frame serv to CCE

[jerets]

hey all. ive done a lot of reading and testing over the past few days and still can't come up with anything im capping from tv and looking to make high quality SVCDs with CCE.

I cap with Vdub 29.97fps 720x480 Huffy compression, uncompressed audio 16bit Stereo (or also known as "CD quality" in vdub).

Im running "CCE SP Ver. 2.66.01.07".

This has been my process:
1) i open my avi cap in vdub, resize it w/ Video filters to:
New width 480x360
Filter Mode Precise bicubic (A=-1.00)
Frame width: 480 Frame height: 480

I also add deinterlace duplicate field 1

2) Now i go to File-> "Start Frame server", i then save the vdr file as "cap.vdr" in the file name field (only way it'll save as a vdr file)

3) Now i open up CCE. I right click and add my vdr and then double click on it. For "Video Setting - Mode" i go w/ "MPEG-2 (ES, Multipass VBR)" - 2pass
I set the bitrate as follows: Avg: 2496 Min: 300 Max: 2496
I change the audio quality to 244 and then click "Encode Now"

4) The following happens (in this order):
a) takes a bit for it to do the vaf
b) then it begins "Pass 1/2" and at the top it says "Saving cap.mpv"
c) just before it begins the 2 Pass i get the following (in this order) as error msgs/pop ups:

"acmStreamConvert() failed (11)." i click "OK" then get, "cce encoding failed: Audio data seems shorter than Video"

d) after clicking "OK" to both errors, it continues onto the 2ed pass.

At this point it finishes out and leaves me with 3 files from the encode:
a mpv file (the biggest), a mpa file (second largest), and a vaf file (pretty small).

I don't know what im doing wrong (or right for that matter.. )..? Im trying to end up w/ a mpg that i can burn to CD and watch like any other.. Could someone point me in the right direction and give me some tips? Im sure theres quite a few settings or things i could do differently to end me up where im looking to get.

Thanks guys
jerets

[adam]

Well you may not be doing anything wrong.

The vaf file is the video information file. In multipass encoding, each time CCE does another pass it writes the info to this file, and then uses it for further encoding. Once your encode is done, you can just delete this file.

In CCE, ES sets the output to elementary streams. That means the video and audio are saved separately. Your mpv is your video and your mpa is your audio. Now assuming the audio is fine, I don't know if it is because of that error you got, then you simply need to multiplex these together. You can do this in either TMPGenc's mpeg tools or in bbmpeg. These are located in the tools section and there are guides on how to use them to your left. If you had set CCE to PS (program stream) then it would have exported a ready to burn mpg, but its actually better to do ES and multiplex later because the fact is that CCE is not very good with audio, which is probably why you got that error. For now, your mpv and mpa are probably fine, so check the mpa and see if it plays and if its all there, and if so just multiplex them together and your done.

In the future do this...Once you've got your footage ready in vdub, set the audio to full processing mode and click file/save wav. Now frameserve to CCE and UNCHECK audio and encode. You will get an mpv. Now take the wav file that vdub made and encode it to mp2 (same as mpa) using TMPGenc, BeSweet, or Head3che, again these are located in the tools section and guides are to your left. Now multiplex these into an mpg. Like I said, you definitely want to do the audio in a separate program other than CCE, it prevents alot of problems and is probably higher quality too.

[Vejita-sama]

Actually the problem is with CCE 2.66, you can't frameserve with it. Only with CCE 2.5 sp.

[jerets]

adam: ah man.. your a super help. i was starting to question whether id get any informal replys such as yours b/c my length may have turned ppl away hehe. i appreciate it.. im going to give this a try and let you know. thanks again man.. ! i really appreciate it

Vejita-sama: ... yes you can, you just have to go about it differently :P

jerets

[jerets]

he he.. wow.. i can't believe it.. it actually worked thats about as far as ive gotten yet..
but for some reason im ending up w/ a real stretched out picture (should be full screen half the top and bottom has black bars and in the middle is the super stretched picture. but other then that i was super impressed. ^ what could i change to fix my picture (as far as all the different stuff i did w/ the dimensions?).

Thanks i really appreciate all the help
thanks a ton
jerets

[adam]

Glad it worked, so far at least.

How are you testing this file? Windows media player won't recognize the aspect ratio, so there's no telling how it will look.

Let me get this straight, its a fullscreen source but the visible picture is essentially playing in a small box in the center of the screen? If your playing it on your dvd player make sure you didn't set the aspect ratio to 16:9, few dvd players support this in a SVCD.

[jerets]

no.. i know its fooked. i use windvd which plays svcds and vcds how they would look on a tv set

ill walk back thru some of the sizing stuff..

in vdub (b4 i serv it over to cce i resize it to the following:

New width 480x360
Filter Mode Precise bicubic (A=-1.00)
Frame width: 480 Frame height: 480

^^^ could that be it i wonder? what should i have set that to? hmmm
thanks man. i appreciate the help !
jerets

[jerets]

adam: i think i figured it out. i don't think i need to resize at all before frame serving.. just let cce do the all the work and it comes out great !
thanks man
i appreciate all thehelp once again
thanks
jerets

[BJ_M]

Actually the problem is with CCE 2.66, you can't frameserve with it. Only with CCE 2.5 sp.

you can frame serve fine w/ 2.66 , i do it all the time

[BJ_M]

just wondering why you are de-interlacing your video capture? if you are watching it on a TV - its not going to play back that smooth .. if your going to watch it only on a pc - you can de-interlace it .


i notice a lot of people de-interlacing when they should not ...

[adam]

Jerets, CCE doesnt resize, so if your source is 720x480 than this is what the output will be as well. You will be making a non-compliant SVCD (XSVCD) and 720x480 is really too high of a resolution to use for this bitrate, but if this is what you want then you can do this.

I think your problem is just with your resizing amounts in Vdub, but I'm not completely clear on the nature of your source. It is full screen correct? You don't want any black bars correct? If so then under "new width" and "new height" set these both to 480x480. This resizes the viewable picture. You've got fullscreen so you've got nothing but picture, essentially no black bars. So you need this resolution to be 480x480.

You resized to 480x360 and added letterboxing (Black Bars) to "fill in the gap" to make it 480x480. This puts the picture in the center and adds black bars to the top and bottom, something you probably don't want to do with a fullscreen 4:3 source.

Try setting it like this and do a short test encode. Also make sure you set the aspect ratio in CCE to 4:3. It would suck to finally get it working in WinDVD only to find that its messed up on your hardware DVD Player.

[jerets]

thanks a ton adam ! you were right again.. he he.. problem fixed. cap is in prefect paportion.. audio is great.. and you can tell that the video would look real nice too if it was just cleaned up a little.

heres the problem im having w/ the picture tho.. its pretty boxy and its like color faded dots and boxes are all over the place.. its hard to explain or even show w/ screenshots.. ill post some screen shots that show it pretty bad.. trust me.. the pictures might not look too bad.. but its super bad when it plays..
check it out:





any idea what it could be?
there seems to be a lot of different filters in vdub and CCE aswell.. what could help me clear this up?
thanks again for help ! uve been a super help
jerets

[jerets]

well i mixed up some settings in CCE under "Quality".. i made some things better and some things worse heh what settings are best to use on average? Thanks jerets

[adam]

Yes that was the first thing I was going to tell you to adjust. The Image Quality Priority essentially adjusts how large your bitrate peaks and valleys are. Basically, the lower the number, the less bitrate it will apply to scenes that don't need it and the more it will apply to scenes that do. This is good for fast motion movies like action flicks, or in instances where you have tons of bitrate to spare. The problem with this is that CCE may take too much bitrate away from those scenes and you get the often quoted "mosquito noise" which is much of what you see in those pics of yours. Again, I'm going to have to defer to the knowledge of those who do alot of capturing. I primarily work with DV and DVD sources so the settings probably aren't comparable. For typical movies I usually use a setting of around 23 or 24. For action movies I use about 14 and for very smooth movies like chick flicks I use sometimes as high as 35 or 40.

If you have CCE's noise filter on then turn it off, I have heard it is not so good.

I don't use 2.66 and my version doesn't have nearly as many quality settings as yours, so I really can't help you there. You may want to use some light noise reduction in vdub. This will make your source more compressible and you won't get as many macroblocks. Just don't go overboard, moderation is the key.

Just from looking at your pics, I'd say your image quality priority is too low.

[jerets]

there is not a "image quality priority" in the settings?

this is what it gives me after i click "Quality":

[adam]

Well I really can't help you there then. Read the manual, it should explain what everything does. Just try to find some settings that work for you. I'm guessing the image quality priority setting correspons to the easy/difficult setting, but just check the manual.

One thing that will help is to set your DC precision to 8. Its not recommend that you use higher DC unless your bitrate is at least 4mbits. This should be mentioned in the manual as well.

[BJ_M]

easy/difficult is almost the same as Image Quality Priority

[adam]

BJ_M in my 2.5 manual it states the exact opposite; alternate is best for interlaced and zigzag is best for progressive. Does the 2.6x manual state otherwise? Honestly, I can't see a difference either way though.

[BJ_M]

BJ_M in my 2.5 manual it states the exact opposite; alternate is best for interlaced and zigzag is best for progressive. Does the 2.6x manual state otherwise? Honestly, I can't see a difference either way though.

you were right - i was tired and mixed it up ... sorry ... my mistake :oops: (i will edit my post)


as for the difference -- in reality you really only notice a difference if you use the correct matrix for each (there are difference between types) ... will people tell the difference? - in most cases -> no

[jerets]

wow.. thanks guys! yea ive tried to read the manual too.. but i don't know what half the stuff means he he

you guys have been a super help thanks so much!!!

my encodes are already starting to look much better.. ill just have to keep trying different stuff from here.

Thanks a ton guys
its greatly appreciated!
jerets