CinemaCraft Encoder and Windows XP

[theaussie2]

Hi there,
I Cannot get CCE to do ANYTHING on WinXP
Running WinXP Pro 256mb Athlon 1.8g.
After I found out to Framserve from VDUB to CCE, I couldnt wait to test it out - no luck. Wont even encode an AVI on its own - sits there Transcoding nothing, and task manager says it is waiting for a respone if I try to shut it down.
I set it up on another puter with a PIII 430 Win2000 Pro and it works fine!!! DANG IT FLYS!!!
Anyone have any clues??
Aussie2

[DJRumpy]

Try a few different sources to encode. It could be a codec conflict. Try an uncompressed AVI.

[doson]

I used to have such problems with CCE and it took me a while to solve them. Luckily, this forum gave me some answers:
First, try using VDub and save a new copy of the file (direct stream copy on both audio and video) as 'Old Format AVI' (file menu), it worked for me.
Second, CCE has problem with 48 KHz sound on some systems, try to frameserve the file, or save an new copy of it with 44.1 KHz sound and it might work.
Anyway, for me all the problems "dissapeared" when I bought my current machine...

[DJRumpy]

I've never heard that one doson. Did you ever determine why your CCE install was choking on 48Khz? Bad crack (er..patch)?

[marvel2020]

Make sure when you frameserve with VDUB to CCE that you select a wav file in the audio tab. CCE will not encode without it, or you could use a avs script and fool CCE.

Also run the compatabilty wizard in WinXP set it to work with CCE under Win95.

Thats what i done when i was having problems in WindowsXP and CCE and it worked for me.

I'm now using Windows2000 PRO, but if i frameserve to CCE i always make sure that i select a wav file when doing so.

[doson]

DJRumpy, my CCE instalation is crack-free... I use it only rarely when I don't care about the logo. CCE does have problems sometimes with 48 KHz sound, and I'm not the only one who had it, anyway, I don't have this problem now.

[theaussie2]

I tried all those settings...with/without audio etc and nothing worked... EXCEPT... I aced the directory file where it did work and copied into the CCE directory on the stubborn one and.... BINGO!!!
Now, I dont know why this is, but I had installed the AVSREAD patch into TMPGenc. As a bonus, now VFAPI will open both .vdr and .avs scripts, and CCE gobbles 'em up and spits out an MPEG with OR without audio. Now why on earth would the AVSREAD patch make all this happen????
Oh, btw , CCE would not encode striaght from AVI either before I did this.... mystery, mystery.

Aussie2

[theaussie2]

ahhh.... oopsies?
Hey marvel, how did you frameserve from VDUB to CCE? Did you go via VFAPI, because I couldnt get it to recognise a .vdr until the aforementioned AVSread thing, It only had .d2v and .tpr as options.

Aussie2

[medievil]

run the auxsetup (Comes with vdub) and make sure the frame server support is installed. open your AVI, click file and select frame serve. It will promt you for the name of the file. Save it as (Whatever).avi.vdr
open cce, right click and ADD, in the drop down select all files then load the .vdr
cce works fine this way, but using avisynth is 75% fasterI get better than real time encodes with dvd rips (dvd rips only need one pass because of the high quality source)

[theaussie2]

thanks for that medievil.... yes that works just fine....
I'm only slowly getting this framserving thing under control. I have some 3rd party rather badly encoded VCD's and AVI's that need reworking ( bad indexing, dark etc) and I really like VDUBs filters previews and cropping previews.... now if only I were smart enough to write a nice GUI for AVISynth
As a matter of quality... is it better to convert a seq.dat back to AVI first or just rejig the mpeg itself?
Aussie2

[DJRumpy]

theaussie2, once you get used to AVISynth, it's much quicker, and more flexible than VDub. The web site has complete documentation on the scripts, usually with examples (I just copied/pasted these into a local text file for reference). With extra plugins, you can read/rip straight from DVD to encoder (via DVD2AVI project file). You can also set your AVS scripts to open directly in any media player, to quickly preview anything. I keep a couple of scripts for each Aspect Ratio to quickly resize/crop/letterbox. All I have to do is plug in the AVISource parameter at the beginning of the script. In combination with CCE, you can get realtime encodes of MPEG-2 video if your system is fast enough.

The rest of it is plug and pray (er...play) 8)

[theaussie2]

Yah DJRUMPY!!!!
I was putting off digging into AVISYNTH 'cos I'm basically a lazy GUI kinda guy - but you are right - providing you dont need any fancy visual aids (preview-type) like color/contrast etc it flies!!! and YUV too.
Good Idea to keep templates too - like TMPGenc.... thanks for making me see the error of my ways....

Aussie2 (converted)

[DJRumpy]

You can also adjust brightness, contrast, sharpen, blur, color levels, etc. Some of those functions are built in (sharpen/blur/contrast), and some require a plugin and one additional line in your script to call the plugin(s).

LoadPlugin("c:\plugins\filename.dll","","")

AVISynth is also an excellent way to convert between FILM (23.976) and PAL (25 FPS) using AssumeFPS

[esmerelda1983]

i also have disscovered the speed of Avisynth compared to VFAPI ( for me Avisynth is twice as fast!!) the first time i had a look at Avisynth i put it away coz it looked so damn confusing.....but now i kinda understand the way it all works. i beleive that every1 should take the time and have a look at Avisynth coz it is well worth your time.

i just got 1 question.......how fast must your pc be if you want realtime encodes.....4 pass vbr CCE

[DJRumpy]

I usually have to serve with a minimum of a resize, and a border add, and I get about .90 for speed on a Pentium IV 1.5Ghz. I'm guessing if I just encoded, without any changes, I would easily exceed the 1x mark.

[esmerelda1983]

thanx

your doing 700 million cycles more then i am and i am only getting 0.3 i need to upgrade

[DJRumpy]

Intel is about to enable hyperthreading on all of the PIV 3GHz processors, meaning the bottom will drop out on the prices for the current crop of 2.5 and lower. It's a good time to buy.

[jeremymiller]

I might have missed it, but where can I find some of those sample AVIsynth scripts? Apprecitated it. Thanks.l

[DJRumpy]

www.videotools.net

Look in the Documentation section. There are also guides there.