Video On Demand - Encoding For

[scottrwn98]

The DVD will play on a 16x9 at full screen and on a 4:3 Letterboxed ... I've encoded it that way ... don't care about that ... I can live wiht Letterbox on TV reguardless of 4x3 TV's or 16x9 TV's

Main Concerns ...

I care about ... AC3, you are right about not everyone, but my boss's office does and he is paying for us to make these filmes for the public (anyone that loves indie films) So I want him to experience the best output from the product ... not just from his copy of the DVD.

I care about ... re-encoding; again (because all they have is a DVD deck)

I care about ... that damn Sony DVD Play menu screen, and the Play button --> at the beginning of the film.

I care about ... figuring this out because if this works for VOD, then I have a better understanding of the process so we can encode our Commercials (which we produce) the same simular to the Advertising Server and will no longer have to babysit our Traffic Department when we take a DVCPro tape down there and the timecode breaks ... their encoder is years outdated and they have no idea what -20dB is, enough said.


Summary

Take a Avid DV Quicktime MOV, export Quicktime Reference, import MOV and AC3 into ProCoder, encode to MPEG (528x480 blah blah) and drop it on the server. ... Walk back to my desk, and pull up Local VOD and boom, there is the film.


What am I not explaining correctly? Am I leaving anything out that I may have forgotten? It happens, not mad.

[scottrwn98]

Another thing to add... I'm reading new posts and replying to old.

Every large cable box that is analog/digital has Optical out. The tiny digital boxes are just RCA and Cable Coaxel.

The DVD is rendered as 23.976 -> 3:2 Pulldown, so the DVD player will pull down the video automatically ... (Rendering a M2V at 23.976 saves 6 frames per every second.) All Commerical DVD's (eg Star Wars) are encoded this way.

There is a way according to the CableLabs specs to encode 23.976 / 24 to flag. and the 16x9 should automatically letterbox on a 4x3. (We will see once I get the damn thing encoded with proper specs ... hints the post question)

The DVD player is hooked up via RCA to the Hardware Encoder. It could be hooked up via Optical (I think) but I don't want to take over Montu's desk all day to play with it.


Please forgive me if I'm missleading ...

[edDV]

Comes down to getting Procoder settings right. Hopefully Canopus has this all worked out by now.

[scottrwn98]

Exactually ... once I can get an already file on the server, I'll know more. But until then, I'd like to familarize myself with these specs from CableLabs.

[Cornucopia]

You're still not getting the point I'm trying to make:

Here's your current flow:

Film: V--720x480p 16:9 @ 23.976 DV, A--5.1, 16bit, 48kHz LPCM
encodes to
MPEG2 on DVD: 720x480p 16:9 @ 23.976, AC3 5.1 384kbps
which gets put in the DVD player, which is spitting out
Analog Composite Video and 2 ch Analog RCA (unbalanced) Audio
V--720x480i letterboxed @ 29.97 (TC'd), A--2 ch downmix from 5.0 (.1 is lost)
which gets encoded by HW encoder as
MPEG2 Transport: 528x480i 4:3 @ 29.97 (unless is recognizes the pulldown cadence and you have turned that feature ON on the encoder), AC3 2.0 192kbps
onto server

You can't use the optical for video, only audio, so that doesn't help much. IIRC, there are NO DVD players that output SDI (a possible input) and only a few that output firewire (which you couldn't use with your encoder anyway). Only exception might be the highest-end industrial Pioneer players.

Better to just do it this way:

Film: V--720x480p 16:9 @ 23.976 DV, A--5.1, 16bit, 48kHz LPCM
encodes to
MPEG2 on DVD: 528x480p 16:9 @ 23.976 (with pulldownflag) 3400kbps, AC3 5.1 384kbps or 256kbps
remux to Transport stream and upload to server.

As long as it's compliant, you'd be good to go. How do you know if it's compliant?
Make that test clip, upload it, and then see if you can access it as an end user via the VOD channel.

Scott

[scottrwn98]

You're still not getting the point I'm trying to make:

Film: V--720x480p 16:9 @ 23.976 DV, A--5.1, 16bit, 48kHz LPCM
encodes to
MPEG2 on DVD: 720x480p 16:9 @ 23.976, AC3 5.1 384kbps
which gets put in the DVD player, which is spitting out
Analog Composite Video and 2 ch Analog RCA (unbalanced) Audio
V--720x480i letterboxed @ 29.97 (TC'd), A--2 ch downmix from 5.0 (.1 is lost)
which gets encoded by HW encoder as
MPEG2 Transport: 528x480i 4:3 @ 29.97 (unless is recognizes the pulldown cadence and you have turned that feature ON on the encoder), AC3 2.0 192kbps
onto server

I do give the DVD the Pull down Flag just for DVD. for DVD's I DO NOT put 23.976, I put 23.976->29.97 3:2.

I will make a test clip, on Monday when he returns.

And you are right, I should put 528x480 at 29.97 (with 3:2 added already ... maybe render it out in ProCoder or After Effects ... worry about that later)

[Cornucopia]

You're still not getting the point I'm trying to make:

Film: V--720x480p 16:9 @ 23.976 DV, A--5.1, 16bit, 48kHz LPCM
encodes to
MPEG2 on DVD: 720x480p 16:9 @ 23.976, AC3 5.1 384kbps
which gets put in the DVD player, which is spitting out
Analog Composite Video and 2 ch Analog RCA (unbalanced) Audio
V--720x480i letterboxed @ 29.97 (TC'd), A--2 ch downmix from 5.0 (.1 is lost)
which gets encoded by HW encoder as
MPEG2 Transport: 528x480i 4:3 @ 29.97 (unless is recognizes the pulldown cadence and you have turned that feature ON on the encoder), AC3 2.0 192kbps
onto server

I do give the DVD the Pull down Flag just for DVD. for DVD's I DO NOT put 23.976, I put 23.976->29.97 3:2.

I will make a test clip, on Monday when he returns.

And you are right, I should put 528x480 at 29.97 (with 3:2 added already ... maybe render it out in ProCoder or After Effects ... worry about that later)

My mistake. I should have written:

Film: V--720x480p 16:9 @ 23.976 DV, A--5.1, 16bit, 48kHz LPCM
encodes to
MPEG2 on DVD: 720x480p 16:9 @ 23.976 (w/3:2 pulldown flag added to display at 29.97), AC3 5.1 384kbps

I wouldn't render it that way--remember it should be a valid DV file and 528x480 isn't valid for DV. Plus, you'll be "oversampling" with the encoder doing the resize, which can look better than resizing early on.

Scott

[scottrwn98]

Ahhh, good point. I'm going to do a few test, maybe I'll get lucky. Thanks for the advice!

[scottrwn98]

Well, from reading Canopus' website, looks like ProCoder Station might be a solution. Any thoughts?

It says:
MPEG-2 video ISO/IEC 13818-2:1996
MPEG-2 program stream ISO/IEC 13818-1:1996
MPEG-2 transport stream ISO/IEC 13818-1:1996 (single program only)

[edDV]

I'd call Canopus support. I usually get through to a reasonable tech without long waits. When they can't answer the question directly they usually follow up with email.

They should be knowledgable about encoding for VOD servers (CableLab spec) and what is typically used for cable advertising servers (higher bitrate than VOD).