Good Method to compress AVI source to MP4? Ffmpeg, Staxrip, Davinci?

[Neil-Betamax]

After many years of trial and error, someone on here taught me how to deinterlace my uncompressed AVIs using AviSynth. It's for the purpose of capturing VHS.

It's the best result I've found so far.

I want to compress to MP4 but I'm unsure how much quality I'm losing whilst trying different settings in Davinci Resolve, Handbrake & VidCoder.

If there's a thread here, or maybe a process somebody could share using virtualdub or ffmpeg perhaps, I'd be really grateful.

I'm hoping to keep the file size down, whilst retaining as much audio and video quality as possible. In Davinci Resolve they average around 20GB per file, (3 hours video, from a lossless AVI of about 600GB after deinterlacing). I've really tried hard using Davinci & it's the best I can achieve. I managed to do well with Handbrake, but without trial & error with as many combinations as I can attempt, it's a bit of a minefield as is ffmpeg too.

[davexnet]

Since you have an AVS script to manipulate and frameserve your source, why don't you just encode it in vdub2?

What trial and error are you referring to? Just pick the preset (medium or slow) and the CRF, 16 - 22 for x264

[Alwyn]

Dave, don't forget the SAR...

[Alwyn]

If it's SD (720x576, 720x480), shoot for around an average bitrate of 6000kbps max. You can either set the bitrate or use CRF, which most people use, as Dave suggested.

from a lossless AVI of about 600GB after deinterlacing

I think you must have captured "uncompressed". "Compressed" Lossless with the usual codecs (HUFFYUV, UTVideo, Lagarith) is roughly 40GB per hour, doubled after double-rate deinterlacing.

[lollo]

I want to compress to MP4 but I'm unsure how much quality I'm losing whilst trying different settings in Davinci Resolve, Handbrake & VidCoder.

If there's a thread here, or maybe a process somebody could share using virtualdub or ffmpeg perhaps, I'd be really grateful.

Once you have your final .avs script you can simply run a cmd line:

ffmpeg.exe -i <input>.avs -c:v libx264 -crf 17 -preset slow -aspect 4:3 -c:a aac -b:a 128k <output>.mp4

If after processing for whatever reason your source is a video file, use it as input

[Neil-Betamax]

Thanks for the help everyone, I've been away from home for a few days but just letting you all know I appreciate your help very much.
I'll get onto trying out these suggestions when I return in a couple of days, thanks again!

[Neil-Betamax]

Thanks Lollo, & especially for helping me get this far with deinterlacing.

Since I'm so new to coding in general, I lack most basic understanding.

[/QUOTE]

Once you have your final .avs script you can simply run a cmd line:

ffmpeg.exe -i <input>.avs -c:v libx264 -crf 17 -preset slow -aspect 4:3 -c:a aac -b:a 128k <output>.mp4

If after processing for whatever reason your source is a video file, use it as input[/QUOTE]

Is this what I should do:

1) Create a new .AVS file
2) Type in the code you quoted above
3) open and run in VirtualDub for the AVI to MP4 Converting process to start ?

As I lack knowledge of the basics, I'm just a little unclear, eg, if the Deinterlaced AVI file was called 'Silver.AVI', would that make the above coding look like this in my .AVS file.. ?

ffmpeg.exe -i <Silver>.avs -c:v libx264 -crf 17 -preset slow -aspect 4:3 -c:a aac -b:a 128k <output>.mp4

I'm sorry if it's too much to explain, I'm just unsure exactly which program I'd type this in, unless you mean Windows Command Prompt?

[lollo]

once you have your avisynth script (which deinterlace, denoise, etc.) you can use it as input to ffmpeg encoder to generate the final output file:

ffmpeg.exe -i Silver.avs -c:v libx264 -crf 17 -preset slow -aspect 4:3 -c:a aac -b:a 128k Silver.mp4

If for any reason you want to generate the deinterlaced file as the first step, then you feed it to ffmpeg encoder:

ffmpeg.exe -i Silver.avi -c:v libx264 -crf 17 -preset slow -aspect 4:3 -c:a aac -b:a 128k Silver.mp4