Converting Old Cartoon's to CVD

[macleod]

I've been doing editing/converting/ripping, etc for quite some time now and run across a new (at least to me) issue, which is ripping old cartoons.

I am attempting to backup old Charlie Brown (specifically the halloween and christmas movies) with DVD2SVCD (for later transfer to DVD when I get a burner) and have been shocked at the quality. Basically, on the Halloween movie, when there is action (Linus runs into the pile of leaves), the pixelation gets bad. There appears to be skeeters (thats mosquitoes to the Yankees and non US people) all around the "actors".

I have tried to do do it using CCE 2.5 and TMPGENC on the highest settings. I read some suggestions from other posts and cranked up the image quality from 10 to 17 to 20 to 50 to 100. I've done CBR and up to 5 pass VBR with lows and highs in all ranges. Anti noise filter at 2 (the "rest" of the settings followed the DVD2SVCD guide).

I've ripped movies like gladiator, braveheart, highlander, monsters inc, Lord of the Rings, We were soliders, and the final product looks fantastic. The only thing I can think of is that with the old cartoon, I'm "trying to kill a fly with a shotgun". In my mind, all I can think is that the encoder is buzzing along with no screen changes (80% of the movie doesnt have movement aside from the "actor's" mouths moving and a little movement.

So, short question is, what have other people who have ripped OLD cartoons from DVD's done to take care of the "skeeter" problem?

If there is the easy answer out there in the search function, could somebody shoot me a link.

[SatStorm]

Hi macleod, nice to see you posting again!

Well, I don't have good news for you. There is only one solution, and that is to go -X-. Cartoons are the most difficult stuff to encode.
The best -x- solution I found, is xVCD. Grabb @ 352 X 576 (480 for NTSC), de-interlace with adaption and rescale to 352 X 288/240. Then Encode to xVCD or xSVCD with an average bitrate about 1800kb/s! That way, no blocks and noise, but way -X-
Considering that this resoluion -as mpeg 1 for sure- is supported by DVD, maybe it is the best solution.

Here in europe, we have a free to air digital satellite channel, Boomerang (28.2 East, Astra 2A), which airs old classic cartoons, including all episodes of snoopy and charlie brown. From next week and for a month there gonna be a daily based 8 hour marathon of looney toons also! This channel is 544 X 576 @ 4000kb/s and still have mpeg 2 artifacts. So, you understand how difficult is to encode cartoons.

[snowmoon]

Cartoons pose a unique problem to the encoder, but I can assure you that you have been deceived by cce. I have catoons off the ait that look preistine.

First the IQ setting needs to be lowered to 5 ( trust me ) and use one pass vbr with a q=30. Persona;;y I pre-filter all of my analog captures though vdub. If interested I can post my cleanup script here. Takes quite a while, but well worth it.

[Waylander076]

Snowmoon

Could you post or mail me your vdub cleanup script as I'd like to
give it ago please.

I've capped some charlie browns from the old Boomerang channel
and using DVD2SVCD they look good but I think the capped avi
could be made to look better.
Therefore I'd like to give you script a try...

Thanks
Waylander

[SatStorm]

The best solution with boomerang (if we mean the same channel), as it is FTA (no encryption, receiveble with any DVB/s receiver), is to go and buy a PCI DVB/S card (hauppauge win tv nova is very cheap, less 150 euro and do the job weel) and grabb direct the transmission! Then, you keep it as it is (if you are lucky and your standalone support -X- ), or you re-encode it to 352 X 576 @ 2520 CBR and you got the best possible quality you can gain from it.

[epo]

SatStorm, I have some questions to You.
1. How is this card's sensitivity compared to Humax?
2. Can You capture whole transponder and demux/decode later
3. What about Dolby?
4. What about soft-decode?
5. What do You know about Nexus?

[SatStorm]

What Humax has to do with this? Humax is a reciever (I guess you have 5400 or 5400z, patched with 6 in 1 files, right?...) so you get the picture from the Scart or the S-video or the RCA, right?
That is not different than grabb from any analogue source!

I talking about DVB/s cards here. To rip the transmission as is. MPEG-2!

The BEST solution is nokia 9200/9500/9600 with dvb2000 firmware. More infos here: www.no-access.de

The second best solution is Hauppauge win tv dvb/s with windvblive software. More infos here: www.odsoft.de

The cheapest world wide solution, is Hauppauge win tv nova. Unfortunatelly, with this card you are limited only to MCPC channels

About your questions:

- How is this card's sensitivity compared to Humax?
It is terrible. You don't get DVB/s cards for sensivity , but because you can rip direct the sat stream
- Can You capture whole transponder and demux/decode later
Nasty boy... You asking nasty questions. No, you can't! It is not like the videocrypt days
- 3. What about Dolby?
You can grabb direct the AC3 stream as well. There are 2 channels in whole europe with ac3 FTA: The German Pro 7 (with many movies) and the Polonian TVN. There are some Sky Digital PPV channels also, impossible to receive them with other receivers than digiboxes.
It is possible to grabb direct to mpeg 2 with ac3 sound from Pro 7 and TVN with the use of nokia 9500/9200/9600 with dvb2000 firmware and the use of the amazing program "DVB Recorder 1.19b")
4. What about soft-decode?
You can use any DVD software like windvd, powerdvd, etc like DVDs
5. What do You know about Nexus?
Things beyond this forum

What You know about E.R.I.K.A.?

[epo]

Your guess was right as was my guess, that I do not need to supply model number And Humy has to do with this only as much that with my location/antenna I don't get guaranteed reception from all of Astra. So this sensitivity thing I would call "additional information".
Actually Humy paired with PVR-250 gives quite good results (higher datarates, than neccessary, but that's OK), but has it's own limitations unavoidable vith analog capture and that's, why I'm asking. And of course direct digital would be prefferable, if possible anyway.

Back to my questions. Some added
1. Right, but if You can not receive, You can not rip...
2. Got I right that it is possible with DVB2000? Do cards have some sort of HW limitations (HW demux and impossibility to output whole stream to PCI)?
3. Have seen Dolby logo on some more channels (Premiere somethin, etc). Not much tough. Quite irrelevant todate anyway...
4. Meant PTV decode.
5. How? Does Nexus differ so much from Nova?
6. really OT . Do other than MCPC channels exist?
7. What's difference between DVB/S and Nova (and Nexus)? Have seen Nova and Nexus on sale, but no DVB/S as such reccently.
8. Subtitle stream capture?
9. 9:16?

As to Your question.
Havent had time for this and not exact need. (No RD allowed) Are You involved?

[macleod]

Hey Satstorm. Yea, I am back posting again. Got over being ticked off at certain folks and said "what the hell" to myself and started back up. Actually during that time I have been receiving private messages from people asking for help, which has been good.

Actually what I am doing is taking old cartoon DVD's and ripping them to CVD. I've done TV southparks off of cable that look better than these DVD rips. I've been using DVD2SVCD, which is a GREAT program.....except for old cartoons, which I know isn't DVD2SVCD's fault, but the two encoder's CCE 2.50 and TMPGENC not being able to do the older cartoons. It is weird, I get an analog source like cable, do a real time cap in powervcrII (CVD 352x480 2520BR, etc.) and burn and it looks better on my 25" TV then a DVD rip with 5 pass CCE, TMPGENC 2 pass, etc.

It is just plain weird since it is a DVD source that I am working with (I keep going back to my shotgun analogy). I looked at the source DVD and it is 9800 BR, 4/3. Should be snap.

I don't know if the cleaner thing that snowman suggested would help out on a DVD source since the source is about as clean as it could get, unless it does something to make it easier to encode down to CVD? I just think that with the old cartoon and with CCE and TMPGENC assuming more action, it overkills it or something?

[oldfart13]

Have you tried:

http://www.lukesvideo.com

That's only for cartoons anyway...

[macleod]

I looked over their stuff, but it is for capturing through an analog source and then encoding with the encode taking into account the "bad" source of analog.

I had tried some of their settings, and no luck. The issue the way I am seeing it is that 80% of the screen is non moving and CCE or TMPGENC is "thinking" that its got an easy encode and then all of a sudden Linus jumps into a pile of leaves or there is movement and CCE or TMPGENC wakes up from its "nap" and can't encode that part perfectly. 85% of the movie is fine, except for when there is movement. If Charlie Brown is yakking about how much his life stinks, the mouth movements are fine (except with higher constant quality settings) or there is little movement it is fine. If I remember right, when there is a lot of motion in the entire scene (snoopy's red baron fight), that looks fine as well.

I think I may need to try something like setting the quality to 0 and see what that does. I had it at 5 the first time and it did the same job up until 50 and then it looked even worse. I wonder what would happen if I set it at 0????

[snowmoon]

Sorry there... woke up in the middle of the night and responded to a few posts


Cartoons have a problems because of their high contrast, and when moving in a non-linear or rotational manner the mpeg-2 has a hard time keeping up. You can help the encoder by giving it a clean source ( as clean as you can make it ). I have found the following Vdub recipe very helpful.

I capture everything as 720x480 and resize down since it give my NR recipe much more to work with.

1) ViewFields

This splits the fields into top/bottom images. It is required for the sharpening to work right on interlaced images.

2) 2d optimized cleaner

Handy! For cartoons this can be set at 7-12 and a 3x2 range. Adjust to taste, just make sure that subtle detail is not being wiped out. Cartoons are easier since most detail is bordered by high contrast lines.

3) kRNC ( don't NR without it! )

This NR filter is the best hands down. It's fast and does not leave posterization in continuious tone areas. I usually set it to 4, 8 as with the other season to taste. Watch out for smearing in faces and sky shots. It should reduce the noise level in almost any shot by 50%. In my caps the noise goes from obvious to almost non-noticable.

4) Resize 352x480 bicubic

5a) For cartoons x-sharpen

season to taste, it's similar to warp sharp it warps the contrasting images onto themselves. It shapens up edges great without sharpening noise.

5b) For everything else m-sharpen

30,5-10 reall helps to bring punch back to the image without any artifical looking sharpening.

6) Levels

20,1.1,235,16,235 Of course season to taste. Basicly the first number helps to restore black level the secong gives the image a slight gamma boost and the third sets the white level. Season to taste.

7) UnViewFields

This re-interlaces the image.


I usually save as huffyuv and feed to CCE. Keep the IQ low and if artifacts are objectionable then turn on and up the NR in CCE. It's going to do a horozontal blur so just keep it low to start. I usually do one pass VBR with q=30 the higher you go the more artifacts you will see and the lower the bitrate. Since CVD is still butrate limited in action shots, lowering this value will improve action, but result in some more artifacts overall ( may not be noticable on a TV ).

Let me know how it turns out for you.

[Waylander076]

Snowmoon: Thanks for that...tried it on a cap just now...looks
a lot better...now to feed it to CCE.

Thanks again
Waylander

[SatStorm]

Well, with analgue channels a "clean" source was possible. With digital ones, no!
I receive almost all the dedicated channels with cartoons in Europe. The best of them in quality is Disney from german's Premiere World service. Nothing to see there unfortunatelly...
The "good" channels, are Cartoon Network (I receive UK, Middle East, Italian, Scandinavian and France versions) and Boomerang. Unfortunatelly, all have much digital noise. If you grabb them direct (as I do), then a re-encoding is neccessary and that is hell... You can do nothing, te noise is enchanced with any attemp to re-encode.
Grabbing the same channels the analogue way, make it even worst...
The only way I succeed good quality from those channels as a source, was the -x- way with low resolution I already post. Never succeed a good CVD/SVCD with Cartoons.

@ epo, some sort answers

1. Right, but if You can not receive, You can not rip...

Ahh, that you mean, I thought you mean grabb the transmission as PST, then enter some valid keys and decrypt the programm so to see it later, the way we do it with videocrypt!
You said that "Can You capture whole transponder and demux/decode later". Well, you can't capture a WHOLE transpoder and demux/decode later. You can capture a channel from a transpoder and mux it in realtime as mpeg 2, svcd or xDVD. When you say decode you mean de-scrable or simply decode? This term "decode" it is used for nasty reasons....

2. Got I right that it is possible with DVB2000? Do cards have some sort of HW limitations (HW demux and impossibility to output whole stream to PCI)?

Yes it is possible. This firmware (dvb2000) works with a reciever (older nokia models), which they have a SCSI 2 port. So, those recievers can sent ANYTHING they recieve to a PC with a SCSI card. For example, it is possible to grabb mpeg 4:2:2 transmissions, frameserve them realtime to a program like winDVD and watch them from your PC with a delay of some seconds!
With PCI cards, things are almost the same, but there is only one (third party) software capable for advance use: WinDVBlive! Only some cards are compatible with this software.

Just for the info, there is also a MP3 radio stations in europe! You grabb direct mp3s of the latest hits. Visit www.megaradio.de for more info. The reception outside germany is possible only with dvb2000 and dvblive!

3. Have seen Dolby logo on some more channels (Premiere somethin, etc). Not much tough. Quite irrelevant todate anyway...
Yes, some PPV services do have Dolby Digital. But those are PPV services, they are not Channels (major difference...)
Also, if you live in Swiss, there is cabel providers called TELECLUB. They have 4 - 5 channels (sky movie premiere style), with ac3 audio. In late 2003, Canal + in france also is expected to launch AC3 audio service. Unfortunattely, with SECA 2 encryption and no TPScrypt (so, we forget the "free" reception...)
4. Meant PTV decode.
No, you can't. Also, forget cards in the near future. Only those with "Season" Interface gonna see again for free Pay TV services
5. How? Does Nexus differ so much from Nova?
Not so much, but both are not supported by WinDVBlive! So, they are only for typical FTA use... (no megaradio mp3 from NBC Europe for example...)
6. really OT . Do other than MCPC channels exist?
Most of the interest FTA channels outthere, are SCPC. For example: MTV Italy, TMF Vlanderen, CNBC-E ("24" for free in europe!), Alpha TV,etc Lots of non english speaking channels also!
7. What's difference between DVB/S and Nova (and Nexus)? Have seen Nova and Nexus on sale, but no DVB/S as such reccently.
WinDVBlive support is the difference! Also, DVB/s have a common interface daughter card, very usefull for descrable subscription services..
8. Subtitle stream capture?
Possible if a channel use DVB subtitling (not Teletext as most do).There is no reason really: Most of the channels, expecially movie ones, have 2 languages: Original and local
9. 9:16?
Sure, also 2.11.1 and anything exist. for example, I grabb last week final fantasy and Planet of the apes, with 2.11.1 picture! Better 16:9!

Anymore question please?

[graemee]

I use the following with good results. I had a number of low quality RM files to do and after reading a few guides on this site I use tnmpegenc to do the conversion. I tried virtualdub with the cartoon filter but using the filters in tnmpeg was good enough for me and it removed a step in the production. Easier to batch the files. I didn't save any time as the steps I use are slow. very slow.

You will find the filters in tnmpeg under the MPEG setting -> ADVANCED
They are a series of check boxes, double click a filter's name to load the settings screen. I use the sharpen fillter in tnmpeg to sharpen the picture & use the colour correction filters if the colours are washed. I use ~40 on both settings for the sharpen filter. The noise reduction filter does the bulk of the work for me in removing artifacts and smoothing, 80,3,80 are the settings. If your encodig to MPEG1 use the SOFTEN BLOCKS @35 under the QUANTIZE MATRIX tab.

Total runtime for a 25min episode is 2-4hrs on a TB@1.4 so it's not fast but it looks good.

[macleod]

I'll give that a shot, but it sounds like you are pulling in a source (the cartoon) through a noisy source (i.e. vhs tape or TV). I (and I should have made it much clearer in the subject line and in my opening statement - my fault) that I have the DVD of Its the great pumpkin Charlier Brown and a Charlier Brown Christmas, so I am, technically, taking it from a noiseless source.

In my readings, the only thing that I haven't tried is to take the Image quality priority down to zero. In the DVD2SVCD advanced guide, there is a section that described my problem (below), where it is talking about mosquitoes. I haven't tried that (starting it at 17 and went up). I'm going to give that a shot and see how it goes.

Image quality priority default 17
This setting decides priority among image areas which the encoder assigns to allocate the bit amount. 0 to 100 can be specified. The initial value is 25. As the value becomes closer to 0, a higher bit amount is allocated to complicated images areas. As the value becomes closer to 100, a higher bit amount is allocated to flat image areas. When the value is close to 0, the mosquito noise at the edges (noise causing hazy part along the edges, looking like flying mosquitoes) is less outstanding, but the contouring noise (noise which looks like contour line patterns, which appear in flat and wide areas, such as a dark background) is more outstanding. The opposite occurs when the value is closer to 100.

[snowmoon]

DVD of Its the great pumpkin Charlier Brown and a Charlier Brown Christmas, so I am, technically, taking it from a noiseless source.

Not true. Many DVD's are masterd from very noisy and very grainy sources. In this case NR will help the output. Even if it's a DVD I have had excellent results using NR due to the fact that SVCD/CVD is still bitrate limited and saving a few bits here and there do count.