converted sports footage - How best to handle ?

[davexnet]

Hi all,
captured some classic soccer out of my cable box (analog capture).
I'm in the USA, the footage is 29.97, but the game is from England, and must have been
25 FPS when it was recorded.

The quality is not very good - unfortunately, that's the way it looked when transmitted -
the fuzziness makes it hard for me to see how best to process it.

I want to convert it from it's 4.3GB (26 minutes) to something like 200MB that
I can save on my PC. I tried to convert it to 25 FPS using the following script, but there
was an occasional skip, as if it were a dropped frame.
This is my script. Any thoughts on this ?

AviSource("i:\capture0001.avi")
AssumeTFF()
ConvertToYUY2(interlaced=true)
Yadif(Mode=1,Order=1)
SRestore(FRate=25)

Here's a sample (25MB)
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?8zg3kkw7hghr7rt

[jagabo]

How about encoding at 59.95 fps?

AviSource("rawcapture0001.avi")
AssumeTFF()
ConvertToYUY2(interlaced=true)
ColorYUV(off_y=-60, gain_y=100, gamma_y=40)
Yadif(Mode=1,Order=1)
Crop(8,12,-44,-0)
LanczosResize(480,360)

x264/mkv attached:

[davexnet]

Hi jagabo - great suggestion . Appreciate your "out of the box" thinking.
It's perfect for PC viewing.

Any recommendations on an encoding app? I'm going to give StaxRip a try.

[jagabo]

One word of warning: some players and slow computers may have difficulty playing 60 fps video. I usually use x264 directly these days. Sometimes Xvid4Psp or MeGUI.

[davexnet]

Had no problems playing it in mpc-hc (not sure if DXVA was active or not; regardless of that it was only using 3 or 4 % cpu)

I took a look at your sample, used the hex viewer and tried to extract the options - they're all there in plain text.
I'm not afraid of the command line at all, but I'm a complete novice at x264 options. I ended up with a set of commands
that look like this. I'm sure if I had a bit more experience I could whittle it down; they're are probably many that are inferred
or defaulted to. When I tried to run it, I get an error - x264 error - can't open file '0', encoder_open failed.

I've given up with the command line for now and I'm using StaxRip. Seems to working fine this way; I'll have to see
what the final file size is; I set crf26 as you did. Here's my command line:

x264.exe --cabac --ref=3 --deblock=1:0:0 --analyse=0x3:0x113 --me=hex --subme=2 --psy --psy-rd=0.00:0.00 --merange=16 --trellis=0 --8x8dct --cqm=0 --fast-pskip --chroma-qp-offset=0 --threads=2 --nr=0 --bframes=2 --b-pyramid=2 --b-adapt=1 --b-bias=0 --direct=auto --weightb --open-gop=0 --weightp=0 --keyint=100 --min-keyint=10 --scenecut=40 --rc-lookahead=10 --crf=26.0 --qcomp=0.60 --qpmin=10 --qpmax=51 --qpstep=4 --ipratio=1.40 --stats "j:\x264enc\abc.stats" --output "tott2_new.mkv" "f:\avs\videohelp_1.avs" 480x368

[jagabo]

I have several batch files in my SendTo folder so I can right click on a AVS script and use Send To to encode it. The command line wasn't as complex as the one you posted because I used one of the built in presets then overrid a few options:

x264.exe --preset=veryfast --crf 20 --ref 3 --bframes 2 --keyint 100 --output filename.mkv filename.avs

The Send To batch file looks like:

x264.exe --preset=veryfast --crf 20 --ref 3 --bframes 2 --keyint 100 --output %1.mkv %1
pause

I add the pause at the end of the batch file so I can see the report generated by x264 when it's finished. Otherwise the window will close too quickly to view.

If you are happy with the defaults you could use something as simple as:

x264.exe --crf 20 --output %1.mkv %1

Or just add one of the presets or tunings:

x264.exe --preset=slower --tune=grain --crf 20 --output %1.mkv %1