Optimal Settings (In your opinion) for Animation/CGI

[gizzin]

I'm just curious what the recommended or best in your opinion settings for VBR_BIAS and Quality_Prec when encoding animation or CGI. Any other things can be done to improve quality. I get poor quality animation encodes with the default settings at bitrates above 3000kb

[Guest]

According to forum rule 12, there are no best settings. Please rephrase your question and thread title to conform to forum rules. Thank you.

[onesoul]

Originally posted by gizzin
I get poor quality animation encodes with the default settings at bitrates above 3000kb What kind of quality problems are you referring to?

[gizzin]

I get lots of edge artifacts and quite abit of noise. Really noticeable with southpark seasons which have a bitrate over 3000.

[onesoul]

Those edge artifacts and noise occurs throughout the clip or at some particular scenes? And is it interlaced or progressive?

[FFA]

I have the same problem with my simpsons dvds!!! the qual is very bad !!! can not accept that! some one there know whats wrong there are nothing with a normal movie there is the qual fine!

please help!

[onesoul]

@ FFA

You got to be more specific, what settings and encoder did you use? Is the simpsons dvd interlaced? What is the avg bitrate?
You can answer my previous questions too.

[FFA]

Simpsons season 4 yes it is interlaced!
and i use encoder Cinema Craft Encoder 2.50 SP
VBR_Bias = 20
Quallity_prec = 16
VBR_passes = 4

don't know what the AVG birate is where can i found out ?

[gizzin]

It is throughout most of the episodes.

[onesoul]

@ FFA & gizzin

With interlaced source (although not sure, I believe that southpark series are interlaced also) I recommend using other encoder such as freeware HC or Quenc or the commercial Procoder, any of them will be superior to CCE regarding interlaced encoding.

Don't use filters with interlaced source unless you know what you are doing.

Average bitrate can be found in the main window of DVD Rebuilder.

Use GOP 15 2 if it is NTSC interlaced source, all other cases use GOP 12 2.

When dealing with CGI and/or progressive source CCE is very good, regarding its settings:
- keep in mind that default CCE's bias is 30, and until now I had better results with 40, you can see a test I made here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&postid=648816#post648816).
Quality_prec at 16 is good default.
The CCE standard matrix (mpeg2 matrix) or QLB matrix are the ones I use.

What I recommend here is based on my findings and I am probably repeating myself, anyway I hope you find it useful.

[FFA]

My preparation... loooks like this!!!
[03:10:44] Phase I, PREPARATION started.
- VTS_03: 3.399.883 sectors.
-- ANGLE and/or INTERLEAVING is present.
-- Scanning and writing .D2V file
-- Processed 276.208 frames.
-- Building .AVS and .ECL files
- Reduction Level for DVD-5: 29,1%
- Overall Bitrate : 2.000Kbs
- Space for Video : 1.055.310KB
- HIGH/LOW/AVERAGE Cell Bitrates: 5.734/2.000/2.000 Kbs
[03:16:34] Phase I, PREPARATION completed in 6 minutes.


i have testet that simpsons dvd with dvd2dvd!! with cinema craft encode sp 2.50 same encoder i use with dvd rebuilder!!!!
but with dvd2dvd damn the qual its great!!!! but it is for main movie only!!!

but with dvd rebuilder the qual is very poor!!

but i know in that dvd2dvd there is that "Max_bitrate" and "Min_bitrate" and i can set the max avg!!!
But i found some hidden settings for dvd rebuilder and i will try to put them into my rebuilder.ini file! and see if it helps.. as i understand is dvd rebuilder dosent have a "Min_Bitrate" and "Max_Bitrate"

[onesoul]

I find it weird that low bitrate is 2000 kbps, but avg. of 2000 kbps is low, maybe you could remove some unwanted audio streams to increase available bitrate.

And if you use pro version, you can choose movie+menu for example, or have movie only or even remove some video streams.

[FFA]

ok i try to remove some audio then i get back :)

i use freeware edtion!

[FFA]

[03:59:02] Phase I, PREPARATION started.
- VTS_03: 3.399.883 sectors.
-- ANGLE and/or INTERLEAVING is present.
-- Scanning and writing .D2V file
-- Processed 276.208 frames.
-- Building .AVS and .ECL files
- Reduction Level for DVD-5: 36,0%
- Overall Bitrate : 2.000Kbs
- Space for Video : 1.307.054KB
- HIGH/LOW/AVERAGE Cell Bitrates: 7.373/2.000/2.000 Kbs
[04:05:43] Phase I, PREPARATION completed in 6 minutes.

i have removed 5 audio streams now!
and it it stills end up with AVERAGE = 2.000 Kbs

[FFA]

btw what AVERAGE bitrate should it be...
so it be good quallity?

[feedback]

@grizzin

Any other things can be done to improve quality

Have you tried a different Matrix for the main movie? ReBuMan's
QuEnc b1 matrix for instance or Kika Comic High Matrix, perhaps.

Regards,:)

[onesoul]

I don't understand how average bitrate could remain the same.

About the ideal average bitrate, there's no saying, it depends on source, low/high action, and a bunch of other stuff. One thing remains for certain, a interlaced source will require more bitrate than a progressive one.

[FFA]

where can i found out if my dvd is interlaced og progressive

[onesoul]

Do you use NTSC or PAL DVD's?

DVD Rebuilder will detect progressive/interlaced by looking at the stream flags. So you just have to check the last line of the generated .avs script and see if there is a convettoyXXX(interlaced=true), if there isn't the interlaced=true setting than the source is progressive.

What happens is that sometimes the flags aren't correct, and for my understanding it seems to only happen in PAL land. So in the cases you want to make sure, you can load the generated avs file in Virtualdub/Vdubmod and seek for combing lines, specially on moving part, if you can't see any than the source is progressive.

You can rest sure that major releases of blockbuster films are progressive, but you never know.

[FFA]

okey but i use PAL DVD's :) and i think it is progressive...

[00:12:23] Phase I, PREPARATION started.
- VTS_03: 3.399.883 sectors.
-- ANGLE and/or INTERLEAVING is present.
-- Scanning and writing .D2V file
-- Processed 276.208 frames.
-- Building .AVS and .ECL files
- Reduction Level for DVD-5: 34,5%
- Overall Bitrate : 3.000Kbs
- Space for Video : 1.251.854KB
- HIGH/LOW/AVERAGE Cell Bitrates: 6.963/3.000/3.000 Kbs

i have put in the hidden setting min_bitrate and i have set it to 3000 and max_bitrate to 9000

[onesoul]

i have put in the hidden setting min_bitrate and i have set it to 3000 and max_bitrate to 9000 You shouldn't set min_bitrate that high, please remove that line and let DVD-Rebuilder assign the default value. You shouldn't mess with hidden settings unless you are sure about what you are doing.

[FFA]

if i let dvdrebuilder asign the default value... i get 978 average bitrate ore 2000 average!
and i have remove audio streams! i don't need!

thats why i have put it the hidden setting! the qual gets great hehe but it not fit on a 4.7 gb dvd disc

[onesoul]

Are you it's not min 978 and average of 2000 that you get?

I don't see why it wouldn't fill the dvd disc.

[FFA]

hehe it fill out... but it is too biiiig :)
i get that average bitrate with my simpsons season 4

i get
978 ore 2000 average
and that simpsons season is on 4 dvd disc i can try to prepare all of them and show the result here
so you can see the average bitrate and i have remove the hidden setting min_bitrate=

here it comes:
DVD disc 1:

[18:58:58] Phase I, PREPARATION started.
- VTS_03: 3.399.883 sectors.
-- ANGLE and/or INTERLEAVING is present.
-- Scanning and writing .D2V file
-- Processed 276.208 frames.
-- Building .AVS and .ECL files
- Reduction Level for DVD-5: 27,5%
- Overall Bitrate : 742Kbs
- Space for Video : 1.000.110KB
- HIGH/LOW/AVERAGE Cell Bitrates: 5.734/1.088/742 Kbs
[19:04:27] Phase I, PREPARATION completed in 6 minutes.

-----------------------------------------------------------
DVD disc 2:

[15:22:58] Phase I, PREPARATION started.
- VTS_01: 3.085.888 sectors.
-- ANGLE and/or INTERLEAVING is present.
-- Scanning and writing .D2V file
-- Processed 247.514 frames.
-- Building .AVS and .ECL files
- Reduction Level for DVD-5: 53,7%
- Overall Bitrate : 1.956Kbs
- Space for Video : 2.364.204KB
- HIGH/LOW/AVERAGE Cell Bitrates: 6.000/2.099/1.956 Kbs
[15:27:42] Phase I, PREPARATION completed in 5 minutes.
-----------------------------------------------------------
DVD disc 3:

[15:11:13] Phase I, PREPARATION started.
- VTS_01: 3.260.519 sectors.
-- ANGLE and/or INTERLEAVING is present.
-- Scanning and writing .D2V file
-- Processed 274.041 frames.
-- Building .AVS and .ECL files
- Reduction Level for DVD-5: 40,5%
- Overall Bitrate : 1.248Kbs
- Space for Video : 1.670.442KB
- HIGH/LOW/AVERAGE Cell Bitrates: 6.000/1.520/1.248 Kbs
[15:16:37] Phase I, PREPARATION completed in 5 minutes.
- Detected ANGLE and/or INTERLEAVING on source.
-----------------------------------------------------------
DVD disc 4:

[15:17:15] Phase I, PREPARATION started.
- VTS_01: 3.218.199 sectors.
-- ANGLE and/or INTERLEAVING is present.
-- Scanning and writing .D2V file
-- Processed 231.234 frames.
-- Building .AVS and .ECL files
- Reduction Level for DVD-5: 53,3%
- Overall Bitrate : 2.422Kbs
- Space for Video : 2.734.072KB
- HIGH/LOW/AVERAGE Cell Bitrates: 6.000/2.417/2.422 Kbs
[15:22:16] Phase I, PREPARATION completed in 5 minutes.
-----------------------------------------------------------

You see what i meen?