Experiences with HC Encoder

[halpern]

All in all what can we see so far? Does CCE have competition with HC or is it good to say that CCE is still on top? I have yet to do any tests. Thanks.

[hank315]

@johnhamler1
is it possible to make more than 2 pass, 3 or even 4 pass???.No, that's not possible.
And I have no plans to implement more passes, HC (just like Quenc) is set up in such a way it only needs 2 passes.

BTW,someone can explain me in 2-3 lines what a matrix is? how it works?For a simple matrix explanation:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?threadid=89897

Just read the post by neuron2, best explanation in just a few lines.

This is a short explanation how it works, how it will work out for your video that's a total different story...
It takes a lot of reading and trying to find out what's best for you.

[SAPSTAR]

Originally posted by johnhamler1
...BTW,someone can explain me in 2-3 lines what a matrix is? how it works?

I guess there is a matrix for cartoon like "Incredibles" or "searching Nemo", what do u suggest? ...

I suggest you to use QMatOp ;) http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=92810
It was tested with HC and they work really well together.....

[archaeo]

Any type of consensus here yet on where HC may be better/worse equipped for certain sources than CCE? I've read comments from beta testers that indicate it is getting difficult to tell (the good news!), but others mention where it might not do as well as CCE, or does better. I've completed several encodes on my own that have looked very good, pretty much indistinguishable from CCE. I sure can't tell very easily, but I haven't yet 'pushed' HC yet as others may have.

Just wondering if others have come to any general impressions/ conclusions with regard to HC performance with varying sources. It looks a great tool to have in the shed, just wondering in what situations you'd lean toward bringing it out, or sticking with CCE.

[SAPSTAR]

Originally posted by archaeo
Any type of consensus here yet on where HC may be better/worse equipped for certain sources than CCE? I've read comments from beta testers that indicate it is getting difficult to tell (the good news!), but others mention where it might not do as well as CCE, or does better. I've completed several encodes on my own that have looked very good, pretty much indistinguishable from CCE. I sure can't tell very easily, but I haven't yet 'pushed' HC yet as others may have.

Just wondering if others have come to any general impressions/ conclusions with regard to HC performance with varying sources. It looks a great tool to have in the shed, just wondering in what situations you'd lean toward bringing it out, or sticking with CCE.
Well, what I noticed is that HC seems to be better than CCE for low bitrates or interlaced materials....But I also recently discovered that if you choose a really good Quality prec according to the bitrate in CCE, in fact CCE becomes better than HC.
Conclusion : I would say that if you are not to tweak settings in CCE, HC is the best choice for low bitrates and interlaced materials. Another alternative is the usage of QMatOp with CCE, I added new functions to adjust automatically the Qprec + VbrBias at the cell level in addition to the optimization of the matrices of course.....

[Edsel]

Hmm, seems most folks here had troubles with undersizing. I'm the opposite, I've tried it twice, and it's been oversized each time. Not by much, PGCEdit reports 16538 sectors or 31.95 MB, but enough to cause trouble.

HC 0.14, RB 0.93.2, running in Best mode, not one pass. Disks are Simpsons Season 3, disk 1 and 2, no angles or interleaving to cause troubles. Have removed the FBI warnings, studio logos with DVD Remake Pro before starting, doesn't normally affect anything.

I do have a CCETargetSectors=2245000, but that shouldn't be affecting HC.

[jdobbs]

That's probably about right. The default TargetSectors setting is slightly under a full disc. There is also an HCTargetSectors "hidden" setting as well.

[feedback]

@jdobbs

Can we just drop the New HCbatch_015 in the encoder folder in DVD-RB Pro.

Or, are you about to release an update, say v0.94Pro., with the updated HC encoder included?

Regards,:)

[hank315]

I just released a new version of HC: HC015

For DVD-RB users, you can just replace the old exe with this new one, should work OK.

[feedback]

@hank315

Darn, in the middle of an encode with HC_14 in DVD-RB.

Not that I want to lose quality for speed, but is HC_15 any faster?

Quality comes first for me. Otherwise, I would just use a transcoder.

Regards,:)

[osho]

I wanted to try this encoder, but for some reason everytime I want to encode with DVDRB HC pops up a GUI and then I get XP error that application has crashed.

-------------------------------
AMD 3700+, 2GB RAM, 560GB HDD
XP PRO SP2

[Rockas]

I wanted to try this encoder, but for some reason everytime I want to encode with DVDRB HC pops up a GUI and then I get XP error that application has crashed.

-------------------------------
AMD 3700+, 2GB RAM, 560GB HDD
XP PRO SP2
You must point the path to HCbatch file under Rebuilder's setup dialog.

edit: spelling

[BadServo]

I jsut upgraded to 0.15 last night for an encode. I've always had extremely good results with HC, and only occational undersizing. However, this encode with 0.15, went from a 5.10GB disc to a 4.70GB disc. That's a substantial oversize. Source material is only about 2hours long. Any ideas? Possible incompatibility between 0.15 and DVD-RB?

[hank315]

@BadServo
Strange you got such an oversize, in fact I did only a few minor changes in the bitrate control for HC015.
There shouldn't be any incompatibilities between 0.15 and DVD-RB.
Will run some tests (again) with RB and HC015, will let you know.

[Rippraff]

@hank315

I've made a test with RB and 0.15 last night, final size was 4.36GB. :)
I've had difficulties with dropped frames with 0.14 on my overclocked AMD XP-M which I haven't with 0.13. Now everything is working perfect again! http://www.cheesebuerger.de/images/smilie/froehlich/a020.gif
Thanks for your excellent work! :)

Cu Rippraff

[BadServo]

Thanks, I'll continue playing with it myself. What intruiges me is that this particular disc is the third in a set of anime episodic DVDs. Each disc is virtually identical as far as running time, extras, etc. So I found it odd to get such drastically different results compared to the encodes I performed on Vol 1 & 2 using HC 0.14.

Thanks for the input.

[alfixdvd]

@hank315

I've made a test with RB and 0.15 last night, final size was 4.35GB.

All's right.

[BadServo]

Hank315, just a quick suggestion... Would it be possible to implement a process priority setting in the GUI that is retained between sessions? I often run my encodes on my main machine, and having HC running in the background at the Normal priority heavily inhibits my PC's usefulness.

I'm aware that I can use the Task Manager to manually adjsut the priority after launch, but on titles with dozens of very small segments, that's not very useful, since the priority will reset itself to normal on each launch.

Just a humble suggestion.

[Fishman0919]

Hank315, just a quick suggestion... Would it be possible to implement a process priority setting in the GUI that is retained between sessions? I often run my encodes on my main machine, and having HC running in the background at the Normal priority heavily inhibits my PC's usefulness.

I'm aware that I can use the Task Manager to manually adjsut the priority after launch, but on titles with dozens of very small segments, that's not very useful, since the priority will reset itself to normal on each launch.

Just a humble suggestion.

SAPSTAR posted this last week Link (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=95642) ... works with HC... it's been know for awhile but I think people forgot about it

[BadServo]

Ah yes, I did see that. Never occured to me to try it on HC though. Thanks.

[Fishman0919]

Ah yes, I did see that. Never occured to me to try it on HC though. Thanks.

NP ;)

[feedback]

Thanks, I'll continue playing with it myself. What intruiges me is that this particular disc is the third in a set of anime episodic DVDs. Each disc is virtually identical as far as running time, extras, etc. So I found it odd to get such drastically different results compared to the encodes I performed on Vol 1 & 2 using HC 0.14.


Well I am backing up my "Band of Brothers" 6 disc set, I get 4463Mb with HC-15
and 4465Mb with HC-14. I have HCTargetSectors set at 2261000. There are 2 episodes plus extras on each disk. I am encoding the complete disk with the HC encoder in DVD-RB Pro. The first one I used the default matrix, then switched to the BDVD matrix for the second disk, they both look good, but at the time I prefered the BDVD matrix over the default in HC14.

Now with HC15 it looks even better on the same disk with the default matrix.
Hank315 did you change something in the matrix in HC15?

I mean it looks better than the original disk. The original has that sort of grainy faded color look to it for a World War 2 movie. And of course there are plenty of action scenes. (Great Movie Series BTW).

So, I am having no problem with HC15 and actually prefer the copy over the original.

How often does it happen that your reencoded movie looks better than the original? That really speaks well of HC and DVD-RB IMHO.

Regards,:)

P.S. Typical bitrate was 3777. Normal quality setting. Default matrix. GOP auto. DC precision 10

edit: spelling
edit ps

[hank315]

@BadServo
HC itself runs at a normal priority but it starts another thread which does the actual encoding.
The priority for that one is set to THREAD_PRIORITY_BELOW_NORMAL.

@feedback
No, I didn't change anything related to matrices.
Because of the better motion estimation (and some other tweaks) the general quality of HC015 will be better than HC014 :)

[archaeo]

Just wanted to report some excellent results w/HC v15 beta. Backup was 'hoop dreams': 210 min, full disc w/extras, avg bitrate 1988. I applied undot/deen filters, and ran it through RB v93.2 onto one dvd5... results are excellent, no artifacts, and came in right at 4.33 gb. Just very pleased with how this little encoder handles the low bitrate sources - it's fast becoming my primary tool for these instances. kudos to hank ;)

[gizzin]

I did encodes of Trailer Park Boys Season 4. I kept everything averaging a bitrate of 3200kb for disc 1 and 3000 for disc 2. I used both HC 15 (Best Quality) and CCE 2.67 (4Passes). And clearly the winner was HC, Im very impressed in its quality especially even more so it is free. And its sizing is accurate. Keep up the good work hank. Also a heads up to jdobbs for making DVD rebuilder which makes use of a good free encoder.

[johnhamler1]

dont shout to loud it is free, hank can change his mind anytime!!!

[Fiebre]

Just wanted to make sure; is everyone getting consistent results from opv with HC? I'd be much quicker to jump on this then. Thanks.

[greinedo]

Hello,

I encoded with success many PAL DVDs with DVD Rebuilder and QuEnc.
But as soon as I try to use HC Encoder in place of QuEnc, I always experience the same problem : messed picture. It seems here that the wrong resolution is used for decoding or encoding. Is it linked with PAL/NTSC change ?

It is surely something very simple, but any help will be appreciated.

This is what it looks like :

http://img278.echo.cx/img278/540/problem1ky.jpg

Thanks

[gigah72]

i noticed that it's turned on, but why?
i won't cut the movie afterwards and i believe it will not improve the video, coz it's stealing bits, too.
useing 1.00rc1

[hank315]

@greinedo
Seems you're using Avisynth 2.5.6 beta3, just install 2.5.6 beta2 and it will run OK.

@gigah72
Scene change detection is turned on by default.
If an encoder hits a scene change it will encode that frame completely intra because there's nothing to predict from previous frames.
I-frames are better for this so it will not steal bits but it will save bits.

[greinedo]

@hank315

OK it works perfect now. Never thought it was an AviSynth bug.
Thanks a lot :thanks: