Xvid Counter-Strike Movie Render Quality Problem

[cheesypoof]

Hey, Im working on a counter-strike movie. So far I haven't seen much related to cs around these forums so Im not sure if anyone will know what the necessary settings for XviD rendering would be. Im using sony vegas 5.0 and virtual dub for the compressing and rendering and Im using Nic's xvid codec to do the rendering/compressing. Basically for some quick background info, high quality cs movies are usually compressed down to around 25mb/min to be accepted as well compressed. Right now Im around a little over 30/mb min at 85 quality, and I want to possibly get up to at least 90 quality (on nics advanced options).

- frame rate: 24.00(film) @ 800x600 res
- field order: none progressive
- in codec options im using 1 pass - 85 quality

I dont know what to do in the advanced options for the codec configing and dont know if there is anything that would really change my file size. After I render with vegas I take the avi + uncompressed audio to vdub where I compress the audio with radium 3 codec @ 44,100 Hz, 16 bit stereo 128 kb.

Im really hoping for some good suggestions and maybe some help from seniors around here.

Also I have tried using 4,000 bit rate, which is what most moviemakers use for high quality cs movies, and it still turns out with poor quality compared to other movies that used 4K bit rate.

Before Render
http://img324.imageshack.us/img324/4341/good9od.th.jpg (http://img324.imageshack.us/my.php?image=good9od.jpg)

After Render
http://img324.imageshack.us/img324/3310/bad1qm.th.jpg (http://img324.imageshack.us/my.php?image=bad1qm.jpg)

SS from movie DreamScape which also used 4,000 bit rate
http://img305.imageshack.us/img305/9765/normal0as.th.jpg (http://img305.imageshack.us/my.php?image=normal0as.jpg)

[Sirber]

May I suggest you try x264? It might be better to compress your source.

[communist]

It seems you're using an outdated version of XviD. I'd suggest you get a copy of XviD 1.0.3 (stable) and check out Doom9's XviD guide.

http://www.koepi.org/xvid.shtml
http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/xvid-vdub-final.htm

[nightrhyme]

Why use Sony Vegas ? Do it like this (image sequence):

Initialization: Lower your ingame resolution to 640 * 480 or 800 x 600 just keep it low. To compensate enable 2x or 4x antialiasing and use 8x anisoptric filtering.
Enable console by going to settings -> controls -> advanced -> developer console

Tools:
- XviD 1.1 beta.2
- VirtualDub

Step 1: In the Beginning:
Join or start the game you would like to record.

Step 2: Start Recording:
To start recording, press the tilde "~" key to show the console, type:

record <vid_name>

and then press Enter. Press ~ to get back to the game if the console is still open. Continue to play and spectate, what you see is what the demo records.

Step 3: Stop Recording:
Once finished bring up the console again and type:

stop

this will end the recording.

Step 4: Recording to disk - initial set up:
After the recording stops, disconnect from the server. To successfully record both audio and video we must the the following:
Video:
- select your desired output resolution; 640x480 is recommended.
- it would be best to set all options to highest with AA and AF set to full; recording is slow and this will hardly make any difference as most of the time is spent writing mass data to your harddrive.
NB:The files will be uncompressed TGA format meaning they will take
Audio:
- Set to stereo; it's recorded as a wave file which cannot support more than two channels.

Step 5: Recording to disk - recording process:
Bring up the console and enter the following:

host_framerate 30
startmovie <file_name>
playdemo <vid_name>

After you have pressed enter it will appear to do nothing, be patient, it is loading the map but does not give any indication of doing so, the actual rendering will be increadibly slow but depending on the resolution and length of the recording it could end up using many Gigabytes of your harddrive; don't worry this is only temporary.
NB: it won't hurt anything if you make the file_name the same as the vid_name

Once the recording has completed and you are back to the menu screen, type into the console:

endmovie

This will stop the recording process. Without it any game you join after this will be recorded also, giving awful performance, and may break the audio as well.
Quit CS:S

Step 6: Ensure files are there:
Open your conter-strike source directory located at:

C:\Steam\SteamApps\<steam_profile>\counter-strike source\cstrike

The output files are stored here, you should find the following:

<file_name>####.tga - there will be many of these, 30 for every second recorded.
<file_name>.wav - check the file size, it should be higher than 1kb

If you wave recording is only 1k and doesn't play, the only cause I have found is because it was recorded in a higher than stereo mode, such as 5.1.

Step 7: Making the AVI
a) Open VirtualDub.
b) Click File -> Open video file...
c) Select Image sequence (*.bmp, *.tga) from Files of type
d) Go to your counter-strike source directory and click on the first <file_name>####.tga file then click Open
e) Click Video -> Compression and chose XviD and set your chosen parameters.
f) Click Audio -> Wave audio and select your <file_name>.wav from the counter-strike source folder
g) Click Audio -> full processing mode; then Audio -> Compression and chose mp3 128/160/192 bit depending on your preference.

Saving the AVI:
h) Click File -> Save AVI as...
choose a location to save the video, give it a name and click save.
Once it is finished minimize VirualDub and find the avi file you saved, test it out and hopefully it has all worked is is playing for you right now

//Enjoy

[cheesypoof]

Alright so Nightrhyme you obviously have no experience with CS movies, which is fine, and thanks for the long post trying to help. To fill you in, however, startmovie and recording commands are pretty much common knowledge. Vegas is neccessary because people use it to edit their movie. Using only Virtual Dub would leave me with an unedited movie lacking any point what so ever. Someone in XviD's IRC channel guided me through a 2nd pass in x264 and it turned out really blotchy and I just would prefer to use XviD. I don't think switching codecs would be the answer either. I have updated my xvid to what the majority of professional CS moviemakers use, and I like the results they get with it. My problem definitely lies within the codec commands. Other than that thanks for the posts but none of anything said so far has helped. :\

[obieobieobie]

Pro-tip when x264 looks like crap: Disable postprocessing in your decoder filter.

The latest ffdshow builds have a setting to automatically disable postprocessing when playing back h.264-content with built-in deblocking.

[cheesypoof]

I would prefer to use XviD as I like the results other moviemakers achieve with it. Some even use 3,000 instead of 4,000 bit rate which still turns out nice, but on my setup it turns out with terrible quality. Here are my settings...
http://img381.imageshack.us/img381/7889/settings9pz.th.jpg (http://img381.imageshack.us/my.php?image=settings9pz.jpg)

[stephanV]

Multipassing would certainly help... and what editing must you do that VirtualDub cant?

A better way of finding an acceptable bit rate would be to do a constant quant encode at q3 or q4.

[cheesypoof]

First of all I don't know what either q3 or q4 are and I was planning on doing a 2nd pass the whole time I just had it on first pass there, although almost all of the movies that have the quality I desire haven't done 2nd passes. The problem is I can use the same bit rate and settings above as anybody else and my quality is less than theirs. This occurs in WMV9 also. Vegas is everything, I put all my clips together, add brightness & contrast/color balance/etc..., synchronise my audio with video, time fx with keyframes, overlay tracks ontop of each other and toggle the opacities, create unique text effects with tracks, make borders, utilize compositing modes, etc... Now I don't know how you could do ALL of that in VirtualDub with the same EASE as Vegas. Obviously you guys haven't seen many CS movies. So I recommend you check this movie out called "Mousesports" since you keep telling me that I can get by without using Vegas.
Mirror 1 (http://ftp.outsize.org/cs-view/Counter-Strike/mousesports_CS_Movie.zip)
Mirror 2 (http://www.cs-sxe.com.ar/downloads/videos/mousesports%20cs%20movie.zip)
Mirror 3 (ftp://www.counter-strike.hu/videok/mousesports_CS_Movie.zip)

[Pookie]

245MB for that file... Couldn't you post something a little bigger ?

[Harley Quin]

cheesypoof, please, keep your tone warm.
since you keep telling me that I can get by without using Vegas.
stephanV did not tell you that. He asked a simple unimplying question out of interest to help you. And he does not 'keep' doing so, he asked it once. There really is no need for a reproachful reply. By the way he gave you a good tip with a constant quant encode at q3 or q4 (though I'd prefer to start with a q2 ;)). If you don't know what that means, hey, no problem. We are all Newbies at something. Just ask... politely. Not like
I want help -- from seniors -- you're answer obviously does not help me... next!

[communist]

First of all I don't know what either q3 or q4 are and I was planning on doing a 2nd pass the whole time I just had it on first pass there, although almost all of the movies that have the quality I desire haven't done 2nd passes.
How do you tell if a file was created using 2 passes or only one? I mean if you already know how other people create their files why are asking here? :confused:

As said before read the XviD guide and FAQ and do a 2pass encode with 4000kbps as average bitrate (for 2nd pass), try some preprocessing (softeners / antialiasing...) and report again.

Oh and I have seen better movies - at least from games where the graphics are worth all the MBs one needs to download ;)

[cheesypoof]

I asked them if they used 2nd pass, and they said no. This is the problem, I can follow the same steps, use the same programs, and use the same settings but no matter what I do the quality comes out worse than theirs. I also made sure my source didn't have any quality problems with it. I don't know what preprocessing (softeners / antialiasing...) is, and I'm sure they don't either since all they do is follow a tutorial like this...
XviD Tutorial (http://moviemakers.nu/guides/quality/)
It used to say 4,000 bit rate, but they must have changed it. Also even when I did for example 86 quality with my old codec, the file size ended up huge, and when I checked the bit rate it was around 10,000. That is just from memory by the way.
WMV Tutorial (http://www.moviemakers.nu/wmv.asp)
I just want to fix my 1st pass so it is the same quality as theirs, but I will definitely still use a 2nd pass for my final render, just not now.

[stephanV]

First of all I don't know what either q3 or q4 are
They are constant quant modes. They don't give you any file size predictability but they give you a good indication about what bit rates are reasonable for your particular file. q3 is usually excellent quality, and with q4 it depends a bit. You can do a constant q encode by selecting single pass and toggle between bit rate and quantizer mode by pushing the button left of the field where you fill in the bit rate. (it actually says "target bit rate")

This is the problem, I can follow the same steps, use the same programs, and use the same settings but no matter what I do the quality comes out worse than theirs.
It hasn't occurred to you that maybe your file is not as compressible as theirs? Just using the same bit rate won't give you any guarantees about quality. If you already tried everything, theres not much we can do either. There are no magic hidden buttons in codecs that make everything look 2x better.

(And what moron zips compressed video ??? )