The Big 3 and credits

[Beastie Boy]

With the wonderful eclCCE tool, it is possible to limit the bitrate for the credits section of the movie. Is it possible to make use of this in the Big 3 procedure or do I need to manually amend the ecl file?
These apps give so much flexibility, this would be a nice touch to further boost the quality of the main movie.

Cheers, Beastie.

[Eyes`Only]

It's totally unnecessary to do that, if you are using Big3. Reason: Your CCE encode is done in VBR, meaning that CCE already allocates only enough bitrate to do the credits as is necessary. You won't see an increase in the rest of the video even if you were to limit this, because of this.

[Beastie Boy]

Thanks for the reply.

I was working on the principle that any bits saved from the credits are then reallocated elsewhere within the movie.
Left to it's own devices, CCE will encode the credits at the same quality as the main movie, but due to the nature of the credits (sharp edges with motion) they consume a lot of bits. What eclCCE can do is set a bitrate limit for the credits so that they are encoded at a lower quality, CCE takes this into account and the desired file size is still reached.
This is the reason RB added the feature to eclCCE.

Cheers, Beastie.

[Trahald]

basically it only is worth the while if you make the credits look like poo. since tampering with the main movie (and the credits are part of it) will decrease the quality of the main film, i dont see it as being integrated into batchcce. however as you eluded too, the beauty of big 3 is you can manually interject your will on any step.. so just change the ecl after batch/docce4u starts for the main movie. you have to find the credit start frame manually anyway.

[Eyes`Only]

I still stand by my original statement, and would like anyone to prove me wrong by showing me a movie that somehow looks better when using a lower bitrate for the credits that doesn't make em look like poo (hey, it's not my phrase!). If you were doing something like SVCD or non-DVD output, I can see it making a difference (maybe?) but for pure DVD-compliant MPEG-2, I can't see those couple of bits making a difference.

[Wensleydale]

Is Robshot-Bach vbr?

[RB]

Eyes, I always encode the ending credits at 1000 kbps using EclCCE's tweaking feature for my DVD-R backups and I can assure you they don't look like "poo" :) The black background looks a little blocky if you look close but the text is still clear and sharp and I'd rather be confident I allocated as many bits as possible to the main movie. And with long movies that have long credits (Pirates of the Caribbean 10 min., LOTR SEE's more than 20 min.) it really can make a difference. Just try for yourself. Normally, CCE really uses approx. the average bitrate for the credits because it's really high-contrast and quite a lot of motion. It isn't that smart :)

[Trahald]

lol

well.. by 'poo' i didnt mean utter crap.. but i did mean noticably bitrate deprived. like.. ok im watching the movie.. eww here come the credits.

bbwoof would have to add it since its on the encoding side for pgc(the majority of projects). on vobid encodes it gets stickier.

Since you have to preview the avs in something like virtual dub to find the frame start of credits. its gonna involve some manual work no matter what. i only found it only sorta worth the extra work with xvid since i was dealing with almost no bitrate as it was... i guess this could come in handy if your around the 2000 kbps area or lower area with dvdr.

[Matthew]

Just to concur with RB, what I've noticed is that the white text doesn't look so white and sharp at low bitrates but even at 1000 kbit they look fine on a high-quality computer monitor.