Huffyuv Codec Question, Quality = ??, problems

[TBoneit]

Hello All

I have these Oddball resolution Mpegs that I'm trying to convert to DVD in a Lossless manner...

They are 588 by 480 by 192@48Khz audio.

They won't open in TMPGenc...

1st try, Add them to DVDMF2 but took about 30 minutes to convert 1%

2nd try, MPEG Mediator to Divx5.03 @ 4mbs rate then Tmpgenc to DVD format, Quality very bad.

3rd try last night, VDUB Mpeg2 AC3 version, to AVI with Huffyuv codec, looked at the avi in WMP and it looks like the circles have the jaggies (Stairstep effect). This could be because they are 4:3 source and the HW?? expands the horizontal resolution? Not sure how it does it.

I chose 4:3 source in TMPGenc and converted to DVD 720by480 using their template. ran that overnight and will be looking at the MPEG tonight after burning to DVD RW and see how it looks.

I Learned my lesson with the DIVX conversion after wasting a cheap dvd-r, thats why the DVD RW. Strangely the DIVX conversion looks ok at the start and later on it gets vewry blurry/smeared looking and then cycles between bad and good looking.

My Questions are: is there a way to use a different codec in the Mpeg mediator conversion? it only offered DIVX or XVID options.

Or How to set VDUB Mpeg to get best output quality, what codec and or settings?

I have a lot more of these files to convert on another HD so I need to get going.

Much thanks
Roger

[TBoneit]

Well to Add to it, method three, 2hour+ movie is now showing as 90 Minutes long...

DAMMFINo what to try next.

Roger

[DJRumpy]

I have these Oddball resolution Mpegs that I'm trying to convert to DVD in a Lossless manner...

They are 588 by 480 by 192@48Khz audio.

Your on the right track. You need to convert these to a standard DVD format. I would definately do it in VDub, or AVISynth first, before putting it into TMPGenc. This resolution is nonsensical (1.22:1 aspect ratio), unless their PAL or something. What framerate is your source. Also, does your source already include letterboxing?

[harrymj3]

Just a thought. I haven't tryed this with this resolution file so I don't know if it will work in this case. If you can demultiplex your mpeg files then run them in Virtual dub to get your video ts files and them burn with your favorite program. maybe just to simple to actually work, I don't know. .......... harrymj3

[TBoneit]

I have these Oddball resolution Mpegs that I'm trying to convert to DVD in a Lossless manner...

They are 588 by 480 by 192@48Khz audio.

Your on the right track. You need to convert these to a standard DVD format. I would definately do it in VDub, or AVISynth first, before putting it into TMPGenc. This resolution is nonsensical (1.22:1 aspect ratio), unless their PAL or something. What framerate is your source. Also, does your source already include letterboxing?

Nope they are actually 4:3 ratio NTSC 29.97 frame video...

The Hardware they come off of, is either padding the sides so that the black is in the overscan sides of the TV to save bandwidth or more likely it expands the horizontal resolution to fill the screen. If I could find a clip with a large circle I could tell more easily.

I seem to recall reading somewhere that all the three (RGB) are not the same color depth either. That may be part of the problem too?

I seem to recall that the red channel may be 8 bit color vs 24 bit for the others or some such thing.

What gets me going is that WMP from WinXP plays them fine but TMPGenc won't open em. But Mpeg Mediator or the Vdub mpeg mod opens them fine too.

Last night I tryed something different too, I Vdub'd the M2v video into AVI HuffYuv format then took the avi for video and the Mp2 audio for the audio input into TmpGenc and ran it overnight, Tonight when I get home I'll look and see what the results are.

The M2v files must be weird format as a 90 minute video shows much less in WMP, but the audio shows proper length.

After running the M2v through Vdub Mpeg it was the proper length. I am suspecting that encode length and sync are way off if I mux first and then try to convert.

However they are decent bandwidth clips (??) and look good. 90minutes runs 1.5 to 2+ Gbs on the drive.

Thanks for the help
Roger

Harry I had to Mux them to get the Mpeg file from a m2v and a mp2 fileset.

[DJRumpy]

The Hardware they come off of, is either padding the sides so that the black is in the overscan sides of the TV to save bandwidth or more likely it expands the horizontal resolution to fill the screen.

I assumed you were talking actual image area, since letterboxing is irrelevent when determining the source aspect ratio. I'm only interested in the actaul image area.

Use DVD2AVI and the VIDEO | CLIP & RESIZE function to quickly see what the image area is, if it's letterboxed at all (horizontal, vertical, or both). You can drop the crop sliders to remove any letterboxing on the tops or the sides. It will report the remaining resolution to you.

One last question, is the video stretched vertically, or horizontally in appearance? You didn't mention it.

[spamagnet]

They are 588 by 480 by 192@48Khz audio.
3rd try last night, VDUB Mpeg2 AC3 version, to AVI with Huffyuv codec, looked at the avi in WMP and it looks like the circles have the jaggies (Stairstep effect). This could be because they are 4:3 source and the HW?? expands the horizontal resolution? Not sure how it does it.

It sounds like the resizing wasn't configured properly. I would stick with VirtualDub for now -- I've had very good luck with it.

Try this in VirtualDub:
1 - Open your clip
2 - Add a resize filter and set it to 720x480 make sure you use bicubic or something like that to avoid jaggies.
3 - It also might not hurt to add another filter here like the "Smart Smoother" filter to clean up some of the MPEG noise.
4 - Specify the Huffyuv video codec and PCM audio codec
5 - Create the AVI file and make sure it looks right.

I've had good results using TMPGEnc on a Huffyuv-encoded AVI like this. I can't give exact instructions/settings right now 'cause I don't have VirtualDub here at work, but if you'd like to send me any more questions/problems I can get specific info at home. Email me directly at spamagnet@eventbooking.com if you like.

Regards,
Rob

[TBoneit]

Hello All

DJRumpy:
Sorry, Ithought I didmention if it was stretched or not, The video looks like it needs to be stretched horizontally. I don't think it's letterboxed... I think it just needs stretching.

spamagnet:
I'm at work right now myself...
Yes it looks like a resize is needed.. Didn't think to do it in Vdub...
What puzzles me is that when I mux the audio & video together then the length looks approx 1/3 its real length.

I have no clue. I can always capture through the ADVC-100 directly and work that way I suppose. I was trying to get best quality by hooking up the Hard disk and working from there rather than outputing the video and capturing it.

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll try again tonight if time permits.

Cheers

[DJRumpy]

Don't stress about the mpeg's play time. Especially if your seeing it in Media Player. There appears to be a bug in it. Try opening the MPEG in WinDVD, or PowerDVD, and check the time. Even if it's still wrong there, I wouldn't be too concerned. If you demux it, the streams will usually report the correct length.

Since your video needs to be stretched horizontally, the fix is easy. First just find out what aspect ratio it is. Search google, with your video's title, and the key word 'aspect ratio'. Example:

The Matrix Aspect Ratio

You should get a few hits right at the top, reporting the films aspect ratio, and sometimes a few hits with the DVD's aspect ratio. This is your target aspect ratio. With this, you can resize your video properly. You didn't mention if your video was PAL, or NTSC. Check the framerate to verify (Use MPEG Properties from the TOOLS section..great little tool). If your movie's true aspect ratio is for example 1.85:1, and your current height is 480, then you simply multiply the height, by the aspect ratio (480x1.85) to get the proper width of the movie (480x1.85=888). A quick drop of the video into VirtualDubMod (mpeg version), and the use of the built in resize filter should tell you if your math is right. Note, that anamorphic widescreen video is squeezed in vertically (just like yours is), when it's placed onto DVD, but stretched out on playback.

Next question. What do you want to do with it? Since it's MPEG, the DAR flag will cause it to stretch back out on playback, it the player supports DAR flags (Media Player doesn't...WinDVD, and PowerDVD do of course). If your planning on viewing it on a PC only, you may just want to view it in a player that supports MPEG aspect ratios. Do you want to convert it to another format like DivX/XviD, or are you looking to convert it to DVD/SVCD/CVD/VCD?

[TBoneit]

Hello DJRumpy

Thanks for the help...

Target is DVD format, I tried a capture through the ADVC-100 and it is ok, But due to the loss going to video the image isn't as good. The hardware doesn't give the sharpest picture that newer ones do, however the video on its hard drive is sharp. That is why I am trying to convert them in the computer.

Since the source is NTSC 4:3 stored in a weird resolution maybe I can just pick 720 x 480 as a target resolution and do the resize that way. Someone else on another venue has said that TMPGenc on a 30 minute video think that a simple reux is only 5 minutes even though they play the whole 30 minutes. It was suggested to use the TMPGenc merge and cut tool to get a stream with the proper length, (Go from 0:00:00 to end), I'll be trying that tonight. Unfortunately it isn't just WMPreporting the length wrong, If I try and run it through TMPGenc it stops converting (resizing and such) at the same short length that WMP thinks the clip is.

Maybe I'll capture a short 5 minute clip for easier testing of results, working with 90 minute clips uses gobs of time.

I have done some test burns on a DVD+RW and the resulting video looks very good, just audio way out of sync and length way short, a 135 minute video after conversion ran around 90 minutes for video and I suspect that was what threw off the audio sync.

Cheers
Roger

[spamagnet]

I have done some test burns on a DVD+RW and the resulting video looks very good, just audio way out of sync and length way short, a 135 minute video after conversion ran around 90 minutes for video and I suspect that was what threw off the audio sync.

Hmmmm ... check PAL vs. NTSC, that would certainly screw it up.

Rob

[DJRumpy]

Since it's a TV capture, that makes it a bit easier. Unless someone has actually cropped your capture, then you should be able to simply resize it to 720x480. Set the aspect ratio to 4:3 (even if it's letterboxed).

If you want a tv capture to look good, you should prefilter it with VirtualDub, or AVISynth. Use a temporal smoother to remove analog noise. They can make a huge difference in our output. You can also sharpen here if you think your video needs it.

Someone else on another venue has said that TMPGenc on a 30 minute video think that a simple reux is only 5 minutes even though they play the whole 30 minutes

I'm not quite sure what your saying here.

If your using TMPGenc, then just use the standard DVD format (NTSC or PAL). If your experiencing sync problems, then using a smaller clip may help to identify the problem, but be sure the clip is long enough for the sync issue to show up. Get it too small, and you may not see it. For your test run, make sure all options are unchecked. Also make sure, as spamagnet already pointed out, that you pick the proper type of DVD template (NTSC or PAL), according to what your source file is. Use MPEG Properties (find it in the TOOLS section) if your in doubt as to framerate of your source. If you actaully want to convert from one format to another (NTSC to PAL, or vice versa), then let me know and I'll give you more specific instructions if that's the case.

If your MPEG has a corrupt frame or three, then you may have to frameserve it back to TMPGenc. You can get around alot of common problems in an MPEG by doing this. You can use AVISynth and DVD2AVI, or VirtualDubMod top open your MPEG, set your filters, and then frameserve it to TMPGenc. You can find some decent guides on frameserving here, and at www.doom9.org. If you get stumped along the way, just ask. Droves of people on this site that will be willing to lend a hand.

You might also scan your su

[TBoneit]

Thanks, Nope it isn't cropped, it turns out to be DVB format NTSC.. 544 by 480... I can use dvdpatcher to burn straight to DVD, but then I can't edit, trim etc...

Almost nothing wants to open it... strange...

since it is sat tv the signal looks very clean if not super bandwidth.

Once again thanks