Black&White encoding

[Lord_KiRon]

Hi guys ,

I have a DVD with some old BW movie I want to encode , can someone suggest the best settings ?

I want to make it Simple MPEG Profile compatible (have KiSS player) so no GMC or QPel , also the movie is a bit blured sometimes so I probably will need to make it sharper or at least not blurer and I am not thinking of use of additional filters.
Going to use lates Alpha3 of XviD , so any suggestions from the experts ?

[Lord_KiRon]

So no one knows ?
I don't believe that non of the "good" releasers didn't ever riped BW movie !

[aaar9800]

you already broke two rules:

1. There are no best setting, use defaults and the recommendations of other people, but don't ask for them... search for them.
2. There are no releasers on this site, we are all honest people that don't distribute our rips.

[Lord_KiRon]

Originally posted by aaar9800
you already broke two rules:

1. There are no best setting, use defaults and the recommendations of other people, but don't ask for them... search for them.



Well recomendations is what I am asking for , and I am sure that defauts are bad choice because they are made for general case and bw video isn't a general case.
Also I did searched believe me , I think I checked all of the video incoding sites on the internet already :) No suggestions for settings just few questions like mine :(


Originally posted by aaar9800

2. There are no releasers on this site, we are all honest people that don't distribute our rips.


Why do you think "releaser" is someone unhonest ? As far as understand "Releaser" is the person who make encoding and release it to the net. Why you imply it nessesary copyrighted matherial ? It can be home made video , it can be movie some young producer made and want to release it for free , it can be even a "regular" movie if it more then 25 years old (well this depends on your country laws, in some places more in some places less). How do you think I can call encoding gurus? "good encoders" ? - well let be it if you like it more.

Also if you believe I break the rules please pos a number from here ( http://forum.doom9.org/forum-rules.htm ) , rule 1a does not appliy because I did searched as can you if you wish to verify this . And no way you can stick me rule 6 not even in "extended" http://forum.doom9.org/announcement.php?s=&forumid=6 edition.

[mikeX]

i think the best you can do is make a small clip out of the movie and try some different settings to see what suits you best
there is no recipe you can follow, not for b/w nor for any other movie

if you want to sharpen your movie (and filesize isn't that important to you) try finding mf's 'sharpening tools' (avs scripts) (just use the search button, they are either here or in the avisynth forum i think)

what's best is what looks best to your eyes, use the defaults as reference and base your tests on minor tweaks around them
you can also try out some 'higher quality' quant matrices (the latest beta comes with quite a collection)

[aaar9800]

How do you think I can call encoding gurus?

You just answered your question
Just call them "encoding gurus", at least it is better than a word that could imply copyright infringement.

And my recommendation is not to use chroma motion, nor chroma optimizer, since there isn't supposed to be any color in b&w movies anyway.

[Lord_KiRon]

Thanks for your replys ,
I will play with the settings of cause , and unfortunatly size do importent :( , it's 110 minutes movie and I was intending to fit it on one CD with 96kb/s or if I have no choice 64kb/s mono ABR MP3 sound (I don't think old mono movie deserves more :) ) .
So on my calculation it will be ~800kb/s bitrate, a bit small for full size PAL movie.

So sharpening tools is not an option, I just wanted to know what XviD settings can cause additional blur and what settings may actually make video look sharper (I chose for this movie XviD over DivX I usually use especially because it sharper and have greyscale mode).
Also if you don't mind please give me effect of this parameters on size I did so some FAQs saing this parameter increase the size/qualiy or that parameter decrease the size/quality but never how much, sometimes small increase in the size increase the quality significantly and some time small decrease in size destroys the look completely .

Well I know I will have to test myself , but any suggestions from your expirience are welcome :)

[mikeX]

well as you can see from the popup descriptions in the gui, h.263 smooths (softens) the image while mpeg sharpens it (but is recomended for higher bitrates).
i don't know about all the custom quant matrices but i suppose the ones that are fit for low bitrates soften and the ones that (are supposed to) give better picture sharpen
do a search on it, there have to be discussions about the matrices

i don't know much about hardware players either but if yours supports the .mp4 container you should definetely go for low bitrate aac sound to gain some extra bitrate for the movie

if it's a really old b&w movie (most of them are really blured and low quality because of the film deteriorating i suppose) i don't think you could produce a better result than the original (DVD?). At best you could reach similar quality but with higher bitrate that 800 kbps

[Lord_KiRon]

Well, no my player (as most of the hardware players) does not support MP4 file format :(
Also it have some problems with VBR MP3, that's why I descided to go on ABR (btw: isn't ABR algorithms used in AAC ?)

Anyway, I can read the pop up windows too as well as encoding guides , so I probably will have to do some tests with settings anyway , just hoped someone from gurus who really know what they doing and why :) can help , or at least someone who once performed such encoding can throu off few tips.


And I have no intention to "repair" the movie making it better then DVD , keeping it about the same will be OK (of cause if it could be better then it great but I believe the company that released DVD already pulled max from the source).

What do you think about redusing resolution ? does it worth it to encode with higher bitrate but lower resolution ?