CCEncoder - Does it work?

[shimrod]

SOMEBODY MUST BE ABLE TO HELP ME OUT!!!!!
I TRIED THIS ON SEVERAL PC'S. THIS ENCODER WON'T WORK!!!!

This little f#cker won't even work in the most easiest of situations!!!!!

I load a AVI-file(30Mb) into CCEncoder.
I set it to 4pass encoding and sound disabled!
Bitrate is set to (min.100,avg.1800,max.1564).
DCT is set to 10.
I use Win98 2nd edition.

When CCE reaches pass 2 the following error appears:
--------------------------------------------------------
cce encoding failed: Error: Video check-sum, is different from that of previous pass.
Source video data or time code may be different
Please check video tape or the information file
--- information ---
Current: check sum = 0128fd9f
Previous: check sum = 0128eecf
--------------------------------------------------------
I tried different settings. Nothing seems to work.
I get the same result while frameserving a DVD to it.

I'm getting crazy here!!!!!
Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaase help!

[adam]

Yes I've gotten this error many times before as well. CCE is full of bugs like this. It amazes me that a free encoder like TMPGenc is less buggy than a $4000 encoder. Anyway...

I have heard several theories as to what causes this error. I know that setting the # of frames to encode at a higher number than what the source actually contains will cause this. But its unlikely you messed with that setting.

I have heard people suggest that this could be a hardware problem where data does not get flushed through the cache fast enough. This seems likely, at least in my case since the error appears completely randomly. On the same file I will get the error on the 1st try, and then the second try will work. Some people claim upgrading or even downgrading certain drivers can solve this problem.

Finally someone created a patch for cce which prevents it from performing this check. Now people have reported that this solves the problems entirely. In my case I occasionally get problems where an I-frame is missing, causing the resulting video stream to be corrupt. I can only assume that it is because the checksum is different because I never had this problem before. Incidentally anyone know how to salvage a video stream with a corrupt or missing I-frame???

Well it might work for you. If you have problems just uninstall then re-install cce again. you can get the patch here... http://www.bath.ac.uk/~susajb/Cinema_Craft_Encoder_2_50_SP_CRC_Patch.zip

[shimrod]

Thank you Adam for your support! It is really helpful!
Now I know which direction to go.

I'm glad to have found someone who has some serious experience with this. I had no clue what to do.

I'm afraid I can't help you with the missing I-frame issue.

I'm gonna try this patch and give it another push.
At least TMpegEnc is a serious alternative here!

Thanks Adam!

If it works - I'll shout it in another post.

[shimrod]

It Works!!! YES YES YES!!!!

I installed the patch and after about 26 hours (4passes on a P3 800Mhz) I had a very nice high quality SVCD.



Thanks for the support!!!

[BillyBobX]

I think the error that you are getting is due to the fact that a .VAF file already exists that is different than the one it is trying to create or verify against. If you get this error, just delete the .VAF file in the directory or change the name of the .VAF file that CCE is generating and you shouldn't have this problem.

--
BillyBobX

[adam]

No that is definitely not the problem BillyBobx. This happens when there are no other .vaf files on the hard drive at all. This is a fairly well known problem and I think it has pretty much been determined that it has to do with your hardware configuration in some way.

Glad it worked shimrod, hope it continues to work because I did have problems with it like I mentioned.

[shimrod]

It still works with the patch.

But I'm a bit confused about the SVCD quality gained by using multiple passes. I did some testing. I encoded the same movie twice using Multipasses VBR (bitrate avg 1800). The first at 1 pass and the other at 4 pass. I compared them on my TV. I grabbed frames on the PC and compared those. They are almost equal. It don't see any quality differences.

Perhaps the difference is more visible with a lower bitrate and very fast action scenes. Anyways I still wonder if using more than 2 passes does improve the quality. The manual says it does, but I don't see any difference.

I also suspect the pacth (no CRC check) of CCE. It seems to produce a slightly lower quality (using 4 passes) than the non-patched version. I hope the patch doesn't damage the multipass encoding routines.

Any ideas about this?

[adam]

I don't believe the patch could possibly affect quality in any way. All it does is disable checksum checking. If there were a checksum error then the encoding process would halt. All the patch does is disable the checksum checks. It doesnt affect how cce encodes at all.

The more passes you do the better allocated your bitrate will be, up to a point of course. If the file you are encoding does not require alot of bitrate to look good then more passes isnt going to help. It might be wasting bitrate resulting in a larger filesize but multiple passes wont increase quality any it will just decrease size. You will need to experiment on various movies but I can assure you that multipass encoding yeilds significantly higher quality as well as significantly smaller filesizes as 1 pass vbr and especially cbr.

Dont forget that part of the benefit of using additional passes is that you can increase bitrate and still keep the filesize the same. For instance, it varys depending on you particular movie but...at 2 passes you might be able to just fit your movie on 2 cdrs at vbr average 2.0 mbits. But by encoding in 4 passes that same movie will now fit on 2 cdrs encoded at vbr average 2.2 mbits. I would never use more than 4 passes though, the benefits pretty much top off at that point.

But your assumption is correct. The more scenes you have in your movie that need high bitrate, the more benefit you will get out of additional passes.

[shimrod]

Thanks Adam for your advice and info on this. I would already have given up if I didn't have this great forum and people like you who clear things out for me.

Finally I'm able to convert all my home-videos to SVCD.

Small request: I noticed your post about the I-author patch that removes the 74min. size limit. Would it be possible to send the patch to my E-Mail address or perhaps post a link to the patch?

Thanks in advance!

[adam]

Yeah I got a bunch of e-mails asking for the patch so I just put it on a web page. You can download it here.
http://home.att.net/~adampoole/I-Author_Limit_Remover.zip

Note to all that read this, this patch is completely legal.

[Kdiddy]

I know you have your problem solved...but in your original post..

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>Bitrate is set to (min.100,avg.1800,max.1564). </BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

why is you AVG bitrate higher than your max bitrate?? I assume it was a typo.

[shimrod]

Yes Kdiddy, Bitrate should be Max = 2564. Typing error.

[shimrod]

Adam, thanks for that link! Really great!

Hi Adam! my name is Sunny. I'm new to this forum. I have lots of DVD Karaoke and I want to ripp DVD to a VCD karaoke. what kind of sofwares to convert. Can you help me out here and how its work. Thanks for your kindness and experience helpful person. God bless you