Help understanding CCE

[troyvcd1]

I am using dvd2dvdr with CCE to re encode a dvd movie. I am converting a 3 hour Lord of the Rings movie so I can fit it on one dvd. I set up dvd2dvdr to do a 4 pass vbr. When CCE first starts up it displays a pop-up screen saying it is creating a .vaf file. It takes about 3 hours to create this .vaf file. Then another pop up screen says it is creating a .m2v file. It takes about 17 hours to create this m2v file. I am confused because I thought that if it is doing a 4 pass vbr that it would go and create the vaf file and then do 2 more passes modifying the .vaf file and then on the last pass it would create the m2v file. Can someone explain what is going on.

[macleod]

4 passes is actualy 5 passes

[adam]

The first pass always creates the .vaf file. After that, it performs however many passes you have the encoder set to, and it does this all in one go. It does an actual encode for each pass, and with later versions of CCE you can even have it output an m2v file with each pass. True it is only doing these passes to gather information, but it is still just doing a regular encode, just with more and more information each pass.

[Jah_Rankin]

I am using dvd2dvdr with CCE to re encode a dvd movie. I am converting a 3 hour Lord of the Rings movie so I can fit it on one dvd. I set up dvd2dvdr to do a 4 pass vbr. When CCE first starts up it displays a pop-up screen saying it is creating a .vaf file. It takes about 3 hours to create this .vaf file. Then another pop up screen says it is creating a .m2v file. It takes about 17 hours to create this m2v file. I am confused because I thought that if it is doing a 4 pass vbr that it would go and create the vaf file and then do 2 more passes modifying the .vaf file and then on the last pass it would create the m2v file. Can someone explain what is going on.

17 hrs , Dude u can get a DVD burner from 50 to 150 $, then they'r Dvd Shrink, Dvd2one, IC,Nero recode, DVDXcopy, etc, Get with the time s .dude

[johns0]

Jah_Rankin,he did state that he`s going to put it on dvd and it does make sense to encode with cce to get better results than using dvdshrink etc,its up to him if he wants to wait 17 hours for this one dvd.

[Jah_Rankin]

In 17 hrs I can back up my entire 800+ movie collection and still have time 2 spare. Of course they're not going to put the movie on dvd, a cd is going to be used that is one of the reason for cce in the first place.

[Jah_Rankin]

Jah_Rankin,he did state that he`s going to put it on dvd and it does make sense to encode with cce to get better results than using dvdshrink etc,its up to him if he wants to wait 17 hours for this one dvd.

17 hrs for a process that may have a slightly better quality than the 1 click 30 minutes to a hr to process transcoders. GIVE ME A BREAK.

[johns0]

I use cce for dvd,it was used mainly for cd`s before but more people are using it for dvds,did you note the program he is using?dvd-dvdr.

[Jah_Rankin]

I use cce for dvd,it was used mainly for cd`s before but more people are using it for dvds,did you note the program he is using?dvd-dvdr.

Still 17 hrs is 17 hrs, a waste of time really

[troyvcd1]

If I wanna wait 17 hours for a quality back up then that is my business. It has nothing to do with my original question which I am still confused about. A 3 hour movie like lord of the rings needs a quality encode with cce and not some crappy encode with dvdshrink. I will use dvdshrink on movies I dont care about but no way are you gonna get as good quality with a 3 hour movie with dvd shrink. DVDshrink is a good program but it pisses me off that no one cares about quality anymore and people dont even use dvd2dvdr.

So I am still confused. the first pop up window says creating the .vaf. Then after the .vaf is created should I only get one more pop up window saying creating the .m2v file. I would think that after it created the initial vaf file that it would start all over modifying the .vaf file.

[johns0]

Cce will first start with the val file and go to the end and then restart with only the mpv.The val file is just a file cce uses to store the info about the bitrates it should use,it then starts to make the mpv based on what the val file stored.

[Jah_Rankin]

but it pisses me off that no one cares about quality anymore and people dont even use dvd2dvdr.

A new fool is born everyday. Simple, the problem u r having with CCE, besides the cost & many other reasons is why folks don't use cce. I have a 65 inch hdtv and the back ups make with dvd2one,shrink,dvdcopy,Ic,clone dvd, etc is identical in most cases or not far from the original. If u can afford the $2000 price tag for CCE then u should b able to purchase 2 to 3 of each dvd movie u have in your possesion.

[troyvcd1]

I dont have a problem with CCE just a question. People do use CCE and most of them know what they are doing and are not reading this forum about one click backups. There is no way you are going to get the quality of a 3 hour movie with DVDshrink. About the $2000 dollar price tag. Well all I got to say is I guess there really is a fool born every day.

[adam]

Jah_Rankin you are hijacking this thread. This is not a CCE vs DVD Shrink debate. Please stay on topic or I will issue a warning.

troyvcd1 If you set it to 3 passes than in that second operation where it says transcoding, it is physically encoding the file 3 separate times. After it finishes one encode it updates the .vaf with the new information and then starts another. It does this every pass using the continually updated .vaf for the next pass. Even though it is 3 separate encoding jobs it is doing it all at once. Regardless of how many passes you perform it is always going to do it in 2 separate operations. First it creates the .vaf and then the transcoding stage just keeps re-encoding it as many times as you set it to. Just rest assured that it is working exactly as you want it to.

[SLK001]

Troy, pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. Your method using CCE is far superior to the transcoder methods (RE: the "one click" methods). The times that you got are correct. 4 passes are really 5, the first time that your go through a video. However, as long as you only change the bitrates, you can reuse the VAF file for subsequent passes. It is probably best to just do a one pass VBR run, then manually adjust the bitrates in areas where they need to be adjusted (using the ADVANCED settings). This would speed things up for you and probably not require that fourth pass. CCE's manual states that there is little quality improvement beyond 3 passes, but your judgement should prevail here - if you think you need it, then go for it.

[jbenj01]

SLK and troyvcd1,

So sorry for changing the subject but I'm VERY curious (I'd be happy to start a new thread, if you'd look for it and respond).. How do you manually adjust bitrates at selected video areas?? Do you manually edit the vaf file via Note Pad or something?

I usually just set high, low and average bitrates based on bitrate calculator results and just run a 4-pass, which takes ~3-4hrs on my system..

Oh, and don't listen to the "video-phile", I've not seen any one-click solution that offers CCE-quality... even at a very low compression-rate.

[troyvcd1]

there is a guide at doom9.org called getting the best out of cce. There you manually go through the move and adjust the bitrates.

[adam]

After creating the .vaf file the "advanced" button now works. Click on it and a new window pops up. There you can set an in and out point to isolate the scene you want to work with. Then you can make manual bitrate adjustments and you get a near real time update of your bitrate and quantization values to just the effect of your changes. If you want alot of control over your encode the possibilities are endless.

For most encodes I really think CCE does a good enough job on its own. Sometimes for long credits I manually go in there and set just the credits to a lower bitrate.

[mrxclnc]

I tried encoding a video that I took with my camcorder using the Adobe Premiere 7.0 "Export to DVD" command and it ran for like 24 hours but it was nowhere close to finishing. The video is 2 hours long.

Is it normal for encoders to take this long?

How do they do encoding when making commercially?

[Skynet107]

A program like CCE is greatly dependant on your processor, you all need to keep this in mind. An Athlon 1.4 will crawl at mpeg2 encoding and will easily take 15+ hours. Upgrading to an Athon64 will cut the encoding by a factor of at least 3.

And it IS worth it to use CCE on a high quality movie like LOTR. A 3 hour movie with Dolby Digital 5.1 will give a bit rate of about 2800 which is VERY LOW for an mpeg2. CCE is the only encoder I have seen that can make an mpeg look respectable such a low bit rate. I would use 5 pass for that bit rate if you can afford to wait.

[johns0]

Skynet107,i had an xp1600 amd at 1.4 ghz and it took 5 hours to do a 3 pass encode with cce,nowhere near 15 hours.

[watrboy00]

i am experiencing the same problems and I just want to know if it is normal. I am not doing 2dvds to 1 dvd but i am taking my home videos and putting them to dvd using CCE.

I capture from my dv camcorder using premiere and edit and do all my fun stuff in there. Then I export directly from premiere using the CCE plugin and have it set to vbr 8000kbs and 256kbs stero. (i am capturing 8mm tapes from a dv camera from sony through firewire - old tapes, new hardware. i love it) but when I do it it can take anywhere from 1hr to 17hrs to complete depending on the length of the footage.

I am using:
Intel 3.2ghz w/ HT 800mhz fsb
1024 DDR400 Cosair Ram
100gig Western Digital HD 8mb cache

I get about and average of 6frames/sec on the encoding on a vbr 1 pass. This is kinda insane don't you think? I have about 60% of the 100gig free still and nothing else is running while this is donig its work. And the part that gets me is I have an Athlon MP 2100+ w/ 512mb ram and a slower HD and it encodes at around 15frames/sec.

What gives? Am I doing something wrong with CCE? or somewhere else?

[adam]

That does seem slow but I doubt it has anything to do with CCE. When you frameserve from Premiere to your encoder it is Premiere that is the bottleneck. The encoder can only process the frames as fast as they are fed to it, and it can take forever for Premiere to render them if you have alot of transitions and effects. Rendering footage can just take a long time, there might not be anything you can do.

[watrboy00]

well the only transitions i have on each video is a fade in and out for the video and audio at the beginning.

If premiere was bottlenecking and slowing things down, how would I get different results on two different machines with the same settings but just with different hardware and logically you would think that the faster machine would export faster but this insnt the case.

[adam]

I'm not saying there isn't a problem. Like I said, that does seem slow. All I'm saying is that the problem probably lies with Premiere and not CCE, since CCE can encode much faster than Premiere can render just about any footage on just about any pc.

I don't know what the actual problem is...sorry.

[Marco33]

Thought I would throw a tid bit in.

You can use as many passes with CCE as you like but, the manual says 2~3 is plenty.

[watrboy00]

well i have no problem encoding directly with cce rather than doing it all in premiere. i guess my question is how would i save my edited video from premiere without compressing it and taking a long time so i can then throw it into the standalone cce?

[Skynet107]

Skynet107,i had an xp1600 amd at 1.4 ghz and it took 5 hours to do a 3 pass encode with cce,nowhere near 15 hours.

You encoded 185 minutes of video in 5 hours with 3 pass in CCE using an xp1600? Impossible.

[FulciLives]

3 hours on one single layer DVD recordable will not look good even with a multi-pass CCE encoding if the bitrate is going to be as low as 2800kbps for the video.

At least not using Full D1 resolution (aka 720x480/576 NTSC/PAL)

However you should get acceptable results if you use Half D1 resolution (aka 352x480/576 NTSC/PAL)

The lowest setting I ever used for CCE at Full D1 was a re-encode of MATRIX RELOADED which I think ended up being around 3800kbps (it might have been lower though I can't remember) and although it looked MUCH better than DVD2ONE version I first attempted there were still some MPEG artifacts here and there even though I did a 3-pass VBR CCE encode.

So for low bitrates like that I think Half D1 is the way to go.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Skynet107]

hmm I'm surprised you saw artifacts at 3800 actually. My personal experience with CCE is 3000 mbits/sec is the lowest you can go and still have a nearly artifact free result. I did a 5 pass at 3150 and it looked excellent.

The hardest DVD to put on a single layer Disc is James Cameron's The Abyss. There is so much fast motion, almost every shot is water, and the directors cut is a long movie. I did a test with CCE 9 pass (crazy I know) on a 5 minute high action sequence and it looked terrible.