a TV will.

Mark

[chainsaw135]

i agree with mark on the settings, no ts and bicubic .60 is awsome specially with sharpen of like 0.40 or 0.60 you'll have to play with that 2 get the results you want, but i'm happy with mine.

[rbergero]

markrb,

I began to read your thread at one time and remembered most of the settings you had. Also, I kicked off a full movie (Vanilla Sky) with your settings and the encode is going to take 24 hours (I only have AMD 1.1GHZ so my speed is only a whopping .469)!

I'll check it tomorrow to see what it looks like.

[chainsaw135]

@rbergero dont feel bad i'm using the xp1600 for my encodes and i'm only getting a .800 or so with it:) but the results are worth the wait i think.

[ux-3]

Just a short question. Have you used these settings on TNG and are you happy with the results?

[chainsaw135]

i haven't used the settings myself in tmpg the settings i used were in this thread http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=17706 I could not get the quality up 2 my standards so i stopped my testing. And haven't heard nothing since. I'd like to hear some views or new testing if posible.

markrb i think your right.:)

[markrb]

chainsaw135 I think he is talking about Star Trek episodes and not TMPG, but I could be wrong.

I have not tried these settings on any TV show at all. I have only used them on movies and only with CCE. I think TMPG does a little better with the contouring noise then CCE does, but overall I think CCE is better for mpeg-2 encodes. I hardly ever use TMPG anymore except maybe to demux.

Mark

[rbergero]

markrb,

I tried your settings compared to the 1passVBR/TS way and I honestly can't tell the difference. I tried to look close at different things in different scenes but I can't tell. The only real difference I can see is only a slight bit more mosquito noise on your settings when viewing on the PC but it doesn't really show up on the TV.

Any hints on what to look for when comparing?

Sorry - Randy

[rajababu2001]

Hi, i just recently started using dvd2svcd in conjunction with cce sp 2.5. I converted a few Indian dvd movies to svcd and followed the instructions in the guides. However, i have noticed that the svcds had the combing effect even when played on a standalone dvd player. I had forcefied option set to automatic but, it still got these results. So, now I choose ivtc under dvd2avi options and also telecide(pal) under deinterlace options and i got really good clear results using these settings. I also uncheck progressive, zigzag, and linear quantizer under encoder settings. The dvds are NTSC, DCT is Field, and are interlaced (i am thinking telecided). But these, new settings have solved the combing and choppy effect with playback on standalone dvd player. Also, i am using cbr at a rate of around 1300kbytes/sec which fits the 2.5 hour dvd into 2 svcds and the quality is just like the original dvd. I set the image quality priority to 12 and turn off the anti noise filter. I have noticed that raising the image quality priority at low bitrates causes the mosquito effect around white objects but, a setting of 12 eliminates that and produces great picture quality.