KVCD New BETA templates and samples.

[kwag]

Hello!:

I have posted three new templates. 352x240, 352x480 and 704x480. They're still BETA, so that means there's still room for optimizations. The templates are now using the KVCD Q. matrix and are now using CQ_VBR instead of CQ mode. Hopefully this will solve some compatibility issues with some DVD players that didn't play correctly CQ mode. Under each template is a 15 second sample.
Link here:
http://www.kvcd.net/dvd-models.html
Discussion thread here:
http://www.kvcd.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=548

Enjoy!,
kwag

[Fred©]

hey kwag,

I downloaded the sample hbo-cap2.mpg and burned with Nero, as XVCD and it did not worked in my dvd player... it is a Nintaus (sold as Suzuki) N-9901 ... I also tried to trick the player, multiplexing the file in TMPGEnc to change the header to SVCD and burned again as XSVCD, but nothing..

I am not logged and cannot update the list of non-compatible dvds... so, please, put this info there, ok?

Fred©

[kwag]

hey kwag,

I downloaded the sample hbo-cap2.mpg and burned with Nero, as XVCD and it did not worked in my dvd player... it is a Nintaus (sold as Suzuki) N-9901 ... I also tried to trick the player, multiplexing the file in TMPGEnc to change the header to SVCD and burned again as XSVCD, but nothing..

I am not logged and cannot update the list of non-compatible dvds... so, please, put this info there, ok?

Fred©

Why don't you try one of the new samples?. The one you downloaded was done with the old templates. The new BETA templates use CQ_VBR, and some players that couldn't play CQ, do play CQ_VBR.
Try this sample: http://ns1.shidima.com/kwag/film-352x240.mpg

kwag

[Fred©]

I will try it... but the idea was make CVD (which my DVD player does not support) or 352x480 (XVCD movies)... I am familiar with 352x240 movies and they are good enough for my 8mm movies...

I will see the differences...

Fred©

[Fred©]

kwag,

i got the sample but have no sound in computer... what coded did u used to capture?

Fred©

[kwag]

kwag,

i got the sample but have no sound in computer... what coded did u used to capture?

Fred©

Opps! sorry about that Fred©! The samples have a 128Kbps silent dual channel track.
Just used as a "filler", because most DVD players can't play a VCD video only stream. They need both audio and video muxed together.
This was posted in the explanation at the kvcd.net forums, but not here.

kwag

[Fred©]

kwag,

the new sample played ok in my DVD player, but I want to know if those large borders are optional or they are the way you found to create smaller movies? also, I want to know if I can convert a 1.1 GB VCD compliant file (110 minutes) into your template without borders, to fill it in just ONE CD, using TMPGEnc to convert.. Is it possible?

Thanks.

Fred©

[kwag]

kwag,

the new sample played ok in my DVD player, but I want to know if those large borders are optional or they are the way you found to create smaller movies? also, I want to know if I can convert a 1.1 GB VCD compliant file (110 minutes) into your template without borders, to fill it in just ONE CD, using TMPGEnc to convert.. Is it possible?

Thanks.

Fred©

Hi Fred©:

Those black borders are the the original aspect of the movie. If you remove them, your aspect will be wrong. Just like a full screen movie, you won't be able to put 120 minutes in a CD. It's more like 90 minutes, because of the extra pixels covering the complete screen. So your mpeg file will be larger. You can convert an existing VCD to KVCD, but the result won't be too pleasing. You're just creating another generation of your VCD, a copy of a copy, and the result will be worse.

kwag

[Arnnie]

Hi kwag,

I have been using and adapting your PAL KDVD Half D1 template for my CVD conversions, ensuring DVD compliance.

I am really interested in how you determined the GOP structure!!

Can you please explain the reasoning why you set "Number of P Pictures" to 18 for both NTSC and PAL, when this value doesn't seem to have a influence on compliance? What about your decision to close the GOP?

Also I have read on this forum that the "Max number of frames in a GOP" should be set to 15 for NTSC and 18 for PAL. Yet you have swaped these values, being 18 for NTSC and 15 for PAL. Is this correct?

Regards,

Arnnie

[Martyn1980]

I know this isnt relevant but can i ask why in this day and age, people are still moaning about Widescreen, dont people like seeing all the film

[kwag]

Hi kwag,

I have been using and adapting your PAL templates for my CVD conversions.

I am really interested in how you determined the GOP structure!!

Can you please explain the reasoning why you set "Number of P Pictures" to 18 for both NTSC and PAL? Does this influence your decision to close the GOP?

Also I have read on this forum that the "Max number of frames in a GOP" should be set to 15 for NTSC and 18 for PAL. Yet you have swaped these values, being 18 for NTSC and 15 for PAL. Is this correct?

Regards,

Arnnie

Hi Arnnie:

The MAX number of frames, for DVD compatibility in mpeg files, is 15 for PAL and 18 for NTSC. Not the other way around. But this doesn't apply to (XYZ)VCD's, so they can be longer.
The number of P's was 18. That was on the old templates. The number is now 5823 ( KVCD if you look at your telephone pad 8) )
Actually, there's no difference from 12 to 9999, because the max number of frames per GOP is locked at 48 in all the NTSC templates. I just fixed a high value for P's for KVCD templates identification only ( and for the hell of it ).
The value of 48 was chosen, because longer GOP's, create a "decaying" effect on the video quality. And when a new GOP was inserted, the brightness would jump up ( because of the new GOP with the new I frame ), and it gave a flashing effect on the video. This was most noticeable on long scenes, where there were no scene changes. On action and continuous changing scenes, this was not noticeable. That was caused because the I frames were longer apart from each other ( too many P's and B's between I's ).

-kwag

[Martyn1980]

Though Kwag i cant say im your biggest fan,mostly cause im a big CCE fan and your use of mpeg1 a lot and my Yukai DVD doesn't play most of your stuff, havn't tested these yet, but apparently according to your website, my Toshiba SD210E does, unfortunately that is 400miles away in my parents.
But i have to say the 704x480 clip looks good, so i might give that a go, at that rate it works out at less than 9mb a min, meaning youd get 90mins on a disc, does that clip represent the total filesize for a whole movie, and if not then what is the average lenght per disc of an average movie.

[kwag]

Though Kwag i cant say im your biggest fan,mostly cause im a big CCE fan and your use of mpeg1 a lot and my Yukai DVD doesn't play most of your stuff, havn't tested these yet, but apparently according to your website, my Toshiba SD210E does, unfortunately that is 400miles away in my parents.
But i have to say the 704x480 clip looks good, so i might give that a go, at that rate it works out at less than 9mb a min, meaning youd get 90mins on a disc, does that clip represent the total filesize for a whole movie, and if not then what is the average lenght per disc of an average movie.

Just to give you an idea, I put "The Matrix" in 2 CD's and also "Proof of Life", also in 2 CD's. Both with audio at 224Khz and Dolby Surround.
There was room to spare in the CD's, and both movies are over 135 minutes long
Remember that I am not a fan of CCE, because the MPEG-1 quality is inferior to TMPEG's. If I was doing MPEG-2, then I would "probably" be looking into it. I also chose MPEG-1 for compatibility reasons. Almost every standalone DVD player plays VCD's. So there's more chance to play a KVCD, than a SVCD. There's a much lower percent of players that do play SVCD's.

-kwag

[Martyn1980]

Im very open minded to improvement and i just done a couple of test encodes with your new template, and i am quite impressed.

Havn't seen Proof of Life but im guessing that clip was from it, glad to hear your using 224kbps sound, a lot of people on here including yourself deglect the audio in the quest for Video quality, forgetting that a movie is an Audio Video experience especially if you have any sort of surround Decoder.

As for the CCE thing i totally agree, i tried CCE at Video CD bitrates Mpeg1 and Tmpeg looks better at about 900kbps, i found this out after making a Video CD trailer CD, after not being happy with the quality i went back to Tmpeg after all this time.
But this is my problem my Yukai DVD player, i think its more of a modified SVCD player, will play Mpeg2 at any resolution and at bitrates as high 5mbps, it might go higher i havn't tried yet, but unfortunately it wont play Mpeg1 at anything higher than 352x288, the screen goes green, i kinda find this strange as i thought mpeg1 was easier for it to decode but im not that much of an expert.

What id like to Know is can i use Mpeg2, or would that affect the filesize in anyway, and would i have to change anything if i use Mpeg2.

Any Help Much Appreciated

[kwag]

Im very open minded to improvement and i just done a couple of test encodes with your new template, and i am quite impressed.

Havn't seen Proof of Life but im guessing that clip was from it, glad to hear your using 224kbps sound, a lot of people on here including yourself deglect the audio in the quest for Video quality, forgetting that a movie is an Audio Video experience especially if you have any sort of surround Decoder.

As for the CCE thing i totally agree, i tried CCE at Video CD bitrates Mpeg1 and Tmpeg looks better at about 900kbps, i found this out after making a Video CD trailer CD, after not being happy with the quality i went back to Tmpeg after all this time.
But this is my problem my Yukai DVD player, i think its more of a modified SVCD player, will play Mpeg2 at any resolution and at bitrates as high 5mbps, it might go higher i havn't tried yet, but unfortunately it wont play Mpeg1 at anything higher than 352x288, the screen goes green, i kinda find this strange as i thought mpeg1 was easier for it to decode but im not that much of an expert.

What id like to Know is can i use Mpeg2, or would that affect the filesize in anyway, and would i have to change anything if i use Mpeg2.

Any Help Much Appreciated

You can try MPEG-2. I haven't. The new KVCD quanization matrix was done with MPEG-1 in mind, and all test runs were done at MPEG-1. So you're going to have to try some small clips and see the results. As for the audio, I used 224Khz, because the space did permit that, for those movies. The templates are still at 128Kbps default, but I have suggested everyone to use headAC3he for audio encoding. The quality created by the mp2enc by headAC3he at 128Kbps, is better than TMPEG's internal audio encoder at 192Khz. It sounds great even at 128Kbps, with no metallic sounds. So I just encode the video part, and then depending on the size, I encode the audio part. But the way I see it, I think we'll be able to use 224Khz on every movie, because the total file sizes being reported are between 1.2 and 1.3GB per 120+ minute movies. And that's great news!. After that, Mux both streams with BBmpeg into two parts and burn. Never fails!

-kwag

[Martyn1980]

Thanks for the help, i'll give it a go with Mpeg2, theres no point in me using Mpeg1 as i know it wont play, well not unless i lower the resolution to 352x288 and i personally cant watch that.

Those filesizes sound great, but i personally use the Besweet part of DVD2SVCD to encode my sound, i just cancel before the video encoding starts, is headac3he better, as im always on the lookout of ways of improving sound quality without going crazy on the bitrates, i even used an 384kbps mp2 once, was supprised that it played ok in my DVD player.

Thanks again Kwag

[kwag]

No hay problema Martyn1980
I'm not sure if BeSweet has "Dolby Surround 2 mode". HeadAC3he does.
As far as speed is concerned, headAC3he has optimized dll's compiled for different processors ( Athlon, Celeron, P4, etc. ). So thats an advantage over BeSweet. It's really fast. And it uses Azid, just like BeSweet.
Here's a quote from the "WhatsNew" file of headAC3he:
"- added internal downmixer (now only to 1ch or 2ch possible) with DS2 ("Surround 2") downmix capabilities"

Later!,
kwag

[Martyn1980]

That sounds good to me, havn't heard of Dolby Surround 2. i think i'll go see exactly what it is, thanks for all your help.

Just finished an encode of The Order, 84minutes using your new template the 352X576 one and it came to 835mb that was using Mpeg2 though, all other settings left the same including 128k audio, bit dissapointed that it was only just over and i dont think i can overburn that much, but the quality was very good and a lot better than Standard Video CD, which would have been the same size anyway.