HERE's HOW TO FIT 120mins movie on one cd in SVCD FORMAT!!!!

[Bigswaffo]

Hey, kwag. Earlier in the thread, you posted a guide comparing the length of the movie to cq. This is for 352x480, anyway, you also said that for 352x288 you should use a cq of 75. I did a one and a half hour movie and changed the cq to 80. it fit to 700 mb. I'm wondering if anybody kwag, or anybody else who has experimented with this, could post a guide to 352x288 movies for those of us who download . Thanks.

[Bigswaffo]

Actually, I've just did some math and have come up with a guide for 352x288. This is for the CQ. Keep in mind, this fits the CD almost to brim. This is a 80 min. CD here. I've only tried it on semi-action movies so feedback on high action movies would be appreciated.

1:45 to 2:00=76
1:30 to 1:45=80
1:15 to 1:30=84
1:00 to 1:15=89
1:00 or less=93

Hope that helps. Should have used my head earlier.

[jeex]

stop the violence. use divx , we must all unite.. divx is the answer....

heh

(oh yeah, masturbation is the answer too)

[DaDe]

Thanks a lot Kwag!!!

I know your reply will do it, now i just have to go deep inside of each step with the link you gave me. You know, i'm from mexico and the language barrier makes it harder for me, overall with the technicisms and the poor information in spanish, but, but, i'm sure i can do it with your help. I'll let you know when you have a new graduated student....

Thanks again, you're a good man... good teacher too! :wink:

Saludos desde Mexico!!!

DaDe.

[kwag]

Hi Bigswaffo:

Yes, those numbers should be about right.
The reason for 75 for PAL was to give some margin and not going "over board" with a number, only to find out that after hours of encoding the resulting mpeg was 1 megabyte above overburn point ( As it has happened to me in the past )

kwag

[Scav]

Kwag,

Hey thanks for the birds-eye view, it helps alot.
One more question though: at what point do you do IVTC? Does telling DVD2AVI to Force Film produce IVTC? Or do you do it later in the processing stream? Is de-combing requiered even if you do IVTC first?

Thanks again for all your help

[kwag]

Kwag,

Hey thanks for the birds-eye view, it helps alot.
One more question though: at what point do you do IVTC? Does telling DVD2AVI to Force Film produce IVTC? Or do you do it later in the processing stream? Is de-combing requiered even if you do IVTC first?

Thanks again for all your help

Hi Scav:

If your DVD is FILM ( most are ), and you selected "Forced Film" in DVD2AVI, then you don't have to do IVTC.
Just encode with the template at 23.976fps.

For captures, use the decomb filter, because it automatically detects field order and does the IVTC from the 29.97 capture.

kwag

[PlaiBoi]

Kwag Wrote:

Hi PlaiBoi:

What was your source?.
How did you feed into TMPEG ( Flask, Xmpeg, DVDx ) ?.

Check the samples at the site in my signature.

kwag

This movie is a DivX file that i downloaded. Its a DVD rip and the quality is really good. The resolution was 640x352 and i tried encoding it to 352x480, i think thats why it got all grainy and light, etc. I just encoded it again to 352x240 and it looks fine now.

BTW, can you make up one of those CQ timetables for 352x240 (ntsc)? Greatly appreciated. Thanx.

[kwag]

Hi PlaiBoi:

I believe I posted much earlier the table. But here it is again:

For 352x480 NTSC ( or 352x576 PAL )

1:45 -> 2:00+ CQ=70
1:30- > 1:45 CQ=74
1:15 -> 1:30 CQ=78
1:00 -> 1:15 CQ=82
1:00 or less CQ=86

And for 352x240 NTSC ( or 352x288 PAL ) simply add 4 to each.

kwag

[PlaiBoi]

Thanx for the table kwag.

Also, has anyone tried using sean madisons template? I have a 54" TV that i like to watch my movies on. Is his template really better quality for 50+ inch TV's? Has anyone tested his vs kwag's. I like kwags, but if his is going to be better for my TV then i wanna try it out. Any results from anyone? Thanx.

[Bud]

Kwag,

Just got my Capture files to work, I just re-set to 352x240 from my 720x480 DV Avi, was able to do a 122 Min move on one disk. In answer to the large TV question, I have a Sony 61" and the KWAG Templates give extermly good result as long as you start with a good picture i.e. DVD Rip or Digital/Sat Capture. I do my captures two ways, on one system I use Premiere 6.0 and Cap to DV Avi at 720x480, on my other system I Cap with MMC 7.6 (ATI) for MPEG2 480x480, both give good results. I can play back the files on a Samsung M301, Hitichi 343 and a Panasonic LV55 Portable Player with no problems, I do recommend you Burn them at a slow speed if using Nero, i.e. 2x or 4x regardless of your default speed, and depending on the quality of your CD-R's. Some CD-R's just don't want to play back very good on anything.

Bud

Bud

[kwag]

Hi Bud:

I've noticed problems too, mostly with CD-RW media, when playback.

But i haven't had a problem with any CD-R media, and I am using really cheal "Prime Peripherals" 80 Min. CD-R's.

Last I bought was a box of 200 for $49.95 at OfficeMax.

I am burning at 12x on a Plextor and on LG CD-R burners.

kwag

[PlaiBoi]

OK, just finished monsters inc. Changed the resolution from 352x480 to 352x240 and left everything else default. It works fine on my Apex AD-500W. I havent tried anything x480 yet though because most of my movies are downloaded and dont have a resoltuion x480 or greater.

[kwag]

OK, just finished monsters inc. Changed the resolution from 352x480 to 352x240 and left everything else default. It works fine on my Apex AD-500W. I havent tried anything x480 yet though because most of my movies are downloaded and dont have a resoltuion x480 or greater.

Hi PlaiBoi:

Just for the record, what was the final size and running time of the movie?. I'm trying to double check the timing guidelines that I posted versus runing time of the movie.

Thanks,
kwag

[PlaiBoi]

The movie was originally 1 hour 32 min. and i trimmed it down to 1 hour 30 min because i wanted to raise the CQ a little and thought that if i did not trim it down that it wouldnt fit on a cd...and i sure was wrong.

The file size was only about 450 mb at 352x240 with a CQ of 78.

It didnt fill up the CD either. Only took up the 450 mb. I guess the timetable differs from movie to movie.

[kwag]

The movie was originally 1 hour 32 min. and i trimmed it down to 1 hour 30 min because i wanted to raise the CQ a little and thought that if i did not trim it down that it wouldnt fit on a cd...and i sure was wrong.

The file size was only about 450 mb at 352x240 with a CQ of 78.

It didnt fill up the CD either. Only took up the 450 mb. I guess the timetable differs from movie to movie.

Thanks for the info.

I guess you could put the extras in there too

kwag

[Deusxmachina]

I sure am glad I caught this thread last week and then started playing with Kwag's template. While I originally only intended to do stuff at x480 with it, my Apex didn't like that, but the template helps to cram stuff onto one disc even using standard 352x240 that I've been using it for things I want done fast and probably wouldn't have encoded otherwise anyway.

For the record, I've done a few more tests. The new Original Sin (Antonio Banderas, Angelina Jolie) is 118 minutes and at 70cq and 128 audio came out to 505 megs. Man, that's tiny. I may have cut off the credits thinking it wouldn't fit, can't remember. I am now encoding it again at 74cq, and with 15% left it looks like it's still only going to hit 600 megs. Since I now have more room on my hard drive, and only have a couple things on-deck waiting for full 2-pass VBR SVCD which takes over 12 hours, I'll probably try it again at a higher cq to test.

At 70cq, it might be ok on a smaller TV, but on my 50" it is quite blocky. Watchable, I guess, but definitely poor. I expect the 74cq to be much better, of course.

I did a Steve Harvey stand-up comedy show from DVD. 92 minutes, I think. At 74cq and 224 audio, it was 730megs and then burned to disc at 700megs.

These are at x240 resolution, remember.

[kwag]

Hey Deusxmachina:

I think we all can call this method the 'Two-Pass FBR" ( Fitting Bit Rate ) Instead of 2-pass VBR.

If the first pass if less than 600MB or above 820MB, go for a second pass
by adjusting the CQ

Oh, and if the second pass still creates over 820MB, go for the third pass at 352x240 CQ=75 and most probably it will finally fit.

Hell, that's what I had to do with "The Mummy Returns"!.

kwag

[Bigswaffo]

Just curious, but I've been doing all of my VCDs with 128 kb/sec audio. How much of a file size change will there be if I change to 224 kb/sec?

[Deusxmachina]

btw, that Steve Harvey stand-up comedy show at 74cq looked very, very good. It's only at x240 resolution, of course, but the overall picture is excellent. And the disc still had an extra 100 megs left, even at 224 audio. It also was 4:3 format, so no black bars for the encoder to save space on.

Plaiboi, to answer your Sean question, his templates should be about as good as you can get since he has made an individual template for each length of movie (1hr 30, 1hr 31, etc) and they fill up the disc.

However, as with most things, there are drawbacks. The temps use 2-pass VBR, and even at low bitrates the new TMGPenc seems terribly slow in 2-pass. I did a couple 90-or-so-minute movies, and with a 933mhz Duron they took over 12 hours to encode. That's a similar time for when I do 90 minutes at an average of around 2000 kbps to put the movie onto two discs. It's like TMPGenc takes the same amount of time no matter what the average bitrate is.

The templates don't really do anything new, as far as I can tell, but they are great for convenience because each is already marked for the length of movie. I mean, you can use FitCD or whatever you want to find an average bitrate for x number of discs easily enough, and these are already ready to go, so if I'm missing something about the templates, I have yet to be told what that something is.

So, using 2-pass VBR, it's easy to fill up the disc to make max use of it, but 2-pass takes so damn long compared to CQ mode. For quality comparisons, since Kwag's template compresses better than standard templates, Kwag's should be slightly better *if* you could guess what cq level would fill up the disc without going over.

If you want to make max use of a disc every time, you must use 2-pass VBR whether you use Sean's templates or whether you calculate the average yourself. If you want something that still looks quite good and if gotten close enough to use the majority of the disc would probably be indistinguishable to the 2-pass VBR version, then use Kwag's to save time. If you have some bigtime cpu power or don't have much in the way of time constraints, then 2-pass VBR would always be the way to go. For most mere mortals with 1gig machines or even less, the time factor can be very important.

There is another thing. Sean's templates use mpeg2, while Kwag's uses mpeg1. I think Kwag may be right when he mentioned to me that mpeg1 has better quality for smaller bitrates. Obviously, x480 resolution requires more bits to look good than x240, but even when both are at x480 mpeg1 *may* produce a better picture at lower bitrates. I may have to do a search now to find some more opinions on the matter.

My Apex won't play mpeg1 at x480, so I can't use mpeg1 at that resolution anyway. Hmmm, maybe I should test mpeg2 at 352x240 just for fun to see what the results would be.

Anyway, I hope that answers some of your questions. I told Sean he should post his templates on here already so people can play with them and perhaps offer ways of improvement if there are any. If they are something that different, it's not like he wouldn't get the credit for them, of course. He's brought them up many times in this thread in the past without saying anything specific about them, and people ask about them, so I wrote this post to hopefully clear some of that up.

Everyone, well... most people, are here to help others and to learn from others, so I don't see much point in playing hype games. I can understand people not wanting to post possibly-new ideas because some people who should know better and who should have more-open minds rip those ideas apart without even trying them, (see the first few pages of this thread for reference), but there's no point in hyping something up without also saying, "Here it is, tell me what you think," at the same time.

[Bigswaffo]

I downloaded the Matrix and it is in 352x240. The standard resolution for PAL is 352x288 and that's what I use most of the time. I was wondering if I could put it in 352x240 and burn it as PAL. Whether it works on DVD players? Thanks.

[Deusxmachina]

For audio, I would say 100megs would be a decent rule-of-thumb for the difference between 224 and 128.

Original Sin is done again. (btw, the movie itself is ok, but not much better than that.) The first encode was 70cq and 128 audio and finished at I think 505 megs. 118 minutes. Was quite blocky on a 50" television.

This one at 74cq and 128 looks much better, as expected. Still, it's a 118-minute movie which does have *some* action in it, yet it's only 564 megs this time. What's a guy have to do to get a 118-minute movie up around 700megs?

If the audio was at 224, 74cq probably would have been just about right for this movie on one disc. These are at standard 352x240 resolution.

What the heck, I don't plan on putting any new stuff on my hard drive until next week, so I'll run 'er again at, oh, I don't know, maybe 78 or 80cq, and see what happens.

118 minutes at 74cq and only 564 megs. geez.

[Deusxmachina]

Hey, Kwag, does your template only work with the new TMPGenc for some reason? I think you said it does. A guy had asked about his DVD player not playing SVCD, and I suggested to try XVCD at SVCD res of 480x480. He said the first one he did worked fine, but now he gets audio glitching. And then he mentioned he used the newer TMPGenc for the second one. So, if your template can work with an older version, maybe that'll fix the audio glitching I and others have.

[kwag]

Hey, Kwag, does your template only work with the new TMPGenc for some reason? I think you said it does. A guy had asked about his DVD player not playing SVCD, and I suggested to try XVCD at SVCD res of 480x480. He said the first one he did worked fine, but now he gets audio glitching. And then he mentioned he used the newer TMPGenc for the second one. So, if your template can work with an older version, maybe that'll fix the audio glitching I and others have.

It works with versions 2.5x standard and Plus, but the best one is the latest, 2.53. I currently use the 2.53 Plus. But the standard version is the same. Only in 2-pass mode there is a difference from the plus to the standard version. ( A new 2-pass mode ).

It doesn't work correctly with versions 1.x, because the CQ values are completely different.

kwag

[PlaiBoi]

I just encoded Joy Ride divx dvdrip.

Movie length of 1 hour 35 min. 48 sec.

Changed from x480 to x240 and used 78CQ. Got a file size of 439mb!!

I encoded the same amount of video (16 sec.) with a resolution of x480 and x240 and the differance in file size was only .02 mb.

I think i put the CQ up to about 82 and still have it fit on a cd.

O yea...GREAT quality and worked on my Apex AD-500W.

[kwag]

I am being asked continuously why I use CQ and not 2-pass VBR.

It all boils down to this:

------------------------------------------------------
(A) In 2-pass VBR mode, you guarantee a final file size, but you can't guarantee quality. The longer the movie, the worse the quality.

(B) In CQ mode, you guarantee quality ( Constant Quantization ), but you can't guarantee the final file size.
------------------------------------------------------

So, what's my choice and conclusion? (B).
"CQ is better than 2-pass VBR. At least with TMPGenc."

If the movie is less that 90 minutes or so, and your media is an 80 minute CD-R, then "maybe" a 2-pass will provide a constant quality close to a CQ. Beyond that, the quality will fall drastically.

Here is a link with a FULL explanation regarding CQ, 2-pass, etc.:

http://tangentsoft.net/video/mpeg/enc-modes.html

Hope this helps and clear any doubts.

kwag

[Deusxmachina]

I've mainly been using CQ lately just because it's so much faster than 2-pass. I still would think, in most cases, 2-pass would provide better quality than CQ because 2-pass already did what is basically a CQ-pass the first time, and then the second pass improves upon it.

But from the results I've been getting, I won't complain. Kwag, you have renewed my faith in CQ mode as well as VCD itself. Well, maybe I shouldn't say "renewed" since there never really was much faith in those in the first place.

I did Original Sin again to test. I chopped the credits off, so it's about 115 minutes. 352x240. 80cq, 224 audio... 730 megs and burned at 700 megs. Alright, now that's just ridiculous. It's basically as good as I could ask for for a one-disc, 115-minute drama, but there's STILL 100 megs left even using 224 audio. Having the resolution at x480 would probably take up that last 100 megs, so that'd be pretty good for using 80-freakin'-cq.

This is nice now.... stuff I normally wouldn't have wasted my time encoding because I would only use slow-ass 2-pass in the past, now I can pop them onto one disc pretty quick and have it at least about VHS quality. Like "Arachnid," for instance. Not exactly something deserving of slow-ass 2-pass. Heh, I watched "Soul Surivors: The Killer Cut"... I won't even put that one on one disc it was so bad.

[kwag]

As you said Deusxmachina. I am getting excelent results too with CQ.

Last night I did "Patriot Games" at a CQ=74.

Came out excelent, and complete movie including credits, totaled 802MB.
Not bad for a 116 minute film with some action scenes.

A sample 29 second clip of an action scene of the movie is up in the site now. It's about 4.89MB in size.

kwag

[KingEightBall]

8)
This needs saying:

I came into this group a 44 year old man whos had a computer for 3 months and virtually zero knowledge about what vcd even stood for.
I read with interest for the past 3 weeks all the posts and replies and picked up little tips here and there, but was real reluctant to post because my questions would have been so frustrating for people wanting to learn, who actually had some rudimentary knowledge, and those semi experts who already knew which way was up, and finally for those "Guru's" who know their business/hobby inside out.

Of all the posts I've read Kwag and a couple others came through. There was one other who tried to help me but gave up because I was just too much of a beginner. i.e. "Get vcd easy." "Where do I get that?, what does it do?"
Y'know? I don't blame the guy. Anyway, to getto the point, the guy that helped me goes by the name Kwag. I felt uncomfortable posting here and wasting the time of others until I had a few facts straight in my head. I was lucky enough to meet the guru of all gurus in Kwag.
He was patient and kind in dealing with me. He offered suggestions, sent links to software and user guides, answered my questions and honest to god helped me to the point that in three weeks I have a rudimentary knowledge of this process, I have a beginners understanding of how it all works and why. And I have burned my own VCD's!! It was a thrill to do and have such positive results. I tried any things and nothing compares to Kwag's template. I swear to god, on my Daewoo 5700 the clip of Geri's Game looks better than any storebought DVD I own. Not an exaggeration. I was lucky enough to learn from the best there is in this hobby and while I'm still a few marbles short of a sack, I'm up all hours at my computer, reading posts learning, gleaning tidbits of precious information, and having a ball doing it.
This would not have been possible without Mr Kwag, and I wanted to publicly say thank you so much. For your time, your patience, your willingness to share that mountain of knowledge you posses, and for making this new hobby possible for a guy (baboon) like me.

Everybody have a great weekend.

I might even have the nerve to post a question now and then...and in a couple of years , maybe even an answer.....NAAAAAAHHHHH!!!! What am I thinking?

KingEightBall

[KingEightBall]

Kwag,

As you know I had trouble getting sound with the movie A.I.

So I'm about to do another movie. This one is called Office Space.

Here are the specs:

397 mb file 416,485,376 bytes

resolution 704 x 336

Audio: 1:23:57 96kbps Mpeg Layer 3

Video: 23 fps 80 kbps 24bit DivxMpeg4-V3

It seems like a simple movie, small footprint, no action scenes.

I personally would just use your template as is. Ia that right? I know you don't like divX as a sourcefile but my wife loves this stinky movie, and thats what I have to work with.

I'm a little freaked out by AI not having audio. I'm not sure what I missed or did wrong and don't want to repeat it.

Also what changes would I make to make this full screen on my tv? i.e. No black stripes on top and bottom?

Do I do anything negative to the template (other than making the file larger) by changing the fps to 29.9? Or should I stop screwing around and just stick to the template you provided? Eightball