I Know What I Want. Need These Options "Translated" for me.

[Teleri]

Hiya guys,

Right now I'm trying to tweak my xvid settings. Right now I'm working on a project "Ranma 1/2". The anime itself is rather old and doesnt have a whole lot in the way of crispness. It is inherently blurry but it has a lot of movement for an anime. I've decided to use Precise Bilinear since not much quality would be gained by sharpening a bunch of blurry artifacts. ( The source for this DVD is a VHS ), and I've enabled 6: Ultra High Motion Search Precision along with Blend ( best ) deinterlacing.

My current problem is that during high motion events blocks appear, and they appear for a longer period of time than they probably should.

I'm getting the impression that the default Xvid settings from Nic's build ( from the Nimo codec pack 5.08 ) dont handle high motion scenes well.

In the past I have applied some suggestions from this forum but recently a pretty basic 175 meg encode looked a lot worse than it should have. Do any of you guys have any suggestions?

Remember, fairly blurry, lot of movement. Too much detail isnt needed, just fluidity.

Thanks again for any replies, I have read the "Xvid Options Explained PDF" but this is still kinda over my head.

[Teegedeck]

Im really not one experienced in anime, but for one thing you should make sure that consecutive I-frames don't get a boost in bitrate, so deduct the same amount for consecutive I-frames that you boosted them. Like:

I-frame boost:100%
below i-frame distance: 25
I-frame bitrate reduction: 50%

I believe that way you're ensuring an economic use of bits.

As for curve compression, the 'linear approach' seems to work VERY well: use the traditional curve-compression but set values for both high- and low-bitrate-scenes to 0%. Tell me if it helped anything. Good luck!

EDIT: Also the blurriness could pose a problem. Perhaps you can try unfilter(5,5)?

[Teleri]

Hiya Teegeedeck,

Thank you very much for the feedback. I read on another thread where you recommended those settings and they worked very well for that individual. However, call me stupid but I just cant find the following 2 settings

below i-frame distance: (25)
I-frame bitrate reduction: (50%)

I've adjusted all of the quantinizers to 2 min/max and have applied the 100% boost. I also found the curve compression without a problem... but if these options above go by a different name then I'm not sure what they are.

Would you mind letting me know where these settings are? I've been staring at them for 10 minutes and there isnt much to look at. I just dont know. *sigh*

Right now I'm using Nic's binary that came with The Nimo Codec Pack 5.08. I tried the newest binary but it went all green on me when I tried to play the encode... from what I've read I think it's a B-Frame thing. *Shrug* .. so I got rid of that and went to the 5.08 nimo build.

[Koepi]

I can't tell often enough that the Nimo Codec Pack is evil[tm](r)(c)!

Please, uninstall it and fetch ffdshow, a recent xvid binary , e.g. from my page from my signature or from Nic or from uManiac.

The other codecs are mostly superflous. Fetch OggDS, SubDS and maybe you need the freedvd codecs as well (find all of them e.g. in Doom9's download section).

After that you will have those options.
You're working with binaries from ~may which are inferiour to the recent builds of all of us build-suppliers.

Regards,
Koepi

PS: btw., uninstalling nimo codec pack doesn't work either in most cases, you need to fresh install your system - evil!

[Teegedeck]

Originally posted by Teleri

Would you mind letting me know where these settings are? I've been staring at them for 10 minutes and there isnt much to look at. I just dont know. *sigh*


Last time I checked, these setting were in the '2-pass'-tab of the 'advanced' setup. :) The two-pass tab contains these I-frames settings and the traditional curve-compression settings. BTW, you CAN'T boost something that already has quant=2, that's the best quality there is. Restricting quants=2 makes all of 2-pass senseless. Please go back and read some basic encoding guides from Doom9's pages.

And good luck reinstalling your system after Nimo, shit happens...

[Teleri]

Well,

I tried Koepi's build earlier because I know that the binary that I am currently using is outdated however when I did all of my encodes, 1 pass, CBR, Quality, 2 pass ect had a green fluid effect in areas of no motion. That's why I came back here for some advice. Also it was my understanding that FFDshow gave a client side only effect, in that if you have it running it wont benefit the people that watch your encodes. Was I incorrect?

And Teegedeck, I asked you to call me stupid and you did just that... If I had not have read those guides then I wouldnt have gotten this far. I have heard that keeping all of your quants at a fixed number yields the best results but I have also heard that 2 pass methods yield the best results as well, what am I missing?

Also, my two pass tab doesnt have those options. I'll try Koepi's binary again after I attempt to uninstall Nimo ( which appeared to work ok last time I tried ). When I installed it I did a custom install and only selected Xvid, Divx, OGG, MP3 and thier respective directshow filters. 5.08 Full Install Nimo = Fubar, I know. Already deltee'd windows and reinstalled once because of that.

I know everything I do from the Doom9 guides and from the xvid options explained PDF as well as the posts made about quants and such. I have to admit that it's still very hard to remember what every option does.

Edit: Got it working. Looks great. I neglected to download Koepi's updated directshow filter. CANT WAIT to test this out. ^_^

[Teegedeck]

1. Encoding at quant=2 yields best results. But the resulting file will get very, VERY big in most cases.
2. Encoding in 2-pass yields the best results if you want to restrict filesize in any way. It works by using higher quantizers in places where you probably won't realize it, so it can save bits for the places where you WILL realize it, so it can use a lower quant on those.

If you are aiming for good balance of size against quality, use 2-pass and restrict quantizers only to guard yourself against mistakes of the 2-pass-algo. If you're not sure about what restrictions make sense, better don't use them at all (the same goes for ANY deviation from the defaults)! Because when the 'bits-redistribution-mechanism' hits the solid border of restricted quantizers, it's 'lights out' for one of them, and it ain't the restricted quants...

EDIT: And I didn't call you stupid, never would.

[DBaT]

@Teleri

Just try to get EVERYTHING that has to do with nimo off and remove
possible registry ref. After that just install the xvid build that you want and hit default values to be on the safe side.

Don't start tweaking xvid settings if you aren't 100% sure what you are doing and read doom9 xvid guides trough a fews times more to get the basics. Try doing as Teegedeck adviced for alt-CC but for the rest keep dafult settings to begin with.