XviD from Laserdisc

[EnergeticBence]

What settings should I use for laserdisc captures. ( high quality player, and disc, B&W NTSC Film source ) I do not intend to do any noise filtering, ( trying to preserve it as close to original as possbile ) I`m looking for DVD size transfers of around 100 minutes.
( I`m using HuffYUV for capture to HD )
Would upsizing be a good idea or stick wih 640x480. Also what settings should I use to handle the noise best? It isn't much though I went all-out to reduce it. Also what custom matrix should I use? Is there one specifically for B&W content? ( as far as shielding capture card, and using high quality cables )
Also it would be played back on high end computer, standalone compatibility is not required.



-EB

[Mug Funky]

if standalone compatibility isn't required, try a constant quantizer of 2. b-frames if you want them (defaults will probably do for them).

this will give you a big file. probably comparable to DVD bitrate (probably less).

greyscale can be set in the zone options. it'll speed things up some, too.

[EnergeticBence]

Given max size is limited ( about 4GB, considering audio ) would B-frames be beneficial or not?

Could it be possible for a larger encode to look worse than a smaller because of the settings?

[Mug Funky]

unless you turn all nice features off (like motion estimation), generally a large encode will be better looking than a smaller one.

b-frames would be nice. if you have limited space and a fast computer, you could go 2-pass. otherwise just set 1-pass to an average bitrate of something like 5000-6000kbps. that'll be fine for DVD, and should be more than fine for your encode. without knowing how compressible your source is, i can't really say how big a q2 encode will be. you could start one off and watch the average bitrate.

cartoon mode will handle (ignore?) noise more than regular mode, but i wouldn't recommend it for natural images unless you're getting problems with noise swimming around (highly unlikely at q2).

[Blue_MiSfit]

If you are encoding 100 mins at 640x480, a cq2 encode probably won't fill 4 gigs.

I would say try the following settings:

bframes at defaults (try with and without)
qpel
no adaptive quant (since you have so much filesize to play with)
VHQ4 & BVOP VHQ (if you are using the 1.1 test build)
Didee's 6of9 or maybe Sharktooth's V3HR matrix
Trellis, and all quants capped from 2-31
grayscale (obviously)

Also, I always reccommend setting a zone up to encode the credits at cq31 to save some space.

How are you capping the LaserDisc? Are you capturing with RCA or S-video inputs? If you can, cap into Huffy using S-Video, and cap the audio into PCM WAV, and perhaps make an AC3 out of this audio capture.

After you know how big your audio file will be (the AC3), check the resulting filesize of your cq2 encode. If audio+video>what you want your final size to be, then play with settings. Some suggestions to save bitrate if you have to (i doubt you will)

1) enable adaptive quant
2) enable bframes if you haven't already
3) just do a 2 pass encode and have some q3-5 frames

any combination of the above will make things smaller :)

At any rate, this sounds like a fun little project.

let us know how it works, I have always wondered how LaserDisc would do in MPEG4

~misfit