TMPGE gave better quality DVD than CCE but took along time

[videocheez]

I'm actually upset by my findings because I love the speed of CCE but quality is my overall goal. I converted avi to DVD with CCE using 2-pass VBR in about 3hours for a 1.5hr flic. Unfortunately, the quality was grainy. I have been reading all of the CCE vs. TMPGE battles and decided to try TMPGE. The resulting TMPGE encoded DVD took eight hours but the quality was superb. I still believe that I can get the same success with CCE if I write the correct script. In TMPGE under the other settings, there were a few boxes that I checked that I believe attributed to the better quality output. These boxes were:
1. ghost reduction
2. simple color correction
3. noise reduction
4. sharpen edge
5. clip frame
Also I selected "motion search estimate (fast)" under the "motion search precision" box.

I would like assistance in writing avisynth scripts for CCE to achieve the above listed filtering and TMPGE setup info. I gotta make CCE give similar results because I hate failure and besides it's so fast.

Thanks in advance,

[Troncano]

I don't know the rest, but if I'm not mistaken, you're select a low quality setting if you set it to fast under the "motion search precision" box.

[soundforbjt]

Try 4 pass on CCE and see if TMPGEnc is better. I think you'll see CCE is better then. JMO.

[videocheez]

i'll give it a try but lately with CCE ive been receiving the following error. "Check sum error" and it says something like, "data is different from first pass."

Any suggestions.

Thanks in advance,

[Mr Grumpy]

I get that when I frameserve from AviSynth to CCE 2.5 - I have a vague recollection that there's a patch to cure this (but I might have dreamt this )

If I use CCE 2.64 it's OK though.

[SatStorm]

You did what? You added all this filters on TMPGenc and took only 8 hours? Wow, TMPGenc must be fast with 2.53Mhz!!!!!

For a 1.5 hour avi , in my PC (athlon XP 1700), with all those filters on, I need about a day or more for the same!

It is way faster to add filters by frameserving to your source, before the encoding. Read about it. Virtualdub is OK, has preview and plenty filters to play with. The same can be used with avisynth, no preview but really faster frameserving. About 30% or more!

Of course, you can use the same filters with CCE. With this encoder expect overall better picture on higher bitrates/ framesizes. The How To needs some practice.

About the quality, is more like what you prefer: Moskito noise (CCE) or Blockiness (TMPGenc)...

[txpharoah]

With all those filters, you're doing decent at 8 hours. That's to be expected with that much. TMPGenc does yield higher quality on DVD MPEG2 than others, and is much faster.

Make sure you have the TASK PRIORITY under the Options menu set to highest. Otherwise, it will run slower. Make sure your computer has TSR programs such as antivirus turned off. They will slurp up your resources otherwise.

Pick LOW (FASTEST) from the motion serach. The "low" quality on motion search does not mean lower quality. The low refers to other things, and is something they should really change. It also refers to the time spent on the frame to attempt a perfect encode, and causes more problems that it helps. Setting it to "best" or whatever will actually make video much more jerky, cause motion issues, and make your encode take up to 10 times longer. Only sometimes should it be set to Estimate, but never anything else.

TMPGenc is also heavily RAM dependant. If you have less than 512meg of RAM, it will take longer. I can encode a full movie with gobs of filters, and for a high-quality MPEG2 encode, you're doing really good at 8 hours. That's about what I get on a P4 with 512 RDRAM. Take off the filters, and you'll most likely be close to realtime. If you're not patient enough to wait, realize bad quality is the alternative. Most of these programs do the same things, so most likely, you just didn't have the settings down on CCE, so it only SEEMED to go faster. My major complaint about CCE is that it is hard to use and lack of options.

Now that you've found a good setting that works, stick with it, and faster computers and more RAM will make it quicker as time goes by.

Also realize frameserving makes an encode take longer than just a straight encode. If you think 8 hours is a lot, just wait for the 30 hour encodes. I frameserved a video for 40 hours once. And in the end, it was NOT worth it.

[SatStorm]

I don't agree with lot of this you mention, sorry...

First of all, about the encoding modes... For a 2 Pass VBR encoding, the Motion Estimate Search mode is equal (if not better) the High quality mode (slow). But it is so faster... The Normal and low quality modes sucks a lot for quality, IMHO.
For CQ modes the High quality mode (slow) is better Motion Estimate Search. Finally, if you encode CBR better use always Higest quality.. It counts there a lot...
The best of all modes of course is the Highest Quality (very slow). But it is exactly this: Very slow...

About frameserving: It takes more encoding time that way than load direct your avi to the encoder, but: Frameserving corrects audio/video flaws, corrects missing frames or fields and guarantees no Audio/Video Lipsynch issues. Also, it is faster to add filters by frameserving and encode, than use the built in filters of TMPGenc (which are amazing but really slow!).

About the task priority, it depends... If you frameserve, better keep it normal (frameserving do a job you know). Also, some OS' do some tasks while you encoding without asking you and you better live some CPU for them. Otherwise, you system hangs out or turn really slow...
That has nothing to do with running applications. It is a must to stop antivirus programs, mem managers, or other programs when you encode (and you need those extra minutes!). But overall, by keeping TMPGenc to Normal is better than highest priority. Don't forget that TMPGenc itself use always an external application for most imports: Vfapi. It needs it CPU space you know...

About RAM, I have doubts... I don't see a boost in performance myself from when I add more DDRAM (currently 4 X 256). Maybe it is different for Intels, I don't know.. (I use only AMD based PCs)

Anyway, videocheez try all the combos we mention here and keep what works best for you. It is about you after all!

[videocheez]

Thanks for all of the tips guyz. I think I'll print this thread and read it again in bed. You guyz are gonna keep me busy all weekend!

Thanks again,

VC

[SatStorm]

Yeah, we are bad people here
We don't like watching people stay long without a job
Yep, monsters I say!

[SaSi]

In terms of speed and quality, I think it's worth giving a try to Mainconcept encoder. The demo version is fully functional - apart from a small watermark embedded on the top right corner (almost invisible on an ordinary TV) and can encode full movies.

The speed is blazingly fast (on a P4/2.67 it goes almost 1.6x realtime) making a 1:40 film in just under an hour.

Even the default DVD settings produce excellent results and if you enable the line filter option, grain is reduced. I have made excellent encodings of 3+ hour movies (Apocalypse Now) at almost 3Mbps average bitrate with excellent results.

I am experimenting with motion search vector parameters right now (some settings seem to increase quality at low bitrates). If I find something solid, I'll put up a post.

[videocheez]

Thanks, that's a new tip. I 'll try kazaa for the dowload.

[MrAndroid]

I've tried to use Mainconcept Encoder but when I frameserv a xvid file from VirtualDub, it will always result in no picture. Whats the problem?

[SaSi]

I've tried to use Mainconcept Encoder but when I frameserv a xvid file from VirtualDub, it will always result in no picture. Whats the problem?

If I remember correctly recent postings regarding frameserving, xvid, etc into Mainconcept (and some other programs), they appear to have trouble with DirectX 9. Have you installed DirectX 9? Have you tried to directly open the file in Mainconcept? Do you have access to another computer without DirectX 9 to make an experiment with the file?

Also, I've been having severe problems with feeding streams into MPEG-2 encoders and realized that most of the them (if not all) were caused by repeated experiments with a wild collection of codecs and apps.

CCE would not accept DivX 5.02 files or produced black video, frameserving to Tmpgenc from VirtualDUB gave me green video, and even Tmpgenc itself would encode a perfectly simple AVI into corrupted blocky garbage full of moving and disolving green blocks.

I ended up using a new system disk, re-installing everything from scratch, avoiding un-needed stuff and then backing up this "known good configuration" with ghost. Just to be safe.

Everything runs perfectly now, and believe it, slightly faster as well (less garbage in the system disk). Plus, I got myself a new lease of time with some interesting time-limited demo editions I'm not just yet prepared to purchase...

[MrAndroid]

I haven't installed DirextX9 and it works if I open the file directly with the program

[crack_man]

MAKE TMPGENC ENCODE MOVIES 30% FASTER

But you have TMPGEnc Plus,not the regular.
If you have the Plus version,then use the cache function in
options=>enviromental settings=>cache

You have to have some gigabyte for temporarly space though but it will speed up TMPGenc much faster

[txpharoah]

This may be why I know TMPGenc is faster, and everybody else always likes to argue. I've had PLUS since day one. No wonder the freebies go slow: no cache. Duh!

Just adds more reasons of why I ALWAYS say:
You get what you pay for. Quit being cheap.

Thanks for pointing out the flaws of the diet version.

[msimon7]

from reading the description of the cache setting, doesn't that only help when you encode with VBR? caches the first pass to help the second go faster. would caching help CBR at all?
are you guys referring to the setting under the general tab or CPU tab?
if you are referring to the CPU tab, what size do you set your cache to? have gigs of free space, but don't want to do something that could also harm the process.

does VBR usually produce better results than CBR? yes i'm new to mpeg2 encoding. working on converting a PAL SVCD to NTSC DVDR.
while i'm at it, looking at the advanced filters, i bumped the sharpen edges up to 85 (picture could really use it), is this going to kill my results - make it stutter, etc. thanks for any replies, marc