Mpeg encoder shootout

[lordsmurf]

If I wanted to script, I'd have been a programmer.
I find AVISYNTH overly confusing, and I give authors like that no credit.
Either make a useful GUI or realize nobody will care.

[BJ_M]

there ARE a lot of GUI for AVISYNTH ... but has anyone got one that is the bee's knee's ?


the few i tried all seemed to be lacking.

[Sefy]

what does "bee's knee's" mean ?
PS, why aren't the AUTHORS of AviSynth not creating a GUI ? they should know best for their own program!

[BJ_M]

means really good i guess -- the kids are saying that around here lately


/me tries to be "hip"

[adam]

bee's knees is just a silly expression meaning something that is really good, or the best.

The author's of Avisynth have stated numerous times that they will never make a gui for avisynth because there are too many variables. There are endless filters and combinations for the syntax. New filters come out every day. Its supposed to be an evolving project. You can't just make a gui for avisynth, your gui would be a full blown Adobe Premiere if you wanted to accommodate even 1/3rd of the available options.

As BJ_M stated there are already a number of guis for avisynth. I think the most complete one is probably MovieStacker, but I really don't see why a gui is needed. The syntax's are extremely simple for most uses and once you create a script (takes about 2 secs) you can just reuse it. Furthermore, all of these Do***4u tools take care of the avisynth scripting for you. You can also download sample scripts for any purpose you need. The lines are ignored with a # at the start of each of them. Just go through and pick the filter and the thresholds you want (heavy vs medium vs light noise reduction for example) and delete the # for that line. Bam, you've got an instant avs script.

lordsmurf you're really missing out man. The possibilities are wide open once you start using avisynth. It beats the pants off of most commercial options and best yet, avisynth filters are usually much faster then commerical ones.

Either make a useful GUI or realize nobody will care.

Avisynth is by far one of the most widely used freeware tools on the planet. Obviously people care if its used by thousands of people every day.

[Sefy]

Adam, I don't think you understand. We don't want text based programs, it's annoying. Doesn't matter how wonderful or amazing or excellent it is, it is in fact annoying and bothersome. I Don't want to "go through" and pick a filter. Then edit the text again and fix it.

It's simply annoying and a shame that the authors will not create a GUI cause I personaly find it hard to believe it's not possible to do. They can create a dynamic menu that will change according to their own scripts. I'm for one not going to bother with AviSynth no matter how extraordinary it might be, it is just not worth it in my opinion and i'm more then positive most newbie's don't care much for it, only the "Extreme" and the "Professioals" propably use it.

[thor300]

The requirements for creating a comprehensive GUI for just the most basic functions available with avisynth would require a GUI that would be 10 times the GUI of Tmpgenc. Do not mistake AviSynth for being a text/script version of tmpgenc or virtualdub. The possibilities in tmpgenc barely scratches the surface of avisynths possibilities.

[adam]

To each their own. Personally I find avisynth very easy to use. I have helped some people learn how to use it who literally had never even used an encoder before, and they had no problems.

I fully understand what you are saying, I'm just telling you the mindset (as I understood it) of the authors of avisynth. Avisynth is supposed to be a slimmed down free alternative to full blown editing apps, which many people would consider bloated. The developers of avisynth have just stated that they don't want to go down the gui road, because it would certainly be a complex one. If you use Avisynth with any number of filters you quickly learn that each filter has its own unique syntaxes. It doesn't make it any more complicated to use, its still just copy and paste and change the numbers according to what you want, but imagine implementing that into a gui. You'd have to have a separate drop down box for each filter with who knows how many options on each. Multiple this by like 5,000 filters which are available, and keep updating it for the new ones that are released everyday. You'd need to use a word search just to find the tab for the filter you want, and alot of filters have similar names. It would be a total mess. It makes much more sense to juse use one the available guis and customize it to your needs. I have like 6 filters which I use regularly. So I just set Fit2Disks's (not even intended to be an avisynth gui) defaults to put in the filters I need. Now, it just spits out a generic script as its calculating the bitrate, which I would be doing anyway. Or for DVD rips I just plugged in my desired settings into DoitFast4u's defaults and now it spits out my desired AVS scripts after ripping my disk. without me having to touch anything. It takes me no more time to get my avs script as it does to load a customized template in TMPGenc.

Those people who use and love avisynth really don't need a gui, and for those people who choose not to learn it simply because it has a learning curve, well I doubt avisynth developers care. After all its free, and certainly insanely popular and widely used, so its not like they need to try and market it to a wider audience. It is what it is. But like BJ_M and myself mentioned, there ARE guis for avisynth and I can guarantee you that with even these simple guis you have far more filters and options available at the click of a button then you do in something like TMPGenc, or Procoder, or Womble mpeg2vcr, etc...

[Josef K]

Since I'm far too drunk/tired to make a useful comment on this, otherwise, interesting thread - I'll make myself useful and answer this one question:

what does "bee's knee's" mean ?

Cockney rhyming slang. (Strangely, this site doesn't list 'bee knees', though my explanation is correct...)

Apples and pears = stairs
Dog and bone = phone
Bees knees = business (phonetic, this one, clever!)

So if you were to say something is 'the bees knees', you would be saying it was 'the business'. Hmm... cockneys don't half talk this sometimes... :P

[tag]

means really good i guess -- the kids are saying that around here lately

means the kids around you are in some kind of a time warp.

That expression was popular in the 1920's along with the "cat's whiskers", et al.

[lordsmurf]

To me time is money. I can use a lot of programs with realtime preview with GUI interface. If I sat around all day trying to see which script worked best, I'd never get any work done. For me, it's solely about time. I don't mind learning new things, but AVISYNTH is not constructive when you want fast and efficient workflow. It's just too slow in that regard. We've been in a GUI-only world for almost 10 years now. The developers of AVISYNTH should realize they ned to get with the times. Free and uncluttered does not mean it should lack a GUI. Plenty of free basic software has a GUI. I think it's more of a statement on their programming skills than anything else. I don't think they CAN do it.

[adam]

I understand what you mean Lordsmurf. But if your time is money then I don't understand why you wouldn't want to use avisynth. If you use any amount of filtering it will surely cut down on your encode times substantially, even with all the extra fiddling around. IVTC'ing via decomb in avisynth fed to TMPGenc is about 3x times faster then doing the IVTC all in TMPGenc. Same thing with noise reduction or just about any other filter. Avisynth is most definitely a major time saver once you know how to use it. And again, it takes me no more time to re-use a script I wrote in 30 secs 4 years ago, then it does for me to load a TMPGenc template. But I fully understand this is all just subjective. I personally disklike guis filled with options. I don't see the point, I'd rather only have to look at what I know I will use. That's why I prefer CCE's gui to TMPGenc, even though most people would call me crazy for saying that. Again, to each their own. But come on, even if you don't like Avisynth or have any respect for its developers, you have to admit that its an important application. The amount of things you can do with it are astounding, regardless of how un-user friendly it may be.

And once again, there are guis for avisynth that have realtime preview capability. You might want to give MovieStacker a try.

[Phlexor]

Someone could make a GUI for AviSynth, in the style of HomeSite 4.5 (an HTML editor). Homesite isn't like Frontpage, it is basicly a text editor that speeds up the process by using dialogue boxes to let you fill in the parameters of each command, coupled with a good help system. You would still have to know how to script in AviSynth, but it would speed it up by heaps. (This could possible be done with some existing Code Editor that caters to many different programming languages with just adding a module that caters to AviSynth)

Anyway, back to what I was talking about. Can anyone explain why the big difference between TMPGEnc and CCE when it comes to making valid access points in an MPEG-1 Stream? (re the examples that I posted of vcdxminfo.exe output)

[lordsmurf]

I keep trying AVISYNTH variants and additions every 3-4 months. So far, nothing good. I haven't given up fully, but so far nothing good has come along. I have complaints about everything I own, software and hardware. But so far, I've found a comfort zone where most things work exactly how I want most times. AVISYNTH isn't in there now, but I'm always open to it being there someday. Maybe in time, after both myself and the software have progressed more.

[adam]

Phlexor I didn't see you other post but I have experienced what you describe in all versions of TMPGEnc, and with mpeg2 as well. (don't know if you've tried mpeg2 also.) I just think its a bug, no other way to explain it. TMPGenc doesn't seem to have nearly the level of control over GOP settings as other encoders. Setting it to all closed GOPs seems to help or even solve the problem all together. Its a completely inelegant and impractical solution but until the bug is fixed or another work around comes along, that's the price you pay for using such a cheap ($$$ wise, not quality-wise) encoder.

I see that TMPGenc's DVD template has closed GOPs set by default. There is no logical reason to use closed GOPs for standard encoding, so my personal opinion is that old Hori is well aware of this bug and we will know when the bug is fixed when the dvd template no longer uses this setting.

@Lordsmurf: Don't give up on avisynth, improvements are always being made and for all its impracticalities, it can be a huge time saver.

[BJ_M]

Someone could make a GUI for AviSynth, in the style of HomeSite 4.5 (an HTML editor). Homesite isn't like Frontpage, it is basicly a text editor that speeds up the process by using dialogue boxes to let you fill in the parameters of each command, coupled with a good help system. You would still have to know how to script in AviSynth, but it would speed it up by heaps. (This could possible be done with some existing Code Editor that caters to many different programming languages with just adding a module that caters to AviSynth)

Anyway, back to what I was talking about. Can anyone explain why the big difference between TMPGEnc and CCE when it comes to making valid access points in an MPEG-1 Stream? (re the examples that I posted of vcdxminfo.exe output)

already did a long time ago (your tmpgenc settings are screwed up)

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=923623#923623

[guns1inger]

For anyone who has used PRman (the renderman compliant renderer from Pixar), you would understand what a pain in the arse it is having to tweak shaders manually while looking for that elusive adjustment to put your image over the top. There are quite a few tools around that simplyfy this by parsing the script and presenting a dynamically created dialogue allowing you to adjust setting for the shader. It doesn't matter how many variables or settings there, it just makes them up as required. Surely something like this could be done for avisynth for those of us who have little enough time as it is.

[Sefy]

Adam, come on, be serious, you think a newbie really wants to go through a "script" which if you say has 5'000 filters, then it must have 5000 or so lines at the least, that is agonizing

I'd be better off going through the source code of some program, it would make the same sense to me as this script

[Phlexor]

(Sorry I missed that post BJ_M, it must of got lost in all the others that exploded since I last checked. and how do I use quoting properly on this thing??)

Force picture type setting [checked]
frame 488(I) - New group



is your problem .. looks like some crazy gop settings (KVCD) which might help quality but is totally different than your cce settings ..

Please tell me how that is the problem? How else does one put a chapter point at frame 488 then? This method works with CCE. and by the way, this is not some crazy KVCD thing, this is compliant to hell. And it isnt different to my CCE settings, the only difference is the luminance levels because TMPGEnc can only handle RGB24 where I can get away with YUY2 in CCE.

And in regards to AviSynth. Unless you have been a computer programmer in the past and on more than one language, it IS going to be hard. And most likely not woth the effort to learn if you havent been a programmer. I mean compared to VirtualDub, the learning curve is much higher (but getting VirtualDUB to frameserve perfectly all the time every time can be dodgy).

[SatStorm]

The problem is that avisynth created by programmers with an interest about proccessing video.
But the majority of the enthusiasts, hobbiests and proffecionals of video proccessing, ain't programmers and never gonna be programmers.

So, what happens: Avisynth turn a Nerd thing from modern Nerd developers who wish to keep it Nerd.


What whould be perfect and easy to use?
A Virtualdub version that you could load any source (including mpeg 2), add filters / etc and then like you hit "frameserve" to hit "create avs script".
If that script would be something like DVD2avi's d2v file, it would be perfect.
They use to say that this was the porpuse of virtualdub mod. But I never figure it out how to use it.

Do we have any programmers in this forum? Programmers capable to do this?
I suggest a combination of virtualdub mpeg 2 with avisynth, with support of wdm application, capable to export "avs" files same way virtualdub can frameserve to any encoder.

And no: I don't wish to create a file, open it, write a couple of lines, etc, as virtualdubmod do. I want direct the real thing. Direct a ready avs.

[energy80s]

I agree with SatStorm on this. Who the hell wants to write out text scripts and try and get them to load into some media player just to see what CCE is supposed to be doing. Its total crap. Either produce a proper encoder that allows an input signal to be configured for any standard output resolution or don't bloody bother. CCE is a complete ramshackle of a product. It looks like it has been ripped from another editing program and released as a little standalone encoder to keep some tech heads happy. Fair enough if it were the only one out there, but with the current variety of encoders available (and at sensible prices) CCE is definately not user friendly enough for the masses. Yes, it produces good output, but then so do most other encoders. Its only saving grace is its encoding speed, but I don't think this outweighs its general unfriendly approach to getting the job done!

[flaninacupboard]

well presumably those with premiere can just use the CCE plugin, that'd do the trick.


If Vdub has a system where you can select a filter from a list and add it and then configure it there's no reason avisynth can't have one the same. in fact EXACTLY like Vdub would be great.

When i was trying avisynth i was trying to do NLE - that was just a joke.

[Sefy]

I Agree with flaninacupboard, I don't see why they can't do a menu style like in VDub! that's just perfect! you add what you want and it's very easy and a very friendly interface!

[adam]

Adam, come on, be serious, you think a newbie really wants to go through a "script" which if you say has 5'000 filters, then it must have 5000 or so lines at the least, that is agonizing

I'd be better off going through the source code of some program, it would make the same sense to me as this script

Exactly my point. You can't accommodate all the filters and options at once in a single gui. It would be much harder then the manual scripting itself. No one uses all 5000 filters at once, and for most people they will only regularly use 2 or 3 or at the most 5. So you write ONE script, ONE time, in about ONE minute and then just reuse it every time you have that same source. Or you use one of the many front-ends that creates avs scripts for you. You do not have to do a single second of scripting to use avisynth if you don't want to. But if you did look at the language you would see how ridiculously simple it is, and you don't even have to understand what it means to use it. All you really do is copy and paste from the readme files for most things. For filters with a threshold you increase or decrease certain numbers. Its no different than moving a slider on a gui, and if you wish there ARE guis that you can use that do just this. I do use guis to a certain extent. Fit2disk gives me my customized script whenever I use it to calculate bitrate. I only had to set it up once years ago to my liking, and by default it can already create scripts for most typical uses including several degrees of noise reduction, 4:3 to 16:9 conversion and vice versa, any regional format change, IVTC, output for CCE or TMPGenc (RGB vs. YUV), trim and fade, etc... Try doing any of those in less then 1 button click in your typical encoder. It also has a near real time preview option, at least in the full version. Same stuff goes for DoitFast4u which I use everytime I rip a DVD. If I need manual tweaking of filters for DV sources then I use moviestacker with my 2 regular noise reduction filters. I guarantee it takes me no more time or effort to tweak my encoding settings then someone using a full blown gui like TMPGenc.

There are sample avs scripts online for all kinds of different purposes. A total newbie can just download and blindly use one. How is this any different or anymore difficult then blindly downloading and using some TMPGenc template?

At least TRY one of the available avisynth front ends. It can shave hours off of your encode times.

[Sefy]

I've tried those GUI's and they are hurrible and non friendly!
And sorry, but I can't use the same "script" cause I don't do the same thing everytime, and I also don't use same folders or ever drives! so i'd have to keep on editing the script for each movie and that is annoying and pointless!

[BJ_M]

there are two topics going on here ----


its the freaking moderators that are at fault

[Sefy]

Nope, i'm not a Moderator anymore, i'm a Regular User, so that means it's your fault :P

[LSchafroth]

well presumably those with premiere can just use the CCE plugin, that'd do the trick.


If Vdub has a system where you can select a filter from a list and add it and then configure it there's no reason avisynth can't have one the same. in fact EXACTLY like Vdub would be great.

When i was trying avisynth i was trying to do NLE - that was just a joke.

Amen! I agree AVsynth is powerful, but it takes me back to the 80s for usability. Those days are dead. People want a normal gui interface to work with. Image using Vegas with text only commands, wouldn't that be fun!

VirtualDub for me.

LS