bad telecine and foreign stuff

[jaggy]

I intend to convert, using Handbrake, various Chinese NTSC and 25 FPS Pal DVDs, European PAL 25 FPS interlaced and progressive DVDs and US DVDs of "TV shows" while preserving several audio tracks and subtitles. For compatibility reasons I prefer the videos to be encoded with constant framerate. I have no time or patience trying to IVTC hard telecined movies with NON-US interlaced patterns. I understand that Handbrake will not properly IVTC these without additional customized commands. I also understand that Handbrake does not OUTPUT purely interlaced content for later processing by the TV. My choices for alternative software is limited as I have discovered that few encoders support multiple language tracks (AUTOGK being one exception).

For foreign DVDs my main option to batch process these appears to be to the decomb setting and encoding at declared framerate of 29.97 CFR/25 fps. For purely interlaced content, deinterlace.

For US DVDs of "TV shows" which is a catch-all term for some problematic content, and which are not clearly film, I am tempted to do the same.

While not ideal, is this plan sound for batch processing of a very odd DVD collection?

[manono]

While not ideal, is this plan sound for batch processing of a very odd DVD collection?

No, not if you care at all about quality. Maybe you don't.

I understand that Handbrake will not properly IVTC these without additional customized commands.

It won't properly handle the difficult ones period. Never mind the 'customized commands'.

[jaggy]

Haha your nick is not new to me manono. Neither are edDV, blutach, neuron 2, len0x, and a few others I cannot remember off the top of my head. Thanks for replying and for the good work to you and everyone else. Encoding is a game of compromises, quality and caring are relative terms. By your reaction one would think the end result of the above would be a jumbled, unusable mess. Not sure if you remember this:

"I worked for a couple of days recently trying to IVTC a movie with 3 interlaced frames out of every 6, and never could get it to play smoothly. I wound up using Decomb’s Decimate(Mode=1) and leaving it at 29.97fps."

Has anything changed from those days?

[manono]

Has anything changed from those days?

Yes, since that must be a very old post, before the decent unblenders arrived. You have Hong Kong DVDs. Many, if not most, are field-blended garbage. For those you need AviSynth. Handbrake doesn't use AviSynth. Therefore...

I haven't left a movie at 29.97fps for a very very long time.

About the best deinterlacer Handbrake has available is Yadif. AviSynth has several that are much better.

[jaggy]

GiGo. The filters and blenders might have changed but good GUIs and all-in-one solutions are hard to find. I like simplicity and preset filters.

I assume AutoGK + AviSynth would do less of a messy batch job? I remember that AGK can detect film and that it uses AviSynth. Not sure how well if would perform on exotic DVDs. What would be the most user-friendly powerful GUI for Avisynth? Hopefully not Notepad.

[manono]

Not sure how well if would perform on exotic DVDs.

All AutoGK can do with the difficult ones is deinterlace. Maybe the best with a good GUI and direct access to many of the AviSynth filters is XviD4PSP (only the 5 versions, though). But unblending will require editing the script. MeGUI can do it also, but it has a fairly steep learning curve.

If you have a bunch of oddball DVDs to reencode, the last thing you want to do is batch-process them all using the same settings. Each will have to be studied manually to try and figure out what you have and how best to treat it before doing any encoding. If you care about quality.

[jaggy]

Xvid4PSP has some interesting and promising presets including restore fps. The installer needs Avisynth with a different version number that I currently have. After installation AviSynth reported an error and the X264 encoder crashed on its first job. The program is apparently not capable to handle multiple language tracks.

[poisondeathray]

what was the error message reported by avisynth ?

[jaggy]

what was the error message reported by avisynth ?

Avisynth: access violation at 0x00003106 in...(plugin address)

[poisondeathray]

Likely you need to clean out your autoloading plugins (the plugins directory)

[jaggy]

I reinstalled and got the same message. Tried with a different DVD. This time the plugin was loaded but x264 crashed. Runtime error Microsoft Visual C ++ .

[poisondeathray]

I'm still thinking it's related to the plugins folder. Reinstalling avisynth doesn't clear out the old plugins, it installs over the old install ; external old .dll's don't get overwritten . You have to completely clear out the .avsi 's and .dll's

It might be xvid4psp related - I can't recall does it have a custom "portable" avisynth directory location, or does it use the default avisynth install ? Where does it install it's own avisynth plugins ?

[jaggy]

In its own directory XviD4PSPPluginsPath = "C:\Program Files (x86)\XviD4PSP 5\dlls\AviSynth\plugins\"

[poisondeathray]

What about the standard avisynth plugins directory? Is there a bunch of junk there ? That's the most common cause of these sorts of problems

[jaggy]

I did add some junk there.

[poisondeathray]

I also understand that Handbrake does not OUTPUT interlaced content for later processing by TV.

BTW, you can encode interlaced in handbrake .
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/344902-Detelecine-decomb-issues?p=2151515&viewfull=1#post2151515

But this is less ideal that the avisynth treatment IMO

I did add some junk there.

Often there are conflicting auto loading plugins, like one for avisynth 2.5 but you have 2.6.x installed, that sort of thing. This is very common cause of problems . Try clearing out the .avsi's and .dll's, adding them back one at a time

you can try simple scripts first, like version() and checking in vdub . Usually the problem will occur right away at avisynth initialization

[jaggy]

version() works.

[poisondeathray]

what was the specific script that induced a crash? Have a look at the xvid4psp log file

[jaggy]

It was windows-based Microsoft Visuals C++ , Avisynth violation and general error on the part of the application. The log stated error! followed by a blank. Thanks for trying but I don't believe the program fits the bill.

[manono]

I just suggested XviD4PSP because it has a lot of built-in AviSynth filters and a ton of presets. If you're comfortable with AviSynth scripts, you can open them in Ripbot or other programs directly for encoding, or use the CLI for creating your MKVs or whatever the final output is to be. It won't make XviD AVIs the way AutoGK will, though. For those you can open the scripts in VDub and encode into XviD AVI.

[jaggy]

Thanks, manono. Xvid4PSP offered me some insight into how the scripts and filters work. While the anime filters could be useful for hybrid content also I saw one that could help with oddball hard telecined DVDs. RestoreFPS consisted of a command to decimate, degrain and a few other extraneous things I was not aiming to do. I did not see one for blended foreign DVDs which as you suggest would need editing the script. Not sure how to do that, or how to customize decimation.

I am no more comfortable with AviSynth than a wannabe programmer ic with C++ after his first "Hello World". No offense to atak_snajpera but I don't remember ripbot too fondly. As with the previous program, it used to support only one audio track and would crash often. It has been a few years since I looked at it though but I see that it needs half a dozen other things to work which often wreak havoc with the computer. I will try it out again, eventually.

CLI - were you referring to the one within Handbrake or the standalone CLI version of the program? Can both CLI and GUI versions of Handbrake be installed and coexist? I don't believe Handbrake supports avs directly. Frameserving through VirtualDub does not sound too promising. Am I missing some other great tool (which does not necessarily need to be free)? Would IVTC'ing the MPEG and then converting via handbrake be more feasible? I am not against examining the DVDs individually but I am unsure how to proceed with the preparation/filtering.

[manono]

By 'CLI' I meant THIS. But there are many front end GUIs for it.

I don't use Handbrake so can't help with that, but you can't use AviSynth scripts.

Many Hong Kong DVDs are NTSC converted from PAL sources. A script such as this works well on many, but one would have to see samples to be sure:

Yadif(Mode=1)#or the better but slower QTGMC
Srestore(Frate=25)

SRestore is the better unblender these days.

[jaggy]

You're referring to studio analog PAL/NTSC conversion that uses field blending hence setting Srestore at 25 fps. Would the end result also be 25 FPS?

Yadif = 1 : double framerate (bob), temporal and spatial interlacing check.
I believe this should result in a framerate of 59.94. Srestore should cut it down to its "original" frame rate?

I assume it eliminates the blended stuff. Handbrake Decomb function set at "bob" + 25 fps CBR would not accomplish the same given that it would be dropping frames randomly. Is this correct? SRestore requires MaskTools2 as additional plugin and can work with 4 optional ones. I am a bit stumped with scripting. One is supposed to save the above two lines as avs and then load them together with the project into an encoding application. Lol, I am not good at this in practice.

[manono]

Would the end result also be 25 FPS?

Yes.

Srestore should cut it down to its "original" frame rate?

Yes.

I assume it eliminates the blended stuff.

Most, if not all.

Decomb function set at "bob" + 25 fps CBR would not accomplish the same given that it would be dropping frames randomly.

I don't use Handbrake, but that sounds about right. It has no way of looking for and preferentially removing blended bobbed fields.

Once you have the required plugins:

http://avisynth.nl/index.php/Srestore

and assuming the source is a DVD, you use DGIndex to make a D2V project file and use it together with the DGDecode.dll and MPEG2Source to open the video, followed by the unblending. A complete sample script might go something like this:

MPEG2Source("Movie.d2v")
Yadif(Mode=1)#or the better but slower QTGMC
Srestore(Frate=25)

With the rest of the required stuff in your AviSynth Plugins folder, they should load automatically. Test your scripts in VDub as it'll throw out a (usually) helpful error message if something's wrong.

You can post short M2V samples (acquired from DGIndex) for us to have a look. Get the DGMPGDec package for the stuff required to get MPEG2Source going (the DGDecode.dll and DGIndex), and read the included documents for help in opening DVD VOB files using MPEG2Source.

[jaggy]

Hi

I did not have time to dedicate to this since my last posting. During the past couple of days I did try to examine better the aforementioned issues. One conclusion I reached was that it is easy to get fooled about the source when examining individual dvds.

I got xvid4psp to work however the program could not complete its first "restore fps" task. I also examined how AutoGK approaches encoding telecined and interlaced content. Several output files turned out with a green line at the bottom of the screen. Upon further investigation, this showed up:
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/362376-Where-did-this-green-line-come-from-(DVD-to-...vi-with-AutoGK)

I also played with Handbrake, specifically with variable frame rate encoding. While I'd avoid vfr for other tasks, due to device compatibility issues, I have discovered that VFR plays fine in MP4 container. This is not the case for vfr encodes in MKV container which don't play properly in several standalone players.

[jagabo]

If you're too lazy to figure out how to handle different sources -- simply encode interlaced. Your resulting videos won't look any worse than the sources (except for compression losses of course). For example, field blended PAL/NTSC conversions will still have field blending and play back just as unsmoothly as the source, but not worse.

[jaggy]

If you're too lazy to figure out how to handle different sources -- simply encode interlaced. Your resulting videos won't look any worse than the sources (except for compression losses of course). For example, field blended PAL/NTSC conversions will still have field blending and play back just as unsmoothly as the source, but not worse.

Cut the proverbial Gordian Knot? That does not sound very enticing. I am not too lazy to figure out how to handle different sources or learn anything new for that matter - I am doubtful of my ability to recognize the problem and apply the proper solution, even after considerable effort. Thankfully very few DVDs look like blurry garbage, which would indicate field blending. I am not abandoning avisynth but given the complexity of the task I am more inclined to learn about the tools and the problem before I unleash myself on more difficult cases. To my untrained eye, for more straightforward NTSC telecine and hybrid tv material Handbrake's variable frame rate detelecine seems to produce very good result. I was delighted that the output played on Realtek-based players.
To keep all the options open, you are suggesting to add :bff or :tff as case may be to the end of the line under the advanced HB options? Also, keep filters off and set the frame rate to "same as source"?

[jagabo]

To keep all the options open, you are suggesting to add :bff or :tff as case may be to the end of the line under the advanced HB options? Also, keep filters off and set the frame rate to "same as source"?

Yes.

[jaggy]

Thanks. Is leaving the framerate "constant" acceptable/advisable for x264 interlace encoding? I can report that appending :tff at the end of command will not work if one of the profiles has been edited manually. Appending it to the "high" profile and editing some of the advanced options works. I still have to test the players for any MBAFF incompatibility issues.

[jagabo]

Is leaving the framerate "constant" acceptable/advisable for x264 interlace encoding?

Yes.

I still have to test the players for any MBAFF incompatibility issues.

Yes, that's one possible problem.