Converting 1920 x 1080 AVCHD Settings for Vidcoder

[Tom Saurus]

I decided not to go the route of putting my Hauppauge HD-PVR recordings onto Blu Ray discs; instead deciding on encoding them to a smaller file size. I have been editing the videos with VideoReDo. Well I decided I wanted to use Vidcoder for my encoder. I chose the .mkv container with the .h264 codec. I have included some screenshots of the settings I have used to get the desired file I wanted. I only have a small 17 inch monitor and the biggest display I have tested so far is a 20 inch 480p HDTV; but the files look and sound good. I did make a mistake with the audio settings, and didn't realize it until today while doing the screen captures. The original audio on my files have ac3 audio and I wanted to pass that through without re-coding. But it turns out I chose the aac pass through instead. I have corrected that and I will be testing out the correct audio pass through this afternoon. These are true HD Widescreen files, so no cropping was necessary. Take a look at the Picture Tab settings that I took a screen capture of for the cropping and other settings. Here are the screen capture pictures:



I chose 2000 kbs as my bit rate for video and 2 pass encoding. I may experiment with a lower bit rate. Perhaps someone can give me some advice on that. Perhaps someone who has a bigger screen will use these settings and let me know how the file looks on their television screen. I am saving up for a 32 inch HDTV that will be my monitor and TV screen. I thought perhaps these settings would be of some use to someone. I will share settings for converting a pillboxed widescreen non HD 1920 x 1080 video to the 640 x 360 .mkv file encoded with Vidcoder soon. I am still trying to figure out a 4:3 pillaboxed non HD or HD as well 1920 x 1080 file; when I get those settings figured out, I will share them.

[aedipuss]

you might try 1 pass constant quality encoding. it gives a more consistent video quality by using the bitrate needed to maintain quality for what's going on in the video. lower number higher quality and larger filesize. start around 20 and go up or down from there.

[Tom Saurus]

aedipuss: I will keep that in mind and perhaps do a bit more experimenting. I remember encoding some video that had two audio tracks and a one pass encode didn't include the audio and perhaps the subtitles as well. It has been awhile since that encode and the memory grows fuzzy after awhile. I do remember doing a two pass encode and everything showed up, but that wasn't a capture file it was a backup. Thanks for your input.

[Tom Saurus]

I have read that unless you have a screen bigger than 44 inches to watch your videos on that there isn't much difference between 720p and 1080p. Since I encode my AVCHD files from 1920 x 1080 to 640 x 360; it most likely I am going below 720p quality wise. The largest screen I have access to at the moment is a 20 inch 480p HDTV, and my conversions look good on that. But for the future, if I can afford the 32" or maximum 36" HDTV, what settings should I use to achieve 720p? Thanks in advance for any advice in this matter.

[jagabo]

2000 kbps is probably twice as much as you need for a 640x360 video. If you use Constant Quality encoding you'll always get the "right" bitrate for the quality level you specify. You won't have to guess.

Whether or not multiple audio tracks and subtitles are retained has nothing to do with whether you use single pass or multiple pass encoding.

[Tom Saurus]

jagabo: Thank you for your advice. I did some research and I found out that the 720p HD is 1280 x 720p. So I am going to try that new size with a constant quality of 18. I will do a test encode and see how it works and report back.

[Tom Saurus]

I just watched a bit of the encode that Vidcoder processed with the 720p settings with a constant quality of 18. It looks and sounds spectacular. It took only about 38 minutes to encode 86 minutes worth of video AVCHD footage. The file size is 1.87 GB. I think that is a reasonable file size for the quality.

jagabo: I always thought there was a quality advantage to 2 pass encoding at a constant bit rate and thanks to your advice and that of aedipuss, I have tried the constant quality and I am pleased with the video and audio quality and the saving of time is an added bonus.

[_Al_]

Do you know that there are players out there (like wdtv live etc) that will load a video and output can be whatever, even CRT?
You can get them for something like $50-$60 used or new ones as for ~$100.

I'd keep original resolution.Encode with constant quality.

[Tom Saurus]

_Al_: I don't need to re-encode to have my original video and audio dimensions. VideoReDo lets me edit and export the file out and the specs are nearly identical to the original, there is a slight change in the bit rate as displayed by MediaInfo. I was primarily thinking of hard drive space. Lets say I have a file that is about a 158 minutes my AVCHD file is 10.6 GB at the 1920 x 1080 specs; now if I convert it to the 720p specs and I would imagine it is really 720i well the file size is reduced to 2.09 GB which is nearly a fifth the size and it looks pretty good. On a 2 TB drive one could store nearly five times as many files. Well a 2 TB drive is really 1.81 TB. So the difference would be if 2 GB was the average file size, then you store about 900 files. If the file was 10 GB you would be able to store 180 files.

I better do some more thinking on this subject. I have thought about getting one of those gizmos. The last time I went to Future Shop they had one of these Boxee Devices and I asked the sales guy to do a Demo so I could see what it is like. Unfortunately he said the remote had been lost, so know demo. I didn't have the money to buy one that day, but if I would of saw a demo perhaps I would of bought one down the line. I will go to YouTube and watch some demos over there.

The TV I am saving up for is going to have a native resolution of 1980 x 1080 so it can be my computer monitor as well as our television.

[jagabo]

Go to YouTube and search for Boxee demos. You'll see what it's like.

Be careful when downscaling 1080i to down to 720p. You have to deinterlace or IVTC properly to get the best results.

[Tom Saurus]

jagabo: I didn't touch any settings for deinterlace in Vidcoder but the video looks good. I have also come to the conclusion that if I capture video that is SD with the Hauppauge HD-PVR via the component cables it is still sharper than if I recorded it via the s-video cable with my Hauppauge 150. Those extra lines of resolution make a better quality picture, but there is the pain of cropping the video, but Vidcoder can do an excellent job with that as well.