Captured Mpegs and Editing

[Zach]

First, since this is my very first post, let me just quickly say that I only just discovered this site back in December, but I have been lurking almost daily ever since and am utterly amazed by the wealth of knowledge and skill everyone here has! You guys rock. :cool:


Okay, I've been waiting five tortuous days to ask this, so here goes. Also, I'm new to video editing, so I'm posting this here in the Newbies section instead of the Video Capturing section where it probably belongs. Hopefully, that's okay. If not, I apologize.


I am transferring my S-VHS (and a few standard VHS) tapes to DVD. What I decided to do was just purchase a DVD-Recorder (Panasonic DMR-E85HS (http://www2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/vModelDetail?displayTab=O&storeId=11251&catalogId=11005&itemId=70437&catGroupId=11058&modelNo=DMR-E85HS&surfModel=DMR-E85HS)) since I can also use it to replace my VCR.

Since most video editing seems to be geared around AVI files, this is where most of my questions come in. My needs are simple, hence why I'm a little lost even after reading all the guides. :(


[Question 1] My DVD recorder records everything in 704x480, Interlaced, TFF format. (I have no clue what colorspace.) This is fine and normal, but the thing is that since I play everything out in 480p mode to my digital TV, should I go ahead and deinterlace these captures (on the PC) before I edit and filter them? (I know from the guides that it is generally recommended to leave interlaced material interlaced if it's only going to be viewed on a TV--which it is--but all the guides seem to presume an old fashioned interlaced TV and not a newer generation digital TV with progressive scan input capabilities.)

[Question 2] I purchased TMPGEnc's MPEG Editor (and also later their 3.0 XPress s/w since I needed the AC-3 plug-in, and buying it in a bundle package was fairly inexpensive). I use this to edit my mpegs since it makes it super easy to cut and splice the video at the frame level. This is fine and good, but as I alluded to above, I also want to be able to filter (remove noise, color correction, etc.) my captures, and in some cases, resize my captures.

Unfortunately, again, everything seems to be geared toward AVI files. I am extremely interested in using AviSynth as I'm an old-school programmer, and being able to manipulate my videos programmatically is like a dream come true. :D The thing is that it seems that to be able to use it in conjuction with VirtualDub requires a lot of effort and a lot of bloat-ware to keep everything in mpeg-2 format. I know there is VirtualDubMod which directly supports mpeg-2 files, but that seems to have died a couple of years ago (in terms of updates).

I'm not sure what my question is here. :rolleyes: I guess the question is what is the very minimum I would need to use AviSynth to process my captures? Can TMPGEnc's MPEG Editor process avs files?


[Question 3] I, like everyone I suppose, am extremely concerned about maintaining the highest possible quality I can from my captures. Since everything I'm recording (excluding the few S-VHS transfers) is coming in from my satellite, that means the video when I get a hold of it will have already been compressed twiced: the satellite itself is sending an mpeg-2 data stream which then gets converted to analog which, in turn, is compressed again by my DVD-Recorder. Sure, I record things with the lowest possible compression (bitrate 7-8 kbps, or, 1 hour/DVD), but still, I'm obviously not starting off with the best possible source material since it's been transcoded twice already.

My question is about what mpeg-2 encoder to use. (Once AviSynth has done its thing, the video data will need to be encoded again naturally.) I've read a number of posts here that seem to conclude that my choice of TMPGEnc is actually the worst possible choice, both in terms of quality and in terms of speed. CCE seems to be the best, but I'm not really willing to spend $2,000 for an encoder. :eek:

Is there some middle ground? If so, what is it, where can I get it, and how much does it cost? :)

[killingspree]

hi and welcome to the forum,

honestly, you've done great work in composing this post. thumbs up for this effort!

to your questions:

Q1: honestly, this is most likely going to be a judgment call, one that you, and only you alone, can make. deinterlace some material and compare it to the interlaced material (which naturally is being deinterlaced by your TV) and see which is doing the better job, the avisynth deinterlacer or your TV. in addition you might want to consider that deinterlacing can save you some bitrate, as encoding interlaced eats up some bitrates, although i wouldn't say it's in visible dimensions...

Q2: the bare minimum to use avisynth you need isn't much... actually, all you need is this guide (http://www.doom9.org/mpg/d2a-mpeg2dec.htm) and some freeware software like DgIndex or DgDecode (updated versions of DVD2AVI and mpeg2dec) - don't let yourself get confused over the name changes...
you do not need virtualdub(mod). virtualdub is only used for encoding steps in conjunction with avi files. so there's definitely no need for you to use it. what you might find useful is virtualdubmods avisynth script editor which makes writing avisynth scripts much easier imho.
after you're done editing the video in avisynth, all you need is to feed it to tmpegEnc (iirc it takes avs files as input - if not, there's a couple of workarounds) and encode it to mpeg2 again.

Q3: of course we're all concerned with quality ;)
anyway, if you want to avoid the reencoding between your sat reciever and your dvd recorder i would recommend you to take a look into the DVB-s PCI cards sector. those devices enable you to directly capture the digitally broadcasted content without reencoding in between.

apart from that, your choice of encoder is not bad, and definitely not the worst choice!! of course CCE yields better quality, but as you said, it comes with a hefty price tag. so as long as you're satisfied with tmpegEnc stick with it. if you want to test out alternatives, maybe you'd like to try QuEnc - a freeware mpeg2 encoder.

hth
if you want me to move your post to the capturing forum, just tell me, shouldn't be a problem :)

kr
steVe

[jggimi]

:goodpost: :helpful: Wow, Zach, you've made a terrific first impression! Great questions, well thought out, excellent research!

Q1: To deinterlace or not?

I agree with Killingspree; compare the same content deinterlaced by the PC and again by your player/TV setup. As he mentioned, your TV may act as the deinterlacer if set to 480i, but if set to 480p, it might be your DVD player doing the deinterlacing. So you may want to compare output in both 480i and 480p, and your player's settings for managing interlaced video, too.

Q2: Editing / Frameserving?

Its great that you found an MPEG-2 editor you like. And you are correct; if you insert AviSynth scripting between your editor's output and your encoder's input, you can do further manipulation of the video prior to encoding.

You might want to give Gordian Knot a try; it makes a terrific AviSynth script generator from VOB or MPEG-2 input. It was designed to encode MPEG-4 .avi files, but you don't have to use its .avi bitrate calculator or its encoding features. Just click "Save" rather than "Save & Encode" to quickly generate .avs scripts that can then be edited and used in MPEG-2 encoders. (It has the ability to resize to VCD/SVCD resolution built-in. In your case, you'll probably want to set PAR to 1:1 and select 720x480 if you want to resize up from 704x480.)

Q3: Quality?

You've already recognized the impact of multiple lossy encodings.

If you're interested in comparing other MPEG-2 encoders to TMPGEnc, you can certainly compare QuEnc, its freeware. CCE Basic is a consumer-grade version of CCE, priced to compete with TMPGEnc, that you might also want to take a look at. Cinema Craft offers trial versions of both CCE Basic and CCE SP.

Once again, welcome!

[Nick]

Killingspree pretty much nailed that one but I do have a couple of addenda to it.

Q1 To deinterlace or not to deinterlace? You talk of wishing to resize some of your footage in Avisynth. If you wish to resize vertically, this is difficult with interlaced footage. A forum search on "interlaced resizing" will get you some useful stuff but to be honest I would say it would be easiest and probably best to deinterlace before vertical resizing.

Q2 Nothing to add

Q3 I tried this the other day
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=88888
and the quality blew me away. This is MAGIC! It is in its infancy so may have a number of issues to iron out but definitely worth a look. That said, TMPGEnc is fine and easy to use if you're fairly inexperienced.

[Zach]

Thank you all for the helpful (and speedy...wow!) replies.

About the deinterlacing, yeah, it's my dvd recorder/player that is doing the deinterlacing. In the limited comparing I have done switching it (somewhat on the fly) between 480i and 480p mode, I honestly could not tell any difference between the two resulting images as seen on my TV.

Being an engineer (software and electrical), I just have this innate attraction to progressive mode video since it just seems more orderly and easier to manage. :) Also, as Nick pointed out, I have read (in various guides) how it's easier to process progressive video. (From a mathematical standpoint, I can easily understand how this would be true.)

About testing it myself, as suggested by killingspree and jggimi, I actually did this and didn't like the results. It was hard to ABX it on my TV and it may have been my imagination--what's the video equivalent to "psycho-acoustic effect?"--but I'm pretty sure that the progressive clip seemed to stutter (not sure how to describe the effect) in certain spots. Maybe "shimmer" better describes it. <shrug>

I chalk this up to my "newbie-ness" and am probably wrong, but being that there are apparently so many deinterlacing filters around (for AviSynth anyway), I have concluded that deinterlacing must not be an exact science. (Before now, I shamefully must admit that I thought, "...take two frames, interweave the data [at the pixel level], and your done. How hard can that be? :confused: ) Anyway, my point is that for now, I have been blaming TMPGEnc's XPress software for the shimmer. I guess when I get AviSynth set up and working, I'll do some more testing.


Okay, well, thanks for the link to that DVD2AVI & MPEG2DEC (http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/mpg/d2a-mpeg2dec.htm) guide. I'll try that out today. Also, thanks for the link (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=88888) to that new experimental encoder. I'll definitely check that out, too.

From this point forward, I'll just post any further questions in a separate, single-topic (and not so long-winded) post in the appropriate forum. ;)

Again, thanks for all the replies, and thank you for making newbie feel so welcome!