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  1. Member hiptune's Avatar
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    I am ripping my DVDs to HDD in ISO format for playing them in my JRiver media player. I have some more Laser Disc & VHS titles to convert to digital for this library. I was wondering if not going to DVD-R with new transfers - but using the AVI files for encoding to a lossless codec for smaller size than the original AVI but better picture than DVD? I figure original AVI files have potential took better than mpg2. But the main thing is to find a lossless format for the smaller size file I might end up with. I don't care if my files have no menus and no chapter marks, I just want smaller file size with no loss of quality.

    Any ideas on this?

    Thanks for reading.
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    Your post makes no sense at all. For a guy who joined over 10 years ago and has made almost 300 posts, it reads like you just joined today and have never done any video work before.

    First of all, it is simply impossible to use a lossless codec and have "smaller size than the original AVI but better picture than DVD". If you want to use a lossless codec then you will have gigantic files. If you want small files then you can't use a lossless codec. It seems that you are capturing to AVI, if I understand your mess of a post correctly, and if so then you can't really make things "better" by converting again. Yes, you can do some filtering and get some marginal improvements, but you can't really expect garbage in, gold out. Some people get more excited over marginal improvements than others do. That's not a criticism of you in anyway, just a statement of fact. I've seen videos get help here with filtering and they get maybe 3% better than the original and the original poster acts like he just converted VCD to crystal clear high definition instead of realizing that he barely improved the original crap quality video.

    Your reference in the subject line to FLAC makes no real sense since that is an audio codec, but maybe you're just trying to emphasize that you want to use a lossless codec and you mention that as an example, although you're comparing apples to oranges in using an audio codec to talk about video codecs. Again, I told you above that you can't go lossless and get smaller and better.

    You don't talk about your capture method at all, again like you are brand new here instead of having 10+ years experience, so perhaps some discussion of your workflow would be in your best interest if you seriously want help. Does your JRiver player have limitations on what it can play? If so then you definitely need to talk about that as if you get advice to use H.264 and your player can't handle that, then that just wastes everybody's time.
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  3. Member Krispy Kritter's Avatar
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    In general, you want to capture in the highest quality possible, preferably in the format you intend in use. Capturing in the final format is not always possible, in which case a conversion will need to be made.

    JRiver supports most all video formats, so file support shouldn't be an issue. Based on your comments, it will be a matter of capturing (and converting) to a format with decent quality and small file size. It will likely be a matter of trial and error to find a format that meets your expectations.

    As noted, your hardware and workflow will be helpful.
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  4. Member hiptune's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by jman98 View Post
    Your post makes no sense at all. For a guy who joined over 10 years ago and has made almost 300 posts, it reads like you just joined today and have never done any video work before.

    First of all, it is simply impossible to use a lossless codec and have "smaller size than the original AVI but better picture than DVD". If you want to use a lossless codec then you will have gigantic files. If you want small files then you can't use a lossless codec. It seems that you are capturing to AVI, if I understand your mess of a post correctly, and if so then you can't really make things "better" by converting again. Yes, you can do some filtering and get some marginal improvements, but you can't really expect garbage in, gold out. Some people get more excited over marginal improvements than others do. That's not a criticism of you in anyway, just a statement of fact. I've seen videos get help here with filtering and they get maybe 3% better than the original and the original poster acts like he just converted VCD to crystal clear high definition instead of realizing that he barely improved the original crap quality video.

    Your reference in the subject line to FLAC makes no real sense since that is an audio codec, but maybe you're just trying to emphasize that you want to use a lossless codec and you mention that as an example, although you're comparing apples to oranges in using an audio codec to talk about video codecs. Again, I told you above that you can't go lossless and get smaller and better.

    You don't talk about your capture method at all, again like you are brand new here instead of having 10+ years experience, so perhaps some discussion of your workflow would be in your best interest if you seriously want help. Does your JRiver player have limitations on what it can play? If so then you definitely need to talk about that as if you get advice to use H.264 and your player can't handle that, then that just wastes everybody's time.
    I've looked around this forum and seen your rude and condescending replies to people asking serious questions. You are obviously bitter about spending considerable time gaining knowledge and tips on video processes, yet have not been able to find this knowledge personally useful productive or profitable to yourself.

    You are a bitter person, and yes you have wasted your time reading my post and commenting on it and the other snarky responses you have given people. You have wasted 10 years, you have little to nothing to show for it.

    I at least have several imdb credits to my name on movies that can be acquired on Netflix and Amazon.

    You are a waste of time on this forum, and your bitterness is disgusting. I've seen your other awful replies to people, it's not just me.

    Go out and do something productive with your dead end place you found yourself in before it's too late.
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  5. Originally Posted by hiptune View Post
    using the AVI files for encoding to a lossless codec for smaller size than the original AVI but better picture than DVD? I figure original AVI files have potential took better than mpg2.
    Lossless AVI may be better quality than DVD (of course, VHS is a poor quality source so you wont' have DVD quality under any circumstances) but the files will be much larger. Lossless codecs usually require 30 to 40 GB per hour. Especially with noisy VHS sources.

    For non-DVD playback you can create h.264 video in MP4 or MKV containers. That can easily be half the size of DVD MPEG 2 video with better quality. But again, if your source is VHS you're starting with far less than DVD quality so the video still won't look great.
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  6. Member hiptune's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by jagabo View Post
    Originally Posted by hiptune View Post
    using the AVI files for encoding to a lossless codec for smaller size than the original AVI but better picture than DVD? I figure original AVI files have potential took better than mpg2.
    Lossless AVI may be better quality than DVD (of course, VHS is a poor quality source so you wont' have DVD quality under any circumstances) but the files will be much larger. Lossless codecs usually require 30 to 40 GB per hour. Especially with noisy VHS sources.

    For non-DVD playback you can create h.264 video in MP4 or MKV containers. That can easily be half the size of DVD MPEG 2 video with better quality. But again, if your source is VHS you're starting with far less than DVD quality so the video still won't look great.
    Thank you for your helpful tips. These files I am making will be all from Laser Discs not VHS for the most part. I am not trying to improve their quality over their limited original resolution, I just want better than going to DVD-R or mpg2 as it is basically.

    The JRiver Media Center will accept just about any video thrown at it. So H.264 or X.264 seems the preferred choice with the smaller file, yet better than mpg2. That all I needed to consider other than audio quality. I may go optical out to capture a LD audio track, and sync that to the video in unresampled 16/44. for best audio playback. These are concert discs I am concerning myself with at the moment.

    -Jeff
    Last edited by hiptune; 1st Sep 2014 at 23:28.
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  7. For best results you'll want to inverse telecine back to 23.976 fps film frames, and filter to remove dot crawl artifacts and noise.
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  8. Member hiptune's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by Krispy Kritter View Post
    In general, you want to capture in the highest quality possible, preferably in the format you intend in use. Capturing in the final format is not always possible, in which case a conversion will need to be made.

    JRiver supports most all video formats, so file support shouldn't be an issue. Based on your comments, it will be a matter of capturing (and converting) to a format with decent quality and small file size. It will likely be a matter of trial and error to find a format that meets your expectations.

    As noted, your hardware and workflow will be helpful.
    Some of the AVI files I am about to work on have been on my system for several years. They were captured to AVI via the Canopus ADVC 500 converter from laser discs. I've left them on hard drives because I did not want to bother creating DVDs of them.

    And now I think it was a good idea to avoid the mpg2 encodes of them.

    The JRiver software player is becoming the standard for PC media playback. I've been using it for three years for music, but now I am about to do some video playback through it. For the LD & VHS transfers that I have already done, I will simply rip them to ISOs, and load them into drives. Maybe some of the best LDs will get redone to h.264 files.

    Workflow is usually LD to ADVC 500 to Sony Vegas or a Final Cut Pro and then encode. Looks like my encodes will be done on the Mac with Compressor for the H.264 files. But there are PC solutions I know.
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    H.264 (upper-case H, dot) is a theoretical standard, a document.

    x264 (lower-case x, no dot) is one specific practical implementation of the standard, an encoder, software. There are other implementations of H.264 encoders.

    AVI is a container. It might contain one of thousands of combinations between uncompressed, losslessly or lossily compressed audio and video content formats. Did you report which video codec you selected to store your captured video inside the AVI? One of us may have missed that. In case you forgot, MediaInfo will discover it.
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  10. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    OK, so after all that, it sounds like your LDs are already captured to DV-AVI. Lossless encodes are LARGER than corresponding DV encodes. If you LIKE the quality of the DV encode, you could encode to MPEG2 for DVD and still retain a great deal of the exisitng quality. Hardest part there is color sampling management, IMO.

    Regardless, you won't get any BETTER than what you have now, unless you were to recapture from disc to lossless. And even then, you won't get better resolution, nor framerate nor dynamic range, just the color purity and less artifacting/blocking.

    Nothing necessarily good or bad with either MPEG2/DVD, DV, or AVC/h.264, just in how they're set up (particularly wrt bitrate). DV isn't really adjustable, but the other 2 are. But remember, LD - as good as it might have been at the time compared to VHS - is still a composite analog SD format, with all the failings that entails. No matter which format you go, you'll only barely affect those deficiencies.

    BTW, I wouldn't recommend Apple Compressor as your AVC choice, especially if you already have a PC. As AVC encoders go, I'd put it at ~7. Whether on Mac or PC, encoders using x.264 engine and encoders using Mainconcept engine are OFTEN of better quality (depending upon source footage).

    I notice jman98 had some condescending things to say, but he did also provide similar helpful info WRT lossless AVI to what jagabo did. I think your spirited response to certain trigger words might have tunnelled your vision to the truth of what he was trying to explain.

    Scott
    Last edited by Cornucopia; 10th Nov 2014 at 13:30.
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