First successful CVD encoding

[Kevin Henry]

Man, is this good!? On my PC it doesnt look perfect, and you can notice artificing, but on the TV - crystal clear, perfect colors, no mega-blocking ...

I'm truly impressed! I used CCE2.62, one pass VBR with Q=1, Min 1180 max 2550. Movie was SW:Phantom Menace. Source was .avi.

I'd estimate you could about 50-55 minutes on a 700Mb CD at those bitrates, or use CBR to pack on a little more at a lower res. Don't know how that will affect the quality - in the jet buggy thing racing scenes, the bitrate is between 1.6 & 2.4

I'm going to try Lord of the Rings at CBR to get the whole .avi on one cd. I had to split the 2 .avi files of Phantom Menace into 3 parts to get it on 3 cds, and the join isnt very clean. But otherwise, I'm really happy with it.

Give a whirl if you havent alread

[Kevin Henry]

Oops I just encoded Lord of the Rings at 1300Mbps instead of 1600 in CCE using CVD template I made.

And the quality is still brilliant, on the TV. Bit rought on the monitor, but REALLY nice on the ol' telly. MINIMAL blocking, I think on 3 CDs it was noticable about 3 times, for only a second or so. And I was looking for it.

Get into it people! Save those bits!

[D_Knife]

Hey - Glad to hear it
I'm a convert to CVD as well

[Kevin Henry]

Knife - what do you use and what settings etc?

[guitar_george_skank]

I've just started to use CVD as well. I can't believe the quality i'm getting. It's fantastic on my 25" TV. Mind you, I'm using 3CD's for a 2hr movie at about 2400K/b per sec. The lowest i've gone is 1900Kb/sec on 2 74min CR-RW's. Still excellent. No artifacts.
What bitrates are you guys going down to? When doers it start to make a difference (in your opinions)? It's interesting to see peoples opinions on quality as they can be quite different

[D_Knife]

I'm capping from a DVC II at 352x576 at 8000Kbs CBR
I then 3 pass VBR in CCE down to 300min 2000avg and 2496max
The results are absolutely fantastic and fully match what comes out of my Hi-8 camera

[bigmicka]

i have been using it as well, i realy like it.

i use tmpg cq_vbr 65. i have used bitrates of 800 as the lowest upto 2520. if your wondering why so low, i do dvd rips mainly and i find the bitrate levels from smart ripper, it will tell you the min and the max rates used.

i like the fact that if i do go to dvd later on that this is one of the compliant resolutions under the standard. no re-encoding will be needed if i move my library over.

my 2 cents.

mic

[guitar_george_skank]

bigmicka:

When you get the bitrates from smart ripper, do you cut the rates in half (because CVD is half DVD res) and use those figures?

[bigmicka]

i usually keep it at the same level. im not sure how good that theory is with half the bit rate for half the resolution.

mic

[MITSUI_1]

What bitrates are you guys going down to? When doers it start to make a difference (in your opinions)? It's interesting to see peoples opinions on quality as they can be quite different

I've been doing CVDs for a while now. I particularly like this approach for DVD's I've purchased because I can burn a CVD, take in on the plan and watch it on my laptop, and if it gets scratched or screwed up, my original DVD is still safe at home and it doesn't cast me another twenty bones. Also, I gotta tell ya, I just LOVE the fact that I can put the damn disc in, press play and watch the movie. I HATE DVD menus, hate previews, hate extras, and hate "remote" games. Just let me watch the movie, already. This issue along justifies the creation of a CVD library from one's DVD stash, and seems a viable fair use.

Anyway, I usually use CCE's CQ mode, with 300 min, and between 1456 and 2248 max, setting the "Q" factor to anything between 18 and 24 and the other slider (smooth/complex) to 12.

For 24fps "film" material, I get EXCELLENT results.


I've fit every Pixar style film I own on DVD onto a single CD with darn near ZERO artifacting except in scenes with so much motion you can't really notice anyway. (I also have some tricks in terms of preprocessing that save me some bits, but that's my secret).


For "live" movies, though, I usually use 2 CDs for 16:9 or 2.35:1 widescreen titles and 3 cds for pan and scan stuff.

For anything other than HDTV, the CVD resolution is the perfect trade-off between detail and quality.

[guitar_george_skank]

bigmicka:

I'm not sure i've understood you correctly. If you keep the same levels are you talking about average bitrates like 4000Kb/sec, 5000Kb/sec etc, just like the actual DVD? Obviously with a bitrate that high the quality is DVD standard? What figures are you getting from Smart Ripper and where?
Sorry if I sound ignorant.

GGS.

PS Most DVD's I've seen have an avgerage bitrate of about 4000-6000Kb/sec. If we take an average of 5000, then we get the following figures.

DVD - 5000Kb/sec Avg, 9800Kb/sec Maximum
CVD - 2500Kb/sec Avg, 4900Kb/sec Maximum (Half the resolution)
VCD - 1250Kb/sec Avg, 2450Kb/sec Maximum (Quarter the resolution)

The quality per pixel is the same for each one. Of course the higher the resolution then the sharper the picture, but the quality per pixel should be the same. This assumes that 2 or more pass VBR is being used with as low a minimum as possible. I know that the figures are not VCD or CVD standard but just give an example of how similar quality can be acheived. I personally use 0Kb/sec min, 1900-2500Kb/sec avg, and 4500Kb/sec maximum. When i use these figures I can't tell the difference on my TV between the DVD and the CVD.

Anyway, this is just my humble opinion. Everyone has different standards, tastes etc. I haven't tried watching a CVD on my PC so I don't know how that would look, but for TV it's the best (again, IMHO).

Cheers.

[SingSing]

I used TMPGenc to make CVD.
What does CCE encoder comapre ?
How much sdoes CCE encoder cost ?

[DJRumpy]

I think the general consensus is that CCE delivers a superior MPEG-2, or same quality MPEG as TMPGenc, but in a fraction of the time it takes TMPGenc.

Cost: If you have to ask, you can't afford it.

http://www.cinemacraft.com/eng/purchase.html

[SingSing]

I assume the different in mpeg2 quality only
showed up in video captured encoding.

DVD rip is pretty noise-less, so both
encoder's output should be pretty much the same.

Is these assumption true ?

[DJRumpy]

CCE doesn't offer all of the filtes, and tweaks the TMPGenc does. Removing them from the picture, and I think they look almost identical. For me, it was all a matter of how long it took to encode, and not the quality.

I have heard that for some reason, CCE does not seem to perform well with MPEG-1 though. Dunno why. TMPGenc is the clear winner there.

[D_Knife]

Yeah I agree there - TMPEGenc is the best for Mpeg 1 - I have had CCE corrupt frames and produce invalid streams on mpeg1

[wway]

Regarding CVD bitrate. I like to compare CVD bitrate in relation to SVCD standard bitrate of 2520.

Given SVCD is 480x480 at 2520 and CVD is 352x480, the equivalent CVD bitrate would be 1848.

(480x480)/2520 = (352x480)/1848

This means you can get more CVD video on an 80min cd-r at the same pixel/bitrate ratio as a SVCD.

CVD = 52 min 50 sec (at 224 audio)
SVCD = 39 min 54 sec (at 224 audio)

HOWEVER, an SVCD at 2520 bitrate will look better than a CVD at 1848 bitrate because of the higher horizontal resolution. BUT, not much better in my opinion. I'd rather have the extra minutes that CVD allows.

It has been pointed out that CVD looks bad on a wide screen HDTV. So, keep that in mind. I have not seen CVD on a wide screen.

wway

[bigmicka]

gutiar_george,

i guess i have been looking at dvd's with low bitrates. aussie movie "he died with a felafel in his hand" only had a max bit rate of 2700. i used the standard 2520.

"Ferris Buellers day off" also had a low bit rate. lol they are the last ones that i did so fresh in my mind. anything before that is a blur.

mic

[guitar_george_skank]

wway:

I couldn't agree more.

bigmicka:

I ripped Blade 2 which has an average bitrate of around 6000Kb/sec!! Try that bitrate on a CVD! Mind you, i encoded onto 3 CD's at 2689 (I know it's an XCVD or XSVCD or whatever you want to call it) and if you did not know better you would think you were watching the DVD.

Basically, anything from 2100 - 2520 will give fantasic results on a CVD. Mind you 1900 is still very good and gives you 51mins per 80min CD.

Lets hear a big HOORAY for CVD!

GGS.

[shochan]

What is with all this cvd stuff. it sounds like a xvcd to me. is that what you folks call it now.

[wway]

What is with all this cvd stuff. it sounds like a xvcd to me. is that what you folks call it now.

Actually, CVD is MPEG-2 at 352x480 NTSC or 352x576 PAL. Click on the link below. Lots of excellent information.

http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/userguides/98177.php

wway

[MrKGB]

I was playing with CVD encoding yesterday and I agree that for most jobs it is very good. I was encoding an old Video8 film and I couldn't see much difference between VCD and SVCD even on PC playing with PowerDVD.
I noticed though that CCE 4 pass VBR2500 was not giving great results in CVD encoding. Tmpgenc encoded the same clip MUCH better!
In SVCD encoding both encoders produced very similar results, with Tmpgenc slightly better.
It looks like CCE has a general problem with encoding low res material.

[DJRumpy]

You should recheck your settings. CCE typcially produces equal or better quality for any MPEG2 format. Check you final output resolution, using an MPEGInfo tool too verify the bitrate and resolution. Some options in CCE, like 'DVD Compliant' will resize your final output if your not careful. Resizing to a higher resolution while keeping CVD bitrates would negate any benifit of CVD at 352 horizontal, and could potentially make your project look much worse.