Help! How to convert odd aspect ratio AVI?

[marknyc5]

I'm trying to convert an avi to mpeg using TMPGEnc, but can't quite seem to get it right.

The original is 656 x 256 at 25fps.

I want to convert it to 16:9 NTSC MPEG at 29.97fps via TMPGEnc, so I cn make a high quality DVD.

Can someone walk me through this?

Thanks much,

Mark

[redwudz]

In TMPGEnc Plus, you can select 'Clip frame' and letterbox and mask to convert that aspect ratio of the video to 16:9. You may end up with some black bars on the bottom and top.

If you stretch or modify the video itself, it will likely be distorted. I would just process it with the letterbox or mask settings. That's easy enough. But you also have a major framerate conversion which is likely to be a much bigger problem. This is the PAL>NTSC conversion.

A few guides: https://www.videohelp.com/guides.php?howtoselect=4;41#4;41

[guns1inger]

so I cn make a high quality DVD

That's funny !

[marknyc5]

Thanks, redwudz - I'll check it out.

Yeah, real funny, guns1inger - I guess using TMPGEnc at the slowest, highest quality setting rather than a faster conversion tool is hilarious, huh?

[Scorpion King]

The original is 656 x 256

That 656 is going to give you some problems I think. If you just add back bars inside a 720 frame you will have 32 pixels of black bars on each side of the video. The top and bottom will have 112 pixels of black each. The top and bottom won't look so odd, but the sides might.

The aspect ration looks like 2.562:1. If you resize to 720x282 the aspect ratio would be 2.553:1 with an error of -0.35%. With 704x274 the error would be 0.27% and AR 2.569:1. I can't find any good matches myself. The resize would rid you of the black bars on the sides.

Myself I would probably load the video in VirtualDub, do the resize to 720x282 and add the black bars and frame it to 720x480. Frameserve that to Tmpgenc or save it out as Huffyuv avi then open that in Tmpgenc. I would consider using 2 pass. Use a bitrate calculator so you can fill the DVD. Also by using VirtualDub you can filter all you want if you need to.

Just a though...
Good luck.

[jagabo]

It's simple to do in Tmpgenc, just set the source aspect ratio to "1:1 VGA", then set the video arrange method to "center keep aspect ratio". Set the output aspect ratio to 16:9 MPEG2.

TMPGEnc doesn't have the best resizing algorithm but will work. Otherwise you can use FitCD to figure out the correct resizing parameters and create a script for AVISynth to frame serve to TMPGEnc.

Tmpgenc can do the frame rate conversion but it simply duplicates every fifth frame to create 30 out of every 25. The results is a little jerky. For better results you can leave the frame rate at 25 then use DGPulldown on the resulting MPEG file to add 3:2:3:2:2 pulldown flags.

[guns1inger]

@OP - what's funny is the belief that a high quality DVD can be created from Xvid/Divx encoded avi. Simply, it cannot be done. Doesn't matter which encoder you use (and tmpgenc, while being certainly the slowest, isn't necessarily the highest quality encoder available). The best you can hope for it get the same quality, perhaps with a little less macro-blocking. But you can't do that with tmpgenc alone. For that you need to use virtualdub or avisynth, deblocking filters, better resizing filters than tmpgenc uses, and usually some careful sharpening.

But hey, if you believe what you are getting is a high quality DVD, I'm happy for you.

[sjmaye]

Doesn't matter which encoder you use. Tmpgenc, while being certainly the slowest, isn't necessarily the highest quality encoder available).

I am also really new. In reading here I got the impression that TEMPGEnc was highly thought of.

What do you consider to be the best mpg encoder?

[manono]

What do you consider to be the best mpg encoder?

Each has its own proponents, and the issue has been discussed ad nauseam. You can do a search and find the previous discussions.

His main point is that you just can't get a top quality DVD out of an AVI source of that resolution, no matter how well you do it, and no matter which encoder you use.

As mentioned earlier, that 656x256 AVI is 2.56:1. Although there are a few movies made in CinemaScope 2.55:1, they're few and far between. I suspect that AVI probably has an incorrect Aspect Ratio for which you can adjust when reencoding. Go find something round in the movie (sun, moon, ball, etc.) and see if it's a slight oval.

[guns1inger]

I would rate ProCoder higher than tmpgenc for visual quality and performance. I would rate CCE and the Vegas/Premiere implementations of MainConcept higher cause while they are probably on par visually, that are all substantially faster than Tmpgenc. Tmpgenc's image quality is generally very good, however it only work sin RGB mode, and it is one of the slowest (if not the slowest) commercial encoder.

It does however have a good price, and by virtue of it's age, there are a lot of guides for it.

[sjmaye]

Thanks for the replies. I hate to persist, but I have one more question.

I understand how I can use a stand alone high quality encoder for a file i want to get to being 100% DVD compliant, but what about when I am editing video footage? I am mixing footage, using transitions etc.

If most editors have poor encoders how do you get around encoding this type of work within the editor?

[guns1inger]

Some editors have very good encoders, or you can get plugins.

Vegas and Premiere Pro both ship with strong implementations of the Mainconcept encoder. Both ProCoder and CCE ship with plugins that allow you to encode directly from Premiere.

I use the Debugmode Frameserver to allow me to encode with ProCoder directly from the Vegas timeline.

You can also always encode to a lossless format (e.g. lagarith, huffyuv, msu lossless) from the timeline, then encode that with your favourite standalone. I do this for longer multi-pass VBR encodes because it is usually faster than going through the timeline twice if I have a lot of filters.

[sjmaye]

Some editors have very good encoders, or you can get plugins.

Vegas and Premiere Pro both ship with strong implementations of the Mainconcept encoder.

I have Vegas Studio. Would the encoder be the same as the full-blown version?

[guns1inger]

I believe it does, yes. I don't know if you have the same range of settings available to you, however.