horizontal lines in x264 encoded dvd using MeGUI

[codemaster]

I've encoded a DVD to x264 with MeGUI by following this MeGUI/Basic DVD Ripping Guide

I didn't want to loose pixels so I enabled anamorphic encoding.

But their guide is not professional, because after waiting 4h for the encode to complete, the resulted video file has alot of horizontal lines that are noticeable when something moves, for example, when a person speaks and their lips move. In static areas the lines aren't noticeable.

I think it's because the video is interlaced and has missing lines in all frames, and there is that technique called de-interlacing wich I saw being used in encoding video for the web.

Is there a professional x264 encoding guide in wich MeGUI or other tool is used? I haven't found one.

[guns1inger]

You won't find a professional guide that uses MeGUI, because professionals wouldn't use MeGUI.

There could be a couple of different reasons for your problems, but without a short sample it hard to say exactly what is going on. Simply encoding interlaced material as interlaced will give combing artifacts on playback if the player doesn't deinterlace on the fly. Try using something like VLC and try the various deinterlacing options.

One major culprit is poorly resizing interlaced footage in the vertical. This can produce horizontal bands during movement amongst other issues. To avoid this the footage must be deinterlaced first, then resized.

I found MeGUI to cumbersome to set up for different encodes, so I have dropped it in favor of other tools. Xvid4PSP 5.37 has a number of good deinterlacing options which can be previewed before encoding.

[codemaster]

I tried Xvid4PSP but AutoGK gives better results, only I can't encode in x264 anamorphic, only XviD. With Xvid4PSP, edges in the video look weird... and I didn't modify any settings. Those were automatically set.

[manono]

He asked for a sample. 10 seconds showing steady movement will be plenty.

[codemaster]

I give up. This MeGUI tool doesn't even set the correct aspect ratio. It calculates a resolution of 700x400, when 16:9 should be 720x416, like AutoGK. And if I use anamorphic encoding, in wich the resolution is 720x480, after I mux video and audio using mkvmerge with video AR set to 16/9, that also gives wrong aspect ratio, because the player stretch it close to 16:9, while source dvd is streched to exactly 16:9

[jagabo]

if I use anamorphic encoding, in wich the resolution is 720x480, after I mux video and audio using mkvmerge with video AR set to 16/9, that also gives wrong aspect ratio, because the player stretch it close to 16:9, while source dvd is streched to exactly 16:9

That is probably because of the confusion between whether the 16:9 image on a DVD is contained in the full 720x480 frame or the inner 704x480 portion. This confusion arises because the rec.601 spec used for digital video from analog sources specifies that the inner 704x480 portion contains the 16:9 image (the extra 8 bytes on each side are for padding). The DVD spec apparently refers to the MPEG 2 spec which claims that the full 720x480 frame contains the 16:9 image unless there is a display_sequence_extension that specifies otherwise. The interpretation of these conflicting specs appear to vary in different programs and hardware.

Regarding encoding an interlaced source -- select the "Encode Interlaced" option in the x264 options.

You can set the aspect ratio "manually" by adding the --SAR argument in the "Custom Command Line" field. use "--sar 40:33" if you want the inner 704x480 to be 16:9, "--sar 32:27" for the full 720x480 frame.