My AVI -> X/SVCD conversion guide (Adv. TMPGEnc set, mp3)

[puntloos]

Puntloos AVI -> X/SVCD conversion guide
For the impatient:
23,976fps, AC3, 16:9 AVI -> NTSC X/SVCD (optionally with mp3 audio)

TMPGenc settings in a nutshell:
(I will explain a lot of TMPGEnc settings below. I don't consider myself an expert, but I do believe I know what I'm talking about in practical situations, so I humbly suggest you read the bottom of the doc as well)

VFAPI Plugin: Make the priority of the Directshow Multimedia File reader highest so it will use (installed, right?) AC3/Ogg/Mp3/xvid/divx codecs.
Audio engine: (optional)If you dare: MPEG1 Audio Layer III encoder: (download 2.90.3 and) select Lame.exe If you cant or don't want to use MP3 use TooLame.exe for mp2 audio (its superior to TMPGenc's built in encoder)

Encoding settings:
video: 24fps (internally 30fps), NTSC, 3:2 pulldown
advanced: non-interlaced, Field B, 1:1 AR, Fullscreen, IVTC (Convert to 24 fps)
audio: (optional): MPEG-1 Audio Layer III, 128kbit or so.

Extra:
On my player, Pioneer 444, image gets completely distorted if you don't do the following weird trick. It has to do with mixing mp3 into the stream since it'll just work with mp2. This probably is a hardware bug, so might not work and/or be necessary with your hardware. You can also opt to forget about mp3 audio

1/ Create a NTSC-sized blank VCD file(yes, MPEG-1, MPEG-1, Layer2 Audio) of about 3 seconds. This shouldn't be too hard.
2/ Create a blank SuperVCD file (MPEG-2, MPEG-1, Layer2 Audio) with the same size (resolution) as your final file, 3 seconds again. This shouldn't be too hard either.
3/ When recording (I use Nero 5.5) make the VCD track 2 (track 1 is the 'data' section), the SVCD track 3 and your final movie track 4.

The long story
OK I've been doing some trial-and-error with converting divx/xvid to svcd since I could never get it right. Always stuttering or other weird effects. For the record I have a Pioneer 444 player, perhaps it has something to do with its hardware-specific properties, but if you have similar problems with your player Im sure it's worth a shot. And even if you have no real problems I believe there are a few useful considerations in my little essay.

Since the TMPGenc settings I found to be working seem to pretty much disagree with everything I've found in forums etc (even when it sounded logical) I'll share them here.

Essentially I wanted to convert an AC3, 23,976fps (progressive of course) 16:9, 608x256 movie to svcd.

First a few preferences
TMPGenc doesn't know what AC3 is, I suspect it might also have problems with Xvid, Im not sure if it's related. One thing's for sure, before you do anything go to

Option -> Environmental Setting -> VFAPI Plugin tab

And make sure the priority of the Directshow Multimedia File Reader is highest. (Right click on it, and select higher priority a few times). Once that is done it will pretty much read any divx that you can also play normally on your system.

Optionally, if you plan to use MP3 Audio (this will probably work if your DVD player supports MP3 since it will use the same hardware to decode the audio anyway) you need to tell it where it can find the latest version of Lame.exe in the Audio engine tab. (download this seperately of course, duh). Lame is obviously the best mp3 encoder out there. Especially since we're really hurtin' for every last byte I find 128kbit mp3 audio quite acceptable compared to the 256kbit mp2 audio. Especially since TMPGEnc's mp2 encoder doesn't produce the best possible mp2 anyway. If you want to use mp2, I suggest you use TooLame for this.



Inverse Telecine - also named 3:2 Pulldown
Now there are zillions of docs about inverse telecine, 3:2 pulldown etc and they do make sense. Of course you want to just store the 23.976 frames per second and let the DVD player hardware to do the rest of the work. Recoding and storing 29.97 frames per second would also work (and perhaps this what Im doing without knowing it, but I dont think so) but storing 6 frames more than necessary is wasteful. Less wasteful than some people claim by the way, the extra frames aren't totally lost since there would be fewer differences between the individual frames, which is easier to encode.

Now of course TMPGenc (Im using 2.59 btw) is made by some asian company so its engrish is probably losing something, but the bottomline is that the setting that would make the most sense would be:

Frame rate: 23.976 (internally 29.97 fps)
Video format: NTSC
Encode mode: 3:2 pulldown when playback

(I would assume they mean that the internal framerate is 23.976 and the mpg contains a flag that tells the player to IVTC to 29.97fps (which is NTSC). Also, you might first have to select the Encode mode before the right frame rate setting becomes selectable)

Sadly this doesn't work. At least not on my player. Still stuttering.

Now after trying pretty much all combinations I stumbled onto the settings that -do- work. Here they are.

Stream Type:	MPEG-2 Video
Size:		720x480 Display
Aspect Ratio:	16:9
Frame Rate:	24 fps (internally 30fps)
Profile&Level:	MP@ML
Video format:	NTSC
Encode mode:	3:2 pulldown when playback
YUV format:	4:2:0
DC component:	8 bits
Motion s. prc.:	Normal

I suggest you do not go over 2300kbit/sec for either Max VBR bitrate, or CBR bitrate. (unless you know what you're doing.. see notes below)

Advanced
Video source:	Non-interlace(progressive)
Field order:	Bottom field first (field B)
Source aspect:	1:1 (VGA)
Video arrange:	Full screen (keep aspect)
Inverse TC:	24 fps (non-interlace source)

Audio
Stream Type:	MPEG-1 Audio Layer III
Bitrate:	128 kbits/sec

System
Stream Type:	MPEG-2 Super VideoCD (VBR)

And burn

With Nero, all you need to do is disable standards compliance since we're creating nonstandard stuff here. Also make it encode to NTSC. I hope your player handles this, if not you're screwed.

Lastly I will Copy and Paste my only note I mentioned above:

On my player, Pioneer 444, image gets completely distorted if you don't do the following weird trick. It has to do with mixing mp3 into the stream since it all works fine with mp2 audio. This probably is a hardware bug, so might not work and/or be necessary with your hardware.

1/ Create a NTSC-sized blank VCD file(yes, MPEG-1, MPEG-1, Layer2 Audio) of about 3 seconds. This shouldn't be too hard.
2/ Create a blank SuperVCD file (MPEG-2, MPEG-1, Layer2 Audio) with the same size as your final file, 3 seconds again. This shouldn't be too hard either.
3/ When recording (I use Nero 5.5) make the VCD track 2 (track 1 is the 'data' section), the SVCD track 3 and your final movie track 4.

Comments on TMPGenc settings
- My player refuses to play weirdly-sized mpegs, so you need to convert to standard size. Now SuperVCD-NTSC actually is 480x480 but I found that my player accepts 720x480. So experiment. If your player seems to accept weirdly-sized MPEG's then by all means keep the output dimensions the same as the source, since you will lose quality (image sharpness) in resizing.
- Aspect ratio 16x9 will result in a fairly good compromise on a 4x3 TV. Yes, the sides of your image will be cut off, but if you don't you will leave precious little image lines for your actual picture. If you wish you can tinker with input and output ratio's to fill your screen and letterbox it more. Basically I believe I'm manually 'Pan and Scanning' but Im not up to speed with the lingo.
- The framerate 24fps works on my player, 23.976 doesn't somehow. Don't ask me why. Your mileage may vary. You definately want to encode at 23.976 or 24 and make the (tmpg engrish lingo) internal framerate 29.97 or 30.
- For bitrate and CBR/VBR I guess it's all up to you. Seasoned SVCD encoders have told me that TMPGEnc's Constant Quality mode is the best mode (even superior to Cinemacrafts MPEG Encoder which some people blindly seem to accept as the best encoder), but to make a neat fit you might have to trial-and-error entire encodes which takes a long time. CBR is for lazy and impatient people. VBR 2 pass is for patient people. (This is only available in TMPGenc plus, which is not free.). My encoder friend tells me that VBR gets you an inferior result compared to a perfectly tuned CQ, but my common sense kinda doubts the statement. I guess I'll try and compare a bit later.
One important thing to remember about VBR (thanks to DLR for reminding me about htis): a lot of players out there are hardware limited as to how many kilobit/second they can read off a CDR. This obviously means that your maximum bitrate may not exceed this. Most players accept anything up to 2500 kbit/sec (or about 2x speed). DVDRHelp sometimes even list this spec on their player reviews but take it with a grain of salt. I suggest you use 2300kbit/sec to be on the safe side.
- DC Component Precision: Well after a tip from BJ_M (thanks!) I've come to revise my stance on this. I never specified for what bitrate I intended this guide, (actually it was for fitting movies onto 2-3 cd's). It now turns out that effectively you get smoother transitions between frames at higher precision, however higher settings (9 or 10) will use up a lot of bandwidth you don't really have at 1500-ish kbit. You should set it to 8bit for low-bitrate and to 9-10 if you go over 3000kbit/sec (as a ballpark indication)
- Motion search precision.. well, I did some tests.. 1000 frames at the lowest setting took 2:05 mins on my system (Celeron 900). Normal setting took 2:30 and highest setting took 8:15. Now the difference between lowest and normal is quite clear, so it's definately worth the 20% extra encoding time. I could -not- tell the difference between Normal and Highest setting. I'm sure there is some, and I only briefly compared one 1000 frame section, but for anything but 'archive quality' stuff I wouldn't bother setting it to highest.
- Noise Reduction, Ghost reduction, Sharpen Edge.. Well, only if your source is 'home made' or 'recorded off TV'. Experiment I guess, but these filters don't do much with 'perfect' sources. (no, divx isn't perfect, however the compression artefacts you get by using low bitrate divx as source won't be improved by this.)
- I don't know anything about GOP structures or Quantize Matrices. If anyone wants to add to this (esp. if you can achieve considerable improvements in final quality) let me know.
- Outputting YUV data as Basic YCbCr not CCIR601 is preferrable, if your DVD player can handle it. Most players can. The rationale is that for every color CCIR allows 227 values while Basic YCbCr allows 256 values. Essentially this allows for more individual colors to be displayed. This is good if your source is true RGB (like all divx avi's are). DV is CCIR601 so if your source is DV, remapping 227 values onto 256 values will cause a loss in definition i.e. bad.
- Softening Block Noise is a good thing though it will make you lose a little sharpness. For movies with lots of action scenes I would advise this since you will get blockiness. If a movie is slower you can probably better either not engage this filter, or do this and enable the sharpen filter at the same time.



- As I mentioned before, if your DVD player can handle MP3 it should also be able to handle mp3 inside X/SVCD. Usually the hardware/software used for decoding is the same so it probably won't even blink if you feed it mp3. You will need to point TMPGenc to your previously downloaded Lame.exe binary.

Well, that's about it for me. Happy Encoding.

[BJ_M]

thanks you for your guide --

the name of your guide should be dvd 2 xvcd though as your output is not svcd ...

a question on some of your settings:

Frame Rate: 24 fps (internally 30fps)

this will not play in some players also -- and if it was a dvd would not even be able to import into most authoring programs .. though really in a way it makes a lot of sense .. you have stated the fact of this in your guide though.

Audio
Stream Type: MPEG-1 Audio Layer III

this should be really layer 2

i don't get what you are doing with the mp3 file stuck in the beginning but if it works for you so be it ... a lot of players dont even play mp3 ...

- 10bit DC Component Precision is the only viable option. Encoding times only differ marginally if you set it to 8bits (1% or so) and quality is superior at 10.

this is not exactly true and is covered in another thread here, and goes oppisite of what CCE and other companies and people have found ..

[puntloos]

thanks you for your guide --

the name of your guide should be dvd 2 xvcd though as your output is not svcd ...

You're very right. Depending on the settings the user chooses it'll be XSVCD.

a question on some of your settings:
Frame Rate: 24 fps (internally 30fps)
this will not play in some players also -- and if it was a dvd would not even be able to import into most authoring programs .. though really in a way it makes a lot of sense .. you have stated the fact of this in your guide though.

Actually well it depends on if your player has hardware IVTC I believe. I indeed said it would depend on hardware etc, so I suggest the people just grab a cd-rw and give it a few tries

Audio Stream Type: MPEG-1 Audio Layer III
this should be really layer 2

i don't get what you are doing with the mp3 file stuck in the beginning but if it works for you so be it ... a lot of players dont even play mp3 ...

Well, as said, if your player supports MP3 this can save you 10% bitrate at comparable audio quality. In my particular player its buggy firmware requires the 'trick' to shock some sense into the playback hardware. You see I found out that with switching to and fro some tracks eventually it would just play back the track correctly!

- 10bit DC Component Precision is the only viable option. Encoding times only differ marginally if you set it to 8bits (1% or so) and quality is superior at 10.

this is not exactly true and is covered in another thread here, and goes oppisite of what CCE and other companies and people have found ..

Could you give me an URL for that? I found 10bit a bit better-looking... but I guess if you use 10bit it will use fewer bits for other stuff..

[BJ_M]

Could you give me an URL for that? I found 10bit a bit better-looking... but I guess if you use 10bit it will use fewer bits for other stuff..

http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=130900&highlight=



not saying anyting is wrong with your guide .. but you may want to check out some v-dub or avisynth methods also for doing inverse telicine (if required) for some excellent results also ..
you have it set there as source is already progressive 24fps , so you shouldnt apply inverse telicine on it again which is what you show ..

[puntloos]

Could you give me an URL for that? I found 10bit a bit better-looking... but I guess if you use 10bit it will use fewer bits for other stuff..

http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=130900&highlight=



not saying anyting is wrong with your guide .. but you may want to check out some v-dub or avisynth methods also for doing inverse telicine (if required) for some excellent results also ..
you have it set there as source is already progressive 24fps , so you shouldnt apply inverse telicine on it again which is what you show ..

Nope! Actually I'm converting from 23.976 to 24 fps. I have no idea -why- but this makes the difference between normal and highly-stuttering playback. On my hardware, anyway.

Update.

- DC Component Precision: Well after a tip from BJ_M (thanks!) I've come to revise my stance on this. I never specified for what bitrate I intended this guide, (actually it was for fitting movies onto 2-3 cd's). It now turns out that effectively you get smoother transitions between frames at higher precision, however higher settings (9 or 10) will use up a lot of bandwidth you don't really have at 1500-ish kbit. You should set it to 8bit for low-bitrate and to 9-10 if you go over 3000kbit/sec (as a ballpark indication)

[boback1465]

I'm unable to control the bitrate settings on my tmpgenc plus 2.5. the settnigs are locked up. i'm only able to choose "motion search precision" on video. on advanced, gop structure quantize matrix i am able to adjust settings. and on audio, i can only change the channel mode, the bitrate is locked up. can someone help to adjust the locked video and audio settings.

thank you,
boback

[BJ_M]

2 ways possable :

load 'unlock' found in the extra folder

or

click to the left of the setting and select unlock

[puntloos]

Actually the third possibility is that you still have 'wizard mode' on. Turn that off.

[creaker]

Hello, thanks for the guide.

I'm trying to convert a movie as you describe to SVCD, but get extremely corrupted audio both when playing with powerlink DVD and on my player. By corrupted I mean random "clicks and beeps". I'm using latest LAME for the compression to mp3.

The input AVI has uncompressed audio.

I'm using exactly the same settings as yourself. Could you help me please?!

Thanks

[creaker]

Seems like the Cyberlink PowerDVD MPEG2 codecs weren't up to the job. Deleted it, and replaced it with the Elecard one. Plays back OK now, including sound within Media Player. However, won't play back OK in the Mico Celo 80 DVD player.

[puntloos]

Personally I have excellent results with Intervideo WinDVD.

As for playback on hardware players, well.. essentially it all depends on the player. There is little difference (other than compression algorythms of course) between mp3 and mp2 data, so I surmise that most mp3-capable players should have no problems with it. That said I'm afraid that your particular player might have problems regardless.

Incidentally, my particular player actually needed a leading track of 2 seconds normal svcd data (with mp2 audio) after which I started the real file. It might be worth the try.

[DRP]

I would like to get in touch with the author of this guide - Mr puntloos??

No e-mail in profile. If you're still around, could you please either post again or supply an e-mail address?

I have some very specific questions about your guide, as they almost work (ie. get closer than anything else I've tried to date) with a very specific XviD AVI transcoding problem I have which probably cannot be discussed on this forum due to the board rules.

Thanks,

DRP

[puntloos]

I be still here, glad to hear my guide is of some use But why don't you use the "pm" button next to my name in the board. It's used to send private messages and will relay anything to me...

[puntloos]

Updated my guide in 2 spots. I've added the factoid that most players will not be able to read cd's faster than 2x (which is around 2400kbit/sec or 2550kbit/sec, depending on how you calculate it) so having your VBR maximum (or CBR) bitrate go over that is asking for trouble.

Secondly I now explicitly reccommend TooLame.exe over the built in mp2 audio encoder.