SVCD quality on 2 discs using TMPGenc

[pothole46]

I have been trying to fit a film onto 2 discs in SVCD qualityusing TMPGenc I downloaded Harts war and the quality was brilliant and on 2 disc with over 55mins on each. Can anyone suggest any settings I am in the UK so could you make the setting PAL thanks for any input.

[ya_jai]

If you DVD can play 90/99 mins cdrs and your writer can burn them, I'd suggest go with that. If not try to lower audio bitrate, maybe to 128 kbit/sec and if still not enough (which is mostlikely not) you have to lower video as well.

I'm not sure what setting you always use, but try this
res 480x576
CBR @2000 (or if you like you can try VBR)
audio @128 kbit/sec.

If you still get more than 800 MB you need to lower your setting until it fit.

Hope this help!

PS. Cut credit at the end of movie so you have space for main movie.

[adam]

You should certainly use vbr encoding before resorting to lowering your audio bitrate. If compression is a factor, which it certainly is if your only use 2 cdrs, then CBR is a horrible waste of space. Unless you can achieve a CBR level of 2.5mbits, which only fits about 40 mins per disk, than VBR will always yield signifanctly higher quality than CBR for SVCD encoding.

128kbits for audio is extremely low, I personally would never use that for the movie's soundtrac. You should probably never go below 160kbits. The difference in quality between 160 and 128 is pretty significant, but the difference in size isn't. Don't skimp on the audio unless you absolutely have to.

Also cutting the credits doesn't do too much. If you use vbr encoding then they will be encoded using an extremely low bitrate so they will hardly take up any space any way. Of course if you never watch them then there isn't much reason to keep them.

pothole46 your using pal so that simplifys things a bit, though the larger resolution does make it a little bit harder to prevent artifacts. To be honest with you there really isn't much to it.

Make sure and crop out your borders and add new borders. This saves some valuable bitrate.

Use either 2-pass vbr and calculate your bitrate so that it fits on 2 disks or use CQ and shoot for 2 disks. Set motion search precision to high or highest, though highest takes forever and probably isn't worth it.

You should not put more than 1 hr per disk, and you should actually be aiming for more like 50-55mins per disk. If you are trying to put more than this per disk than you may want to consider making a CVD instead and use 352x576 for your resolution. This format is still compatible on all SVCD compliant dvd players.

In viewing that other 2 disk svcd's quality there are some things you have to consider. First off if the movie you downloaded was released by a release group than they almost surely did not use TMPGenc to encode but instead used Cinema Craft Encoder. I personally think CCE is higher quality than TMPGenc at encoding svcds but that doesnt mean you can't get excellent results with TMPGenc.

Also note the playtime of the movie. As I said don't go over 60 mins. Harts war is just over 2 hrs so its pushing it. If the movie you are trying to encode is longer than this than trying to fit it on 2 disks is probably not reasonable.

Lastly not all movies compress the same. A 110 min action movie may require 3 cdrs while a 140 min chick flick might look acceptable on 2 cdrs.

[ya_jai]

I always use CQ for my template and set bitrate even lower than 2000. But I encode at res 352x480 with audio at 160 kbit/sec sometime 128 kbit some even lower than that. I have found that encode at 352x480 doesn't get smaller file size than 480x480 (forgive me I'm wrong, I tested only once).

For sound quality or even picuture quality matter, if you really want to make it fit into 2 cds you have to let it go sometime. Of course I know it makes different but what can I do. So my choise always like this if I like da movie and sound is impartant I would go with 3 disc but if just so so and almost of the movie is dialogue I will try to fit into 2 cds. Sometime I even fit 63 mins to one CD with my template and I think at least picture quality better than VCD.

I wouldn't dare to suggest you to use 352x576 res becuz VCDImager always warning with this type of file(XSVCD) and I live in NTSC country so I don't know much about complatible, but one thing though my APEX can play 352x576 without any problem at all.

Oh did I mention about full screen, wide screen thing. If I wanna put more minutes into one cd, and if I can, I always encoded with true wide screen (16:9), this is for DVD-rip. Letter box will take more space than wide screen and full screen is the worst.

[adam]

Resolution has no effect on filesize. Filesize is soley determined by your bitrate. I think you misunderstood what I meant about this resolution. With the smaller resolution of CVD you have fewer pixels so at the same bitrate the quality will be better. Filesize is the same, quality is better. That is why it is a good option to use when your cannot achieve as high of a bitrate as you would like, because the smaller resolution makes your bitrate go much further.

Vcdimager warns its not svcd compliant because its not, its CVD compliant. Vcdimager is a vcd and svcd authoring program, it doesnt specifically account for CVD, though it is talked about in the manual. I can assure you that any svcd compatible dvd player is required by law to also support CVD. Its a good option to have if you are trying to squeeze longer movies onto 2 disks.

As far as the audio, it all depends on your ears. My point is that lowering the audio bitrate doesnt really free up that much space, so you dont gain that much bitrate for your video. I see no reason why you can't have good quality audio and good quality video, even on just 2 disks.

You brought up a great point which I totally forgot to mention in regards to the compressibility of movies. Obviously wide screen movies will compress much better than fullscreen ones since there are far fewer pixels to encode.

[ya_jai]

I didn't misunderstood you at all adam? I just point out why I didnt mention 352x576 res to pothole even thou I'm still using this res when I convert avi with PAL format. And just to clearify with pothole46 becuz you didn't mention about benefit of 352x576 res. I don't know it myself, maybe.

About vcdimager how come VCDimager never give a warning about my 352x480 res SVCD? I'm just wondering, nothing much.

[pothole46]

Thanks Adam and ya_jai for the advice, I will try CCE and use the setting you suggested, thanks again.

Pothole

[adam]

About vcdimager how come VCDimager never give a warning about my 352x480 res SVCD? I'm just wondering, nothing much.

Ok I actually don't use VCDimager for this particular step so I just assumed it didnt accept 352x480/576 res as compliant, since it would only accept vcd or svcd compliant input. But if I am understanding you, you mean that when you load 352x480 you get no error but with 352x576 you do get an error? If so then this is because you have vcdimager set to create an ntsc formatted CVD, so giving it pal resolution content will obviously make it non-compliant, though it would be compliant if you were authoring a Pal CVD.

So it seems VCDimager does author CVDs.

[Jaspa]

For longer movies than 2 hours, you can try cce and path a new matric in.

angel´s SVCD matrix,
or the Andreas 78 matrix,

with the angel matrix, you can fit 120 min of 2,35:1 widescreen movies, resized with fit cd, and tv oversceen set to 2, with good quality, on one 700MB CD´R, that looks better than a VCD movies.

But it depends of, the sort of movie you encode.

Iprever ti encode always on 2 CD´s with the ANDREAS matrix, and gives me good quality.

The cce default matrix, is not so good at average bitrates below 2000kb/s, so you can also try, the ultra low bitrate matrix.

When using cce2.5 you must patch the matrix, and than reastrem the matrix, after encoding with ReStream.

With cce2.6xxx you dont need to patch the matrix in, but this version, are not so good for DVD2SVCD than the older 2.5 encoder.


hope this helps

[Deusxmachina]

The main thing I do to squeeze things is (other than lowering the audio if I have to, 128 will save around 100megs over 224), is just cap the max bitrate at 2000 or even 1700 or 1800. 1800 is plenty for most things. I did some tests on "Merlin" in 4:3 format during the big castle attack at the beginning, and even 1700 max looked fine. It macroblocked a little when there were ten guys running around, but other than that, no big deal, and 98% of movies aren't going to have ten guys running around attacking castles.

Capping the max allows a little macroblocking on the high action scenes where there is some _serious_ action taking place, but then the rest of the movie looks great, so I don't mind giving up a small bit during momentary action in order to enjoy the other hour-55 or whatever of the movie.

[ya_jai]

Ok I actually don't use VCDimager for this particular step so I just assumed it didnt accept 352x480/576 res as compliant, since it would only accept vcd or svcd compliant input. But if I am understanding you, you mean that when you load 352x480 you get no error but with 352x576 you do get an error? If so then this is because you have vcdimager set to create an ntsc formatted CVD, so giving it pal resolution content will obviously make it non-compliant, though it would be compliant if you were authoring a Pal CVD.

So it seems VCDimager does author CVDs.

You are right adam, I think I didn't tell vcdimager that it was PAL. Sorry if I get anyone confuse just becuz I always do vcd/svcd in NTSC so I forgot all abou that

[energy80s]

For longer movies than 2 hours, you can try cce and path a new matric in.

angel´s SVCD matrix,
or the Andreas 78 matrix,

with the angel matrix, you can fit 120 min of 2,35:1 widescreen movies, resized with fit cd, and tv oversceen set to 2, with good quality, on one 700MB CD´R, that looks better than a VCD movies.

Where are you getting these extra matrixes from?

[Jaspa]

Dont know, a friend, has a patch for the cce encoder, with this he can patch the new matrices in.

But when yue using, thze cce2.5 this version, canot read the new streams in the mpeg file, so he use a tool called restream with that he write the new matrices (Intra and Non Intra) in the mpeg stream.

The newer version of cce 2.6x can write it automatic in, without restream.

But iám usind DVD2SVCD and the cce2.5 so i dont use it, because i want to use the bin files encoded with VCDXBuild, so canot use the restream tool, because it works only fpr the mpeg files, but there i have no chapters, and i want make them sepperatly with an authoring tool.

So i use the standard matrix in cce, and use 4 passes in cce, and billinear resize, and sometimes the anti noise filter, and get also great results, near as the movies with the Angel or Andreas matrices.

[adam]

The program is called "CCE Patcher" and its made by someone who calls himself Tsunami.

I won't post any links to it because it can also be used to crack CCE so it is illegal, it shouldn't be hard to find though. Download it at your own risk.

[banjazzer]

Can anyone suggest any settings I am in the UK so could you make the setting PAL thanks for any input.

You never mentioned whether your source material was PAL. You will compromise quality if your source material is not. Your choices if this is so are either to convert first to PAL, or to encode in the same format as your source.