VideoHelp Forum
+ Reply to Thread
Results 1 to 9 of 9
Thread
  1. Member
    Join Date
    Aug 2017
    Location
    Germany
    Search Comp PM
    Hello,

    I have some MPEG2 stuff recorded from television.

    I'm familar with editing video material from VHS and digital camcorders ("Home Videos").

    But I'm a novice in converting MPEG2 material recorded from television. I never did it before

    I want to encode more modern and smaller MP4 files from it. The MPEG2 are too big and inefficient to me.

    For that Task, I want to use the software I'm familiar with. That is AviDemux, KDENLive and Audacity. (I think, KDENlive is unnecessary here. I don't want to alter the movies itself)

    Here are my novice questions:

    For the video part (I want to use MPEG4-AVC for the video codec):
    1. Should I deinterlace (if necessary) or keep the interlacing?
    2. Should I inverse-telecine, if possible? (Especially cinematic movies)
    3. If I should deinterlace, should I resize the anamorphic material to square pixels too? (720x576 -> 1024x576 and 720x480 -> 854x480) Or only set the pixel aspect ratio flag to the proper value? Which is better?
    4. What do I do with crappy PAL<->NTSC conversion that were done by frame blending? Are there filters to reverse it?
    5. Is crf=22 enough?

    For the audio part (Would be AAC)
    1. I don't have a surround speaker system. How to mix 5.1 channels down to 2.0? I think, the two left tracks together, the two right tracks togheter, the center to both at -6dB (half level) and drop the LFE?
    2. How much AAC bitrate is equal quality to a stereo AC3 track with 384kbps?
    3. Which is better quality? AC3 or MP2 (Sometimes, there are audio tracks in both formats)
    4. What exactly is "Dolby Prologic"? Do I need to do something with it or can I simply encode it as stereo?
    5. Same question goes to "Dolby Digital" - What is it exactly? Do I need to do something with it to get regular stereo sound?


    Regards,

    Frank
    Quote Quote  
  2. This is what I would do... you don't have to follow it precisely.
    First thing: install Avisynth, for me that's a must.

    Video part
    1. I would deinterlace in case of live material (sports, concert, studio show) to double rate using QTGMC. The other option is to use x264 mbaff to encode it interlaced but you mentioned "modern MP4", right? Progressive is just more efficient and uses less bitrate. In the case of movie I would't deinterlace.
    2. If the source is NTSC, you should do IVTC to remove pulldown. For PAL source, no. Always first inspect your video frame by frame to see what's going on. Don't trust any software, just your eyes.
    3. I would keep it in original resolution and use adequate SAR in x264.
    4. It was a long time I worked with such material, but I remember I would deinterlace to full rate (either QTGMC or Yadif) and then use SRestore to improve situation with blending.
    5. Maybe it is, maybe it's not. DVB video streams in standard definition are usually encoded around 3,5 - 4.0 Mb/s average in MPEG-2. I would use CRF 18,19 or 20. Lower than that is overkill for already pretty compressed DVB source. Higher than 22 is starting to look poor IMO. Also, try 2-pass encoding if you are targeting specific file size.

    Audio part
    1. I would keep the original 5.1 audio but if you insist on stereo I would forget about doing manual downmix in editor and instead use eac3to for that task. It's much easier.
    2. Lossy compression to different lossy compression is never equal. There's is always some loss. Can you notice that small loss in quality? Maybe not. I'd use something like 128-160 Kb/s. I use QAAC front-end for Apple encoder for quite some time.
    3. For stereo tracks they are very similar. I guess AC-3 is little better but not much.
    4. Don't know much about it, it's something like 'quasi" surround sound where there's still some surround information in stereo track.
    5. No, use eac3to or keep original track.
    Quote Quote  
  3. Member
    Join Date
    Aug 2017
    Location
    Germany
    Search Comp PM
    Sorry, I don't use Windows so your windows-only-software suggestions are useless to me.

    But your workflow for the video is the same as what I had in my mind so I'm going to use it (but with my software).

    For the audio part, I'm not with you. You didn't answer the questions completely. I don't want to copy the original audio streams for following reasons:

    - AC3 isn't compatible to MP4 container
    - If I keep the AC3 tracks as they are, I need to use MKV but my TV has troubles to play it at all (A/V sync issues ).
    - I hate MKV. It is somewhat piracy feeling to me to use them. I don't want to create pirate copies here. It is for personal home use only.
    - I edit the audio so I need to recode in any case
    So I want to convert them to AAC using FDK.
    Quote Quote  
  4. Originally Posted by Franky123 View Post
    - AC3 isn't compatible to MP4 container
    Wrong.
    Quote Quote  
  5. It says Win 8 in your computer details so I assumed you can use windows.

    I think I answered what you asked...

    To each his own, I hate MP4, it's only MKV for me. Nothing "piracy" about it. It's a tool. MP4 can also be used for piracy.
    Quote Quote  
  6. Member
    Join Date
    Aug 2010
    Location
    San Francisco, California
    Search PM
    Matroska was the darling of the pirates several years ago. But why blame a container format for what its users did? That's just silly.
    Quote Quote  
  7. Member netmask56's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2005
    Location
    Sydney, Australia
    Search Comp PM
    Also some media players handle MKV better than they do mp4 and there are others vice versa. MKV is a flexible container that IMO has advantages over mp4. The comment "piracy" is just very odd.
    SONY 75" Full array 200Hz LED TV, Yamaha A1070 amp, Zidoo UHD3000, BeyonWiz PVR V2 (Enigma2 clone), Chromecast, Windows 11 Professional, QNAP NAS TS851
    Quote Quote  
  8. Member
    Join Date
    Aug 2017
    Location
    Germany
    Search Comp PM
    As I already said, my TV can't play MKV. After a few seconds, audio and video gets slightly off-sync. The computer play the same files fine.

    And I tried it today: It doesn't play AC3 inside any container but TS. It wants AAC or MP3

    What is the advantage to use AC3 instead of AAC?
    Quote Quote  
  9. Member netmask56's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2005
    Location
    Sydney, Australia
    Search Comp PM
    Clearly in your case no advantage (AC3 or AAC) at all - if your TV is so specific to format and container then that is what you are stuck with.
    SONY 75" Full array 200Hz LED TV, Yamaha A1070 amp, Zidoo UHD3000, BeyonWiz PVR V2 (Enigma2 clone), Chromecast, Windows 11 Professional, QNAP NAS TS851
    Quote Quote  



Similar Threads

Visit our sponsor! Try DVDFab and backup Blu-rays!