Log in

View Full Version : incredible results with TMPGEnc


dizzyhazy
2nd July 2005, 16:14
Hello, everyone. Just thought I’d share my experience with TMPGEnc. I have always been disappointed with the picture quality of my DVD of the movie Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story. I have used DVDRB with CCE to make it anamorphic widescreen. It helped, but it still had the problem of the original: you can see scan lines within the video. Plus, diagonal lines had a very bad stair step effect. This movie deserves much better than this.

I have been playing with TMPGEnc and found the right settings to enhance the picture quality to the point that it actually looks like a brand new transfer! I think the results are incredible. Solid picture, no scan lines, and actually MORE detail than the original (can this be? no, not really, but it sure does look that way). I don’t quit know how TMPGEnc does it, but that little program is the BOMB!!!

Under filters, I set the following:
Deinterlace at 24fps (motion prior)
Crop 40 from top and 40 from bottom
Noise reduction at 50
Color correction: Luminance at 12, contrast at 33
Resize to Center (custom size) to 720x480 with adaptive resize model

Then I went to Set Output. I selected NTSC with aspect ratio 16:9 with VBR and AC3
The encoder/bitrate setting I left as is.
The DC component mode set to 10 bit
The Video mode I changed to progressive
The Motion serch precision I changed to highest with error compensation
The output stream type I set to separate elementary streams because I use DVD LAB to author the DVD. I don’t know how others will author theirs, so this may be different for them.
I also checked the Soften block noise and left it at 35 each.

Some of my findings were calculated (like how many bars to crop and resizing) but others were just trial and error. The biggest help was the second step: deinterlace at 24fps. That was the last one I tried. I kept playing with it until I got good results. Then when I set that deinterlace, BAM!!! Looks like a modern transfer of this DVD. Opens up new possiblilities… I have also been playing with making fullscreen DVDs into quai-anamorphic ws. But that will be another post.

Hope this may help others....

:sly:

Encoder Master
2nd July 2005, 20:11
The Motion serch precision I changed to highest with error compensation

High Quality gives you the best quality in TMPGEnc.

dizzyhazy
2nd July 2005, 23:49
High Quality gives you the best quality in TMPGEnc.


Thanks for the tip. I'll definitely start using High Quality for now on....

I'm still tinkering with it (I'm such a perfectionist) and found one more thing: instead of selecting progressive on Video Mode, selecting 3:2 pulldown playback gave me slightly smoother motion.

So many options, so little time to try them all....

Paulcat
4th July 2005, 14:18
Using High Quality instead of Highest Quality also saves a lot of time! I did an episodic DVD from AVI files, each episode (30min) took 60 minutes with normal quality, and 90 minutes with high quality, and I was looking at over 2 hours each at highest quality!

How long did your encoding take?

dizzyhazy
4th July 2005, 18:41
Using High Quality instead of Highest Quality also saves a lot of time! I did an episodic DVD from AVI files, each episode (30min) took 60 minutes with normal quality, and 90 minutes with high quality, and I was looking at over 2 hours each at highest quality!

How long did your encoding take?


The entire Dragon movie took 10 hours with High Quality. Before that, I was only doing 5 minute samples until I got the desired results. I was surprised how long this one took since other movies only took 5 or 6 hours. Not sure why this one took so long. Maybe it was filesize. Other movies have been 3.5-4.0 GB. This one was 5.8 GB. Plus, this one was 2 hours vs others being about 1.5 hours. Also all my previous endevors have been converting fulscreen to widescreen. This one was converting letterbox widescreen to anamorphic widescreen. Only alot more testing will say exactly why this one took so long. By the way, I have an Athlon 64 bit 3400 processor with 2 Gigs of memory. Also running my HDs in Raid 0 array.

But I don't really care about time. I get it started before going to bed and when I get up, usually they are done.

Abond
5th July 2005, 11:10
TMPG filters are very slow.

Paulcat
5th July 2005, 14:37
Yes, they are aren't they?

I tend to use as few filters as possible, since most of what I do is PAL conversion, usually of older material which isn't the greatest to begin with. I don't have an HD or LCD television, so it's good enough for me.

Also, I turn off most of the VFAPI flags in environmental settings and only use the one that opens my source material, that speeds up the process as well.

I have an Athlon XP 1900+ with 768 MB of DDR ram. Converting a 2 hour film takes about 5 hours with no filters.

It's great in winter, I can heat up my whole den!