Best Settings for VCD in CCE

[jugernaut]

I have been using TMPGEnc to encode for a long time, and i'm very happy with their VCD quality, but recently i try Cinema Craft Encoder and it speed is awesome so i want to use it to encode my VCD's but i have been unable to get an image with the same level of quality of the TMPGEnc one (Remember, only in the VCD setting).

So i want to know your favorite settings:

Image Quality Priority
AntiNoise Filter
Preset on the Quantitize Matrix Setting

My current configuration in Misc settings:

NOT selected "Try decoding in YUY2 Format"
NOT selected "Try decoding in 32 bit Format"
Selected Use Overlapped Output

[adam]

Well I personally do not think CCE's mpeg1 encoder is as good as TMPGenc. Even Custom Technolgy themself admits that its mpeg1 encoder is not exactly up to par. Hopefully this will change in the new release due this year.

Those misc settings really have no effect on quality. If you use dvd2avi to frameserve and you keep it as YUV and have cce to decode in YUV than that saves you alot of time, since the encoder does not have to convert to RGB first. But again, this doesn't affect quality. I believe overlapped output is used for dual processors, but I'm not positive.

If you do choose to continue using CCE for encoding vcds then use a very high image quality priority setting (higher means slider farther to the right.) Generally speaking, the lower your bitrate, the farther right you want to move the slider otherwise you get mosquito noise. For SVCDS I find that a good level is 25 or so. I do not use CCE for encoding mpeg1 or vcds so I haven't experimented with it too much but you should certainly use a higher setting than this. I would use at least 30.

There are better noise filters than CCE's. If you are using avisynth to frameserve try temporal smoother. Light noise filtering can definitely help when your encoding low bitrate video.

Where do you see a place to adjust the Quantize Matrix? Are you using the newest demo? I haven't even tested that out yet. Anyway do not just edit this section manually, you will surely do more harm than good if you don't know what you are doing. Do a web search for "CCE patcher." This is a little patch that lets you choose a custom matrix and patch it into any version of cce. If your version of cce allows manual Q Matrix editing, well then you can just input the values manually if you like. There are a number of very good Q matrix presets available, some of which are optimized for low bitrate encoding such as what VCDS use. Try the Angel matrix or the CCE Low bitrate Matrix. Ultimately though, I don't think these make very much difference.

The most important settings for you to pay attention to are the ones in the video tab. For VCD encoding always set it to progressive and zigzagg scan order. Set the DC precision to 8 and if you use pc scale in dvd2avi set it to 16-235 for the luminance level in CCE, and 0-255 if you use tv scale. If you don't use dvd2avi frameserve then you can check the luminance level in virtual dub and just use the same one in CCE.

I think thats about it for versions 2.5-2.64 unless you choose to make a non-standard vcd and use multipass vbr, in which case you can use the advanced settings which opens a whole new set of options. If you are using the newest demo version then you have a bunch of settings that I don't have, so I can't help you with those.

If fast encoding time isn't a priority than I would use Panasonic mpeg1 encoder or TMPGenc for making vcds. If you want the fastest encoding time with mediocre quality than CCE is definitely the encoder to use.

[jugernaut]

Wow, thank you very much. I will try the settings on the Quantize Matrix. I don't know if using Dvd2avi apply, as i only want to convert from captured avi's, not from DVD's.

But i think you are right, TMPGEnc is king in VideoCD quality (but lose on speed, CCE encodes 1.4 real time VS 0.25 of TMPGEnc - In CCE a 3 minute video takes 1.5 minutes encoding versus 12 minutes in TMPGEnc).

[ROBO1964]

Quality takes time