Undersize Video File with a Loss of Quality

[EnforcerSG]

Undersize Video File with a Loss of Quality

Although I am a newbie, I have looked on many threads, I have waited five days, I have read the FAQ’s (may have missed something, but nothing came close to my problem that I saw), I have not read much of any recent guides, mostly because I am on a slow 56k and they are somewhat large PDF’s, and I am out of ideas.

I am trying to rip Lord of the Rings; Fellowship of the Ring Special Edition. Working with disk 1 first, I am trying to do a two pass with XVID (nic’s version, I do not know what build). I will provide a list of settings that I have tired to fix the problem. But first…

Each time I encode, the film is great for about five minutes into the movie, when the quality drops like a stone. I can describe it like a curtain of static waving over a poor quality movie leaving ghosts of what was there before. The file size is also less than half the size (it is 1 hour 45 minutes, I want it to fit on one CD, the file comes out between 250 and 350 meg in size).

First pass appears to go well (one time I got error 100). I admit I have not done a first pass for every time I have done a 2ed, and I am going to start doing that more often.

I have tried motion search position from 6 to 2 with no effect.
Quantization type has always been H-263,
FourCC used: XVID,
VHQ has varied from 2 to 4.
I have tried both with and without lumi masking, chroma motion, Global Motion Compression.
I have tried B-Frames at 0, 1, 2, with only DX50 B-VOP checked.
Alt Curve is not checked.
Everything else has been default. I have in general been using a resizing filter (dropping it to 640 by 340), but I recently have not been bothering to set that. Sometimes I crop a little of the black bars off, other times not [and I adjust the size to account for that], but again, recently I have not.
I have not necessarily tried every combination of those things together.

My system is a homebuilt Anthon XP 1533 MHz with 770 meg of DDR 2100 ram, a GeForce4 4600 vid card, Win XP Pro with service pack 1 (maybe other upgrades).

I am using Virtual Dub to encode, I used Smart Ripper to rip it, I used DVD2AVI to make a project where I extracted the audio. Then I used VFAPI Reader Codec 1.05 to make it into whatever it does, then V-Dub. Audio has been 96khz MP3 Stereo with the volume increased to 200%.

Some threads have said that the DVD may be so compressible that the bit rate is higher than it needs to be. I should try to up the resolution or lower various settings, but I have tired several of their suggestions with no effect.

[Kemlo]

Sounds to me like the credits option is enabled and set a little early ;)

/Kemlo

[Koepi]

Next to that, use avisynth and a YV12 process chain. Read the guides! (Yeah, I know, you waited 5 days.) You are doing some steps severely wrong! There is a general ripping guide (xvid guide) here on doom9.org, you should use that.

Regards
Koepi

[hellgauss]

I suggest you to use one of the last nic's or koepi's build.
Click 'load default' before setting your options.

These are the settings I use to encode:
VHQ=4 (it's very slow, if i'm hurry i use vhq=1)
Chroma motion ON
Lumi masking Off
GMC Off (don't use it!)
QP Off
B-f 1, 2 or 3, it depends on the movie's lenght and the number of cd i want to fit.
Trellis quant on
q. type h263
You have to use the same settings in both first and second pass!!

i also suggest to use avisynth to load the .d2v file in vdub

Bye
HG

[powerslave]

Enforcer, check out the newbie settings, there is a link there for snowbeach's current guide. Get the tools that he lists on the pdf, and follow his instructions. You can use vhq 1 to encode faster, and also use h.263 and if you need better compressibility, use bilinear resize instead of lanczos resize, and check out avisynth forum on doom9 about filtering noise, etc. Snowbeach's guide has really been helpful, and doesnt have a steep learning curve. I am pretty new myself, but it helped me to get started off the right way, then from there, you can mess around with settings and determine for yourself which is the best way to go for you ;).

[Bogalvator]

Using VFAPI is the problem here I believe. I think I remember reading somewhere it is "a big no-no". Read up about the prog called Gordion Knot - it takes the .d2v files, and should sort you out.

[DoW]

Changing settings between the first pass and second pass is a big no no. If you change a setting, then the first pass becomes invalid.

[Koepi]

Well, only settings which affect compressability require you to do a new first pass - if you just change the bitrate you want to achieve this is perfectly ok with the "old" first pass ;)

XviD is very tolerant with such "flawed" input, but the quality still suffers. So to optimize quality, do a proper 2pass (including a first pass) for your settings.

Regards
Koepi

[EnforcerSG]

Just so you know, I have not forgoten about you guys, but I had to work overtime among other things...

I am trying to get avisyth to work, I will let you know what happens. Thank you all for all of your help.

PS: Could anyone link to a XVID guide that is not a 'huge' PDF? I am on a slow dial up connection with limited time online.

[powerslave]

Uhm, snowbeach's guide is only like 300k, if you cant download that, then you got problems. Check the newbie settings thread for the link.

[EnforcerSG]

Your right power slave, it just always took a long time to load up for me.

I did try using avisynth_252, I loaded in my dvd2avi file. And it still does not work. I am having the same problem. I will try playing with a few more settings to see what I can get.

It is not the credits activating too early(first thing I checked).

[gpower2]

@EnforcerSG

My personal opinion, VFapi is definetely NOT the problem here, I have been using VFapi for more than 50 movies and I have never had any problem at all. Yet, avisynth provides you with a plethora of filters and a faster frameserver since it doesn't convert the colorspace from YV12 to RGB. So it is good to learn how to use it anyway!

Try compressing in 1-pass and not 2-pass. With the right settings you should achieve great results! You should NOT use GMC and lumi masking. Try VHQ 4, Mpeg quantization, Chroma Motion and Chroma optimizer. And more important, download latest build of XviD, Nic's if you have an Intel CPU, or Koepi's if you use other than Intel CPU. Find the links at Doom's 9 Links page. Also, try Vdubmod latest version, it is quite stable. Don't forget to copy avisynth.dll to Vdubmod directory.

As for 2-pass, use the same settings exactly and look carefully at the credit settings.

For resizer use bicubic with 1/3,1/3 for b,c parameters.It works perfectly!

Hope we helped you!

CU!

[stax76]

I did try using avisynth_252, I loaded in my dvd2avi file. And it still does not work. I am having the same problem. I will try playing with a few more settings to see what I can get.


also copy mpeg2dec3.dll to your AviSynth plugin dir and do not move your source files because the d2v file references the paths to your source files. Maybe would be easier to use a program like DVX, the program tries to take care of users that just started out, tweaking XviD and writing AviSynth scripts is more for advanced users!

[gpower2]

@Dolemite

I am against those all-in-one programs! I believe that if you really want to get a grip of video compression, you must use different programs for each task, so that you can understand what you are actually doing. In this way you will learn to have the best results for every occasion, because as you have probably already seen, there is no universal settings for every movie and every clip. Each has its own differences and you must use different settings. Of course all of this require a lot of reading and personal testing, but I believe it worths it! Just read a few guides and you will be ok for start, especially take a look at Snowbeach's guide, its really really good!

CU

[stax76]

I am against those all-in-one programs! I believe that if you really want to get a grip of video compression, you must use different programs for each task, so that you can understand what you are actually doing. In this way you will learn to have the best results for every occasion, because as you have probably already seen, there is no universal settings for every movie and every clip. Each has its own differences and you must use different settings. Of course all of this require a lot of reading and personal testing, but I believe it worths it! Just read a few guides and you will be ok for start, especially take a look at Snowbeach's guide, its really really good!


I don't believe DVX has much limitations compared to doing everything manually, if some at all. If you find some, please let me know, I'll try to fix it. What kind of settings do you mean with every movie needs different settings, the only thing I'm currently aware of is a noise filter, almost everything else can be handled with presets and automation. I know this sounds kind of ignorant to people who are into heavy XviD tweaking and heavy AviSynth filter chains which are the majority here. I think it's good to have a basic XviD and AviSynth knowledge and to use it but I don't expect miracles out of heavy tweaking and I don't think it is much fun to spend a hour to set up a encoding when it can be done in two minutes. Doing everything manually compared with a automated all-in-one tool is to me like coding using emacs compared to a decent RAD IDE

edit: I'm a little curious now about your formular for the overhead calculation, for the compressibility test and how you crop, how you calculate things like aspect ratio without to much error etc.

[EnforcerSG]

Dolemite, I want to become more experienced in terms of ripping DVD's. The first few minutes (depending on the settings I have chosen) have been awesome. The quality is amazing, and if I can get that for the entire film, I will be happy. I also am a little bit of a control freak, and I like to know what is going on.

I am going to start from scratch. I will follow the guide as best I can, along with the newbie settings, using GKnot. Hope it works out.

Also, I did try one pass, and the quality is just not that great. I It is hard to describe, but moving edges were alternating lines of what was moving and what was not (flames really brought it out). I get that a lot with DIVX encoding. Also just the general quality was bad. And it had the same problem with the curtain of static a few minutes in the film.

Again, thank you for trying to help me. I just hope that it works out eventually.

[gpower2]

@Dolemite

Well, basically, for each movie I try different quantizers and bitrates and sometimes different compression settings. This for DVD movies. When talking about TV or VHS captures, things are getting alo more complicated! You could say "we're just talking about DVDs here man", yes, but if sometime you got a TV rip from somewhere, wouldn't it be nice to know how to compress it with really good results?

For the cropping, resizing and aspect ratio, I have made a lil prog in Vbasic to calculate all these by inputing only the original size and the crop aeras, and ofcourse the desired width. It calculates the height and the error percentage and the final pixels of the frame(meaning 640x480=307200pixels which is why I always try to get resolutions with 200000-300000 pixels @<1% error).

Compressibility test is not necessary for me, when I do all the above, I always get the quality I want. Never have I seen a movie which wasn't compressed well. Size is not a concern for me, I always go for the quality, but I never pass 1,3GB files. Mostly I get 800-1100MB.

All the filters etc, I first try them in VirtualdubMod and then I make the Avisynth scripts.

But, to be honest, I never tried DVX, maybe I should check it out and tell you what I think about it!

CU

[stax76]

But, to be honest, I never tried DVX, maybe I should check it out and tell you what I think about it!


feedback is always appreciated, you can find the latest built here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=59144)

[magneez]

enforcer i had the same problem.

in the 2nd pass xvid codec settings- dont use the file size option for credits (even if you dont have any credits) but always move it to the %percent option. (just the radio button forget the values...)

weird bug. took me days to figure it out.

[stax76]

it's anyway recommend not to use credits in XviD because it can cause problems. The credits can be encoded seperately and merged with VirtualDubMod but don't try this with Koepi's build and avi

[EnforcerSG]

I have never used the credits setting for this rip.

Still no luck. GKnot is a bit confusing, but I am still trying.

I can't seem to get it to use XVID.

[Nibor]

Originally posted by Dolemite
The credits can be encoded seperately and merged with VirtualDubMod but don't try this with Koepi's build and avi
Why? I did it and there were no problems at all!?

[stax76]

I didn't remember the topic, there is a bug with the frame header

[magneez]

enforcer,

even if you *dont* use credits: the secondpass/advanced options/credits tab/credits rate reduction should be set to "Desired % rate" and not "starting size" or "I-frame quantizer"

that solved my problem (which according to your description is identical to yours...)

[EnforcerSG]

It is set to Desired % rate, should it be 20?

[magneez]

%precentage doesnt matter if you dont use credits ...but whatever percentage there is, the radio button has to be there (on %) and not on the other two choices..even when credits option is not used...

(btw when i do use credits i put it on 10% - its enough to understand low-res text and compresses average credit sections to only 5-10 megs...

also if you use credits with an IVTC'd project change the values manually according to the avs in nandub/virtualdub. (dont use the automatic "credits" slider values...)