Need good front-end for HC

[TheManuel]

I want to use HC to encode my captured AVI files but don't want to use AviSynth scripcts.
Can anyone point me to a good tool that handles the frameserving for me and yet allows me to fully configure HC?
I already tried AVI2DVD, DIKO and a few of the lesser known ones and none allow me to fully configure HC. In fact all I need the tool to do is handle the frameserving of the avi file to HC and let me configure HC directly with its own front-end.

Any suggestions will be appreciated.

Thanks.

[manono]

Any suggestions will be appreciated.

I hate to be glib, but learn AVISynth or use another encoder. How hard can it be:

AVISource("C:\Path\To\Video.avi")

It accepts nothing but AVISynth script and D2V (which you can't use with an AVI source) input. Use FitCD to generate your scripts for you. You're making this more difficult than it really is.

[Abond]

I want to use HC to encode my captured AVI files but don't want to use AviSynth scripcts.

Why, for god's sake?

[kschang]

I want to use HC to encode my captured AVI files but don't want to use AviSynth scripcts.

That's almost like saying "I want to go somewhere in a car, but I don't want to learn how to drive, nor do I want to pay for a cheuffer or a taxi."

[guns1inger]

Use FitCD to create your avisynth script - it will resize and convert colour space for you - then load the script into HC.

Or find the HCEnc post over at Doom and discuss with the author the possibility of him changing the app to allow you to load files dirrectly.

[Abond]

By now HC can load directly .d2v files from DGIndex. Unfortunately it doesn't work for avi.

[vhelp]

TheManuel, so you want to be able to have "middle-man" or, font-end
between the items:

filename.avi -> FRONT-END -> HCenc

I think that most, if not all, of HCenc 's Functions and Settings can
(or, are) probably done so in it's .INI file.

My scenarios vary according to project, based on source type, of which I
lable as IVTC or Interlace. And, they go even further than that. I used
to have separate TMPGenc folderS. Each setup to do either. But, then I got
more ideas and started futzing around with *each* folder setup, and things
began building, and I had even more folders of various setups. In these
sort of arrangements, you can see how confusing and disorganized one can
become over time. This happened to be, and I resorted to just staying
with one folder, and just do the necessary setup quickly.

A GUI command center (front-end) would have been perfect for this, but I
was all too lazy to build this tool. Most of my time is well spent in
research, not coding.

You (or someone else) could build this tool for your HCenc endeavors

In your case, based on what I understood by your post, you would need a tool
that creates several Profiles for the various sources you will be encoding..
IVTC; Interlace; MPEG-1 vs. MPEG-2, etc etc. and through the avenue of your
GUI tool, you could select that given Profile for your project, and lounch it
into action. The GUI tool would do all the necessary foot work.

But, as you said, there are already some out there, but just not completely
controling HCenc to its fullest. It might be that those GUI tools are
lacking those commands or functions. But, they *could* be added onto those
gui tools.


A *new* front-end or GUI tool..
..to be added to the gui collection. This might be possible, though others
may feel it's unecessary.

You could try and contact the authors of those tools. But chances are, you may
not suceed. You could try with the author of HCenc, but if you're not a close
friend of his, you *could* be waiting a long time. At least you can post a
few questions, and he might answer them with a reply. Wouldn't hurt to at least
do this as a first move

-vhelp 4005

[TheManuel]

Thanks go to everybody that replied.
I realize I gave up too early. I had spent hours finding the right tools an methods for the whole process of converting home videos to DVD and was mentally fatigued when I got HC which was the missing piece. It is as easy as having avisynth installed and create a very simple file with the command manono suggested to load it into HC. I had captured my first file in 4:1:1 instead of the required 4:2:0 but HC suggested the right command to convert colorspace so that was easy too. I was indeed making it harder than it is.
Thanks particularly to vhelp for the detailed response in trying to help.

Now that I have all the tools I need I will try and formulate a more productive question:
Would using the "Constant Quantization" settings in HC produce better results than simply using VBR and specifying a high avg bitrate (in my case 8500 with max of 9000) and setting the compression curve to 100 (approaching constant bitrate)? Space is not an issue as I don't anticipate making home videos longer than an hour. Smaller coding times would be nice to have but are not a requirement either.

Thanks.

[manono]

Hi-

Glad you got over your "fear" of using AviSynth. Hank is a pretty sharp fellow, and his HC Encoder uses .avs input for a reason. It's simply the best way to feed video into an encoder, and the results are better than they might be were it possible to simply drop an AVI into his encoder.

Would using the "Constant Quantization" settings in HC produce better results than simply using VBR and specifying a high avg bitrate (in my case 8500 with max of 9000) and setting the compression curve to 100 (approaching constant bitrate)?

My opinion is that at the high bitrates you're using, it doesn't make much difference. However:

Smaller coding times would be nice to have but are not a requirement either.

Since CQ encoding is 1-pass, and VBR encoding is 2-pass, you'll about halve the encoding time by going the CQ route, although you lose control of the final size, which doesn't seem to bother you much.