Making XSVCD's

[Cosmo999]

I'm experimenting with making XSVCD's at 720x480 resolution with a max video bitrate of 2500. I did one chapter of a DVD and it looked outstanding on my computer monitor and my digital tv. It is almost indistiguishable from the DVD.

I'm not sure what resize method I should use, since it's not really being resized at all. I'm using CCE 2.5. I set the resize to simple. Should I edit the script to not include any resizing, or should I use bicubic or bilinear?

Another question: Do you think a 720x480 resolution with a 2500 video bitrate is enough? I'm currently encoding the movie "High Fidelity" and I'll post my results here if anyone is interested.

I'd appreciate any feedback I can get. Thanks!

[adam]

Since your resizing there is no need to have a resizing line in your frameserving script. You can still crop and add borders though.

2.5mbits is not nearly enough bitrate for a resolution that high. Think about it, you have exactly the same amount of pixels as the dvd and less than half as much bitrate. You'd get a better bits per pixel ratio with vcd.

Quality is relative. The added sharpness you see at the high of a resolution undoubtedly makes the movie look crisp and clear. But you will surely have alot of artifacts and an overal lower quality clip with that little bitrate. I'd recommend using a half D1 resolution of 352x480 and making a CVD (half as many pixels, half as much bitrate...woohoo same bits per pixel ratio as dvd) or a SVCD (good compromise between resolution and bits per pixel.)

Now if your dvd player can accept bitrates above 2.5mbits than a resolution of 720x480 might make more sense but you will get alot less playtime on each disk.

[Cosmo999]

Thanks for the reply!

I encoded "High Fidelity" at 720x480 with max avg bitrate of 2444, max bitrate of 2574, 5 pass with CCE, and it looks awesome. No macroblock artifacts. I watched it on my 65" digital tv via 480p component connection.

Now "High Fidelity" is a low-action, talking-head movie - maybe I'll see those problems you mentioned on another movie.

Regarding the macroblock artifacts - I've noticed this on some DVD's if my tv's brightness setting was too high... Criterion's "Silence of the Lambs" is full of them. But they disappear after setting the brightness control properly with Video Essentials.

Another thought - most people would take an anamorphic 720x480 and convert it to non-anamporphic 720x480 with borders - Do you think this process might add artifacts? I encode as 4x3 since my tv is widescreen.

I've made a lot of SVCD's at 480x480, and they look good - but the extra resolution of 720x480 really stands out for me.

One more thing: The default settings in DVD2SVCD for a 120 minute movie is a 1680 bitrate. I'm not sure, but I think many users encode at that rate with good results. Since a 720x480 is 1.5 times bigger than 480x480, that would translate to a 2520 bitrate.

[poopity poop]

I've had some experience encoding XSVCD's. I recently finished encoding Kenshin OAV's 1-4 XSVCD at 1 episode/CD.

I usually always use the defualt bicubic resize a=1/3 b=1/3.

I beleive a bitrate of 2500 is pretty good to cover all of that surface area. I encoded mine at 500-4708 avg ~3200. Now this fits about 30min/CD and gives outstanding quality. But this is almost ridiculously high...which is what I wanted the highest possible quality EVER.

Now.. I also did something that some people will disagree here was my avisynth script:

LoadPlugin("D:\Encoding\avisynth\mpeg2dec_dll\mpeg2dec.dll")
LoadPlugin("D:\Encoding\avisynth\decomb37\decomb.dll")
mpeg2source("g:\Trust\trust.d2v")
#audio=WAVsource("g:\trust\Jappanesse 44_110.wav")
#audiodub(video,audio)
telecide()
decimate(cycle=5)
bicubicresize(656,448,1/3,1/3,8,0,705,480)
addborders(32,16,32,16)

subtitle("Poopity Poop X(S)VCD", 265, 420, 100, 200,"Arial Narrow",20,$FFFFFF)

subtitle("Poopity_Poop@hotmail.com", 245, 420, 260,319,"Arial Narrow",20,$FFFFFF)

Don't pay attention to the subtitles, but instead look at the commands I used for the resize. When doing this it produces black borders on all 4 sides. The reason I did this is because of the TV overscan. This adds 32 pixels of black to the sides and 16 pixels of black to the top and bottom. Final resolution is still 720x480. This(if you are using a 4:3 AR movie/episode) will show MORE of your picture on the TV because the TV likes to crop off tons of pixels form the sides.

Also you may say.. geez that's a really mx bitrate and average bitrate. Well unbeknowst to most people, DVD players can read A LOT more than the famed "2600Kbps" This max bitrate "rule" came about for those FEW peopel who actually have SVCD players. You undoubtedly have a DVD player which may be able to support more than the stupid 2600Kbps "rule." I would suggest making constant bitrate samples of a clip in increments of 500Kbps from 2500-5000, and test what your DVD player can support as its max bitrate for SVCD/XSVCD. In other words make a bunch of samples at 2500Kbps, 3000Kbps,...,4500Kbps, and 5000Kbps and see what the max bitrate your DVD player can handle. Then enter that MINUS what your audio bitrate is(not my DVD player can handle 5000Kbps so the max bitrate I set it for is 4900-192(for audio)=4708Kbps).

I encode my SVCD's at 350-4000Kbps avg ~1700(or whatever I determine the average to be). This makes for high quality action scenes. FORGET THE STUPID 2600KBPS RULE, ITS STUPID! FIND OUT WHAT YOUR DVD PLAYER CAN SUPPORT AND SET THAT AS THE MAX! :)


Anyway.. just some food for thought

[Cosmo999]

Thanks Poopity Poop,
I haven't tested out the max bitrate my player can handle yet. I will try that, thanks for the suggestion.

I'd really like to get a 2 hour movie on 3 cd's... do you think if I had settings such as min 500, max avg 2400 max 3000 I could hit the 3 cd limit, with enough headroom for those harder-to-encode scenes?

[Dreassica]

U could always try a CVD with slightly a less bitrate count, u won't see the diff on a TV set AND have more minutes of movie on one disc.
I did a CVD at av. 2700 bitrate and it looks great in action scenes too. U can go higher with the bitrate too, making it a XCVD.

[poopity poop]

XCVD? You mean XVCD? XVCD's resolutions is 4 times smaller than XSVCD's. It would not produce the highest quality encode that he is looking for I think.

If you want exactly 2 hours to fit onto 3 CD's with 192Kbps audio you would want an average bitrate of 2531. I just calculated it out using a bitrate calculator..nothing special. But the trick is the max bitrate. You can set the avg bitrate to like 1500 if you want to, but if you set the max bitrate to like 4000 the demanding scenes will look good. The average bitrate really doens't have any bearing on the demanding scenes, its the max bitrate you want to look at. So find out what that is and use it

[Dreassica]

no, i mean a XCVD, a CVD movie (352/576 resolution), with a bitrate higher than the max bitrates for the CVD format. Just like a XSVCD is a SVCD with higher than standard max bitrates!!

[adam]

Originally posted by poopity poop

The average bitrate really doens't have any bearing on the demanding scenes, its the max bitrate you want to look at.

Actually thats not really accurate. You can set your max to 100mbits per sec if you want but with a low avg it will never even get past 3mbits in even the most demanding scenes.

Your avg bitrate is the focal point. In order to allocate say 1mbit more in one scene the encoder has to save 1mbit worth in less demanding scenes. All of the peaks and valleys have to be proportional, well they at least have to average out that way. Using a higher than standard max bitrate will defitely help in demanding scenes but it will only do so much without also increasing avg bitrate as well.

[Dreassica]

yep, if u have an average bitrate of 2500 and a minumum bitrate of 1000, it only makes sense to add the difference (1500) to the average bitrate used (2500+1500) and make the outcome your max bitrate, which in this case is 4000. Any higher isn't usefull, as it will probably be never get that high anyway!!

[Cosmo999]

Thanks for all the answers, guys. It's kind of a mute point because my dvd player won't play a higher total bitrate than 2750 or so.. (it makes a weird clicking sound at higher bitrates).

I'm going to stick with using 480x480 - 720x480 at the low bitrate does have problems with high-moving scenes (although low-moving scenes look great). Besides, my other player (Apex) won't play the higher resolution.

I also realized doing all the passes was a waste of time... I'd rather just do a CBR and throw a two hour movie on 3 cd's. I wish I realized this before - I was doing 5 passes for nothing.

Thanks again for the help! I've learned a lot on this forum.

[Pabster]

Bah, CBR sucks. It wastes way too many bits on low-motion scenes and black areas and doesn't allow enough bits for high-motion scenes, leaving blocks and artifacts.

SVCD was created around the idea of VARIABLE BITRATE ENCODING.

I've been using 3-pass VBR - max 5000, max average 2628, 128kbps audio ... results in amazing quality packing most any movie on 2 CD-R's with near-DVD quality. I use 128kbps for the audio because A) most movies don't have a great soundtrack and B) I prefer more bits for video :)

If your player can handle it, by all means, crank up the bitrates and use multipass VBR. The quality is night and day superior to CBR.

[madmaninc]

I'll have to agree, not just because I'm from the "great state of corn":D , but because VBR rocks! been doing svcds at perten'ner DVD quality myself...my advice, stick to SVCD!:p