A little help with settings for captured X-Play.

[LeonMcNichol]

Now, I know settings threads are usually unwanted, but I'm at a bit of a loss here. I've been capturing X-Play from TechTV @ 640x480 and encoding them to XviD. I'm setting the size to 175MBs and audio to 96kbps, which usually gets me a bitrate for video around 1000-1006kBit/s. (Episodes are around 22minutes.) I deinterlace using TomsMoComp, because I think it gives the best results and I like the slight "blur" it gives.


LoadPlugin("f:\encoding\avs\tomsmocomp.dll")
SegmentedAVISource("X-Play - 07-10-03.avi")
TomsMoComp(1,5,1)


Now, default settings and just changing VHQ to 4 and b-frames to 2. Quality is not so bad, but not the quality I want. :| If anyone has ever seen the show, you know it's a game review show. It switches back and forth between live and game. Which seems to look fine for the live part, but for the games, they get pixelated or lose a lot of detail due to blocking.

I read the guide that's listed in the newbies settings. So I started messing with the settings and ended up making it look WORSE! ><

I'm using Nic's latest build. (I think.) My current settings are:

Global:
Motion search precision: 6-Ultra High
Quantization type: H.263
FourCC used: XVID (I decode with ffdshow anyways.)
VHQ mode: 4 - Wide Search
Maximum I-frame interval: 125
Minimum I-frame interval: 1
Enable Lumi masking - checked
Use chroma motion - checked
Enable greyscale - unchecked
Enable interlacing - unchecked
Quaterpel - unchecked
GMC - unchecked
Max B-frames: 2
B-frame quantizer ratio(%): 150
B-frame quantizer offset: 100
Packed bitstream - unchecked
DX50 B-VOP compatiblity - checked

Two pass: (I think this is what fudged it up, not sure.)
I-frame boost %: 20
Below i-frame distanc...: 15
I-frame bitrate reduction %: 30
<rest default>

Alt Curve:
Curve Aggression: Medium
High distance from average %: 250
Low distance from average %: 90
<rest default>

Now from the settings that I gave, can you tell me the settings that I fudged up and maybe give me a few things to try out. I'm at a loss here.

Thanks for your help.

[Assault]

Hmm....first I think your maximum I-frame interval is too low. Use something like 250-300. Then don't use lumimasking. It doesn't work very well at the moment. Furthermore I would use the default values for two pass (no alt curve compression). You could also try to use only 1 b-frame. 1,150,100 and when you use Koepi's build a threshold of 10-20 worked best for me.
I hope this helps.

Assault

[UGAthecat]

You may need to investigate your source video. For all the cable providers I've looked at, TechTV is an 'extended basic' channel, which means it is only available on digital cable, which is bound to have lower quality in high motion scenes than in low motion scenes. I know it looks like crap during high action game scenes on my DirecTV setup, but during the parts with Morgan (the hotness :D) and the dweeby angry dude it still looks great.
If your not capturing form an originally digital source, disreguard all of the above :)
As to your setings, don't take my word because it has been a long time since I even looked at anything other than default settings, But I think you and Assault have already pinpointed the most likely bad settings, I'd experiment with the Max Iframe interval and the 2pass settings you were already suspicious of.

[LeonMcNichol]

Alright, default setting there is. I also resized it down to 512x384 which yeilds good results at 140MBs. Unless someone can recommend some good filters, I guess 640x480 is out of the question at 175MBs. (Unless someone can recommend some really good avs filters that might help me.) Thanks for you help guys.

Oh and you are right on two things. This is basic digital cable. The quality is subpar, but still mucho better than the analog channels. Also for the fact, Morgan is hot. ;)