TMPGEnc MPEG-2 at CBR 7300kbps good enough or do 2-pass VBR?

[FulciLives]

Hello

I have a VHS capture I did of a movie that is only about 75 minutes long. I figure if I do AC-3 audio of 224kbps or even 256kbps then I should be able to set my bitrate at about 7300kbps and that is somewhat conservative (should give me a final total size of M2V + AC3 = 4.0GB to 4.1GB) as I don't like to fill up my DVD-R discs TOO much so as to avoid any "edge" problems and leave room for authoring overhead etc.

Anyways ...

I guess my question is this ... since 8000kbps is the highest you can set your MAX bitrate for a 2-pass VBR (I use TMPGEnc Plus 2.5) should I even bother since my AVG would be 7300kbps? I mean that isn't too far away from the MAX of 8000kbps so is it even worth doing a 2-pass VBR encode?

Please note that this is a PICVideo MJPEG (19 setting) 704x480 NTSC capture and I am using AviSynth to read the AVI into TMPGEnc as I am using decomb (for IVTC) and Convulsion3D as a "noise" filter. Source is an old pre-record VHS video that I own but it is a movie that is hopelessly not on DVD and I don't expect to see it soon. Despite the fact that this was an old 1984 VHS video release the quality of both the film-to-video transfer as well as the image and sound (Hi-Fi Stereo) of the VHS video are excellent.

Anyways I thank any and all for their comments on this and ...

Thank you in advance

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Ejoc]

Im always in the mind set of: I can encode it while I sleep, so doing VBR vs CBR doesnt really matter, it finishes while I'm asleep either way, and VBR give better results. Sure I doubt you'll really notice, but since it sounds like you are trying to get the best outa it, Id go VBR, even at a 10frame/sec encode you're only talking like... 4hours

so is it even worth it?

Probably not, but I'd do it anyways.

It'd be interesting to do a 720x480 CBR 7,000Kbps vs 352x480 CBR 8,000kbps

Please note that this is a PICVideo MJPEG (19 setting) 704x480 NTSC capture and I am using AviSynth to read the AVI into TMPGEnc as I am using decomb (for IVTC) and Convulsion3D as a "noise" filter

The 19 setting is pretty good, but I'm guessing you're lacking the space for 20/huffyuv, they seem to produce the same size AVI in my experience.

[FOO]

I really don't think all the extreme measures are
worth it for a VCR.

[FulciLives]

Well this is a movie not on DVD and from what I hear it is not comming out on DVD anytime soon.

Also the quality of the VHS video is actually very good (at least for VHS) and after doing IVTC and Convolusion3D the image quality is actually pretty damn good ... you would be hard pressed to think it was from a VHS video.

So ... in short ... I am trying to get the best out of it.

However my computer is SLOW as hell so that is why I thought maybe I could get away with a CBR instead of a VBR since I can use such a high bitrate (it is an old 1973 TV movie so I guess that is why it is so short ... I guess they had more commercials on TV back then hehehe)

Anyways ... I'm probably getting off topic from my posted question but I've noticed something that does seem to be a bit disturbing.

I'm using Convolusion3D at the movieLQ setting which is:

Convolution3D (0, 6, 10, 6, 8, 2.8, 0)

This is working wonders on cleaning up the image HOWEVER it is making the picture substantially DARKER than what it was before.

I opened two instances of VirtualDubMod and in one I load the AVI directly and in another I load my AVS file which applies Convolution3D in the AVS script before loading the AVI into VirtualDubMod. The original is MUCH brighter than the Convolusion3D version.

Anyone have any ideas on why that is and if there is anything I can do to "fix" it somehow (i.e., make it brighter or keep it from getting so dark)?

Thanks again

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Ejoc]

Check out Levels()

[SatStorm]

7000 is more than enough for quality with CBR. You gain nothing in praxis and theory using 2 Pass VBR (what? 2000 - 7300 - 8000 ? Ain't worth it!)

Quality in this case, is about the use of filters.
3d convultion is good, but why don't try other filters like the temporal ones?
On Virtualdub (I'm not an avisynth fan, maybe I'm old for it....)

Just for your info, I use Temporal Smoother, Dynamic Noise reduction, Static noise reduction and rmPAL (you don't need this, is for PAL only) and sometimes PAL frame restorer (delay any second field and put it in an offset position, so you end up with semi-progressive frames - you also don't need this with NTSC). I succeed miracles with all those filters, and I know that they all exist for avisynth too. Try them!

[energy80s]

Why not use CQ encoding? With TMPG its considerably better than VBR. My normal encodes use CQ85 at 8000 max and 4000 min. This usually hovers the bitrate between 6500-7500 and works fine for high speed car rally action.