PAL interlaced questions

[Kwark]

I'm trying to reencode Highlander (R2), an interlaced PAL title. DVD2AVI says the title is interlaced, and when stepping frame by frame i clearly see combing regularly on several places in the picture.
The video of Highlander is 6.5gig, so I need a lot of compression. Luckily the menu is very small, and I only want 1 soundstream so I can focus mainly on the video.

I'm using the newest big3 guide (with the latest software, including DIF4U 1.4.7).
DIF4U has no automatic mode for PAL titles yet (right?), so I must select the correct options to ensure correct deinterlacing. But I'm still a huge amateur, even though I've read a lot of articles and guides.. The whole interlacing/ivtc/etc business can be very confusing.
So, I need some advice.. and this still seems the best place to ask questions like this.

I read that CCE will give better results with progressive material, and since I need a lot of compression I want to deinterlace the video first.

- Which options/tags must I select? I guess there is no standard way, but can you give me tips/hints to help me make the correct decision?

- When I select "Do It" in DIF4U (after setting up according to the guide" the whole process starts and is still running after 3 hours.
The chapters after "Now that we have configured everything let's rock. Press the Do It! button and let DIF4U do it's thing." don't seem very relevant since DIF4U just goes on spawning programs and starting encoding stuff..
Step 3 is starting automatically.. should I stop at this point for PAL titles and make my own decisions?

[arlsair]

As there are not a lot of extras and the menu is quiet small, you get a high bitrate for the main movie and so I would keep it interlaced, because of the better quality.

For this, you activate nothing in DoItFast4U! and check in BatchCCE, that "alternate scan" is activated and "progressive" is disabled.

Why DoItFast4U! takes 3 hours and more, I have no idea.

[Kwark]

Originally posted by arlsair
As there are not a lot of extras and the menu is quiet small, you get a high bitrate for the main movie and so I would keep it interlaced, because of the better quality.

Why would the quality be better? Didn't CCE handle progressive video better (and faster) than interlaced video?
And deinterlacing (properly mastered) PAL titles should be doable in general (says the amateur..).

When I press "Do it" in DIF4U, does it start all the encoding (including menu and the main movie) too, or does it only prepare the work for BCCE?
If it does the full encoding, that could explain the 3 hours (I canceled after that, I'll do another run later).

[arlsair]

Originally posted by Kwark
Why would the quality be better? Didn't CCE handle progressive video better (and faster) than interlaced video?
And deinterlacing (properly mastered) PAL titles should be doable in general (says the amateur..).
When you deinterlace something, you average the pixel values of the both fields (speaking in simple therms, of course). So you loss some sharpness and details.

Deinterlacing is a good thing, when you don`t have enough bitrate. Then you will see blocks and that is not so cool.
But with enough bitrate, it is better to keep the interlaced.

And the CCE is not bad, when encode interlaced. Indeed he is good. But there are other encoders how are better, like ProCoder.

Originally posted by Kwark
When I press "Do it" in DIF4U, does it start all the encoding (including menu and the main movie) too, or does it only prepare the work for BCCE?
If it does the full encoding, that could explain the 3 hours (I canceled after that, I'll do another run later). [/B]
How did you setup DoItFast4U!. Under "Global Options -> Post Processing -> Launch external app" you have different options.
If you want to directly encode after DoItFast4U! choose "DoCCE4U (Start automatically)". Read the help of DoItFast4U!, what all the other options mean.

[Kwark]

Okay thanks, that cleared up the most important questions.. I'm going to do a new run right away.

Now I have another question though: RoBa encoding is the standard setting of DIF4U, but in most people on this forum seem to think that it's a nice fast method, but that for real quality you need multipass encoding (not roba)..
Why is RoBa selected by default in DIF4U?

BTW, I need to reduce the size of the main movie to about 60% of the original (according to dvdshrink, nice for calculations..).. Isn't that too much?

[arlsair]

Originally posted by Kwark
Okay thanks, that cleared up the most important questions.. I'm going to do a new run right away.

Now I have another question though: RoBa encoding is the standard setting of DIF4U, but in most people on this forum seem to think that it's a nice fast method, but that for real quality you need multipass encoding (not roba)..
Why is RoBa selected by default in DIF4U?
There is a difference between RoBa in DoItFast4U! and 1pass OPV. First do a 1pass OPV and then some extra VBR passes to archive the filesize.
Second do first some test with short samples to estimate the right Q value, which will fit in size, and the a 1pass OPV with this Q value.

In general both produce the same quality. RoBa takes more time, but archive exactly the wanted filesize; 1pass OPV is fast, but is not as exactly. There is normally a tolerance by 1-2%.

Originally posted by Kwark
BTW, I need to reduce the size of the main movie to about 60% of the original (according to dvdshrink, nice for calculations..).. Isn't that too much?
I don`t think so. I calculated the bitrate on the fly and it is 4700 kbps. It is OK.