Reaaallly need some help on my TMPGEnc NTSC Interlaced setti

[rhuala2]

I feel like I'm running into a brick wall here with TMPGEnc, and it's starting to reeeaaly hurt

Here's what I am trying to do. I have a bunch of Star Trek TNG episode DVD's. Most of the episodes I don't like but there are a few I really like, so I am trying to make some 'best of' DVD-R's with 4 episodes per 1 DVD-R. Each episode is about 45 mins long so 4x45=180min, which means I need a bitrate of 3000kb/s.

My problem is that TMPGEnc just does not give me decent quality. I have encoded about 50 movie DVD's and they all look fine I would say very close to the original with slight combing or pixelation at times, very acceptable. But with these stupid tv episodes I get crap, major combing and when I switch to interlace for encode mode or check deinterlace or switch fields I get major jerkiness (image studders on panning).

I have read thru many posts now and many more guides and can't find a definitive answer here. People either get the combing or the jerkiness. I'm almost ready to completely give up on TMPGEnc.

If you have successfully encoded any NTSC 4:3 interlaced material with TMPGEnc would u PLEASE post ur setting here.

Here is the setting that probably works the best for me (tried about 20 now):


-------- PAGE 1 ----------------
Size: 720x480
Aspect Ratio: 4:3
Frame Rate: 29.97 - need this for it to work in Meastro
Rate Control Mode: Auto VBR (3000 kb/s)

Profile &Level: Main Profile & Mainlevel
Vid Format: NTSC
Encode Mode: Interlace
YUV format: 4:2:0
DC component precision: 8 bits
Motion seach precision: High quality (slow)

-------- PAGE 2 ----------------
Video Source Type: Interlaced
Field Order: Top field first (Field A) - Field B is less jerky but more combing
Source aspect ratio: 4:3 525 line (NTSC)

Checked:
Ghost reduction
Deinterlace(None)

-------- PAGE 3 ----------------
Left alone all but tried checking/unchecking 'forced picture type setting', read this in one guide.


I've flipped back and forth between filed A and field B, turned on/off ghost reduction, turned on/off deinterlacing, tried all 4 encode modes on page 1, tried different motion search percisions and still crap Any links to guides or anything would be appreciated. Thanks.

I'm dieing here, someone please throw me a bone... should I drop TMPGEnc all together and go to CCE (which I don't have) ???

Viewing material on Sony GW XBR LCD (50" HDTV), Progressive scan DVD player (Panny RP-82)

rhuala
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Maxtor 80GB, 7200rpm, ATA66 Hard Drive
Sony DRU500A DVD Burner

[DJRumpy]

You should see if your material is telecined. If it is, you should be removing the pulldown flags, so that the video your converting to SVCD is progressive. That will eliminate the interlace artifacts altogether.

http://www.lukesvideo.com

Check the 'Classifying Hi-Res' section for details on identifying telecined/interlaced material.

I believe the Star Trek NextGen DVD's are telecined, which means when you extract them, you should be using the FORCE FILM option in DVD2AVI. Someone should be able to confirm if they are interlaced, as I don't own them, but I've heard quite a few conversations about them.

[C53248]

I don't know anything about Star Trek TNG DVD's in particular. TV shows are generally not telecined, but rather 29.97 fps interlaced.

Most of your settings look good.

You should definitely UNcheck the deinterlace filter. It will only do harm, regardless of your video type. It will cause jerky motion, etc. It's a necessary evil if you are putting non-telecined interlaced video onto a standard VCD, but you are making DVD's so it's just self-abuse.

- If the source video is 24 fps (23.976 fps) progressive you can get DVD2AVI to output it as 24 fps by using its Forced FILM setting (Video menu > Field Operations > Forced FILM). Don't mess with the field order. If that seems to work, then in TMPGEnc, on the Advanced tab, set the video source to Non-interlace (field order will be inapplicable), and on the Video tab set Encode mode to "3:2 pulldown when playback".

- If the video was filmed at 24 fps and telecined to 30 fps (29.97 fps), then you can use TMPGEnc's inverse telecine filter to get back to the original 24 fps, and encode as otherwise described above. For DVD, that's an optional step. It could improve your encoding quality, but it can on rare occasions make mistakes leaving slight imperfections.

- If the video is 30 fps interlace (either because it was filmed that way or because it was telecined to that), you can just encode it that way. Leave the settings as you describe, but uncheck the deinterlace filter. And most likely it's "Bottom field first (field B)".

Also, uncheck the Ghost reduction filter. Video from DVD should not have any ghosting, and using the filter will add distortion.

Leave the "Force picture type setting" unchecked. It's not related to your trouble.

Also, you can try TMPGEnc's Project Wizard. It can sort out most of this for you.

Hope this helps.

[rhuala2]

Thanks for the reply, I think I have things looking pretty good now. Even with a bitrate of 3000, my wife and I can hadly tell the difference between the original and my encoded version. The real key was changing the setting in DVD2AVI away from FILM and to NONE.

Another important setting was using field A, if I choose B it really stutters and looks jerky. Also the Deinterlace check makes it look a little sharper in slow motion scenes and doesn't appear to effect motion or panning scenes either I can't quite explain that and it may be my imagination but I've left it checked. I can't have fps at 24 becasue I'm using Maestro and it only accepts 29.97.

Your right about ghosting it does nothing so I've left it off, other than that my settings are the same as posted above. I really believe the 2 keys were using Field A and not using FILM on DVD2AVI. Looks pretty good now, I've got batch encoding going and have about 10 episodes lined up over night. Thanks C53248 and DJRumpy!

You think I should uncheck deinterlace, maybe it'll effect my quality later on? I've only done 60s clips and they look fine with it checked but maybe I'm not seeing the whole picture here. What do u predict will happen if I leave it checked, I'll look for the results... I'm 2 episodes into my 10 batch I'd hate to stop everything just to go back and uncheck deinterlace...

rhuala

[C53248]

29.97 fps video is interlaced, which means that it is really 59.94 fields per second, where each field is every other line of video. That's why when things go wrong you get "comb" effects, lots of little horizontal lines, on the vertical edges of moving objects. With the Forced FILM setting turned off, you are probably giving 29.97 fps interlaced to TMPGEnc. That's no problem. TMPGEnc can encode that interlaced video straight to interlaced MPEG-2 video. But if you have TMPGEnc deinterlace it first, that's not good. With interlace video, you have two fields, each 1/60th second apart, to make one frame. The odd numbered horizontal lines are one field, the even lines are the other. They don't match up exactly, because during that 1/60 of a second, something moves. This is all good, because that's how the TV displays video, and probably how the TV show video was filmed. Deinterlacing takes away this behavior. There are two ways the deinterlace filter can work. It can merge the two fields together, in which case those comb effects become ghost effects. Or it can just drop one of the fields, e.g. the even one, and just double the lines of the one it keeps, in which case you eliminate the comb effects, but the video becomes jerkier, because you've lost some images of the motion. In both cases you lose vertical resolution, i.e. your 480 lines are really only showing 240 double-thick lines.

I recommend unchecking the deinterlace filter and getting the interlace to go through properly.

If you stop TMPEnc's batch process, it will give you a warning box something like, "Really stop? Yes/No". You can just leave that box unanswered while you burn a test disc. Then, when you're ready, you can (carefully) give it the answer to not stop, and it will continue what it was doing.

[spiderman2k1]

You might want to give DVD2One a try and see if you can make your own info file's with infoedit could also try instantcopy 7 easy or DVDXcopy Me I I'll way's take the easy rode

[rhuala2]

You might want to give DVD2One a try and see if you can make your own info file's with infoedit could also try instantcopy 7 easy or DVDXcopy Me I I'll way's take the easy rode

And how are u going to create a menu sytem so u can select, say episode #4? And see a title with a brief description of the episode. And how are you going to split and join episode #2 from disk 8 with episode #4 from Disk 1 ...etc. I use those programs only when I want dumb and fast copy...

Although DVDxcopy to me is useless, I never use that. Don't like the copy warning and the FBI warning, sure I could edit the ifo files but why not just use IFOEdit to split without all the crap...

rhuala