Creating SVCD with CCE

[joeydlc]

I have tried many times but the output is choppy. What is the recommended bitrate settings (min,ave,max) using 3 pass MVBR? I have a 91 minute ripped DVD movie. Any help is very much appreciated.

[Kdiddy]

Read the guides...first make a standard compliant SVCD from there...lower bitrate, means less quality, more blocks, more movie per disk.....higher bitrate is the opposite of previously mentioned.

[snowmoon]

You are looking at (on an 80minute disk overburned) an average bitrate of 1055/128 so...

I'de use 5-7 passes cause you will need it. min-0,max-2472,avg-1055.

encode the audio with toolame -b 128

Quality will suffer, you might be better off reducing the video size to 352x480 or 352x240 to improve encoding performance, but soften the image.

[Sully]

It sounds like your problem is interlacing not a bitrate issue. Try reversing the field order in CCE. Uncheck the upper field first box.

If you're still getting "choppy" results you can also open your video source in TMPGEnc, use the de-interlace option then save it as a PROJECT. Convert this project to a fake .avi with VFAPI and you can then encode it CCE.

[Kdiddy]

regardless..you wont need 5-7 passes, especially with TMPG, you will be easily in the 24hour+ range...you wont notice a quality difference past 3-4 passes....also I would set your min & max variables so extreme if you are shooting for an average of 1150..then I would go min=800, max=1500...especially if your source is DVD.

[snowmoon]

Kiddy,

He is asking about CCE not TMPGenc. With such bitrate starved video he could use every pass he can get to make sure the distribution of bits is correct.

a max of 1500 will lead to severe block ups on motion scenes as 1500 is not aduqiate for 480x480 action shots. Giving the encoder the ability to peak higher will reduce problem in action shots.

I would really recommend moving this project to two disks if you are interested in using SVCD.

[Kdiddy]

I know he was referring to CCE, I was using TMPG as an example, not that you could do 5-7 apsses with TMPG, even still anyone will tell you that 5-7 passes is way more than you need for CCE...3-4 is just fine...yes I agree giving the ability to peak higher is a good idea, but the doesnt neccesarily mean the encoder WILL reach that peak....also, the more you increase your range from the specified minimum average...the harder it is for the encoder to keep that EXACT bitrate you specified WITHOUT having to 5-7 passes which takes time, and effectively eliminates CCE speed advantage, plus again, there is no quality gained pass the 4th pass....because it order to do so, it would have to allocate equal number of low end bitrates...so if his peak is 2472 (which is 1422 above avg), then his low end would have to be 1422 below avg at one given point..which would be zero by the numbers you specified...thus at some point in his video, it will produce a rather crappy frame, thus why it is best to keep you min/max values evenly space from your average...and I wouldnt recommend more than 500 to either side in order to maintain your specified average....otherwise you might be a little over, and will be upset to find that your movie doesnt fit by about 2 mins...so it depends Joey, are trying to fit that on 1 CD or 2? and what audio rate are you going to use?...I personaly would do 2 CDs, which would allow you avg bitrate to hang in the 1800-1900 bps range, you shouldnt get any chop there....chop could also be a result of cheap/bad media.

[adam]

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On 2001-10-16 14:49:42, Kdiddy wrote:
plus again, there is no quality gained pass the 4th pass....because it order to do so, it would have to allocate equal number of low end bitrates...so if his peak is 2472 (which is 1422 above avg), then his low end would have to be 1422 below avg at one given point..which would be zero by the numbers you specified...thus at some point in his video, it will produce a rather crappy frame
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

I don't follow your logic at all. More passes allows the encoder to more accurately allocate bitrate on a frame by frame basis. Regardless of what your max and min settings are, for any given frame extra passes allows it to use a more appropriate bitrate. I also don't understand where the crappy frame would come from. Just because you set 0 as a min bitrate that doesnt mean the encoder will ever actually use that exact bitrate, in fact it can't. I agree that past the 4th pass it doesnt do much good, simply because by that time the encoder has already determined the best possible bitrate to maximize quality and size. But considering that it seems he wants to squeeze so much movie into so little a space, an extra pass or two might at least be worth a try.


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thus why it is best to keep you min/max values evenly space from your average...and I wouldnt recommend more than 500 to either side in order to maintain your specified average....otherwise you might be a little over, and will be upset to find that your movie doesnt fit by about 2 mins... </BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Sorry but this is very bad advise. There is no reason why your peaks and valleys need to be equal on either side of your bitrate. You WANT your low quality scenes to use as little bitrate at possible without degrading in quality. If your average is 2mbits per sec you certainly dont want to have your credits encoded at 1.5mbits per sec. 500kbits on either side of your average doesnt come close to using vbr effectively. On the high end its ok but your valleys wont be low enough and you will be wasting lots of bitrate and ultimately space. You max should either be the svcd standard max or what your dvd player can handle, your choice. And your minimum really shouldnt be more than 500kbits per sec and your just as good setting it to 0 and letting your encoder pick the approprate value. If your using a decent average bitrate then the only time your going to experience quality loss as a result of too little bitrate is when your limited by your max bitrate setting. Your picture will never degrade because your min bitrate stetting was too low unless you are using a very flat quality setting (cce.) Assuming your max and min settings are reasonable, these will not have any significant effect on the resulting size of the mpg. The encoder attempts to stay at the average setting wherever possible, and most bitrate peaks and valleys cancel each other out in terms of size, which is the whole point of vbr encoding. When using a bitrate calculator always just lower the bitrate a little lower than what it says and it will always fit.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: adam on 2001-10-16 16:46:27 ]</font>

[Kdiddy]

well A) I dont rip credits so that is of no issue to me

but its simple math, in order to get an AVERAGE, you have to equality on both sides...I'll assume we can agree on that w/o a need for an example...so therefore if you hope to maintain that average as close as POSSIBLE, because that the number he is trying to use to calculate how many disks he will need, you need an equal range of bits on either side of your specified range...now I myself even said, that... "yes I agree giving the ability to peak higher is a good idea, but the doesnt neccesarily mean the encoder WILL reach that peak"...of course this would be true on the low, end, I didnt think that was worth mentioning since anyone should be able draw that conclusion logically....my overall point is that a an uneven range especially on the lower end or in an exmaple of min-avg-max = 500-1500-1900, would the leave the encoder to have a greater range to to encode lower than desired/specified average, especially with 2-3 passes...because the true average point here is 1200 not 1500.....now some argue with this example, that all the encoder would do is have a higher # of frames at encoded above the average rate than it does below...of course logically speaking the opposite is quite possible as well, which leads back to Im saying...to which I point that IF that is true, then if the majority of scenes are going to be encoded that high per say, then why leave the min value so low, you might as well raise it..

"Regardless of what your max and min settings are, for any given frame extra passes allows it to use a more appropriate bitrate."

well you cant really say that, because if it was done regardless of the fact..then whats the point of having the max/min values period?

"You WANT your low quality scenes to use as little bitrate at possible without degrading in quality."

Im not saying that he will suffer ONE bad frame that will just jumped out at him and make him say what was that?..Im saying that is OVERALL average bitrate will be lower/higher than specified based upon movie complexion & max/min range values.

[adam]

I just used credits as an example since its the most obvious one. The point still applies to the entire movie and to mpeg encoding in general. Setting your max and min at an even amount on either side of your average is not an effective way of encoding, especially when you use such a low interval. When you have say a 1mbit per sec range for your encoder to pick from you are drastically limiting the effectiveness of vbr encoding to the point where its almost not worth the effort.

You do not need to "equalize" your bitrate yourself by making your max and min settings proportional. The encoder already does this for you, thats the whole point of setting an average bitrate. It will try to make all peaks and all valleys proportional so that your average never changes. But if you set overly restrictive max and min bitrates then you are preventing the encoder from using the best possible bitrate levels relative to that average.

"then if the majority of scenes are going to be encoded that high per say, then why leave the min value so low, you might as well raise it.."

Why? Why raise it if you don't have to? No one ever sits in the back seat of my car should I rip it out? What is it hurting by leaving the option of using it? The better question is why raise it higher than it needs to go? Leave it at 0 and let the encoder pick the appropriate value. The amount of bitrate required to render the absolute lowest quality scene without degragation will equal your min setting and all other bitrate levels in between that and you max will be determined by your encoder. Why set your min as high as 1, 1.2, or even 1.5 mbits if you have scenes that only need .6mbits? Its a waste of bitrate, you might as well just encode in cbr.


I said..."Regardless of what your max and min settings are, for any given frame extra passes allows it to use a more appropriate bitrate."

You said..."well you cant really say that, because if it was done regardless of the fact..then whats the point of having the max/min values period?"

I think you misunderstood. Obviously I meant the encoder chooses a more appropriate bitrate per each pass you do RESPECTIVE to the max and min settings. Its still going to fall in between that interval but it will use more or less bitrate depending on what that scene requires. Just because your bitrate falls inbetween your max and min settings that doesnt mean you have the optimum bitrate level for that scene.

"Im saying that is OVERALL average bitrate will be lower/higher than specified based upon movie complexion & max/min range values. "

No it won't. His average bitrate will stay the same, hence the term average bitrate. Average bitrate never changes regardless of your other settings, which is why its not necessary to attempt to manually ensure it stays the same, the encoder already does that.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: adam on 2001-10-17 06:33:56 ]</font>

[Kdiddy]

"As I already said most peaks and valleys will cancel themselves out regardless of what settings you use as long as they are logical and the encoder will stay as close to the average as possible anyway. "

And min-avg-max, 0-1500-1800 is logical???..see you are saying exactly what Im saying, 1000-1500-2000 is a logical range in my book, thats fits the definition of average much better.

"As long as there is enough bitrate to render the scene without any quality degragation it doesnt matter how little bitrate it uses."
"The amount of bitrate required to render the absolute lowest quality scene without degragation will equal your min setting and all other bitrate levels in between that and you max will be determined by your encoder."

Degredation is in the eye of the beholder is it not??..so what you or the encoder may consider acceptable does not neccessarily appply to the next person...but I for one dont trust encoder as a whole, would prefer to have my min bitrate above 1000 regardless...otherwise with the logic you are saying if its left up to the encoder to decide what is the optimum bitrate for a scene with a given range 0-1500-2250, then it is conceivable that the encoder could decide that in the entire encodable clip, that lowest point in the scene is 1600 and highest is 2250 right??..so what then becomes of the specified average??


"Go ahead and do another encode but this time with max at 2.5mbits and min at 0 and you will find that the quality is better and the filesize is smaller. Thats the whole point of vbr."

been there done that....but I did it again just for you and got the same results as before, and yes the CBR file was the larger..However, BBmpeg detected my AVERAGE bitrate to be lower (1.58 than the CBR rate (1.7) even though I specified 1.7 Average for the VBR.

"Why? Why raise it if you don't have to? No one ever sits in the back seat of my car should I rip it out? What is it hurting by leaving the option of using it? "

Not quite the correct analogy, thats why 2 seater cars are very popular in Japan. No one rides in and so little road space..no need for 2 extra seats for nothing.

"Why set your min as high as 1, 1.2, or even 1.5 mbits if you have scenes that only need .6mbits? Its a waste of bitrate, you might as well just encode in cbr."

Because I have yet to see a scene at .6mbits that was even close to acceptable..but see you are missing my point, if you want to do .6 , then fine do it..but if your average value is 1.2...then I SUGGEST, based upon my findings, that you go no higher that 1.8...IN ORDER TO MAINTAIN THE TRUE 1.2 DESIRED AVERAGE BITRATE...which a person uses to calculate how many disks he will need.....


We can round and round about this..bottom line, in my findings/tests Ive done...it is better FOR ME and I recommend to others to keep equal range above & below your specified average value which I desire and which use to calculate how many disks I would need, etc...regardless if the bitrate range is 0-1500-3000 or 1150-1175-1200.


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Kdiddy on 2001-10-17 06:45:02 ]</font>

[adam]

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On 2001-10-17 06:34:28, Kdiddy wrote:
And min-avg-max, 0-1500-1800 is logical???..see you are saying exactly what Im saying, 1000-1500-2000 is a logical range in my book, thats fits the definition of average much better.
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You are completely misinterpreting the definition of average as it applies to encoding. Your average bitrate NEVER changes regardless of your max and min settings. Increasing the interval that the encoder has to work with allows both your high and low spikes to be bigger but they will ALWAYS be proportional. This means that quality ALWAYS increases as the interval increases, up to a point. Your max point of 1.8mbit is far too low. In any given movie there will be numerous scenes which will greatly benefit from bitrates as high as ~1.6mbits. You are handicapping the ability of the encoder. These are really encoding basics here.

Where did you get 0-1500-1800 from? I specifically said that a logical setting would be 0-500 min, whatever avg you want, and 2600 or the physical limit of your player for the max. No 1000-1500-2000 is not a logical setting to use. You will waste bitrate on low quality scenes and be starving for bitrate on high quality scenes. The max and min settings do not need to be proportional because your high and low spikes will already be proportional anyway. All your doing is preventing the encoder from making logical adjustments to increase quality.

<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>
Not quite the correct analogy, thats why 2 seater cars are very popular in Japan. No one rides in and so little road space..no need for 2 extra seats for nothing.
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

What? People choose cars with less capacity for personal reasons. Can anyone honestly say that they would prefer a lower quality encode? Ok here's a better ananology. Say there are two hard drives identical in every single way but one is 10 gigs larger than the other. Would there ever be a reason to pick the smaller one? Even if you dont need the extra 10 gigs are they hurting anything?

<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>
Degredation is in the eye of the beholder is it not??..so what you or the encoder may consider acceptable does not neccessarily appply to the next person
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

This would be an acceptable argument if there werent a quality setting which determined how much degragation cce allows.

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otherwise with the logic you are saying if its left up to the encoder to decide what is the optimum bitrate for a scene with a given range 0-1500-2250, then it is conceivable that the encoder could decide that in the entire encodable clip, that lowest point in the scene is 1600 and highest is 2250 right??..so what then becomes of the specified average??
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Further evidence that you are misunderstanding what avg means in terms of encoding. As I have already stated the allocation of bitrate that the encoder decides upon is RELATIVE TO YOUR SETTINGS. Shouldnt this be obvious? The encoder keeps the bitrate at the specified avg and wherever it can decrease bitrate without causing degragation PER YOUR QUALITY SETTINGS, it will do so. Say over a course of 5 mins it saves you an extra 500kbits. It will redistribute this somewhere where it is needed more. The average has not changed, the filesize has not changed, the quality of the lower bitrate scenes has not changed but the quality of the higher bitrate scenes has IMPROVED. The bitrate levels are being redistributed they are not being increased or decreased which is why the average stays the same, again hence the term average.

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if your average value is 1.2...then I SUGGEST, based upon my findings, that you go no higher that 1.8...IN ORDER TO MAINTAIN THE TRUE 1.2 DESIRED AVERAGE BITRATE...which a person uses to calculate how many disks he will need.....
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And I'll say it again. The average never changes. The difference your avg was compared to your cbr setting is due to the nature of vbr encoding. There will always be a minute change due to the inferiorities of the encoder but this is negligle and it happens regardless of whether your max and min are set "proportionally". You cannot compare my vbr rip to a comparable cbr rip and claim the average changed so therefore it didnt follow the specified settings. You have to compare one VBR rip to another VBR rip because the difference in the avg is due to vbr encoding NOT the max and min settings. This is the whole reason why bitrate calculators can never be completely accurate. But with that said, the difference in your average from using vbr instead of cbr is neglible. Whatever the bitrate calcultor tells you just take a little off the average to be safe, regardless if your max is 1800 or 9000. But just for the sake of argument...what if it did change according to your max and min settings? Well now your filesize is smaller yet the quality did not decrease. What would be wrong with that?

If your findings show that your quality settings yeild the best quality on your personal encodes then thats fine FOR YOU. But I am saying that I believe these settings are not logical and will result in a lower quality encode and they should not be used. For anyone else who's reading I urge you to run your own tests and to read up on how vbr encoding works and decide for yourself what settings to use.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: adam on 2001-10-17 15:27:03 ]</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: adam on 2001-10-17 15:36:54 ]</font>

[joeydlc]

Hey guys,
I think you are missing my point here.
I don't mind fitting the movie on 2 CDs.
All I want is to get rid of the "choppy" problem and have the best quality possible.

My source file is DVD,
Aspect Ratio 4:3
Frame Rate 29.970
Video Type Film
Frame Type switches between Progressive and Interlaced

[Sully]

joeydic - you're right, the point has been completly lost. Did you try what I had suggested before with reversing the field order in CCE?

By the way... assuming you used DVD2AVI, what film info did it give you? This might help a little more to getting to the bottom of your problem.

I'm a frequent user of this forum, but I must admit it's almost funny when people (adam?) start using a certion question and end up taking somewhere else, namely to a totally different debate. A forum is there to debate things, don't get me wrong, but I agree, I think you all are totally missing the point of the question. It's not about his (or hers) bitrate, it's about "choppy" playback of the encoded video that was done.

[snowmoon]

IF you are comming off of DVD you should be encoding progressive 24(23.976) fps and field order should be non-important ( with CCE you should use pulldown to post process your .mpv files ).

Adam was merly trying to corret someone, and he was right. I would not have gone hook line and sinker for kiddy's baiting, but he is wrong. With ANY multipass encoding you should set your MAX value to either SVCD max 2600 or your player max bitrate ( whitchever is higher, or more appropriate ). You should set your MIN based on your percieved minimum quality standard, and the average based on space availible. They need not be equidistant to be correct.

[vitualis]

Agreed.

Kdiddy, adam is correct in his understanding of min/max and average bitrates.

<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>And min-avg-max, 0-1500-1800 is logical???..see you are saying exactly what Im saying, 1000-1500-2000 is a logical range in my book, thats fits the definition of average much better.</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

If the mpeg encoder doesn't have any encoding flaws the minimum bitrate should always 0, the maximum bitrate should always be the maximum allowable and the average bitrate can be anything you want it to be between the min and max.

Having a setting of 1000-1500-2000 actually makes no sense at all. You are giving too much bitrate to those scenes that don't need it (wasting bits) and you are giving too little bitrate to those frames that could have benefited from it. If you wanted an average bitrate of 1500, then a much better setting would be 0-1500-2500. Often people set the minimum bitrate higher because the encoder will incorrectly set a bitrate that is too low for some scenes.

The "average" bitrate is just that -- the statistical mean bitrate over the entire clip. The min. and max. bitrate have to do with spread of the bitrate only and has nothing to do with the mean. In terms of VBR encoding, you want your spread to be as wide as possible to allow the greatest flexibility for the encoder when allocating bits (thus, for a perfect encoder 0 for min. and ~2500 for max. SVCD).

Say I then theorectically set the average bitrate at 1000 kbit/s. This just means that the statistical mean bitrate will be 1000. However, the range is still from 0-2500 as allowed for under SVCD specs. If you do a bitrate histogram, most of the frames will be skewed towards the lower end of the range (as expected) with a peak at the average.

Similarly, say I theorectically set the average bitrate at 2200 kbit/s. Again, the range is still from 0-2500. If you do a bitrate histogram, most of the frames will be skewed towards the higher end of the range (as expected).

In summary again, the average bitrate is completely separate from the possible spread of the bitrate (min. and max.). If any encoder deviates significantly from the average bitrate as set by the user, then this is indicates nothing more than poor VBR allocation and implementation by the encoder.

Regards.

[Kdiddy]

truly you guys are beating a dead horse, you have your view and I have mine, lets just leave at that

[vitualis]

Opinions and views can't be "incorrect", but facts can. IMHO, points of fact should be corrected when wrong or misleading.

Regards.

[joeydlc]

Sully,
Yahooooooo! I reversed the field order in CCE as you have suggested and now it works smoothly. Many thanks for that.

And for the rest of the guys who have contributed to this post, your inputs are tons of information for me. Keep up the good work. There are more newbies like me out there who can benefit in one way or another from your inputs.

[Kdiddy]

Again vitualis, let the horse die...because what I said, I have seen & done myself....whether you choose to believe it is up to you, the point is im not going to argue about it over & over, because in the end, there are so many variations on how one can encode a project and its up to the INDIVIDUAL to decide whats best for him....if we were talking about something as cut & dry as 2+2=4, then it might be worth the time.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Kdiddy on 2001-10-18 05:29:55 ]</font>

[adam]

Sully if someone gives advice which I believe is incorrect then I will correct it, regardless of how much it strays from the original topic. I do this to prevent people from being mislead, not simply to start an argument.

[Sully]

joeydic - Glad things worked out for you.

adam - I in no way meant you were trying to start an arguement. I think you do a fantastic job here. I only meant the point of the question got lost, joeydic himself came back to say just that. Fortunately things didn't get too off subject that he was able to learn a few things along the way.

By the way, you and vitualis are absolutly correct with the way the bits (and bitrate) are used.

[vitualis]

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On 2001-10-18 04:31:25, Kdiddy wrote:
...because what I said, I have seen & done myself....whether you choose to believe it is up to you,...</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

I'm not arguing or debating your formative experiences. If you find what you are doing works better for you, then that's great.

The debate is about the hypothesis on which you are basing your explanation on. I'm sorry, but your understanding and interpretation of bitrate allocation (as you posted in this thread) is quite incorrect. This IS cut & dry.

Regards.