Compliant or Not Compliant, that is the question!

[Tatjahna]

Hi guys!

I am new to DVD authoring and I need some expert advices. I will have my dvd burner in about 2-3 weeks and I want to be "ready" 'cause I will then pass all my time doing capture, encoding and authoring.

First, I already do some VCDs compliant..

Now, what I will do with the burner, is grabbing old anime series of our childhood from VHS and putting 'em to DVDs... ( Candy Candy, Goldorak, etc..) I am in a kind of fan club so I can have relatively good VHS quality...

Situation : I have a serie of 40 episodes of 21 minutes approx.
I want to put at least 9-10 episodes ( 210 min ) on each DVD.
I work with VDub, PicVideo MJPEG 18 (capture), and TMPGEnc.

:o So my questions are:

1- I know that If I want more minutes available, I will have to decrease the bitrate. But will the settings will be DVD Compliants ??

2- If so, what bitrate do you suggest me to have the best quality encoding for putting at least 180 min, and Mpeg2 audio encoding, or which type to use ( Average, Constant, Manual VBR, Constant Quality )

3- Well in fact, what is the best used encoding receipe for animation ?

A big big thanx in advance guys! :D

[Vulpine]

You can put approximately 120-165 minutes (with a low bitrate) of video on a 4.7GB DVD (depending on the audio format). It will be even less time if you have seperate subtitles.

One of the problems you are going to have is your source material. Since it is off of VHS tapes, you will need to "clean" up the video as much as possible, otherwise your encoded video will either be larger than needed or look like garbage.

How the video looks will be determined by several factors including: how clean your video source is, how much high speed motion there is in the video, bitrate used, and how complicated the picture is. (The last item shouldn't be that much of a problem with anime).

[TRILIGHT]

I agree with what Vulpine said. If it gives you any indication, I capture video from my DirecTiVo unit for DVD authoring. I use video at 6Mbps (less begins to introduce more noticeable artifacts) and audio at 256kbps. With these settings, I am able to fit right at 100mins. on a DVD-R.

[Tatjahna]

Thanx guys..

But you're telling me that I cannot go further 165 min ? What If I accept to low the bitrate to 2600 instead of the setting of 3000 in TMPGEnc's wizard? Will the DVD will be "compliant" at this setting? :confused: It will permit me to add 210 min. on a DVD. (10 episodes of 21 min.)

I accept that the quality decrease a little because the filters can help me a little... I set the "soften block noise" to 30 on each, and add a little sharpen of 30-40 to compense for the upcoming blur.

My VHS captures are okay (just some problem with decreased sound), and my sources are very good..

Thanx in advance!!

[TRILIGHT]

You can go as high as 3.25Mbps for the video with 256Kbps for the audio and you will fit about 167mins. on a DVD. Something you need to keep in mind though is that, at a bitrate this low, you WILL see artifacts. Regardless of how clean your VHS is, I just don't imagine you would be able to go as low as 3.25 without seeing compression artifiacts. As for "compliant", that has more to do with your encoding method than with the bitrate. As long as you keep between 1Mbps (some players have problems going lower) and 9.8Mbps, you're still within a compliant range for DVD. You need to make sure you're encoder is encoding to a DVD-Compliant GOP structure. Hope this helps.

By the way, you can go as high as 210mins. if you use a 2.6Mbps video setting and 192Kbps for the audio. I honestly believe you'll have some serious digital artifacts in the video and audio if you do so though. Especially considering you're coming from a VHS source.

[Tatjahna]

Wooaaah.. Yesser!

I know that I will even see artifacts at 2600 kbps.. I will try other settings to see what should help me...

What do you suggest me for keeping the best of my 2600 quality? ;) ABR, CBR, Constant Quality, 2pass ABR ?

And Trilight, keep in mind that theses are anime, and the people just want to protect their VHS for the quality loose over time...

I was able to do good VCDs, there were artifacts, but the people were understanding and accepting that. If they accept ( at the limit) the 1150 kbps CBR for a VCD, I really think they will accept 2600kbps :sly:

Thanx again for having confirm me the compliant rules of a DVD ... I really wasn't sure! If the medias go down a little, I will then keep the 3000 kbps and only put 7-8 episodes on 'em ... But well... While I'm typing that to you, I realize that 2 episodes less on the DVD won't really make a big difference for them.. So OKAY you convince me, I will arrange myself to put 8 episodes of 20-21 min. so it will fit the approx of 165-167 min. dvd capabilities... But what for the menus? I won't add subtitles, and other thing like that... Just 2 chapters menus (1-4 and 5-8) and some background music... How much space approx. the authoring needs for its stuff ??

Thanx!

[TRILIGHT]

I would stick with CBR. It makes the calculations for size more predictable and it will go faster. As for the menus, don't worry about space. I always calculate a buffer for such things. In this case, I was assuming 12MB left free for menu items. I've personally never had any of my menus take up more than around 8 or 9MB and that was just because I wasn't compressing my menu's audio. I left it as PCM WAV files. You shouldn't have a problem with the menu space. Glad I could help. Happy authoring! :D

[Tatjahna]

Hehehe

How happy I am, and how anxious I am to start to burn my DVDS !!! Ohhh laaahhh, I cannot sleep at night... When I will receive my DVD burner, I will probably dance with it!

You surely can imagine how discouraging it was to do thoses VCDs with all this artifacts, and trying to get the best from 1150kbps!! :mad: And all that for only 3-4 episodes on a CD !!

Now, I will be able to breathe a little, I'm really anxious...

Thanx for all guys...

[Arky]

There is absolutely nothing to stop you creating MPEG1 files at a maximum of 1800kbps, which is ACCEPTABLE for DVD authoring. In this instance, you MUST create MPEG1 @ 352x288 (PAL), or MPEG1 @ 352x240 (NTSC). Assuming you are using VHS source, this does not represent any noticeable decrease in Framesize. Of course, you may get blockiness on faster scenes, in which case you will need to increase the bitrate - if it proves necesary to exceed 1800kbps, you MUST switch to MPEG2, or your files will be rejected. The point I'm making is that, so long as you familiarise yourself with the requirements of the DVD spec, you will find that it's actually remarkably flexible, and a great deal of footage can, potentially, be squeezed onto a single disk, with great success. You will find that programs such as SpruceUp, and Ligos MPEG encoder, have pretty useful discussion of appropriate MPEG encoding parameters for DVD authoring, in their HelpFiles.

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?threadid=26719


Arky ;o)

[Tatjahna]

Arky thanx for this infos ... But if I do Mpeg-1 encoding, will the dvd players think it's a VCD or a DVD ?? I don't want to have VCD anymore 'cause lots of people in the clan doesn't support it for now, or have bunch of complications trying to run my VCDs.. :(

What about that ?

Thanx again!

[Arky]

I am SPECIFICALLY, and ONLY talking about the DVD spec. ALL my above advice relates to DVD-authoring. I can assure you CATEGORICALLY, that the above parameters WILL work with the DVD spec, and, provided you have used a genuine DVD-authoring application to import your MPEG1 files into, and authored a "Video_TS" folder (this is the final output from a DVD-authoring application, as you are no doubt aware), then your DVD player WILL recognise the final disk as a genuine, BonaFide DVD. I have done this many times, owing to the fact that, up until now, I have never had a DVD-R writer, so I've had to squeeze as much as possible onto CDR. If you need convincing that I am not mistaken - then put it this way - DVD-authoring applications don't get much more serious than Spruce Maestro and my CDR-based MPEG1 cDVD porjects have worked perfectly.

If you have any more questions, or need any more help, just repost and I'll help you out (may take a day or so, depending on when I log on, but I WILL reply! :D )


Arky ;o)

[Tatjahna]

Great !!!

What a clear reply :D

I will try this right now... But the fact is that the quality will me much less than Mpeg-2 ( 1st, because of the output resolution, and 2nd, because of the bitrate ) So I don't think I will use Mpeg-1 .. By the way, I will do a test right now for Mpeg-1 at 1800...

Thanx!

[Arky]

ok, point taken, and I'm inclined to agree that 1800kbps (or 1750 with fussy programs) is a little on the meagre side for bitrate, but I was just making the point that you can go that low, or even lower, with MPEG1 within the DVD-spec. You can jump over to MPEG2 and go higher from there - you just don't necessarily need the beefy bitrates that commercial DVDs use, PARTICULARLY if your original source is VHS tape, because there is absolutely no point in encoding to full size 720x576 (PAL), or 720x480 (NTSC) from a VHS source, and since this means you're going to be encoding smaller framesizes (the sizes I mentioned above - which are known in the trade as "SIF", or "Standard Interface Format"), you will find your smaller bitrates will work rather nicely :)

Anyway, now that's clear as mud, I'll just re-itterate: any problems, don't panic, just re-post.

Oh, and one more thing - I forgot to mention that TMPGEnc is infamous for ignoring bitrate settings - it loves to exceed them, so I suggest you play it safe and select something like "1700kbps", if you are using this encoder, just to be on the safe side. Do a short clip first and try to import it into your DVD-authoring program, rather than waiting hours and then being disappointed.


Arky ;o)

[ulfschack]

I'd suggest you go with low bitrate (2500 - ) mpeg-2, VBR 2pass, 352x576 (PAL) res, which is DVD compliant as well. The advantage is that you'll have more bits per pixels. As a "bonus" the streching to full screen will make your player present the video a little more blurred than it would have for full resolution. Thus compression artefacts will become less visible. In this case I'd go easy on the anti-noise filter in TmpgEnc (read: none).

cheers

[avih]

i think that 480x576 (pal) or 480x480 mpeg2 at around 2500-2600 kbps (similar to maximum quality svcd) will be perfect for backing up old vhs tapes. also, since you're audio is lousy already. i think that 128kbps will give more than enough quality, and there's no need to go to 192, and you gain some more kbps for the actual video.

cheers
avi

[ulfschack]

Ah, but please note that it's not within DVD spec by those resolutions, allthough with high certainty playble in all dvd players.

Have a look at both resolutions before you make up your mind. I suspect you'll be quite pleased with 352x576 (480 alternately).

cheers

[avih]

@ulfschack:
i guerss you're right. i don't mess with dvd, so i don't know the spec. thanx for your correction.

cheers
avi

[Tatjahna]

avih,ulfschack,Arky and Trilight : Thanx alot for all of your help guys!!

I will take a look at all theses settings :)