Some pointers for encoding anime?

[Turbonutter]

Hi there

I've just finished Akira and there are some quite visible artefacts in it, especially around movement and contrast edges. It's all a bit noticable, and I'm not really happy with it - I get the impression that seeing as it is a cartoon I could probably do better.

Anyone who does an amount of anime out there know of some pointers that help me get better results?

Sorry people, no screenshots.

[mf]

Try the stuff that's in my sig.

[Turbonutter]

Those are exactly my settings except my threshold is 0, not 10.

[unmei]

Q: " trellis ONLY when encoding mod16" is there a reason to this (except mod 16 being best solution in general :). I recently did 2 encodes which have only mod 8 vertically and used trellis R-D - i couldnt see a problem,

but these files also feature a much higher bitrate than i usually go for, so there could be efficiency problems i can't discover in these (hell, 1700kbit/s _has_ to be good quality :) uh, i talk about anime too

[mf]

It could be mod8 too, but cause I wasn't certain I just put in mod16. Anyway, leaving the question of whether it's mod8 or mod16 aside, if this isn't abided, trellis is known to cause shit frames (the luma blocks as we all know & hate from divx3). That's why.

[Joe Fenton]

Originally posted by Turbonutter
Hi there

I've just finished Akira and there are some quite visible artefacts in it, especially around movement and contrast edges. It's all a bit noticable, and I'm not really happy with it - I get the impression that seeing as it is a cartoon I could probably do better.

Anyone who does an amount of anime out there know of some pointers that help me get better results?

Sorry people, no screenshots.

What bitrate are you trying to achieve? Are you trying to fit the whole movie on one disc? My encode of Akira was set for two discs and looks awesome. I don't think you can fit Akira into one disc and still avoid artifacts.

[Turbonutter]

It worked out at 700kbps in the end - 0.124b/p/f, 640x352. I thought I could get away with it seeinf as in anime a lot of the blocks don't change at all.

Areas of flat colour 'n' all.

[Sirber]

Sorry for this interruption in XviD forum, but maybe you could try RealVideo 9 and get the full DVD rez. RV9 is the best for animes at any bitrates.

[Turbonutter]

Sorry mate, all the tea in china couldn't convince me to use ANYTHING made by real.

And I drink a lot of tea.

Not that chinese tea is any good or anything.

More accurately would be all the tea in India.

But that could be any old tea.

-------------------------------------------

Sorry mate, all the tea in Taylor's of Harrogate couldn't convince me to use ANYTHING made by real.

[Sirber]

What about coffee? :p Have you at least tryed RV9 once?

[Turbonutter]

Well I've tried Real software before and it's not really an experience I want to relive.

[superdump]

I recently used RV9 to encode season 3 of futurama. It was by far the best codec (other than vss h.264! :)) and I don't mind admitting it even though I'm a semi-XviD soon to be nerodigital zealot. ;)

[Sirber]

My futuramas are in 320x240, and I encode them at 250kbps including a 32kbps voice track. DropDupe really do a great job on them :D Talking about size, It goes from 230MB to ~25MB. :)

[superdump]

Heh, mine were ~576x424 at ~500kbps with 44 kbps for the audio. It's not bad really. I managed to fool my brother into thinking it was the original anyway, but then he hasn't seen the original so....

[mf]

RV9 users are barbarians. 320x240, how could you consider it. 25MB, like any codec would still look good. And if that thing is really that good, why'd you even drop res to 576x424, it should be able to smooth out all the bitrate-eating detail at 640x480 well enough, no? Or is that a too logical conclusion.


--
sorry for the above rant, but by posting in the xvid forum it's something you should be able to expect.

[superdump]

I just did it at roughly the same resolution I did the last season that I encoded with XviD. I found that XviD at the same bitrate would produce lots of mosquito noise, much to my dismay. I didn't want to use lots of CDs up so instead I looked to other codecs which were less noisy.

[Sirber]

Originally posted by mf
RV9 users are barbarians. 320x240, how could you consider it.It's in 320x240 coz it's from a MPEG.I'd like to see your encode in xvid with that source, same size :D

[superdump]

Mine were from the DVD, and I used mod 16 for the XviD encode by the way mf. :) I didn't do anything stupid, but it was noisy. I'll try again.

[mf]

Originally posted by Sirber
It's in 320x240 coz it's from a MPEG.I'd like to see your encode in xvid with that source, same size :D
Try SharpResize :D.
Originally posted by superdump
Mine were from the DVD, and I used mod 16 for the XviD encode by the way mf. :) I didn't do anything stupid, but it was noisy. I'll try again.
Denoise + h.263 should be fine.

[Joe Fenton]

Originally posted by Sirber
Sorry for this interruption in XviD forum, but maybe you could try RealVideo 9 and get the full DVD rez. RV9 is the best for animes at any bitrates.

You should try encoding Cowboy Bebop ep 1 and say that. Certain sequences of CB really mess with the RV codec big time... hyperspace, the bar shot-out, neither come out worth a spit on RV9 at high bitrates, forget low bitrates. RV9 may be good for doing mid-quality super-low bitrate vids, but you can't beat XviD for high-quality mid to high bitrate encodes.

[Sirber]

I have CB in old RV9, but it was from a DIVX/XVID source. but I guess from a DVD with dropdupe, EHQ and vertical anamorphic I could get hawesome results at 450kbps including a 64kbps surround track, with SSA subs muxed all happily in matroska. Isn't life beautiful?

[RadicalEd]

Hey Turbonutter, you don't have to use any of Real's official software to encode and watch Real content. There are alternatives out there for those who for whatever reason still can't get over Real's dark past. That said, there's no longer any reason not to use it anymore. The company has cleaned up, and the codec outperforms all others. And India is cool.

[Gaia]

you don't have to use any of Real's official software to encode

What? Ofcourse you have to use. You can just use alternative gui's.

Biggest reason why people don't like rv codecs is still Real Player. Sure you can use mplayer or that unoffical thing but average user don't know them.

I still refuse to install Real Player. First it's true pain to download because of that web trap(It was still there then i last time visited their site). It still tries to hijack whole system... I don't need media library. I don't need audio encoder. I don't need that browser. I can't understand why they don't make some kind of lite version without all the useless stuff or why you can't choose what to install? Sure you can use Media Player Classic but you have to install Real Player first. Or use Gabest filter put you still need those dll's.

Very basic player or true Direct Show decoder and RV9 would be amazing codec.

[RadicalEd]

Well you can use the Helix Producer milestones, which aren't official realproducer releases, and there are illegal codec packs which install the dlls and the directshow filter.

[Turbonutter]

Or alternatively, I just use XviD!

[Sirber]

We are just trying to help you getting rid of your squares problems :D Stay with XviD and stop complaining about the artefacts then :sly:

[Lefungus]

Could we stop the trolling ? Thanks

[superdump]

Originally posted by superdump
Mine were from the DVD, and I used mod 16 for the XviD encode by the way mf. :) I didn't do anything stupid, but it was noisy. I'll try again.

Hmm, I've tried with mf's settings from his sig instead of using my standard ones (which were very similar) and the main culprit appeared to be a combination of a less than optimal source and qpel. After a bit of fluxsmoothing, a bicubic resize and no longer using qpel, XviD is producing much better results.

[Turbonutter]

Originally posted by Sirber
We are just trying to help you getting rid of your squares problems :D Stay with XviD and stop complaining about the artefacts then :sly:

I never said I was getting macroblocks, that's not the problem!

[mf]

Originally posted by superdump
Hmm, I've tried with mf's settings from his sig instead of using my standard ones (which were very similar) and the main culprit appeared to be a combination of a less than optimal source and qpel. After a bit of fluxsmoothing, a bicubic resize and no longer using qpel, XviD is producing much better results.
Good, another soul saved from the evils of RV9 :D.

[RadicalEd]

Originally posted by mf
Good, another soul saved from the evils of RV9 :D.

WE'LL GET YOU YET

[Sirber]

After Surreal UI, you're my next goal mf mouhahahahahahahaha :devil:

[mf]

Peh, if I ever seriously use RV9 it'll be a hacked version with special detail preservation and other neatness. I'll call it "XviD ;-)" :D.

[ssjkakaroto]

It could be mod8 too, but cause I wasn't certain I just put in mod16. Anyway, leaving the question of whether it's mod8 or mod16 aside, if this isn't abided trellis is known to cause shit frames hey mf, back to this, i've got shitty frames with trellis even with mod16 (640x480), are you sure you dont get those?

[mf]

Originally posted by ssjkakaroto
hey mf, back to this, i've got shitty frames with trellis even with mod16 (640x480), are you sure you dont get those?
I've never had them, and I was wondering why, and then someone told me they only occur on non-mod16, so well, I immediately assumed that since it's the only logical explanation till now of why I don't have them.