question about cce passes

[namreh]

Can somebody answer these questions for me?

1) Quality wise, is 2 pass vbr with TMPGenc equal to 2 pass vbr with cce? or are more passes needed?

2) In avi2svcd, is setting multipass pass vbr number of passes to 1 the same as selecting one pass vbr?

3) I read that selecting 3 passes in cce is actually doing 4 passes (because of the vaf?) and that in terms of encoding, anything beyond 4 passes is wasted. Does this mean I should set the number of passes to 3 (which will make 4 passes) or actually set it to 4?

4) Would there be a very noticible quality degradation if I lower the number of passes to 2 (or even 1)? I'll be mainly encoding anime movies.

5) Is there a way to encode movies with ac3 to play on stand alone players using only avi2svcd?

Sorry if any of these questions are too stupid/noobish. Any help would be appreciated.

[Vejita-sama]

Can somebody answer these questions for me?

1) Quality wise, is 2 pass vbr with TMPGenc equal to 2 pass vbr with cce? or are more passes needed?

Most people seem to think that CCE does a better job of encoding MPEG2 and TMPGenc does a slight better job of encoding MPEG1. I pretty use CCE only these days because I only do MPEG2 and I think the quaility is better and it's MUCH faster than TMPGenc.

3pass in CCE (ie 4 total) takes about the same time as CBR encode in TMPGenc.

2) In avi2svcd, is setting multipass pass vbr number of passes to 1 the same as selecting one pass vbr?

I don't use this program, sorry. But I'd assume so

3) I read that selecting 3 passes in cce is actually doing 4 passes (because of the vaf?) and that in terms of encoding, anything beyond 4 passes is wasted. Does this mean I should set the number of passes to 3 (which will make 4 passes) or actually set it to 4?

In CCE the number of passes you enter is the number of VBR passes, after the CBR VAF encode is complete. In TMPGenc 2pass VBR really is two passes (the CBR encode + 2nd VBR pass). Most people think that 4 VBR passes is over kill (ie. 5 total encodes). I normally set VBR=3, this works out fine for me.

4) Would there be a very noticible quality degradation if I lower the number of passes to 2 (or even 1)? I'll be mainly encoding anime movies.

This is a personal choice, acceptable quaility to me might look like crap to you. And it depends on the quaility of your source, you max supported bitrate, filters, etc. For best results you want CBR at your standalones max supported bitrate. VBR encodes are for when you choose to use less than max bitrate. So you really should encode a 1-2min clip with different settings and see what looks best to your eye.

5) Is there a way to encode movies with ac3 to play on stand alone players using only avi2svcd?

It can be done but it should NOT be done. Neither VCD or SVCDs truely support AC3 sound. However, some DVD players (very few) will play xSVCDs with AC3 audio. Again I don't use avi2svcd but I DOUBT it does this. And again you really don't want to...

[ZippyP.]

So you really should encode a 1-2min clip with different settings and see what looks best to your eye.

Sorry to nitpick but...1-2 minute encodes with VBR won't give an accurate reflection of the final fully encoded product. Multi-pass VBR analyzes the entire sequence and assigns bitrate according to the amount of action that it detects in each scene (keeping within user settings of course). Higher action demands a higher rate, low action a lower rate and bitrate is assigned accordingly. Picking a small clip to encode will not represent the final result which is when the entire clip is analyzed and bitrate calculated and assigned.

I'm not sure if that's what you meant but I didn't want anyone to get a wrong idea.

[Vejita-sama]

No you are of course correct. I kind of forgot about that aspect of VBR encoding. When I use to make xSVCDs I had a general rule of thumb that worked out well for me. Less than 60min/80min CDR, 3pass VBR (300,1800,2520) with audio at 128kbit/s.

But I've since stepped up to DVD-RW and really don't remember all the 'tips & tricks' setting wised I used for x(S)VCDs. And it really is a personal choice. Plus it varies from video to video (that is high motion vs. low motion video).

Anime is really hit and miss with this. Some series are nothing but a collection of stills, others are non-stop high speed motion.

[ZippyP.]

One day we'll all have DVD-R and then we can all forget about VCD/SVCD!

[videocheez]

I have been attempting multipass encoding with CCE and when ever I select two or three passes under the multipass VBR tab, CCE will crash. Here is the last script that I tried.

LoadPlugin("C:\Program Files\DVD2SVCD\MPEG2Dec\MPEG2DEC2.dll")
avisource("elor12nb.avi")
BicubicResize(352,480,0.0,0.6)
ConvertToYUY2()
ResampleAudio(44100)

Do you have an suggestion on how to keep CCE from crashing?
Below is copy of the logfile.
cce created.
encoder initialized.
>> received encoding start notification
encoding started at 2003/03/21 07:32:46.
>> received encoding start notification
>> received encoding stop notification
encoding stopped at 2003/03/21 09:48:21.
sync stopped.
fdev0 closed.
fdev1 closed.
uncompressed YUY2.
cce created.
encoder initialized.
>> received encoding start notification
encoding started at 2003/03/21 09:48:38.>> received encoding start notification

>> received encoding stop notification
encoding stopped at 2003/03/21 09:48:46.
cce encoding failed: *** Could not write to the file <\\DON\SharedDocs\shared video\movies\the lord of the rings\lord of rings 1\lord2\elor12nb.mpv> ***
The handle is invalid.


[Windows error code: 0x6 6]
sync stopped.
fdev0 closed.
fdev1 closed.
uncompressed YUY2.
cce created.
encoding canceled.
encoder initialized.
encoding started at 2003/03/21 17:04:46.>> received encoding start notification

>> received encoding start notification
encoding stopped at 2003/03/21 17:04:46.>> received encoding stop notification

sync stopped.
fdev0 closed.
fdev1 closed.
>>>> Performance <<<<
Source : 0.042 seconds (1 frames)
Elapsed: 1.656 seconds
---------------------------------------------------
>> File reading 0.021 1.254 %
>> Decoding 0.000 0.000 %
>> RGB -> YUY2 0.001 0.041 %
---------------------------------------------------
>> MPEG encoding 1.635 98.705 %
fexp thread terminated.
***** Cinema Craft Encoder SP shutting down at 2003/03/21 17:05:09 *****
Thanks in advance,

VC