Star Wars Conversions-Hit me with your best shot...

[Mythos2002]

Thanks for the information Robster. The pictures look very nice indeed.

Unfortunately, I can't spend any more money on this project right now or in the forseeable future, so I was going to go with 2 disc versions and maybe do 1 disc versions in the future.

It looks like DVD 1 will be sides 1 & 2 and appox. 1/2 of side 3 and DVD 2 will be 1/2 of side 3 and sides 4 & 5. So, would I just join sides 1,2 and 1/2 of 3. I don't think I have enough space to hold the full film and 2 other files that contain 1/2 of the movie.

I'm doing one film at a time. Once I'm happy with the results, all of the captures are deleted to make room for the next film. I know this isn't the best way to do it, but I have time now to work on it. I just don't have money for another hard drive.

A two-disc version, which I'm still working on, uses a video rate of 100-6000-8200kbps VBR, but with uncompressed PCM audio.

Is the 100 value the minimum bitrate? I thought DVD required something like a minumum of 2000-2500.

Mythos

[Robster]

I've used 100 minium on all my conversions and never had any problem on any DVD player.

[Merle Corey]

Since a few other people have posted the AVISynth scripts they've used for cleanup, I figured I'd toss mine in as well. I captured from a Pioneer CLD-501 using the Canopus ADV-100 through one of the old-style Raptor cards using the Canopus DV codec. No frames dropped, perfect audio sync.

This is the script I used (AVISynth 2.5, decomb 4.1) for the first side (from the Definitive Collection):

SetMemoryMax(128)
AVISource("Y:\Capture\ANH - 01.avi")
Trim(1295,50565)
Crop(8,104,-8,-100)
Telecide(guide=1,ovr="ANH.ovr",mm=1)
Decimate(quality=3)
TemporalSmoother(2,3)
BicubicResize(720,360)
AddBorders(0,60,0,60)

Most of it (source, trim, crop, smooth, resize, borders) is either self-explanatory or covered elsewhere in this thread. I found I needed the SetMemoryMax to keep the whole thing in RAM when processing the script that joins the five sides together (I've only got 1GB RAM).

IVTC (ugh): Thanks to the tip in this thread that the source material is on the LDs as 24fps progressive and is telecined on play, I tried a little experimentation. I found that the biggest reason for decomb/telecide to result in jumping video (for me, at least) was decomb making erroneous choices - mixing up video vs film, matching to next instead of current/previous, that sort of thing, even with the guide=1 in place. My solution was to take all the decision making away from decomb.

ANH.ovr is an override file that states that the entire frame range is film, not video (0,75000 f). mm=3 forces matching against current/previous only. quality=3 makes decimate be a little more thorough in its selection process.

The end result was apparently flawless. I've tested against side 1 (opening credits to just before the first shot of Luke/C3PO in the 'speeder) and side 5 (rebel pre-launch through end credits). No obvious jumps, skips, or stutters. I'll be testing against the entire movie as soon as I have time to sit down and make the chapter lists - this takes so long to encode that I really don't want to do the whole thing twice.

Just thought I'd share. YMMV, of course. 8)

MC

[Mythos2002]

Welcome to the board Merle. You have an interesting script.

I'm still debating about one or two discs. I'm doing Empire (non Special Edition version) first since I don't have to worry about subtitles. It looks like the middle point is after the Falcon escapes from the asteriod monster. The problem is that there is a wipe right after that part. I wonder if it would be best to put sides 1-3 on DVD 1. That would make Disc 1 approx. 1hr/15min.

Any ideas?

Robster: I'll try the 100min to see what happens.

Mythos

[Robster]

Myth, in your situation I would definitely go for the 2-disc version. You can always convert to a single-disc later on.

Choose a break-point that suits the flow of the film. Don't worry too much about getting it exactly in the middle because you'll be able to get the bitrates nice and high anyway.

My Pink Floyd Pulse conversion 2-disc breaks at the 1hr point just before the band start playing Dark Side Of The Moon. The rest of the concert is 1hr 25 and I've still got the bitrates up at 5500-8200 with uncompressed audio which in itself takes up a load of space.

[Mythos2002]

Robster,

Thanks for your understanding. If I had more money I would definitely get me an ADVC-100 or something comparable as well as a bigger hard drive. My girlfriend would kill me if I spent more money on this since we are trying to get a house.

I may make the break point right after the asteroid monster. There is a still shot of Dagobah briefly, then a bird flies by.

As far as the audio, should I wait until Virtual Dub saves the joined files before saving the wav? I know I don't save it until I clip out the excess parts between the LD sides, but I wasn't sure about when exactly to save it. I also have to read up on BeSweet.

Were you making your SW conversions Anamorphic? If so, are you doing that with the menus too? I saw another thread here were Borghe discusses the issue of making Anamorphic menus.

Mythos

[Robster]

s far as the audio, should I wait until Virtual Dub saves the joined files before saving the wav?

Extract the WAVs from your two AVI files when you've made the split. That way your audio will be an exact match. If you try editing the audio separately to the video you're bound to introduce synch problems.

When I process in TMPGEnc, I only encode the video. Although the audio is still contained within the AVI I process the audio completely separately.

I've left my single-disc conversions as 4:3 letterboxed. I've tried doing an anamorphic version but it needs more bitrate and doesn't give you any extra resolution. I do prefer the way the 16:9 encoded version looks on my TV (as the scan lines usually so visible on NTSC signals practically disappears).

[geek rock]

I've left my single-disc conversions as 4:3 letterboxed. I've tried doing an anamorphic version but it needs more bitrate and doesn't give you any extra resolution. I do prefer the way the 16:9 encoded version looks on my TV (as the scan lines usually so visible on NTSC signals practically disappears).

eh?

you do get slightly more resolution if you make an anamorphic version. not much, but the difference is there. it simply means the encoder is able to dedicate more bits to the actual image rather than the black bars, since the area of the black bars is smaller on an anamorphic picture.



-Mark

[Mythos2002]

I think I may have messed up somewhere. I'm doing a test encode of the first hour. I can't believe it takes 36 hours for that. I have 16hrs left.
My script looks like this:
LoadPlugin("g:\decombfilter\Decomb.dll")
LoadPlugin("g:\decombfilter\TemporalCleaner.dll")
avisource("G:\Empire\empire1.avi")
Telecide(guide=1,gthresh=30,blend=true)
Decimate(mode=0,cycle=5, threshold=2.0)
TemporalCleaner(6, 8 )
temporalsoften(4,4,8,15,2)
LanczosResize(720,480)

I used 720,480 instead of 720,360 because it didn't look right on a test encode I did of a 30 second clip.

I think I messed up because I couldn't get BeSweet to work even though i read the guide. I just gave up and used TMPENGEnc's audio encoder. Every time I tried to set BeSweet as the encoder, it would give me an error saying I couldn't use BeSweet.exe for the encoder. Also I chose System (Video+Audio), so now I have one file instead of two (one for video and one for audio). Should I have used ES (Video+Audio) so that I would get an MPEG-2 file and a Mv2 or whatever it is for audio? I did use my script file for video and the Wav file I saved from Virtual Dub for the audio. Any thoughts?

Back to BeSweet. I used the BeSweet GUI and got as far as setting my input file (a Wav file I had Virtual Dub create). When It came to output, I couldn't find or create anything. What did I do wrong?

Thanks.

Mythos

[Robster]

it simply means the encoder is able to dedicate more bits to the actual image rather than the black bars

But more moving picture area requires more bits.

I tested it myself. A 16:9 encoded version of the same AVI file came out larger than the 4:3 version at the same bitrate.

[DivXExpert]

The quality is worth the extra filesize.

[Robster]

Maybe, but it gets to the point where you just can't fit any more on the disc.

I'd rather have a 4:3 transfer at a higher bitrate than a 16:9 one at a lower rate.

[Mythos2002]

Well, my encode finally finished. Overall, I'm happy with the results. However, I'm going to need to redo it again. The reasons why are that the audio and video turned out to be one file. Also, the aspect ratio turned out to be 2.21:1 instead of 2.35:1. The file also turned out to be only around 1.7Gb.

My bitrates for video were 2000 6000 8000 and audio was 48,000 2 CH at 224. The video stayed in sync and was pretty much free of artifacting and choppiness. The only areas I noticed artifacting was a couple of darker scenes on Luke's face when he was laying on the ground at hoth and would move around. Other than that, everything was fine. I'm going to try to refine my methods and encode a small clip again before doing another hour's worth of video.

There was one other wierd instance. WMV showed the video to be 1hr 29secs which is correct. However, WinDVD only reported it as being 28mins. I don't know what is going on there as all of the video was there when I played it in WinDVD 3.0.

Anyone have any suggestions on how to improve this encoding? It shouldn't take 38 hours even with my PC. Thanks.

Mythos

[indolikaa]

Mythos,

I downconverted from a 15-minute DV avi to 1/2 D1 using TMPGEnc last night. My average was about 5 minutes to produce one minute of finished product, and that included two filters and 2-Pass VBR. That's about 10 hours for a two-hour movie, if my math is correct.

Something sounds *not right* if it's taking 38 hours.

.indolikaa.

[Ufit]

Here it is..

[Ufit]

Force is with us

[DivXExpert]

That looks incredibly noisy.

[vhelp]

Hi peoples.. TGIF all 8)

@ all..

Actually, that looks a lot like VHS (fullscreen I presume)
Looks like those shots are from his .AVI (see interlaced lines)

Still, even on VHS, I wish I had the Widescreen version - it would be so
much fun converting to CD/DVD :P

-vhelp

[mysticgohan17]

That looks incredibly noisy.

im confused. looks noisy, its been 3 years doing this and that could be the only thing i've never heard of.

[Robster]

Myth,
Give us your TMPGEnc settings and we'll try and see what's going on.

[Mythos2002]

Okay. Thanks Robster.

The script above is the one I was using. There isn't a space between the 8 and the ) on the TemporalCleaner line. I had the put one there so it doesn't show up on the forum like one of the Emoticons.

Let me know if you need the environmental settings too. I bought a subscription to TMPENCenc Plus from Pegasys. The version I'm using is 2.512.52.161. Anything I mention as locked is unlockable. I either just left it locked, or unlocked it, changed the setting, and relocked it.

I did not use the TMPENGenc Wizard.
Here are the settings:
Video source: G:\Test\newscript.avs
Audio source: G:\Empire\Empire1.wav
Output file name: G:\Empire\Empire.mpg

Stream Type: System(Video+Audio)

MPEG Setting: Options
Video Tab:
Stream Type: MPEG2
Size: 720x480
Aspect Ratio: 16:9 Display
Frame Rate: 23.976 fps(internally 29.976 fps) (Locked option)
Rate Control Mode: 2-Pass VBR(VBR) (Settings 6000 Average, 8000 Max, 2000 Min., Max Pass 2, Enable padding not be lower than minimum bitrate checked. P Picture Spoilage: 0, B Picture Spoilage: 20)
Bitrate: 7000 kbits/sec. (Greyed out option).
VBV Buffer Size: 224 (Locked option).
Profile and Main Level: Main Profile and Main Level (MP@ML) (Locked option)
Video Format: NTSC
Encode Mode: 3:2 pulldown when playback
YUV Format: 4:2:0 (Locked option)
DC Component Precision: 10 bits
Motion Search Precision: Highest Quality(very slow)

Advanced Tab:
Video source type: Non-interlaced (progressive)
Field order: Top field first (field A)
Source Aspect Ratio: 4:3 525 Line (720x480)
Video Arrange Method: Full screen (keep aspect ratio)

I used the following filters:
Noise Reduction: 8 1 12 High Quality Mode
Simple Color Correction: Brightness 10, Contrast 10, the rest left alone
Clip Frame: Top Mask 102, Bottom Mask 102 On Arrange Setting I chose Full Screen (keep aspect ratio) (Reports on Arrange setting tab: Input Format: 720x480/4:3 525 Line (NTSC, 720x480), Output Format: 720x480/16:9 Display

GOP structure Tab: I left this alone, but here is what it says:
GOP structure: IBBPBBPBBPBBPBBP
Number of I picture in GOP: 1 (Locked option)
Number of P picture in GOP: 5 (Locked option)
Number of B picture in GOP: 2 (Locked option)
Output interval of sequence header: 1 (Locked option)
MAX number of frames in a GOP: 18 (Locked option)
Output bitstream for edit (Closed GOP) option is checked.
Detect Scene change option is checked.
Force picture type setting option is unchecked.

Quantize matrix Tab:
Default
No options checked except Soften block noise
Intra block: 75 Non-intra block: 75

Audio Tab:
Stream type: MPEG-1 Audio Layer II (Locked option)
Sampling frequency: 48,000 Hz (Locked option)
Channel Mode: Stereo
Bitrate: 224 kbits/sec
Error protection checked, but also a Greyed out option that can't be changed.
Original flag, Copyright flag, and Private flag options unchecked
De-emphasize flag: none
Use Audio Edit option is unchecked
Under Setting Tab: Change Volume is the only option checked with 150%
I think I hit cancel, so it wouldn't use the Audio Edit option.

System Tab:
Stream type: MPEG-2 Program (VBR) (Locked option)

That's it. Let me know if there are any other settings you need. I really appreciate the help with this. Thanks.

Mythos

[Robster]

I can't see anything blindingly obvious that would cause the distortion of aspect ratio. If you have any left/right values in Clip Frame then set them back to zero, but it doesn't sound like you're using them anyway.

I know nothing about AviSynth though, so it could be that problem are being introduced from there. What are your reasons for using it? All of my processing was done with TMPGEnc.

The encoding time of 38 hours doesn't seem wrong considering you're using the slowest encoding method with filters (the noise reduction filter makes a big difference). A beefier processor and motherboard combo would boost that.

Do you really need the noise reduction though? I found that while it did smooth things out, it masked detail. I preferred the results without it.

I would recommend this: Don't run with all those filters - or even AviSynth. Go with only the required settings for a test-encode. The aspect ratio needs to be sorted out and it sounds like something else isn't working properly with the file size you're ending up with.

And I stress again - don't use TMPGEnc for audio processing.

BeSweet has a horrible user interface but it works fine. You need to make sure the 'BeSweet.exe' path is correct otherwise it wont know where to fine the actual .exe file that does all the work.

[Mythos2002]

Thanks for the information Robster. I may have to give you more of TMPENGenc's settings. I just did a quick guage to see how long it would take if I didn't use AVISynth. It still says 36hrs 51min no matter what stream type I choose that includes video. The only short one is Audio only which takes a little over 30 minutes.

I hope it isn't my processor or motherboard. I've seen where it doesn't take that long with slower PC equipment than mine.

Here are additional settings. Under File and MPEG tools, nothing is selected. From the option Tab, under the Environmental Tab I have:
General Tab:
Do not use cache function by OS to access file checked.
Enable reading referred format AVI through network checked. (Cannot turn this option off).
Nothing else is set here but D:\WINDOWS\TEMP\ for temporary file. I changed the directory to no effect.

CPU Tab:
The only options checked here are:
Enable MMX
Enable MMX-2
Enable 3DNow!

Sound Tab:
Option is checked with D:\WINDOWS\Media\Notify.wav to notify me when ecoding is finished. I turned this off and it didn't affect the encode time.

Audio engine tab:
I've changed the settings here with no affect on time. I've chosen to use external encoders even though I had no directory to them. I still need to work on getting this to work.

VAFPI Plugin tab:
I haven't messed with this to much except to turn off the DirectShow Multimedia File Reader and give it a priority of -2 so that I can use AVISynth. Here are the other settings and priorities for this tab. All other t plugins are enabled.

AVI2(OpenDML) File Reader Priority 0
BMP/PPM/TGA/JPG File Read Priority 0
Microsoft MPEG-1 Decoder Priority 0
WAV File Reader Priorty 0
TMPGEnc Project File Reader 2.512 File: TMPGEnc.vfp Priority 0
This file cannot be loaded. File: aviutl.vfp Priority 0
AVI VFW Compatibilty Reader Priority -1
DirectShow Multimedia File Reader Priority -2

That's all of the settings I could find. I do appreciate all of the help. It could be this VAFPI plug in tab that is causing the problem, but I am leary of messing with it unless someone knows better settings I should use. Thanks.

Mythos

[Mythos2002]

Sorry to reply to my own post.

I did a few quick tests. It was the darned Noise reduction filter causing me the problem as you said it would Robster.

Turning it completely off resulted in an encode time of 10 hrs. even using TMPENGenc's audio encoder without the AVISynth script. The script only added 1 hour to that time. If I just turned off high quality mode it resulted in a 22 hour encode time which is also acceptable since I've heard some with similar PC specs say it took nearly 40 hours to do each of the films.

I'm going to do some quick encodes on problematic areas where people's faces had slight artifacts without the soften block noise setting and without noise reduction to see what the results are. I can live with 10 to 20 hour encodes if the file turns out to be compliant. I'm still going to try and work out the problems I have with Besweet so I can use it as a separate audio encoder. I do have to ask which is the best stream type to use? System or Elementary? Thanks.

Mythos

[Robster]

I just use Elementary. Not really sure what the differences are to be honest, never investigated it.

[Mythos2002]

Ok. Thanks. I know you use Besweet, but when you choose the Stream Type, do you choose Elementary (Video Only) or (Video+Audio)? Sorry, I forgot to ask that part of it.

Mythos

[Robster]

I use Elementary, Video Only.

[prev]

Before I start with my own conversion of this boxset I have a question that you guys can hopefully help me with. I am currently capturing the 'Making Of' documentaries from Japanese laserdisc and I am capturing in uncompressed .avi and the audio digitally via the optical out on my LD player to an optical connector on my Creative Live Drive II to get the best quality. I'm using Virtualdub_Sync to capture but I'm still getting audio that is out of sync (that I have to correct).
Is there a solution or a recommended capture card that I could try.

My 'Making Of' project is described here
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=167663

[Mythos2002]

I would use Huffyuv to capture the AVI in compressed format. Even though it is compressed, Huffyuv is lossless. It also saves hard drive space.

Mythos

[prev]

I'm happy with the uncompressed .avi. Thanks for the advice though. I might give it a go. What does worry me is the loss of sync with the video and audio. Could this be my capture card. Would something like a Canopus advc1394 help. I want to capture to uncompressed .avi and NOT dv though as DV has a strange effect when capturing laserdisc.