Moviegate help

[Mark V]

Moviegate is an awesome program but i would like to get the most out of it i can so i have a few questions.

Example

#1. When i use Moviegate it shows Resolution at 576X240, FPS at 23.92 and Bitrate at 0. It has underneath this Encoding settings of source file bitrate, what would i set this to, or how do i determine what the bitrate is?

#2 Quantizer.... what is the best setting?

Thanks for the help in advance.

[Mark V]

I would figure after 41+ views i would have some responce.

Hopefully someone has answeres to my questions.

Thanks in advance.

[Case]

#1. Use a bitrate calculator.

#2. Learn about quantisation. Note that MovieGate is quite helpful on this with a description, e.g.:

Quantiser = 4, Variable Bit Rate, Bonne Qualité

(emphasis mine)

[Mark V]

Thank you very much.

[Mark V]

How do you find the Audio bitrate?

[Case]

Check your source movie, e.g. in VLC's Info window, the stream with Type: Audio. Use that bitrate, or a lower number that is still good enough for you, in MovieGate. MovieGate has the audio settings in the Preferences [128/192/224 kbps] [AC3/mp2]. Use the MovieGate bitrate of your choice in the calculator.

[Mark V]

Thank you.

[sjk]

And there's BitrateCalc, if you don't like the Java applet.

[Mark V]

Thank you!

[rorschach]

I'm trying out MovieGate and while the interface is nice and simple, I'm disappointed that the output doesn't really rez up the movie to true NTSC level quality.

If the source file is, say, 640x480 and is 23.98fps, the output stays at that level. I wish it would transcode up to 720x480 and 29.97fps. And yes, I know there are other apps out there that will do this for me.

I've just done my first encode and I will look at it on a DVD player...

[espidog]

Hi Rorschach,
Only ten months after you posted your question about transcoding NTSC....

Forgive me if you know this stuff already, but I have some input re authoring DVDs in NTSC.

If your input footage is at 23.98fps you should keep it like that and author your DVD at that framerate: you don't need to increase the fps to 29.97. In fact, doing so will waste a lot of encoding effort and produce a fatter output file with worse image quality than the original.

For some years now, NTSC has had two framerate standards: 29.97fps is used when stuff is recorded straight to video, and is the necessary frame rate for broadcast (cos the transmitting system is still locked into the old 60Hz analog TV standard). 23.98fps is what you get on all commercial movie DVDs - and they play perfectly well on domestic DVD machines, because modern TV sets can display material at a variety of different framerates.

When a movie is broadcast on TV in the USA (and any other countries that use the NTSC system), it is run at 23.98fps, but the telecine machine electronically bumps up the framerate to 29.97 by a process called "3:2 pulldown". This generates 'fake' frames (made up of the odd interlacings of one frame and the even interlacings of the next). They're inserted in a pattern like this: REAL / REAL / REAL / FAKE / FAKE / REAL / REAL / REAL / FAKE / FAKE. Compared with the movie's 'real' frames, the fake frames are really smeary and dirty, especially if the scene contains rapid movement.

The human eye can't detect them, but mpeg2 compression (which works by recording the differences between frames) certainly can, and it doesn't like it at all ! If you try to encode a DVD from NTSC telecine'd footage (an old movie you recorded on VHS, for example), you always get some jerkiness in the resulting video. It's a serious PITA. There are software tools designed to restore the original 23.98fps framerate by removing the dirty frames (a process known as "inverse telecine" or IVTC), but the ones that work properly cost serious money, and the cheap ones don't work at all. It's far better to have nice, clean 23.98fps footage to start with - like you had.

Cheers,
Espidog