Guides for RV9 encoding

[bilu]

All info seems to be too spread for an RV9 starter like me :(

Are there any guides (in English) that gather all the needed info for:
- Installing
- Encoding
- Playback
- Necessary packages


Thanks in advance,
Bilu

[Sirber]

Hi

Playback:
RMVB:
RealOne
RealOne then MPC
Real Codecs Pack + MPC
MKV:
MPC

Encoding:
AutoRV9
RMFactory
RealAnime
HPG
soon Surreal UI :D

All infos on:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=40392

When Surreal UI will be avalible (and working), I'll do a big one on helix community:

https://producerapps.helixcommunity.org/surrealui/

[bilu]

OK. You've made an index, that's a start :D


Really, a tutorial including needed programs, available plugins, how to use jobs, would be nice for starters :)

I'm making my first encode now in AutoRV9 (Multichnnel 128 kbps, average cca 1360 kbps), the 1st chapter of Two Towers, Autocrop + Anamorphic+ Uncomb, EHQ High, preserve high motion...). Let's see how it goes on my PIII-850 /192MB RAM :D

Still have a lot to learn :rolleyes:

Bilu

[Griniaris]

A question because I am not sure I understood this correctly...
To be able to playback matroska files containing rv9 I need MPC alone or do I also need the realone dlls?

[defeatist]

WARNING: The following guide concerns Win32 only. It is mostly intended for RV9 beginners (Anime re-encoders especially) but I'd really appreciate it if anybody else with some time and an open mind would peruse it. I really believe RV9 has enormous potential for Anime, and not for merely re-encoding it. And hey, there's a nice sample below!

(re-)ENCODING, ETC

There are many GUI's available for encoding to RV9 from various sources (GUI = Graphical User Interface). See the list here: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=40392
Most if not all of these GUI's are packed with some version of the Helix Producer CLI (CLI = Command Line Interface). Each has its intended use. You may need to get more than one for various encoding sessions.

So far I have used RV9 for "Low-Bitrate Anime Archiving". Sirber's RealAnime was designed and is perfectly suited for this purpose. Below is a guide for RealAnime.

RealAnime thread: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=56576
Binary download: http://www.webernic.com/sirber/Downloads/RealAnime_114.zip

RealAnime comes with Helix Producer and everything useful for RV9 anime re-encoding as far as I know. I use it and only it (for the video) and I have excellent results.

Extract RealAnime into its own directory.
Run RealAnime.exe.
Select the Settings tab.

The default settings are actually quite good, although I recommend NOT re-encoding the audio. If you must, I'd suggest using HE-AAC or Vorbis - not RealAudio.
By losslessly re-multiplexing (referred to as remuxing hereafter) the audio you will probably want or need to increase the total average bitrate of your re-encode, so take this into consideration when calculating your video's bitrate.
If you agree to the above, uncheck Audio.
The Average Total Bitrate field now equals the video's average bitrate.

The default is 450 kibps (kibps = 1024 bits per second) (See http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html for clarification)
I consider this more than necessary for re-encoding most Anime video. I have had excellent results with 335 kibps on E-F's fansubs of Hikaru no Go. Below is a sample (video only) of my own re-encode of the first episode. I strangely find it more pleasing to the eyes than its source. Please give me feedback.
For playback requirements see that section below.

http://www.hentai-legacy.net/HnG01_-_[E-F]_sample2_RV9-EHQ-85_DropDupe1_MSL60_335kbps.mkv

Average Total Bitrate is the setting which you will probably change most often to fit your media. Most other settings need little tampering.

Max Startup Latency should be 60 by default.
This seems to be the buffer which allows RV9's variable bitrate to use bits most effectively. I have found this to be the most important setting for quality. Lowering it would make the output more suitable for streaming but degrade quality enormously. Keep it set to maximum (60) for any other purpose (like archiving).

Keyframe Interval should be 10 by default.
I see no reason to change this.

EHQ should be 85 by default.
80 seems to be preferred by many because it is faster and only slightly lower quality. However, Sirber claims this GUI has "Custom EHQ", so values may be altered. I always use 85 for final encodes, but the process takes about 3 times as many CPU cycles than the "default" of 65. I have seen a difference between settings (although not as significant as with Max Startup Latency) and because I prioritize quality far above speed, I consider the extra time worthwhile. This is for low-bitrate, high-quality archiving, after all.
EHQ thread: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=55193

DeNoise and DeInterlace should be unchecked by default.
You may need them, but I suspect most re-encodes will not.

DropDupe should be checked and set to 1 by default.
DropDupe = 1 means that "exactly" duplicate frames will be discarded before encoding, but only 1 can be dropped consecutively. Higher values are not currently recommended due to this filter's developmental state. 1 is quite safe, however.
This is an extremely useful filter for Anime. Enabling this combines the efficiency of RV9's VBR with VFR (variable framerate). I consider this a must for any kind of animation, but it should do no harm to any other content.

Crop, Resize, and Black Level Correction should be unchecked by default.
These are largely self-explanatory, and usually unnecessary.

That covers all of RealAnime's settings. Producer takes more which can't be modified with this GUI. The file "job.txt" contains these. Eventually you may wish to forgo GUI's, but if not remember all your alternatives.

When ready select the Files tab and click the Add button. This will open a file browser from which you can only select one file at a time. Now it is necessary to address Producer's input capabilities.

Helix Producer decodes using DirectShow, as opposed to VirtualDub(Mod), which decodes with VFW (i.e. Video For Windows). This means you must have working DirectShow filters for whatever files you choose as input. It is important to realize that however your source file would play via Graphedit is how it will be decoded by Producer. Be sure to have your registered filters configured with this in mind. For example, you should probably deactivate post-processing. I've been using ffdshow-20030523 with no post-processing of any kind for my re-encodes, however if you know what you're doing you may want it. I have also noticed, that if you have soft subtitles embedded or of the same filename (-ext) in the same directory and you have any kind of subtitle display filter installed, they will ALL be encoded into the video (in my experience).

If you are following my recommendation and NOT re-encoding the audio with Real, you may also want or need to remux only the video of the source into AVI. Other containers may cause problems in Producer, and I have experienced errors merely for encoding from the original AVI. I recommend using VirtualDub(Mod) for this. Take this time to consider cutting any wholly redundant beginnings or endings and encoding those at higher bitrates. For example, Hikaru no Go episodes 2 thru 30 have exactly the same opening sequence, and so I demuxed it from the best source I could find and packed it once with each CD containing those episodes (each of which I marked with OP1 at the end of the filename after having removed it). This can save a lot of otherwise wasted bitrate and can easily simulate the original with playlists.

Bearing all this in mind select your input files one by one. When your batch is ready click Start Encoding. The Producer CLI will open in a prompt window and report encoding information, progress, errors, etc. If it is closed during the encode all progress will be lost irrevocably. RealAnime can be accessed during this time to change the batch or modify settings for the next files.

The output will be in rmvb (Real Media Variable Bitrate).
While it is in this form I'd recommend analyzing it with RMVB Analyser http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=55392 . It is very interesting to see where RV9 spends bits. To do this "Analyse" the file and click Show Histogram. Then play the file in MPC preferably (see Playback section below). Resize MPC so that the seek bar aligns nicely with the histogram's inner edges. Then seek to points of interest in the file. Especially impressive is the minimal bitrate RV9 uses on still scenes. This is VBR at its best.

If it is video only you will want to multiplex (mux for short) it with audio and possibly subtitles into Matroska.
Currently I recommend using mkvtoolnix 0.7.0 for this. Newer versions are available but recent changes may make files less future-proof (lacing by default, for example). I also cannot recommend Gabest's DirectShow MatroskaMuxer until it outputs audio ID's more precisely (i.e. without AS/ACM). It is also more difficult (although possible, as I've done it) to batch mux via Graphedit. Please research this matter yourself. I don't know much about it and any feedback would be most appreciated.

You may want or need to fix the headers of the audio if it is MP3. This is of course lossless, and you may experience problems with the final MKV if you forgo it. I experienced jerkiness in ZoomPlayer3, MPC, and Graphedit with almost every MKV muxed with an unrepaired MP3 (MPC's builtin decoder did not suffer from this, although it does randomly fail to play some audio without a manual seek). Using foobar2000 to fix each MP3 header first resolved the problem in every case with every tested player and decoder.

Download whatever version you decide upon here: http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/
Follow installation instructions and run mmg.exe.
Under the Input tab click the + button and open your input files one by one. Select each to confirm track selection and edit tags.
Enter the Output filename and verify all muxing settings. Now you have the Command line in the field below. Select the Muxing menu and click Save Command line. Save this as a batch (.bat) file in the same directory as mkvtoolnix and edit it. In this file you should put all the filenames and settings of your input and output files. Copy and Paste operations will serve you well here.

When the batch file is ready save it and run it.
You should soon have working Matroska files with RV9 video and streams of whatever else you chose. Now you will want playback capability.

PLAYBACK

You will need Real's DLL's installed and registered to playback the media, of course. The RealONE player will definitely work, but it's reputation is not good. See this thread for information about pacifying it: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=48179

I recommend using Gabest's MediaPlayerClassic (heretofore referred to as MPC) as the player. It has all the necessary filters builtin. As long as the codecs are installed you should be set.

Most other players (certainly Graphedit) will need a Matroska Splitter and RealMedia Splitter. The recommended filters can be found here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli Individual filters registered by calling "regsvr32 filtername.ext"
http://cvs.corecodec.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/*checkout*/matroska/doc/website/downloads/windows.html Playback packs

CREDITS

This guide was written by defeatist, who is so tired and hungry from the exertion he just put into it that credit is really not a consideration. Do with this what you like, and please report the innumerable errors (as long as they're valid!). Thanks go to Gabest, Mosu, and Sirber, among many others (like my gracious sample-host - you know who you are!).

As a sidenote, here's a guide for DVD to RV9
http://users.pandora.be/DVD2RV9/
I'm afraid it might be rather old.

COWS

Hey, I'm a fan of cows, too!

[Sirber]

Hi

I think I'll have to give you a new version of RealAnime. Defaults changed. But remember something, RealAnime os for reencoding only, it can't DVD backup.

Check RealAnime thread for the lastest version and sources:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=56576

[bilu]

@defeatist

Your guide sure is a great help to start, thanks for all your work ! :)

Just finished my first RV9 encode (15 min took 4 hours encoding :eek: ) - I think I won't go back any soon, just beautiful. Looked better to me than a XVID's 1st pass, especially in colors and lack of artifacts on textures.

Got yourselves a new RV9er ;)
Bilu

[Sirber]

Nice, the fan club count now 5 people! :D

When ready select the Files tab and click the Add button. This will open a file browser from which you can only select one file at a time. Now it is necessary to address Producer's input capabilities.I was just too lazy to code the multi-select :cool:

[karl_lillevold]

@defeatist: thanks for writing up your guide! Very useful starting point, incl. the very important part about DirectShow file input to Producer. Also interesting to read about some types of RV9 encoding I have not tried myself :) AutoRV9 should have its own guide too in this forum, but at least there is one oldish guide available from DC's web site. This does not cover multi-channel RA, EHQ, or the latest changes in AutoRV9 1.3 though.