Ripping and encoding anime/cartoons.

[Cheeksahoy]

Hey all,

I'm kinda new to all this business and so far I've only ripped and encoded one live action dvd to SVCD using DVD2SVCD. It turned out fabulous, spreading a 2 hour movie over 3 800meg discs (40min per CD for the mathematically challenged). Very pleased!

For my next trick, I tried an anime movie, this time fitting 45 min onto one CD. Now I've seen an hours worth of anime squeezed onto an SVCD and still look good but unfortunately mine looks like crap. It goes blocky whenver there's fast motion. My encoder is CCE and its set to 3 pass. Like I said, worked like a charm with my live action movie so what is it with my anime attempt? I would've thought that with the bland textures, there'd be an even better result but obviously I'm barking up the wrong tree. Any thoughts or recommendations?

Thanks, people.

[pire]

You might have to do IVTC, although for anime:

ANIME. Anime is the "I don't get no respect" bastard child of video encoding. But it shouldn't be. Because Anime NTSC DVDs are frequently the most difficult to IVTC properly, the greatest skill is required to work with them. As far as I know, for the best results, very few movies and none of the OVAs or TV series DVDs should be Force Filmed in DVD2AVI. On the other hand, almost all can be IVTC'd with good results (Neon Genesis Evangelion and Record Of Lodoss War being two possible major exceptions). With no other kinds of DVDs do you find more strongly held opinions about which IVTC to use and at what settings. So, to avoid the issue entirely, I'll just recommend studying the .avs carefully in VDub-Nandub before encoding. Know all the possible parameters and settings of the IVTC you choose to use and be prepared to use them. Unless the video stream is very clean, I also recommend using some kind of Deinterlacer to take care of any remaining interlacing of flapping mouths, dark areas, etc. For PAL Anime.

[TheLostTimberwolf]

Anime can be a major problem to rip/encode properly. I find that even when I allocate large bitrates, 2300 - 2500 it still can have noise and the blocks you mention are there also, not quite as noticable though as you say I must add.

If your encoding anime using CCE within DVD2SVCD I lower the image quality to around 7 , set it for a 3 pass, the anti noise filter i dont know if it has any effect im looking into that at the moment, so far though it doesnt seem to make a difference. I have noticed that the noise and blocks were less noticable in SVCD sizing than in CVD sizing(I havent tried VCD)

As for IVTC all My source dvd's are 25 fps and IVTC dont do much for them, so i dont know there.

May I ask which anime movie it was ?

ciao
TLTw

[macleod]

I am in the same boat (discussing the cartoon side of things) as you are with the resulting CVD looking like crap from DVD2SVCD (not DVD2SVCD's fault, but the encoder, which is CCE 2.50). I have made numerous posts about this subject and haven't come to any concrete solutions.

The cartoons I am talking about are the old ones (when I say old, I am talking about the Charlie Brown christmas, School house rock cartoons and not monsters inc cartoons). Anyway, I have achieve acceptable results (not perfect, but real close), using TMPGENC. From my readings and experience, TMPGENC does a MUCH better job on cartoons and a much better job of mpeg-1 video(VCD).

It basically has to do with the way old cartoons were drawn vs. today's cartoon making process, but anyway.....

Take a short at making the cartoon a VCD (or try it as CVD using TMPGENC in DVD2SVCD).

If you find something different or better, please post it back here.

[oldfart13]

You have to remember a few things about cartoons in general. Virtually all made for TV cartoons are 4 frames of animation per second and up. The max (like in the old Disney cartoons) is 24 frames per second which would be a horrendous cost nowadays. So, converting cartoons is going to be hit or miss. Anime is also problematic because of the limited framerate in old series and the "looks like cels but is actually drawn by computer" animation used today. That means for any given cartoon, there isn't going to be any standard for conversion. A friend of mine actually gets good results by using a non standard 15 frames per second when capping and encoding from there. Ditto on commercials (if you are collecting those) that are animated. No set framerate at all...