best codec for prog scan 50hz ?

[alan.lovedog]

so....
there i was, happy using auto gordian knot to rip tv stuff - and it looked good.
then some crafty guy introduced me to dvd2avi and virtualdub, plus the gunnar thalin deinterlace and smooth filter.

end result - silky smooth 50fps prog scan pc video.

so now i want to use an appropriate codec - the guy said i should use wmv9 because i would get less artifacts than with xvid or divx at the chosen bitrate - around 220kbps

is he right? - should i use wmv9 or would divx serve me better?

as someone who usually uses auto GK it's so very confusing......

[Ark]

This is the 5 million dollar question: which codec is the best?

Answer: try out for yourself, your eyes are the only who can answer this for you.

Some like Xvid, some Wmv, some others RV10, DivX, Vp6, H.264... it's all a matter of taste.

I'll say that probably at such very low bitrate RV10, Wmv9 and VP6 are the best candidates, but a question: what resolution has this video?
Because 220 kbps is a loooooow bitrate even for a 320x240 video... just for curiosity... :)

[alan.lovedog]

to clarify -we're talking 225000000! - i.e if you right click windows will report 225kbps - a high bitrate.

[Ark]

Ooops, i've overseen something...

[celtic_druid]

So to clarify that would be mbps. Otherwise a 128k mp3, etc. would be massive.
225,000,000/8*1024^2=26.8MB/s. Now that is massive. 1.5GB/min.
12*576*720*25=124,416,000, so even raw YV12 would have a much lower bitrate. Unless I missed something?

I think that you mean 2.2mbps. A reasonably (but not insanely) high bitrate. Guess you could also mean 225kBps, which would be around 1.8mbps. b=bits B-bytes, so multiply B by 8.

[Mug Funky]

h.264

just make sure your compy is fast enough to decode it :)

the best encoder to try out is ateme's (is it out yet?), but i find x264 is doing pretty well already.

@ 2mbps xvid will probably do you (are you going 720x576 here? or scaling down to something like 512x384?).

wmv's inloop looks really naff to me - some parts are massively oversmooth, abutting onto jaggy-sharp areas. it's pretty ugly. besides that i hate microsoft, and couldn't bring myself to use their codec, even for pr0n.

RV10 might be a good option. it seems to look pretty good at most bitrates, but i haven't tested it much.

i'm leaning toward h.264 because it's at the forefront and still being developed, but in theory will beat all of the above codecs once it's matured a bit (it's been accepted into DVB, so that will happen rather quicker than without the commercial incentive, i think).

also there's an experimental codec called "snow" which promises to be extremely good once it's been developed a bit more.

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by alan.lovedog
so....
there i was, happy using auto gordian knot to rip tv stuff - and it looked good.
then some crafty guy introduced me to dvd2avi and virtualdub, plus the gunnar thalin deinterlace and smooth filter.

end result - silky smooth 50fps prog scan pc video.

I have done the same thing in the past. But it seems to create more problems than it really solves. It worked pretty well when Divx and Xvid interlaced encoding was new and kinda buggy. But now they are rather mature. I have found that files encoded as interlaced are generally smaller, look as good, and take alot less system resources to play back than bob deinterlaced content. Further you can use ffdshow to do bob deinterlace on playback if you are watching on your monitor now.

Originally posted by alan.lovedog
so now i want to use an appropriate codec - the guy said i should use wmv9 because i would get less artifacts than with xvid or divx at the chosen bitrate - around 220kbps

If you are rather a newb when it comes to manually encoding outside GK etc then WM9 will probably give you less artifacts to start with. But if you are sufficiently knowledgable with Xvid etc you should be able to encode faster with as good a quality or better than WM9 rather handily. WM9 is not bad for beginners. And even experienced users can do ok with it. But MPEG4 is hard to beat.

[alan.lovedog]

yep- wmv takes a long time on my 3ghz HT pentium - the second pass runs at between 2 and 4 frames per second - an age in comparison to divx encoding.

i'll investigate h264 - for the martial arts sporting events i am encoding the 50fps video really does make a massive difference.