What is the best/easiest way to convert ripped movies keeping best quality?

[poisondeathray]

You'll find that x264 scales much more efficiently with more cores, about 1.8-1.9x per core linearly even up to 16 cores (and probably more)

XviD only scales to about 2 cores, maybe 1.2-1.3x then levels off with no appreciable gain after 2 cores. DivX is better for multithreading than XviD, it scales up to 3 cores then levels off after 4 cores.

You can also tweak settings on x264 to make it run much faster, or slower with more quality; it is highly customizable.

Also, you might want to research Popcorn Hour compatible settings for x264. I doubt it support all the features/settings.

[Emanef]

What do you mean by more cores? Are you referring to when coding/playing back on multi-core PC's? Or something completely different?! I'm finding my feet here, man.... don't push my head back under too far at once!

Yeahh, I have been looking on the Popcorn user board. There are still a few issues with some mkv files, but according to the mods they are due to release a firmware update that should correct any probs people are having with picture freezing.

For the time being I'm going to convert to both xvid and X264. Increases the time but I can queue them up and leave it running through the day, and at leasy I know the xvid's will playback! Hopefully it'll be here within the next week so I'll have a better play then!

[jagabo]

What do you mean by more cores? Are you referring to when coding/playing back on multi-core PC's?

Yes, he's talking about encoding speed on multicore systems.

In my tests Xvid gains about 60 percent performance going from 1 to 2 cores (the amount varies depending on the settings used and the particular video). Going from 2 to 3 cores only gets a little more. Maybe 30 percent. Going from 3 to 4 got no more improvement. (All this testing was done on a quad core Q6600 with VirtualDub in fast recompress mode and by setting the number of threads in Xvid.)

X264 scaled much better. In the range that poisondeathray indicated. I've only tested up to 4 cores though (Q6600 CPU).

[poisondeathray]

Sorry to confuse! I mean more CPU cores for encoding.

So if you use a quad core for encoding, it is about 3.6-3.8x as fast as an equivalent single core using x264, but using XviD it's only 1.5x as fast going from single core to quad. Depending on the settings used, x264 can be faster than XviD when you have an overclocked quad, and definitely with a dual quad (dual socket) setup because of the scaling. The quality is definitely better with x264 at any equivalent bitrate.

I say this because the next generation chips to be released in a few months have a new version of hyperthreading technology that has "logical cores." So a quad core would then have 4 physical cores plus 4 logical cores for a total of 8. The scaling on preliminary sample shows about 150% faster from previous generation of quads.

It's not a big problem when you are encoding standard definition like DVD, but if you eventually want to do higher definition (like blu-ray), the encoding time slows down considerably

Q6600's (Intel quad core) are about ~$199 right now, the next generation "Core i7" quads will start around $300 but are on a new platform (i.e. your current motherboard will not work with it). Just some info for future purchase decisions so you don't get "burned"

Cheers

[jagabo]

I say this because the next generation chips to be released in a few months have a new version of hyperthreading technology that has "logical cores." So a quad core would then have 4 physical cores plus 4 logical cores for a total of 8. The scaling on preliminary sample shows about 150% faster from previous generation of quads.

That's higher than I would expect given that the P4's hyperthreading rarely added more than about 15 percent (in the real world). Hope it's true.

[poisondeathray]

That's higher than I would expect given that the P4's hyperthreading rarely added more than about 15 percent (in the real world). Hope it's true.

Yeah HT v.1 was kind of a bust

I'm excited for Nehalem generation CPUs

These results for x264 are very beta with an early bios and suboptimal memory configuration; so expect slightly better at launch time. Only problem is single threaded apps see only a minor gain, maybe 3-5%. (Sorry for hijacking your thread!)

Reference:
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3326&p=6

Other good reference reading
www.nehalemnews.com

[jagabo]

Thanks, I missed that article at Anandtech. My first question was whether the big improvements were from the hyperthreading or from other architectual changes. But the single threaded Cinebench results imply that the other changes don't help much.

[Emanef]

Ah, ok cheers. Interesting reading. I'll be sticking with dual core for the time being though! I don't game or playback video on mine, the main grunt I need it for is video converting and recording guitar, so dual core is fine for me for now. Once I get hold of an E6700 chip it'll give me a boost and cut down encoding time to around 2 hours, which I'm happy with for now!

I think I will be sticking with the mkv (hmm, although mp4 would play back on Xbox 360 as well as the Popcorn....) and using the CRF quality 20. It gives a similar size to the Xvid constant quantiser 3 but better quality.

Next I need to work out how to get subtitles into my X264's! I don't think Staxrip can do it, or at least I can't seem to find the option to!

[Emanef]

The Popcorn is here! I'm trying to work out what settings are best, but to be honest, I can't see [i]too[i/] much diffence between quality 20 and 22, but it is slightly noticeable I'm thinking I'll settle for 21 as it's marginally better than Xvid with a quantiser of 3 and a smaller file. I need to get a hard drive in there really, as trying to stream over Homeplug at the other end of the flat is not ideal! It's fine for smaller files but larger higher quality files aren't quick enough. That's tomorrow night's job!

[jagabo]

Try a scene with a lot of fog or smoke. You may see some posterization aritfacts.

[johnnyl1]

Hi emanef,
Just come across this thread and its quite similar to what i'm trying to do so very interested in your results. I too have the popcorn hour and was using fairuse to convet my dvd's to xvid with quantiser value of between 2 and 3. Before converting all my dvd's though decided to do bit of research and come across a lot of hype about the 264 codec and the mkv container. The popcorn hour has a really long winded and complicated tutorial on how to convert dvd to h264 for the popcorn. Decided to just use fairuse (a basic 1 click option). However it encodes at h264 L5.1. Popcorn doesn't seem to handle this too well (jerky playback) and after searching the forums found popcorn only capable of handling h264 L4.1 and lower. At the moment considering just using xvid but would be interested to see your results.
regards
J
edit: popcorn hour does handle h264 L5.1. I was attempting to change the profile to L4.1 using h264info, but when demuxing (mkvetract) the mkv file created by fairuse discovered it consisted of the sound file and an avi file! A container within a container, didnt know this was possible. Anyway, extracted the h264 from the avi using yamb and muxed it together again (mkvmerge). Worked just fine on the popcorn without going near h264info. I guess the problem was due to h264 not being well suited to the avi container as other forums suggest. Something for other fairusers to look out for.

[jagabo]

Yes, h.264 can usually encode to 1/2 to 3/4 the size of Xvid with similar quality. But it takes a lot longer to encode and more CPU power to decode.

Peronally, I hate the MKV container. I find it to be pretty much a write-only container.

[poisondeathray]

@johnnyl1 - you can convert your stream to L4.1 with h264info without re-encoding.

You can use more comprehensive solutions like MeGUI to customize your encodes. You can even use the downloadable profiles verified to work on standalones, such as TviX and Popcorn Hour

[FulciLives]

XVID4PSP can do MKV from a DVD Video and the result will be a Level 4.1 H.264 video along with the original audio from the DVD plus subtitles if you want it.

It is fairly simple to use.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[FulciLives]

I have a VOB sample. Just like you would have from a DVD Rip.

I loaded it into XVID4PSP and converted it to MKV format.

Download it and see if it works for you on the Popcorn. The file is small so it won't take long.

The sample MKV is called popcornsample.mkv
Link ---> http://www.mediafire.com/?ug9ynj994jo

If you want to try and replicate the process then download my VOB sample. It is called sample.vob
Link ---> http://www.mediafire.com/?xycztgklm1x

If it works I can post a short tutorial of what I did but really it isn't hard.

Just select MKV from the list of formats ... change the audio to AC-3 (in this case the audio in the VOB was MP2) or set the audio to copy (when it is a DVD with AC-3 audio like most) and use the default video setting or one of the other settings with the same name but a lower number (I used 18 instead of 21).

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[johnnyl1]

Thanks fulcilives, Really appreciate you putting those files up. Not so many forums as helpful as this one. Worked a treat on the popcorn. Going to try a few full length dvd's with xvid4psp. Hopefully its as straightforward as fairuse as i've quite a few dvd'd to get through. thanks also to poisondeathray, will also try h264info and MEgui but thinking it might be a roundabout way of getting what i need. regards John

[macblob]

I ran across this thread searching for the same answer. I want to be able to convert all of my movies, TV Series, etc., to a high quality file and store them on a hard drive too. This way I can access them any time by use of Windows Media Center and the Linksys DMA-2200 media extender.

I am finding that I need to buy another hard drive and get a hard drive server, so I can put maybe 3 or 4 hard drives in it. My movie collection is at 200+ and so is my TV series collection.

In my Dual Core Processor Gateway GT5432, I have used Hauppage PVR-150, Hauppage HDR-1600, ATI All In One Wonder HD 650 USB to capture regular TV series and watch them when I wanted to. Now I have a Pinnacle PCTV To Go HD Wireless and a dedicated Motorola DCT-6416 III for my High Def movies and shows. Had to buy the Pinnacle Remote Kit for Windows Media Center, just to be able to use it in Windows Media Center.

Viewing everything and anything I want to watch that I have recorded at the touch of a button is the ultimate goal. But using less hard drive space with little to no quality degradation is the key.

DVDFab for ripping. VideoRedo/TVSuite for TV series commercial cutting.

This morning I used Nero 8 Ultimate to convert (VOB) Surfs up to H264 compliant *.mp4. It took 2 hours for that conversion.

3Gb down to 1.12 Gb's. 5.1 Stereo. 1 Pass

Came out pretty darn good. It still would be nice if a conversion only took 30 minutes and kept all the qaulity with less than 1 Gb. Someday.

[Emanef]

I've still not played too much on my Popcorn Hour as I've ordered a 750gb drive for it and am waiting for delivery.

I have, however, been busy converting a load of my DVD's to X264 format, so this is how I've been doing it.....

After all the advice from the guys in this thread I settled on doing them to x264 in the mkv format. I've been using StaxRip and keeping the full resolution (it defaults to a crop). I'm then using the CFR 22 Slow setting with a quality setting of 20.

Using this I either get a file that's small and high quality (ie 700mb to 1200 for a 90-140 min file) or one that's almost double that. The ones that are double that I re-convert using the same settings, but then change it to a 2-pass and specify a filesize of around 1 to 1.2gb. The 2-pass takes longer but gives a smaller file for the same results, but it's quicker to do the quality of 20 setting first as two out of three are fine like that.

I'll post back an update once I've got them all on the Popcorn and have tried them

[poisondeathray]

That's the problem with CRF mode, filesize might be way bigger or smaller depending on the source.

Complex scenes with lots of detail, motion, colors need more bitrate to make each frame "look" the same quality as the CRF setting. So an "action movie" might be 2x as big as a "drama movie"

If you don't care about filesize, it's usually the better way to encode (and faster!)

[jagabo]

Noise, like in off air or VHS recordings, is also a big sucker of bitrate.

[johnnyl1]

Hi emanef,
I just edited my first post. I know you're not using fairuse but just wanted to correct the post. I've found popcorn hour quite capable of handling h264 L5.1 after fixing the mkv created by fairuse.
regards
J

[Emanef]

My 750gb drive should arrive so I'll be chucking that into the Popcorn and copying over all the MKV files I've converted.

I'm having a problem with a few of them though. Staxrip says there's a problem with the PID. Any ideas how to correct that? I've tried converting a couple of the files from VOB to MPEG (after using VideoReDo's Fix Stream) but it still says the same for the MPEG files as well.

I quite liked Fairuse, btw, but my main issue was that it wouldn't let me keep the full resolution and always wanted to resize it.

[Emanef]

Just thought I'd update on how I'm getting on with this....

Instead of using Slow HQ CRF2 with quality of 20, I've been using the same setting but on two-pass, and using the compressibility check to gauge the size/bitrate. Takes a bit longer, but seems to give good results, and I presume it gives a better filesize for similar but vbr quality compared to the fbr Quality 20.

I'm having a problems with a few dvd's that Staxrip (or more acurately I think, DGIndex) is having not being able to find the audio/video streams, but I'm trying to work that out (hence my other thread!)

[jagabo]

Instead of using Slow HQ CRF2 with quality of 20, I've been using the same setting but on two-pass, and using the compressibility check to gauge the size/bitrate. Takes a bit longer, but seems to give good results, and I presume it gives a better filesize for similar but vbr quality compared to the fbr Quality 20.

Not really. They are two sides of the same coin. The main difference is this: in one you select the quality, the file turns out whatever size is required to deliver that quality. With the other you select the file size, the video turns out whatever quality the encoder can give you at that size. In the end, quality is similar at similar file sizes.

[Emanef]

Ah, ok. Most have been fine on the one pass, Qual 20, but some have been too large. U-Turn came out at 3.5 gb! It must have miscalced something, so I had to do that as two pass!

[jagabo]

Q=20 is a pretty high quality setting. I find 22 to be a good compromise for casual viewing.