CBR or VBR?

[Stanley Bostitch]

When encoding a DVD2Avi frameserved DVD Rip with Tmpegenc to VCD, should I use VBR or CBR? I've been using CBR in the past (at 1500kpbs for 2 disc VCDs), and have been please, except for the occasional blockiness (usually during black screens).

I'd appreciate any input.

[kinneera]

VBR should give you better quality in the same space, especially if you go for 2-pass or n-pass encoding.

[Akai Rounin]

Multipass variable bit rate encodes are fine if you have a computer that can remain untouched for several extended hours at a time. VBR seems to be the holy grail for proponents of SVCD and higher resolution DivX videos in particular. So if you know you are going with multi-disc encodes with higher, non-standard bitrates on average, you will likely get better perceived quality with VBR. Personally I use CBR on everything, as I try my best to have only one disc for the final product. I'd rather be able to go from rip to final copy in under four hours instead of going for eight, twelve, sixteen or twenty-four as others have reported. I'm so glad my eyes aren't as sensitive to macro blocks as are others... I don't see the point of attempting to replicate the DVD experience when I'm only making VCD compliant discs.

HUN-YA!

Akai Rounin

[Deusxmachina]

CQ is definitely the way to go with TMPGenc. I didn't believe it at first, either, but CQ mode will have a smaller filesize *and* look better than 2-pass VBR. And that's with just getting the filesize maybe within 100 megs (or more) of what it would have been with 2-pass. I spent some hours testing CQ, making one-minute samples and comparing filesizes and quality to 2-pass, etc, and ever since I've never used 2-pass again.

I'd never use CBR for anything.

[Mirror_Image]

at 1500kpbs for 2 disc VCDs

That's an XVCD, not a VCD.

[Greyhair]

Deusxmachina:

Rather than having to re-invent the wheel, would you be willing to share some comparison settings for file size using 2 pass VBR vs. CQ? I'm wanting to try CQ. I currently am able to control file size on dvd rips to dvd in VBR because I can set the average bitrate. In CQ, you just set min/max and a quality slider. What settings do you use vs. the file size you end up with?

[LeeBear]

Not to sound like I'm bashing CQ or anything, but Deusxmachina your testing method is flawed. If you only took a 1 minute sample to encode with n-pass VBR it's not representative of what VBR can do because you are not giving the encoder much room to distribute the bitrates. For example in your one minute clip the average bitrate may be 1800 kpbs, but if you encoded the entire movie with the same average bitrate that particular section of the movie may have a bitrate of 2500 kpbs because the encoder would be able to use extra bits from other scenes that do not need that high of a bitrate. Hence the scene would look alot better. If you're going to do a valid comparision encode an entire movie.

Another thing I may point out is, with CQ you do not know the ending file size so you may have a movie that's too big to fit on one CD so you have to use to or whatever. I know you can guess at the final file size and be close, without bringing up the entire what looks better CQ or VBR at the same file size arguement because there's been many threads about it already. But even if you could guess at the resulting file size and be close (within 50-100MB is not unreasonable) you have to wonder if the empty space on the CD that could be used by VBR encoding may give a better picture.

CQ has it's uses but if you're going to be putting a movie onto 2 CD's like the person has said, I think you're better off using a VBR to take advantage of all the bitrate possible.

I personally use CCE 4-pass VBR Mpeg2 480x480, encoding for movies I put on CD's. And for stuff I keep on my computer like music videos,etc, I use a CQ encoding, because I don't need to be worried about file size.

-LeeBear

[wulf109]

In my expierence CQ is just too un-predictable in file size. I encode a TV series,one episode will come out to 650MB and the next one will be 950Mb. Just to erratic. 2-passVBR is predictable and at low birates(1500) is very effective at stopping macroblocking.

[mh2360]

Here we go again...

http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=97391&highlight=battle

[wway]

Here we go again...

http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=97391&highlight=battle

Yeah...I love it.

[Martyn1980]

NO NO NO, that post drove me insane.



Though Tmpegs 2 pass VBR aint too hot though, equivelant to CCE Mulitpass VBR with one pass set, not to be confused with 1 pass VBR on CCE, which is similar to CQ, damn that didn't make too much sense, ah well.

CCE 4 or 5 pass VBR is the best for quality

for speed and quality and if you use Tmpeg then id have to say CQ but dare i say it....................................Kwags templates are best for that

[offline]

When encoding a DVD2Avi frameserved DVD Rip with Tmpegenc to VCD, should I use VBR or CBR? I've been using CBR in the past (at 1500kpbs for 2 disc VCDs), and have been please, except for the occasional blockiness (usually during black screens).

I'd appreciate any input.

Stanley, to get rid of the blocks during black or dark scenes
set minimum bitrate to 300 - 600 and check padding on.

[Deusxmachina]

Not to sound like I'm bashing CQ or anything, but Deusxmachina your testing method is flawed. If you only took a 1 minute sample to encode with n-pass VBR it's not representative of what VBR can do because you are not giving the encoder much room to distribute the bitrates. If you're going to do a valid comparision encode an entire movie.

I had done about 40 movies using 2-pass before playing with CQ that day and after that, and since then I've done at least 100 with CQ. It's rare not to hit the target filesize within 100megs easy, and the things simply look as good as any of my 2-pass stuff that fills up the discs. This whole thing has been talked about before, such as in the thread link that was pasted.

I'll say this, though: I watch everything on a good 50" television, everything looks good at 27" or whatever, but watch on a 50 or 60" and you can see flaws pretty easily. I can get at least the same quality out of CQ as I can with 2-pass, even if the CQ file is quite a bit smaller than the 2-pass, it does it in half the time, and after you get five or ten movies/shows under your belt, knowing what settings to use for what length and what aspect ratio etc to get what filesize isn't hard at all.

Back when I'd do a movie or TV show here or there, part of why I used 2-pass was because the computer had plenty of time. But since then, when you have ten shows waiting to encode, time becomes a problem, and on a big TV, I just don't see any quality difference. YMMV.

I tried Kwag's templates for awhile, but they didn't work for me. Lots of synch problems on my Apex. They tended to save about 100 megs over the course of a movie, which is good, but that wasn't worth it to me if I had to give up knowing they were fully compliant. I loaned a couple things to a friend that I did with those, he was all excited about watching that particular movie or show, but then he had to hit pause and play all the time to help the thing stay in synch on his player. So, I gave up on offshoot templates. The potential lack of compatibility isn't worth it to me. Maybe it is worth it to others, but I'd rather just drop the audio rate down or something to save that 100 megs if I had to, which, usually using two discs, I never have to.

[Deusxmachina]

Deusxmachina:

Rather than having to re-invent the wheel, would you be willing to share some comparison settings for file size using 2 pass VBR vs. CQ? I'm wanting to try CQ. I currently am able to control file size on dvd rips to dvd in VBR because I can set the average bitrate. In CQ, you just set min/max and a quality slider. What settings do you use vs. the file size you end up with?

Let's see... remember, I encode stuff to look good on things bigger than 32" screens, so I generally shoot for two discs for most movies. Even my old VHS SLP copy-of-a-copy junk looks good on my 20-some inch TV. But at 50" it's horrible. If a movie is 2hrs or more, I assume it will almost always be three discs in order to have the quality I want, so take my quality concerns into account. Figure 45-50 minutes standard per SVCD disc, with the option to go to 55 or so minutes. I've done 60 minutes easily on a disc though (and in 4:3 aspect too), as I'll mention later.

Sometimes they take one, sometimes they take three, but most movies can fit on two and look very good. Anything in 16:9 aspect is pretty easy to control the final result. 4:3 format can get a little more tricky.

I use SVCD and 224 audio all the time when possible. I can tell the difference between 128 audio and 224, but 128 still sounds just fine for most things to me, so I'm not afraid to use 128 to save 100 megs if I have to in order to preserve video quality to make things fit. Also depends on the movie, too. Using 128 audio on something like U-571 is just wasting the movie because the sound is so good.

Most of the time, you know beforehand whether a movie will fit on one disc, or two, or three. The Fifth Element is a beautiful-looking movie, and I decided to do that one in 4:3 aspect ratio, and it's fairly long if I remember, so I knew going in it would be a 3-disc movie if I wanted it to look as great as it is supposed to. In 16:9, it probably would have fit on two discs.

Take a typical 16:9, 90-100 minute movie. It will be two discs. SVCD. 224 audio. Quality slider will be 80-85. For 16:9s, I usually leave it on 84 and it's rare to have a fitting problem. If I almost never wanted to have a fitting problem, I could just leave it on 80 or 82. Seems like two points equals somewhere around 50 megs.

When unsure, just look at the filesize after it's encoded for 5 or 10% and divide the filesize by that and then multiply by 100 to estimate the final filesize. If there's any doubt, you can find out within the first 5-10%, drop the quality a little, and then hit start again. Still is way faster than going over the thing with 2-passes.

Anyway, 84 with 224 is typical for me for the type of movie mentioned. I used to use max bitrate of 2500, but it seems to be a waste, so since then I've dropped the max to 2300 and still don't see any problem at all in action scenes. Stuff like the opening scene in The Mummy Returns is the only place you'd see any difference between 2000, 2300 or 2500 max, really. Most "action" scenes don't have anywhere near as much action as that does. (I use high quality/slow for motion precision, of course.) Minimum is left at 300, although dropping it down wouldn't hurt. This should put a typical 90-100 minute 16:9 movie around 1400-1500 megs. I like to leave some leeway so I can cut it in half at the end of a scene instead of in the middle of one.

Now, SVCD at 84 quality is some good-looking stuff. Even at 80 it looks pretty damn good. 78 starts getting iffy to me, although certainly tolerable most of the time. It's all still far better than VHS or VCD, of course.

For talking head stuff, you can get away with quite a bit more. I've been doing the Monty Python DVDs lately, and those are 4:3 format from 1970. I tried 90 minutes (three episodes) on a disc in VCD, and it looked fine on my 19" monitor, but on the 50" TV, not good enough for me. So, 60 minutes on a disc (two episodes) in SVCD was how it will be. The original quality (particularly the audio) is poor, so you can get away with more. 60 minues on a disc, and I use 77cq, 300min, 1700 max, 128 audio. After 15 episodes, only one didn't come in within about 20 megs of 340, and that one for some reason was a few minutes longer and came in at 400.

So, if there's a fitting problem, now the first thing I look at is if I can drop the max bitrate down to boost the low end. It might give up some in high action scenes, but I doubt I'd even notice the difference much if at all. And if there is a difference, maybe it will macroblock for a moment, but big deal since the rest of the movie will look pleasing to the eye. For talking head stuff, you can drop the max way down and never notice because there is never any need for the max.

After dropping the max bitrate if I have to, (and if the movie isn't big on action that's the obvious first choice to drop), I'll then either look at dropping the audio or dropping down the slider. It's a bit of a feel thing for using cq, but it doesn't take long to get the feel for it, and then it will be rare when you get a curveball for filesize. It's hard to remember the last time I got a filesize curveball on a 16:9 movie. I almost always set the edit points in TMPGenc before encoding so that the final mpegs are all set to burn already, and I cut the second half a little long so it came out like 5 megs over what could be burned. So I chopped two minutes off the credits and that was that. Usually, though, everything winds up between 700-750 megs pretty easily.

Once again, remember the quality I shoot for when I encode stuff. If I played everything on my little 19" monitor, the filesizes could be way smaller, and most everything would probably even fit on one disc. Blow it up to 50 or 60", though, and that's a different ball game.

So, play around with it a little bit, and after a few shows you should be well on your way to having that cq-feel. 4:3 aspect requires more finesse and setting control, but it's still not bad once you do a couple of them. And once you get the hang of it, that extra time spent will more than pay for itself from then on because encoding will never need to take twice as long due to using 2-pass.

[LeeBear]

Deusxmachina, I agree with you that 2-pass VBR is alot slower then CQ in TMPG... that's why I don't use TMPG to encode MPEG-2 stream I use CCE. Doing a 4-pass VBR using CCE is faster then the 2-pass using TMPG, although slower then the CQ mode of TMPG. But the slightly longer time is worth it to me for the predictability and in my opinion a slightly better quality (althought very unnoticable unless you go through frame by frame). Of course maybe the 34" 16:9 Toshiba HDTV direct view television with a progressive scan Panasonic DVD player isn't good enough to see the flaws

You may not agree but picture quality is a subjective thing I guess. I will agree with you about the Kwang templates thought. I've gotten sync problems and other strange problems with it. I have nothing personal against Kwang, I just think that on his quest for quality he has sacrificed compliancy. To me when i watch a movie a sync or a hiccup in the movie is more annoying then watching a movie with a slightly less quality but plays perfectly.

-LeeBear

[kwag]

I will agree with you about the Kwang templates thought. I've gotten sync problems and other strange problems with it. I have nothing personal against Kwang, I just think that on his quest for quality he has sacrificed compliancy. To me when i watch a movie a sync or a hiccup in the movie is more annoying then watching a movie with a slightly less quality but plays perfectly.

-LeeBear

Please remember that this has nothing to do with templates. This is related to MPEG-1 VBR and/or resolutions, which many DVD players don't like.
As for VCD compatibility, I've had almost 99% compatibility with the 352x240 PLUS template. Even though it's MPEG-1 VBR, it plays in just about every DVD player that supports VCD's. But then you get the added bonus of 120+ minutes on a CD-R, at the same quality you would get on a standard VCD. And as for SVCD compatibility, the same applies to the SKVCD's. If your player supports SVCD's, then 99% of the cases, you can play SKVCD. Again, with the added bonus of longer play time on a selected media.

-kwag

[Greyhair]

Deusxmachina

Man, thank you very much. I too am a bit of a quality junkie, especially if I'm encoding to dvd. What you do has helped me avoid a lot of experimentation, so thanks alot!!

[Deusxmachina]

I read the forums here in spurts, so the past couple days have been the first I've been here in probably a good two months. I'm halfway through that thread that was posted above, and it makes more sense when I got to the "TMPGenc is a good cq encoder but not so good with 2-pass" part.

I just d/led DVD2SVCD to play with later this weekend, (mainly for its subtitles capabilities since they are a pita otherwise), and I've messed with other encoders a little, but TMPGenc has always been it for me. If I had a $2000 CCE encoder to test out, maybe I'd have a different opinion on cq versus 2-pass. As it is for TMPGenc, though, logic says 2-pass is better, and I used to think there's no way it couldn't be, but after using both on full movies, if there is a difference, I really don't see it. And cq is so much faster once you get the hang of it. As computers get faster and faster, time limits with multi-pass become less of a concern. But for most people who have around 1gig machines, time can be very important.

Kwag's templates definitely help on filesize, no question. Like I said, I tended to average about 100 meg less per movie, I think. (When all other factors such as audio bps were set the same, so the 100 megs was saved from the compression changes.) My Apex would no way no how play mpeg1 at x480.

Also, I made a bunch of test samples at 352x480 with mpeg1 and mpeg2, and half if not most of the time I think the 480x480 *at the same filesize* looked better. I wrote the tests down somewhere around here, but I do know I gave up on 352x480, even with mpeg2, for a reason. It might have been how my Apex 5131 read the file, I don't know, but with all the variables that affect things, I gave up on saving 100 meg per movie or using 352x and went back to using standard VCD/SVCD resolutions and Q's and all that to ensure the damn things would play.

Unless I'm missing something, when/if I want to transfer my 480x480 SVCDs to DVD-R, all I plan on doing is putting both files on the same disc. They may not play seamlessly at the switch, but good enough. I've been doing audio at 48hz for quite some time, too, so that shouldn't affect it. Multi-disc SVCDs are why I bought a DVD changer anyway, though, so no biggie.

I just read something in that linked thread where Kwag said all his templates were returned to standard Q's. Maybe that would fix all the synch problems I had, even with VCD. My Apex wouldn't touch x480 mpeg1, (and Kwag either never messed much with changing the Q's in mpeg2, or else it didn't help much, I forget which), so the only Kwag template I could use was for regular VCD/mpeg1 of 352x240. Those are the one that would give synch problems as the movie played. x480 would be bad synch right away, but I remember making half a dozen regular VCDs with the template, playing them in the player for a minute and seeing they worked, and then not coming back to them until later. So later when I watched them or loaned them out, fifteen minutes in things started going wacko and kept getting worse. Ah well. Was worth a try.

Back to some cq/filesize stuff for fun for Greyhair... Heat is a heck of a long movie, but I did it on two discs in SVCD at 78cq and 224 audio. It's 2.35 aspect so filesizes are small and quality is high, but that thing is such a long movie I was surprised it made it on two discs. I did Mystery Men at 85cq and 224 on two, Killer Clowns from Outer Space on one disc at 79cq and 224, Skulls 2 on one at 80cq and 128, The Usual Suspects on one at 82cq and 224, Lost Souls (winona ryder) on one at 75cq and 128. Those just happen to be a few I had sitting around that I looked at quick. I usually write on the disc what I encoded them at. And then for VCD you can really fit stuff decent, such as Original Sin (that long, boring angelina jolie movie) at 80cq and 224 on one disc with room to spare.

That's all just using the standard templates and nothing fancy. For most people, an SVCD cq of 75-80 should be more than plenty. I can see the flaws in the 84cq stuff I do, (sometimes I have to squint though), but most people just say, "Damn, dude, that DVD sure does look awesome!"

When cq encoding, usually 90-100 minutes is on two discs to have very good quality in SVCD. But with cq, while you can get that occasional curveball filesize, it works both ways, too, such as with Heat or The Usual Suspects and the like. CQ is more unpredicatable, no question, but sometimes that unpredicatability works in your favor, too. For something like Skulls 2, at 80cq it would have hit 850 megs or whatever. So then you can drop the audio down to 128, and boom, fits on one disc. And at 80cq in SVCD.

If I had a much faster computer, I might use mulit-pass for everything, (especially if I had CCE since it's supposedly better), but with TMPGenc, I have a hard time finding fault with cq mode.

[Deusxmachina]

Oh, and LeeBear, no matter how good that 34" television is, it's still only 34". I have a Toshiba 50a61, and plenty of people have said they thought it was an HD set when they first saw it at Best Buy or wherever. (Mitsubishi analog rear-projections are excellent, too. Too bad they won't be making analogs anymore and instead make HDTVs with sucky linedoublers.)

Anyway, I have a 32" Proscan, too, and even SLP VHS looks pretty decent on that. But blow it up to 50" and it can hurt your eyes. The only thing I regret on the Toshiba is that I didn't get the 61" version, but if it was another 11" on there, I can just see myself posting about needing 88 or 90 cq to make things look good, so maybe it was for the best.

I'm sure you have to smile like I do when someone says they fit a high-action, long movie on one disc in SVCD and it looks so amazingly great on their computer monitor which is probably 17" at most. Or maybe they're watching it in a little mini window. If they put that thing on a TV even at 34 or 36" or so, it'd probably stop a lot of them from saying what great quality they got from such a tiny file.

[kwag]

Kwag's templates definitely help on filesize, no question. Like I said, I tended to average about 100 meg less per movie, I think. (When all other factors such as audio bps were set the same, so the 100 megs was saved from the compression changes.) My Apex would no way no how play mpeg1 at x480.

And now every new APEX model won't know how to play a VCD
As of April 15, 2002, APEX has dropped support on their complete production line for VCD playback in their DVD players, because of licensing issues. ( Bad move APEX, VERY bad move ).
And so have our efforts at KVCD.Net to support tweaks for APEX products
I can't say the same for JVC, most Panasonic models, and Sony. Most do play MPEG-1 VBR perfectly, and KVCD's. So, end of story, and probably "The End" for APEX too.

-kwag

[Deusxmachina]

Wow. That's just sad. I know the new "second generation" of the 5131 is giving people SVCD problems, but to not have VCD at all might be a mark for death. Everything plays VCD nowadays. It was always SVCD that was hard to come by. Bummer.

[Greg12]

VBR works well for me because I can set it to encode, go to bed, then the next morning I get up and go to school.

It has about 16 hours to run untouched.

[Deusxmachina]

It used to work well for me, too, until I started doing more and more. Now I'll be setting things to run overnight, but I'll be setting two or three things. For the Monty Python episodes I'm doing, I set up the TMPG batch encode to do 3-5 of them, hit start, and then let it run. It'd take forever in two-pass.

It's almost hard for me to believe how many VCDs/SVCDs I have now just from the past not even year. If I had this stuff on VHS, I wouldn't have room for it. If I encoded more TV shows, I'd have to buy a faster computer just to keep up. This stuff sure can get addictive.

Best part is when you pass TV shows or whatever on discs to friends who aren't into it. Then they'll watch the shows on their player and think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.

[Greyhair]

I'm encoding dvd rips to burn to dvd. Re-encoding a dvd to 4.3 gigs on my 1.2 gighz thunderbird, using TMPGEnc 2 pass is taking about 20-24 hrs. I have a new mobo and p4 2.0 gig on order, but still, if I can get good quality using CQ with 1/2 the encode time, I want to do that. I have a netflix subscriptions, so time can matter. Right now, I'm transcoding a 144 min svcd dvd rip to a dvd compatible mpg2. With 2 pass the time is 26 hrs, with cq the time is 12 hrs. If the quality is good, I'll struggle with estimating the file size........

Thanks again Deux..for the info.

[Deusxmachina]

Sounds about right. The Monty Python episodes are a little over a gig each for 30 minutes, and those take around 5 hours each if I don't touch the computer, which includes inverse telecine which adds a good bit of time. That on a 933mhz@133fbs Duron. Well, actually, I guess that's at 700mhz@100 since I unoverclocked it recently due to a broken video card fan that liked to reset things when it got hot. At two-pass, that'd take a day for three episodes. It's nice to have discs finished encoding before I have to shave again.

Sometimes the 2.5x TMPG seems way slower than the older versions, and other times it seems much faster. Eh.

I wanted to comment on Stanley's original post again. At the worst, check out Sefy's template on this site. (I think it's his I'm thinking of.) If you load it up and look at the settings, you can see what is different from the normal template. If I remember, he sets it for a max bitrate of 1150 like a standard VCD, but then sets the minimum to 300 and uses VBR in order to fit more on a disc. You could do a similar thing.

If you are happy with what you've been doing for the most part, something like that might be all you need to test out. You're using 1500kbs now in CBR, but if you use two-pass VBR, you can set the average to 1500, the min to 300, max to 2000 or 2300, and it'd be the same size but look much better overall. It'll take longer, though.

Or if you wanted to play with CQ mode to do it as fast as you do now, do the same five-minute clip with min at 300, max at 2000 or 2300, and the cq at 60, 65, 70, 75, 80, and 85, and then you can compare filesizes with picture quality. Spending a couple hours doing test runs will easily pay for itself later in both time and quality.

If you do VCD at the standard 352x240 resolution, I'd always look at fitting most 90-100 minute shows/movies onto one disc. You might have to drop the audio down to 128 on some of them, or play with a couple of the other settings I mentioned before, but the video quality should still be quite good. I mentioned some of the stuff I put on one disc even using 480x480 SVCD, and then I did that long-ass Original Sin in VCD at 80cq with 224 audio and it's only 750megs.

I use VCD for stuff I don't really care about but wouldn't mind having around if I can do it fast and on one disc, and I don't know if TMPG is improved in compression or what, but you sure can fit a lot on there nowadays. I almost fit 90 minutes of 4:3 Monty Python on each disc in VCD, and I could have if I used a cq around 72 or so, which would have looked ok, but instead I figured screw it and did 60 minutes on each disc in SVCD. So if you stick with VCD, you should be able to fit most things on one disc.

[LeeBear]

Wow, I can see why the TMPG people use CQ mode to encode over 2-pass VBR. I wouldn't wait 26 hours to encode a movie either. What kinda of filters, etc are you using Greyhair? When I encode my movies using a 4-pass VBR, MPEG2, 480x480, frameserved with bicubic resizing, CCE only takes about 6 hours for an average movie (One and a half hour). That's on an Athlon XP1700+.

-LeeBear

[Greyhair]

My setup is a 1.2 gighz thunderbird. The only filtering I'm using is to reduce block noise in TMPGEnc. To create a 4.2 gig dvd file on a 144 min. movie takes right around 26 hrs using 2 pass.

I just did an re-encode of that same movie using CQ. The movie is 144 mins. I used a min. of 2500 and max 8000 bitrate, and a slider setting of 80. It's a 16:9 video, and the final files size was 4.2 gigs.......just right. The total encode time was right at 13 hrs. The samples I looked at for quality were indistinguishable to 2 pass encodes I've done. I will watch the entire movie to make a final judgement, but so far soooo good.