DVDShrink 3.2 AEC

[quantum]

@dvdshrink, or whoever can answer:
It seems the Adaptive Error Correction only "kicks in" when a certain threshold is reached. Otherwise, the older faster technique is used. Correct? Can you explain exactly what threshold causes it to kick in?

Is there any way to force the AEC mode for everything? Maybe it wouldn't help, but it would be nice to have the option.

[dvdshrink]

"Maximum smoothness" option will do this, although whether you find it an improvement or not, I don't know.

[TheSeeker]

I dont know but I used Maximum Sharpness on a 64% encode of Sorcerer's stone and the detail was fantastic. No macro blocking or artifacts you sometimes get when trying to sharpen something too much. Worked quite nicely in this situation.

[quantum]

I just tried "Maximum Smoothness" for the first time. My first thought when I saw this description was it softened the image, but now I think it means a smoother bitrate distribution?

It seems to me I see less "pulsing" or good frame / bad frame syndrome with this activated.

[TheSeeker]

Hmm thats interesting. I thought it meant smoothing the picture as well. I will have to try out this setting.

[jsquare]

I also tried both methods and Maximum Sharpness gave me almost the same results as DVD-Rebuilder+CCE.

The material in question is John Wayne's "The Alamo" and it's very difficult to achieved the same sharpness as the original source, when I used Sharp or Maximum smoothness I was getting the "shifting" or "Pulsating" pixel effect, but with MaxSharp almost disappeared.

One last thing, DVD-Rebuilder+CCE won the battle against Shrink 3.2 in this case, I even included the Special Feature(Still pictures in Shrink) encoded at 354x480 and the whole DVD came out almost perfect.

[TheSeeker]

@jsquare

That really isnt a fair competition though. CCE + Rebuilder will win every time because it is totally reencoding the movie. The thing that makes shrink so nice is those movies that are really easy and not very big where not much compression is needed. Then you almost cant tell the difference between the two. Otherwise if more compression is needed or its a difficult rip CCE will win every time. CCE is really a great program. Damn near a miracle. But for 2000 dollars i should hope that it works good.

[jsquare]

Originally posted by TheSeeker
That really isnt a fair competition though. CCE + Rebuilder will win every time because it is totally reencoding the movie.
I know that but with the Lexx S4V6 TV series was another story, DVDShrink 3.2 won over DVD-RB+CCE(Basic).

I don't think that CCE is very good with interlaced and P/S material, while The Alamo was progressive and W/S.

$2,000 no way, CCE Basic is only $58 and well worth it.

[TheSeeker]

I mean CCE SP. CCE SP is like $1,950 or something like that.

[Ton80]

Originally posted by quantum
It seems to me I see less "pulsing" or good frame / bad frame syndrome with this activated.

If Max Sharpness gives you that "pumping" or "pulsing" syndrome then that is the exact reason to try one of the Smooth settings. Max Smoothness results are probably closest to IC7/8 results, but the sharp settings might be closer to the original if you dont have pumping/pulsing. Smooth does not mean blurry, I would just consider it a name to distinguish it from Sharp. After all what else could he call it?

Transcoded video can never be as good as the original, but the goal is to get it so close that it doesn't matter. Every transcoder has to make tradeoffs and I love the fact that DVDShrink has given the user the option to try it both new ways as well as the old fashion quick method with little analysis. I will always activate DA and AEC, but if only a little compression is needed I might be wasting some time. Of course since AEC only activates after some threshold in 3 of the modes, I wouldnt be wasting much.

I would consider Sharp and Max Sharp the 3.1 method improved with AEC and other tweaking and Max Smoothness as an alternative AEC way of doing things that looks better sometimes. Just my opinion, feel free to disagree.

[TheSeeker]

I havent done much testing with max smoothness but honestly i have done a few long movies with max sharpness and am really impressed with the quality of output. A little grainy perhaps, but that might be the only thing.

[quantum]

I just finished comparing Shrink 3.1.7, Shrink 3.2, and CCE. I did Taxi Driver Collector's Edition NTSC, keeping everything, including the lengthy extras. I used the default AEC setting in Shrink 3.2.

By keeping everything and not reducing the menus to stay consistent with DVD-RB, the main feature was reduced to %53. Normally I would have found ways to allocate more to the main movie, but I was deliberately stress testing.

Shrink 3.1.7 and 3.2 had obvious differences. The older shrink had macro block frames, while the new version was close to CCE. The new version was so close to CCE that I found the differences mostly insignificant.

This is going to make it hard for me to justify using CCE considering Shrink's solid output in terms of compliance, multi-angles, and closed captions.

Mr. Shrink you've really stirred things up this time. ;) And I wouldn't be surprised if there are even more tweaks that could be squeezed out of your AEC routines.

[nwg]

I have done the PAL version of Return of The King with DVD-RB and CCE. I never got the results I wanted.

I have done it again with Shrink 3.2 and the default EAC. The picture is much better than my CCE version. It is sharper, better contrast and colour. This is playing on a 28" widescreen TV.

I did a few chapters with max sharpness at the same compression (58%)and it looks even better on the monitor.

I am very happy with the default EAC setting so far.

I have also done Once Upon a Time in Mexico with extras at 45% compression. They are still very watchable and didn't notice any blocking.

The other bonus compared to CCE is it is much faster. It has taken 2 hours to do ROTK with Shrink and EAC and deep analysis. The ROTK CCE version took about 7 hours.

[muralin]

can someone provide simple guidance on when to use what mode? thx.

[TheSeeker]

Originally posted by muralin
can someone provide simple guidance on when to use what mode? thx.

That is kinda what this thread is all about. DVDShrink even said that he himself doesnt have enough experience with using 3.2 to tell what movies work best with what settings. Right now I havent done much experiment with max smoothness. I have found that sharp works great on movies that need very little compression 80% and up. I did Sorcerer's stone with max sharpness and it looked great so you might say that max sharpness works good on movie where more compression is needed. But then some people say max smoothness works good in these circumstances. As far as what might be good for high action scenes im not sure. I havent done enough testing with it yet. This will come with time. The program is still so new no one really knows what settings to use so we are all experimenting. And pitting it up against CCE (and its holding its own).

[quantum]

Just finished Marathon Man NTSC which is over 2 hours plus over an hour of extras. I reduced the main movie to %57 and the extras to %50 with default AEC. I keep looking for the compression artifacts or the pulsing backgrounds but I can't find them on the main movie. Honestly the extras don't look too bad either. I'll retry the same movie again tomorrow with Shrink 3.1.7. Weird..

Yes, it is safe, to use Shrink :) (movie related joke)

[arsmori]

I'm not entirely sure I understand AEC options, maximum smoothness give priority to temporal resolution and maximum sharpness to spacial resolution, is that it?

[begu]

Originally posted by nwg
I have done the PAL version of Return of The King with DVD-RB and CCE. I never got the results I wanted.

I have done it again with Shrink 3.2 and the default EAC. The picture is much better than my CCE version. It is sharper, better contrast and colour. This is playing on a 28" widescreen TV.


Yes, I tried the LOTR II ext.ed. disc 2 (R2) too with main movie at 63% of the original. I also did DVD-RB using CCE basic with same reduction ratio. Both did have default settings. It was hard to tell wich one was better, but the shrink version looked more clean and did have the same detail than CCE version. But it is very hard to decide between them, really. The CCE looked little more grainy and maybe more natural, but in some scenes the lesser artifacts in shrink version satisfied me more. I have to do more tests.

Well, does anyone know at what size percentage does the AEC kick in? When the movie is 80%, 70% or 60% or what? Thanks in advance. :)

[aicha]

I just tried AEC with "Maximum Smoothness" for x-files session-1/disc-1, but the result is the same like when i'm using 3.17 (3.17 look like original "looking"), esspecially episode-3, still have macro blocking or artifacts, very light blur. so i think this AEC, like feature in tmpgenc (quantize/other), cmiiw. thanks for replacing a title with a custom image, i'm still waiting for subtitle in preview dvdshrink for the next version.

this is from help tmpgenc;
Detect scene change - checkbox
Detects an huge change in the scene and sets the detected picture as I picture. This option helps to reduce MPEG blocknoise and cshould be left checked for better image quality.

Soften block noise - checkbox
When blocknoise is detected during decoding, this will soften the blocknoise. High values reduce the block noise but reduce the image sharpness. It should be used on low bitrate videos.

Intrablock: - field
Sets the softening strength for intrablock elements of the image.

Non-intrablock: - field
Sets the softening strength for non-intrablock elements of the image.

[Holomatrix]

I think what I'm getting is that if the movie needs high compression then do Max Smooth where as if a move that does not need much compression then stick with sharpness.

[Beak]

It would be great if dvdshrink could offer his thoughts on what options would be best for high compression movies, action movies etc. Even some input on what changes in processing are made between sharp and soft options would be helpful.

I just compressed Kill Bill Vol 2 with 7% reduction and the quality was of course fantastic. It processed at the same speed as the other versions of Dvdshrink have been doing so I am assuming little AEC was required.Default sharp was used.

The Green Mile on the other hand was compressed by 37% and took 3 full hours after the deep analysis. Default sharp was selected and there was a lot of correction going on, requiring over an extra hour of processing.

The results were very good with no noticeable defects seen on a 28 inch Sony TV.

I used to do such movies with CCE but I am not sure the extra processing and hassle is warranted now.

I'd love to know how to insert my own title picture but havn't found that on the guides yet. Updates for the guides are apparantly on the way.

I'd like to thank anyone who had anything to do with this great free app. It works flawlessly and if you ask me its better than InstantCopy d/t its flexibility. You can teach someone how to use it in about five minutes too.:)

[ddlooping]

Thanks for the positive feedback, Beak. :)

I doubt dvdshrink will be able to give much advice as to what setting to use and when, as, just like the rest of us, he hasn't had much experience using v3.2 yet. ;)

My understanding of the AEC options are as follow:
- "Maximum Sharpness" will try and compress B-frames almost to their maximum compressability before getting to work on the I then P-frames.
- "Maximum Smoothness" will try and spread compression more evenly between frame types.
- The other options are in-betweens.

[Beak]

With the B frames maximally compressed I am assuming this is where the jerkiness would come in, with reduced bi-directional control between key frames,is that correct?

The upside of this would be more bits available for the I and P.

I want to experiment with the max sharpness control. Can anyone tell me what type of scenes look the worst without B frames?

It also seems like being able to apply different AEC levels to the main movie vs. extras might be useful if you really choose to crunch the extras.:)

Its such a treat to have such a huge advance applied to an app you thought had stopped development. Thanks again!

[ddlooping]

Originally posted by Beak
With the B frames maximally compressed I am assuming this is where the jerkiness would come in, with reduced bi-directional control between key frames,is that correct?
I'd say yes about the first part. :)
As far as the "reduced bi-directional control between key frames" is concerned, I can only say... :confused: :D

[Beak]

Originally posted by ddlooping



My understanding of the AEC options are as follow:
- "Maximum Sharpness" will try and compress B-frames almost to their maximum compressability before getting to work on the I then P-frames.
- "Maximum Smoothness" will try and spread compression more evenly between frame types.
- The other options are in-betweens.

Can you tell me where you were able to learn this? I would like very much to learn more of how this AEC works.

Thanks, BK

[ddlooping]

Can you tell me where you were able to learn this?
While beta-testing. ;)

I can't say more or they might send someone after me.:scared:

[daehkcid]

Took me 15 minutes to DA & EAC Kill Bill 2, on a Centrino 1.6

[DVD Maniac]

Reading these various posts it occurs to me that we are seeking an answer to a very good question in totally the wrong way. There is more to this discussion than just the compression level, what about -

1. If the original is Interlaced or Progressive?
2. The Type of material in question (New Movie, Old Movie, VHS capture, Anime etc etc)
3. What type of monitor are you watching the end result (PC LCD, Plasma, TV tube etc etc etc)?

These will affect how the end result "looks" to the person watching the end result. If we are ever going to come up with the holy grail of "what setting should I use and when" we will have to get more sophisticated in the way we are going to set up these tests.

Or maybe we should just stick with the default setting and save some time for better things to be getting on with in the summer.

Just off to finish my BBQ ;)

[quantum]

After further testing and closely comparing captures, I'm using the "maximum sharpness" setting for everything. I think this setting most closely duplicates the original especially in high compression situations such as TV episode disks. The description is probably misleading since it doesn't seem to have anything to do with "sharpness" at all.

[JFerguson]

I just did some tests with Cold Mountain Disc 2 (Special Features) using the Default, Maximum Sharpness, and Maximum Smoothness settings. Looking at various frames, I think the results from Maximum Sharp beat out Maximum Smooth.

But, in a couple of tough frames, I almost think the results from the Default (plain 'ol Sharp) actually look better than Maximum Sharpness. I didn't expect that...

Compression was about 58% of original.

[As7r080y]

ok.... im gonna bitch for a bit... because as with anything there always has to be an explanation for things.

dvdshrink is a great program, and with these new features of AEC and deep analasys i believe that better quality can be achieved otherwise these options would not be in there...

The question that seems to be flying around on everyones tounges is WHAT SETTINGS TO USE, AND WHEN?

now i cant believe that not even the author of this program knows this.. when you read the help file it says... try it out and see what works best for you ?

that is just ridiculous.... !!!!!!!!

with cce reencoding... yes it is hard to use but once you know the way compression works you can adjust it to your likeling and it works... smoothing will smooth the overall pic... sharpness will sharpen it.... i dont think anyone actually knows what smoothing and sharpness means in dvdshrink.... sad sad.....

if the author put those options in there then he should thouroughly explain what they mean and when to use them in the most appropriate cases... eg... MAX SMOOTHNESS FOR ANYYTHING LESS THAN 60% COMPRESSION or MAX SHARPNESS FOR ANYTHING MORE THAN 80%.... etc...etc.. the possabilites are quite a few... but you know what i mean....

if the author of dvdshrink does not shed light on this then everyone here on this forum will only be speculating and the debate will never end...

if the author expects you to shrink a movie or animation and try all the settings till you get a good output then sorry but your going to spend half yourday shrinking and comparing...

if anyone actually knows the methodology behing the compressiona algorithms then please shed light on this so it does not keep comming up for god's sakes.

sorry for getting pissed but im sure im not the only one in this boat that feels this way.

regards....

[ddlooping]

You don't have to try the settings on the whole movie.
Try them on a chapter (or an even shorter part).
Simply switch to "Custom Ratio" before using "Start/End". :)
Then compare them in DVD Shrink, using its full-screen playback, and pick the one you prefer.

Having been a beta-tester, I can tell you I haven't found a better way of going about it, as there doesn't seem to be any clear pattern as to what to use and when.
Hence dvdshrink writing in the help section.

I personally end-up using "Maximum Sharpness" on 95% of my backups.

P.S: dvdshrink doesn't have to thouroughly explain anything.
It's a free program, and you're free not to use it if it does not satisfy your needs. ;)

[dragongodz]

i dont think anyone actually knows what smoothing and sharpness means in dvdshrink.... sad sad.....
yes its sad, sad that you have not done any searching or reading. they HAVE been explained before. sharp is for sharper picture(compressing Bframes harder first etc) while smooth is for smoother playback(more consistant reduction over all frame types). actually just looking i see ddlooping said basically that near the top of this page. gee you looked hard didnt you ?

with cce reencoding... yes it is hard to use but once you know the way compression works you can adjust it to your likeling and it works
so you never have to change anything for different movies ? bull. have a read of the CCE and DVD-REBUILDER sections and you will find people suggesting different settings to try for different movies. why ? because every movie is different, from the amount of noise/grain to the way it was originally encoded and bit distribution. you try and make a theory that covers all that sometime.

if the author of dvdshrink does not shed light on this then everyone here on this forum will only be speculating and the debate will never end...
look at the age of the thread you have dragged up.

im gonna bitch for a bit... because as with anything there always has to be an explanation for things.
no there doesnt HAVE to be an explanation to everything. as ddlooping said its free so be thankful and if you want to know something first search and failing that ask politly.
oh and your not bitching your ranting, there is a difference. :D

[blutach]

@dragongodz

Noting your and as7r's location, and you can guess mine if you don't already know it, I guess, by his post as7 could be an import? My guess is a whingeing pom :D

[nwg]

DVD Shrink himself said he doesn't know what settings to use. He knows each setting as mathematical and techncial concepts.

I myself stick to the default sharp AEC most of the time. I do sometimes use the smoothness settings when using 50% or more compression.

It depends a lot on the DVD itself and things like bitrate.