MeGUI - x264/XviD/lavc/Snow encoder with MP4/MKV/AVI output & audio

[MrX]

I have the errormessage only by the reported "plugins".
All other updates works.
I have reported it to Microsoft. I hope that help to find the failure.

Can I do other things like "megui.exe -debug" to get a debuglog?

[Sharktooth]

uhm.... have you installed avisynth before running megui?
if so, before updating megui check if the avisynth plugins path is correct (in megui settings->program paths->other). if not, just correct it then run the update.

[MrX]

I first installed AviSynth in "C:\Program Files (x86)\DVD\AviSynth"
Now I have installed it in "C:\DVD\AviSynth" and it works now.

Thanks

[Sharktooth]

glad it works. vista is weird, so, please have some patience :)

[MrX]

Not Vista, WinXP 64bit with SP2 and all Updates.
I can't understand, why Microsoft use such a bad path "C:\Program Files (x86)" for the 32bit Programms.
In Vista the Path is the same. And some other WinXP bugs are in Vista too :-(

[Booji Boy]

Intermediate step AVS->AVI with MEncoder uses only one core...

Isn't MEncoder capable of multi-threading? Or is AviSynth the bottleneck here?

[check]

Intermediate step AVS->AVI with MEncoder uses only one core...

Isn't MEncoder capable of multi-threading? Or is AviSynth the bottleneck here?You mean encoding to huffyuv? avisynth is always single-threaded, unless you use the reasonable unstable MT version of it. mencoder can be multithreaded, but is not (AFAIK) for this operation with MeGUI.

[reallango]

https://forum.doom9.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=8611&stc=1&d=1215925866

I've been haveing this problem ever since megui went to official version 0.3.0.1014 It happens when I try useing the one click encode. I think it may have to do with the D2V Status error that also showed up in this release. I'm running Win xp home sp3 and it wasn't doing this with the beta release I was running before the update. As you can see from the error it seems like the D2V creator isn't passing the information back to megui after the idx file is created. although the audio is correctly demuxed and the idx file is correctly created. I have tried a complete reinstall of megui with no diffrence. I have 0.3.0.1015 installed and it is still haveing the same issue.

Thanks in advance for any help with this problem.
And also for such a usefull little program.

[Booji Boy]

You mean encoding to huffyuv? avisynth is always single-threaded, unless you use the reasonable unstable MT version of it. mencoder can be multithreaded, but is not (AFAIK) for this operation with MeGUI.
Yeah, that step it is I was referring to. So avisynth is the culprit here.

Anyone knows whether there are plans on making megui fully multi-core capable. Is this even possible with its current design of its process chain?

[check]

Yeah, that step it is I was referring to. So avisynth is the culprit here.No, the culprit is mencoder not threading the input video, which would let you use at least 2 cores partially.

Anyone knows whether there are plans on making megui fully multi-core capable. Is this even possible with its current design of its process chain?It already is. You can run arbitrary numbers of jobs using one of the many multi-threaded encoders included. Your question here is probably intended to "are there plans to make this particular function work on more cores?", the answer is "if there's a feature request on the MeGUI tracker, then maybe".

[Nozomi]

Sorry for a maybe stupid question... isn't it possible to have MeGUI to encode 23.97fps input to a say, 12fps output so as to save hopefully half of the encoding time? Of course sound track of the output video should be in sync during playback. The reason I asked is due to from time to time I would like to encode some non-PSP compatible movies and watch them on the road then delete after watched. I don't need perfect quality on those watch and delete kind of media but a super quick way to encode with MP4AVC is the most important and by reducing half number of frames shouldn't affect too much of picture quality at all?!

[Ryu77]

Sorry for a maybe stupid question... isn't it possible to have MeGUI to encode 23.97fps input to a say, 12fps output so as to save hopefully half of the encoding time? Of course sound track of the output video should be in sync during playback. The reason I asked is due to from time to time I would like to encode some non-PSP compatible movies and watch them on the road then delete after watched. I don't need perfect quality on those watch and delete kind of media but a super quick way to encode with MP4AVC is the most important and by reducing half number of frames shouldn't affect too much of picture quality at all?!

Use the AVIsynth command... ChangeFPS(12)

[Nozomi]

To my surprise, the result is not too promising... overall processing time is 30% faster but the processing rate is in fact slower maybe due to ChangeFPS(12) actually slow down the frame serving. Also to my surprise is that size of the resulting clip are exactly the same even if number of fps being cut to half.

Processing Rate
23fps Clip = 11.98 FPS
12fps Clip = 9.12 FPS

Processing Time
23fps Clip = 00:08:45
12fps Clip = 00:06:00

Source Clip
Format : RealMedia
File size : 22.7 MB
Duration : 4mn 33s
Overall bit rate : 682 Kbps
Width : 704 pixels
Height : 396 pixels
Frame rate : 23 fps
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.096

Output Clip (23fps)
Format : AVC
Duration : 4mn 33s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 405 Kbps
Nominal bit rate : 400 Kbps
Maximum bit rate : 1424 Kbps
Width : 480 pixels
Height : 272 pixels
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 23.000 fps
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.135
Stream size : 13.2 MiB (100%)

Output Clip (12fps)
Video
Format : AVC
Duration : 4mn 33s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 404 Kbps
Nominal bit rate : 400 Kbps
Maximum bit rate : 1252 Kbps
Width : 480 pixels
Height : 272 pixels
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 12.000 fps
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.258
Stream size : 13.2 MiB (100%)

[check]

The filesize is the same problably because you left the bitrate the same... ;)

[Nozomi]

Oh, you're right... but never mind, file size is not my main concern, ideas on further reduce processing time without giving up too much on picture quality are welcome. Below is encoding setting for reference:

Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=3 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x1:0x111 / me=umh / subme=6 / rdcmp=psy / brdo=1 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=0 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / chroma_qp_offset=0 / threads=1 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / mbaff=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=0 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / wpredb=1 / bime=1 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40 / rc=cbr / bitrate=400 / ratetol=1.0 / rceq='blurCplx^(1-qComp)' / qcomp=1.00 / qpmin=10 / qpmax=51 / qpstep=4 / vbv_maxrate=2000 / vbv_bufsize=500 / ip_ratio=1.40 / pb_ratio=1.30 / aq=2:1.00

[reallango]

is any body else useing the one click encoder and if so is it working in the new version.

[ZombiePimp]

is any body else useing the one click encoder and if so is it working in the new version.

I would be using the one click encoder if it worked :p

Yeah, still broken for me, just as described on the bug tracker.

[Sharktooth]

one click encoder is broken due to the dgindex update.
please use d2vcreator (only for dvd or mpeg2 sources)->avisynth script creator->autoencode as a substitute until we fix it.

[reallango]

one click encoder is broken due to the dgindex update.
please us d2vcreator (inly for dvd or mpeg2 sources)->avisynth script creator->autoencoe as a substitute until we fix it.

So is it possible for me to just use an older version of dgindex untill the problem is solved and if so do we know what version of dgindex still worked.

Edit: I did some reading and testing and it seems that useing the dgmpgdec 1.4.8 (AKA: dgindex) solves the problem. Although I'm not sure yet if you need to use the DGDecode.dll version 1.4.8 for avisyth plugin or not. Will test more later and post results.

Edit 2: Yes it looks as though booth programs dgindex and dgdecode must be down converted to version 1.4.8 in order to solve the problem. http://neuron2.net/dgmpgdec/dgmpgdec148.zip just download that and replace all files in the /megui/tools/dgindex folder. Then replace the dgdecode.dll file in you avisynth plugin folder with the one from the zip. If you do this after udateing to version 1.5.1 Megui will think it is up to date until a new version is released that hopefully fixes the problem.

[dansus]

Since the recent updates, my encoding speed has dropped by 25% on x264.

Nothing else has changed, same scripts, settings, hardware ect. Im using 901 and have tested below and above to 914 with the latest stable build.

Any thoughts on why this might be? I dont even know where to start on this one.

[Sharktooth]

not due to megui.
maybe some profiles changes, or x264 updates.

[Dark Shikari]

Since the recent updates, my encoding speed has dropped by 25% on x264.

Nothing else has changed, same scripts, settings, hardware ect. Im using 901 and have tested below and above to 914 with the latest stable build.

Any thoughts on why this might be? I dont even know where to start on this one.I'm going to guess that its because someone started patching the MeGUI build with Psy RDO, which increases quality (but decreases speed). I'm not sure if they have tossed in version 0.5 of the patch yet, which cuts the speed decrease in half.

[dansus]

I'm going to guess that its because someone started patching the MeGUI build with Psy RDO, which increases quality (but decreases speed). I'm not sure if they have tossed in version 0.5 of the patch yet, which cuts the speed decrease in half.

Hoping that might be the case and not my cpu fading.

I will look into that, thanks.

[dansus]

I will look into that, thanks.


I get back about 5% with 880-889.

Im using the ps3-360 profile in default, did that profile change in the update?


--------

[LOGiC]

Hi there all,

I am a complete newbie to x264 and to re-encoding, but I am very interested in this. I bought a Blu-Ray Standalone Player some days ago which is capable of AVCHD. Unfortunately the supported bitrate is just about 15mbits, so I would like to do some re-encoding of my stuff. I would like to use MeGui to reach the best possible quality.

Are there any guides available which figures to use, which checks to make in which field etc. to achieve good results ? Would be happy for every tip about how to start off.

Thank you guys in advance.

Best regards,

Andy.

[Sharktooth]

the word "best" and this forum are not compatible coz best is a subjective concept.
:readrule:

[Sharktooth]

I'm going to guess that its because someone started patching the MeGUI build with Psy RDO, which increases quality (but decreases speed). I'm not sure if they have tossed in version 0.5 of the patch yet, which cuts the speed decrease in half.

true, 0.5 patched build will be up on the autoupdate as soon as bobor will build it.
also, the theory is, if you want speed thou shall not use RDO.
if you use RDO modes then you dont care about the speed....

[LOGiC]

@Sharktooth

that was meant to be the best for myself. I am fully aware of the fact, that everything is subjective and people have other interpretations for the word "best". I just would like to have a point to pick up and start off.

[Sharktooth]

avc-hd and blu-ray have the same specs for h.264 except the bitrates.
if you know the values, you can create a new profile starting from the blu-ray ones and change the VBV parameters (18mbps as max bitrate for DVD medium and 15mbps as buffer) according to the AVC-HD specs (http://www.avchd-info.org/format/index.html).
if you would like to have an AVC-HD profile by default, ill include it in the next profiles update.

[LOGiC]

An AVC-HD profile by default would be great Sir.

Nevertheless, I will start reading about all the specs and trying to move around in the program. Maybe I can set something up.

Thank you.

[Sharktooth]

ok, working on it. in the meanwhile i updated the xvid profiles.

[smok3]

would it be very hard if megui would look for neroaacenc on system %path%?

[Sharktooth]

no, post a feature request in the megui feature request tracker (http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=798479&group_id=156112&func=browse).
it may take a while since we're all (devs) more or less busy.

[smok3]

ok, posted under 'nobody' for some reason...

[Sharktooth]

coz you dont have a SF account or didnt log in.
we dont care though. when the idea is good AND we have time to implement it, we'll do...

[JPSiemer]

I'm using the latest 0.3.0.1017 release of MeGUI and I cannot get 5.1 OGG encoding to work. My source is a 5.1 DTS and I am telling MeGUI to "Keep Original Channels", but every time I end up with a 2 channel file. I think this is a bug that needs fixing!

[Sharktooth]

report it in the megui bug tracker on megui's sourceforge project page.

[Archibald NME]

I'm using the latest 0.3.0.1017 release of MeGUI and I cannot get 5.1 OGG encoding to work. My source is a 5.1 DTS and I am telling MeGUI to "Keep Original Channels", but every time I end up with a 2 channel file. I think this is a bug that needs fixing!

This is OK for me on latest version. I just checked. Output is proper 6ch Vorbis.

[JPSiemer]

Figured out the 6CH OGG thing. AC3Filter was messing up the output.

I found another problem though, and I'm wondering if there is a fix for this...

If an AVS file references a media file that has a "»" character in it, then MeGUI will not open this AVS file. MeGUI will add an additional garbage character of "Â" before the "»", resulting in MeGUI not being able to open the file correctly.

I know I could just rename the file to something else, but I figured that this is a bug that you guys do not know about.

[Sharktooth]

do NOT use spaces or special chars in filenames/paths. windows doesnt support unicode filenames (Vista does but many other programs dont... so it's basically the same...).
simply avoid it to avoid problems.

[rkalwaitis]

Anyone,

Hello hope all is well. I really love Megui. It Rocks! By far!! Of course I have been waiting to play with snow codec. So I was all over the scratch pad for it. And Megui gave her hell too. But the process never is allowed to complete. Some of my project is encoded and then Im forced to close due to an error. Which I immediately snagged and am presenting to the smart folks. "You guys :)" It seems to be an MPlayer issue, which seems odd as I can not find MPLAYER in my version packet (0.3.1017). Anyways here it is.

-[Information] Log for job1 (video, Monty Walsh.avs -> Monty Walsh.avi)
--[Information] [8/6/2008 8:38:40 AM] Started handling job
--[Information] [8/6/2008 8:38:44 AM] Preprocessing
--[NoImage] Job commandline: "C:\Program Files\megui\tools\mencoder\mencoder.exe" "C:\Users\Baba\Downloads\Monty Walsh\Monty Walsh.avs" -ovc lavc -nosound -lavcopts vcodec=snow:vbitrate=690:vstrict=-2 -o "C:\Users\Baba\Downloads\Monty Walsh\Monty Walsh.avi" -of avi -ffourcc SNOW
--[Information] [8/6/2008 8:38:46 AM] Encoding started
--[NoImage] Standard output stream
---[NoImage] MEncoder dev-SVN-r23107-4.3.0 (C) 2000-2007 MPlayer Team
---[NoImage] CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+ (Family: 15, Model: 75, Stepping: 2)
---[NoImage] CPUflags: Type: 15 MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 1 3DNow2: 1 SSE: 0 SSE2: 0
---[NoImage] Compiled with runtime CPU detection.
---[NoImage] success: format: 0 data: 0x0 - 0xf4
---[NoImage] AVS file format detected.
---[NoImage] VIDEO: [YV12] 640x352 12bpp 23.976 fps 0.0 kbps ( 0.0 kbyte/s)
---[NoImage] [V] filefmt:38 fourcc:0x32315659 size:640x352 fps:23.98 ftime:=0.0417
---[NoImage] Opening video filter: [expand osd=1]
---[NoImage] Expand: -1 x -1, -1 ; -1, osd: 1, aspect: 0.000000, round: 1
---[NoImage] ==========================================================================
---[NoImage] Opening video decoder: [raw] RAW Uncompressed Video
---[NoImage] VDec: vo config request - 640 x 352 (preferred colorspace: Planar YV12)
---[NoImage] VDec: using Planar YV12 as output csp (no 0)
---[NoImage] Movie-Aspect is undefined - no prescaling applied.
---[NoImage] videocodec: libavcodec (640x352 fourcc=574f4e53 [SNOW])
---[NoImage] Selected video codec: [rawyv12] vfm: raw (RAW YV12)
---[NoImage] ==========================================================================
---[NoImage] Forcing output FourCC to 574f4e53 [SNOW].
---[NoImage] Writing header...
---[NoImage] ODML: Aspect information not (yet?) available or unspecified, not writing vprp header.
---[NoImage] Writing header...
---[NoImage] ODML: Aspect information not (yet?) available or unspecified, not writing vprp header.
--[NoImage] Standard error stream
---[NoImage] New_Face failed. Maybe the font path is wrong.
---[NoImage] Please supply the text font file (~/.mplayer/subfont.ttf).
---[NoImage] subtitle font: load_sub_face failed.
---[NoImage] Assertion failed: iscore >= 0, file snow.c, line 2169
---[NoImage] This application has requested the Runtime to terminate it in an unusual way.
---[NoImage] Please contact the application's support team for more information.
--[Information] [8/6/2008 9:08:58 AM] Job completed
-[Information] Log for job2 (video, Monty Walsh.avs -> Monty Walsh.avi)
--[Information] [8/6/2008 9:12:28 AM] Started handling job
--[Information] [8/6/2008 9:12:29 AM] Preprocessing
--[NoImage] Job commandline: "C:\Program Files\megui\tools\mencoder\mencoder.exe" "C:\Users\Baba\Downloads\Monty Walsh\Monty Walsh.avs" -ovc lavc -nosound -lavcopts vcodec=snow:vbitrate=400:pred=2:vstrict=-2 -o "C:\Users\Baba\Downloads\Monty Walsh\Monty Walsh.avi" -of avi -ffourcc SNOW
--[Information] [8/6/2008 9:12:31 AM] Encoding started
--[NoImage] Standard output stream
---[NoImage] MEncoder dev-SVN-r23107-4.3.0 (C) 2000-2007 MPlayer Team
---[NoImage] CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+ (Family: 15, Model: 75, Stepping: 2)
---[NoImage] CPUflags: Type: 15 MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 1 3DNow2: 1 SSE: 0 SSE2: 0
---[NoImage] Compiled with runtime CPU detection.
---[NoImage] success: format: 0 data: 0x0 - 0xf4
---[NoImage] AVS file format detected.
---[NoImage] VIDEO: [YV12] 640x352 12bpp 23.976 fps 0.0 kbps ( 0.0 kbyte/s)
---[NoImage] [V] filefmt:38 fourcc:0x32315659 size:640x352 fps:23.98 ftime:=0.0417
---[NoImage] Opening video filter: [expand osd=1]
---[NoImage] Expand: -1 x -1, -1 ; -1, osd: 1, aspect: 0.000000, round: 1
---[NoImage] ==========================================================================
---[NoImage] Opening video decoder: [raw] RAW Uncompressed Video
---[NoImage] VDec: vo config request - 640 x 352 (preferred colorspace: Planar YV12)
---[NoImage] VDec: using Planar YV12 as output csp (no 0)
---[NoImage] Movie-Aspect is undefined - no prescaling applied.
---[NoImage] videocodec: libavcodec (640x352 fourcc=574f4e53 [SNOW])
---[NoImage] Selected video codec: [rawyv12] vfm: raw (RAW YV12)
---[NoImage] ==========================================================================
---[NoImage] Forcing output FourCC to 574f4e53 [SNOW].
---[NoImage] Writing header...
---[NoImage] ODML: Aspect information not (yet?) available or unspecified, not writing vprp header.
---[NoImage] Writing header...
---[NoImage] ODML: Aspect information not (yet?) available or unspecified, not writing vprp header.
--[NoImage] Standard error stream
---[NoImage] New_Face failed. Maybe the font path is wrong.
---[NoImage] Please supply the text font file (~/.mplayer/subfont.ttf).
---[NoImage] subtitle font: load_sub_face failed.
---[NoImage] Assertion failed: iscore >= 0, file snow.c, line 2169
---[NoImage] This application has requested the Runtime to terminate it in an unusual way.
---[NoImage] Please contact the application's support team for more information.

Megui didnt crash, she let me shut her down nice and easy.

Thanks K

[rkalwaitis]

oh what was encoded with snow looked very promising.

thanks k

[check]

It looks like a crash in the Snow encoder. Snow is a highly experimental (and basically untouched for the past few years) codec, I wouldnt recommend you spend much time with it.

[rkalwaitis]

The new specification codes for snow were drafted this year. I hope they don't give up on it. It seems to be working fine (as I type) with mencoder. Perhaps the fix for Megui is an easy one.

Thanks K

[Sharktooth]

let megui auto-update... if you dont get the updates you wont get mplayer...

[rkalwaitis]

okay ill try that, thanks!!!

Thanks
K

[Sharktooth]

also 0.3.0.1017 is not the latest version. we do not support old versions.

[rkalwaitis]

okay ill go get the newest version

thanks again

[rkalwaitis]

Source forge has that as the latest version (0 3 0 1017) as of 23 Jul 08. Where is the latest build?

[Sharktooth]

autoupdate.
you dont need to download it from SF... megui can update itself (in the menu: Options->Update)