Dr Mordrid: TMPGenc/24fps/MF2(DVDWS)

[bitz4brainz]

As you may recall from earlier posts, I've been having trouble getting MF2 (or DVDWS, for that matter) to accept DVD-compliant MPEG2 video produced by TMPGenc.

Using PowerDVD, it plays beautifully as a generic MPG, but it stutters, gasps, and eventually freezes after it has been authored into a DVD. I've tried high and low bitrates, closed and open GOPs, VBR and CBR, system and elemental files -- everything. Except:

I have been using TMPGenc's IVTC filter on the video because it is film source. I specify 3:2 pulldown on playback. The results are remarkable (pre-MF2). Tonight in desperation I have just completed re-encoding without IVTC, and made a quickie DVD. This time, it works. So I am led to believe (tentatively) that MF2 doesn't like 24 frame progressive material. What a bummer. Because the video I produced tonight is significantly inferior (tho encoded with all the same high-quality settings). It seems to have lower resolution, less detail. And I get some interlacing artifacts.

You mentioned 24 frame in another post. Have you had success or problems getting these files into Ulead's products? Is there a trick?

Thanks...

[bitz4brainz]

DL'd the TMPGenc authoring package and got this thing to work.

[dchip]

Originally posted by bitz4brainz
DL'd the TMPGenc authoring package and got this thing to work.

I remember the early reviews here on the TMPGEnc authoring package were not very favorable. bitz4brainz, your comments here appear to suggest it worked well for you. If you don't mind, I would like to learn more about what you accomplished here. I'm a big user of TMPGEnc but I have never tried anything other than standard resolutions. I have not purchased or tried the authoring package but might do so if it lets me diversify my DVD-making a bit.

Thanks for any tips you might provide.

[bitz4brainz]

dchip,

I'll tell you what I know (and that won't take long ;-).

With TPMGenc, you can produce/encode mpeg 1/2 FILES that can be played on a computer. With an authoring package you can take those files and produce VCDs/SVCDs and DVDs that can be played on a DVD settop player (as well as a computer, using a software player). "Authoring" restructures the video and audio so that it will be recognized as a valid VCD/SVCD/DVD. But its primary function is to allow you do produce menus, chapters, and other features (additional audio tracks, etc). Most authoring packages include an integrated encoder, but quite often it isn't the best encoder or it doesn't allow you to fine tune the encoding the way TMPGenc does.

There are roughly three categories of authoring:

Consumer: USD$50 or so consumer software that offers "canned" (but modifiable) menus, chapters - and not much else. But they are wizard-driven and easy to use. Examples: TPMGenc DVD Author, Ulead Movie Factory, Pinnacle Expression, many others. Some USD$100 consumer video editing packages (Ulead's and Pinnacle's, for example) include basic DVD authoring. One other commonly-offered consumer feature is the ability to make your digital photos into slide shows with music and transitions, and include those as if they were a movie clips. They also include the ability to capture (if you have the hardware) and import video and audio that is not DVD-ready and convert it. People who want very high quality encoding will often use a separete encoder like TMPGenc, MainConcept, and use the authoring software just to produce the DVD.

Semi-Pro: These USD $300-500 packages allow much more creativity and customization in the menus, links, and buttons, and other things like additional audio tracks, Dolby Digital audio, etc. They include a better encoder with more twiddling. Example: Ulead DVD Workshop, Sonic's DVD It Pro, etc. (Interestingly, Ulead's entry-level and midlevel packages use the same encoder and its a pretty decent one from MainConcept.)

Pro: Often costing $thousands, these are used to produce commercial DVDs - the ones you buy at the store. Scenarist, others.

You can also make DVDs the very hard way, using free software tools. Some people enjoy that. I don't. But if you do, go to DVDRHelp.com for loads of info and downloads.

I use DVD authoring for two things: Converting videos (often from laserdisc); and distributing video that I shoot and edit. I use the consumer products. TMPGenc's DVD Author is a very rudimentary package, to put it charitably. It does menus and chapters and has only six templates. But it was able to accomplish what I needed in a particular situation, where others failed, and I didn't need fancy menus and stuff. In that situation, it saved my life. I hesitate to overrate it. Someday it might have enough features to make the grade with its competition.

Of the other packages (I have tried several) I find Ulead's MovieFactory quite useable and reasonably flexible. One thing I like is that it does both NTSC and PAL. If I were to upgrade to semi-pro I would look at Media Studio or Workshop. When Adobe comes out with their semi-pro product I might give it a try, because I already use Premiere and other Adobe products.

There you go. All I know. There are others on this board who know MUCH more than I. Happy DVD authoring!

[dchip]

Thanks for the response.

I have been doing some authoring already after encoding with TMPGEnc or Mainconcept encoder. I use a cheap package from Dazzle called DVD Complete and it works very well for me.

I am more interested in hearing about the 24p encoding you are doing with TMPGEnc. Are you starting with 24p material and what are the steps you are using to get everything to come out right? Are you really getting a film look and, if your source is 29.97, how does the conversion work? It all sounds pretty interesting and I want to give it a try. Thanks again.

[bitz4brainz]

dchip,

The movie was Star Wars (original version), which I have on CAV laserdisc. I captured it by feeding the analog video/audio to my Sony DV camcoder, then by Firewire to my PC. I used Scenalyzer capture software, but that's probably not significant. The result were 720x480 AVI files that use DV compression, which is about 5:1, and include 48KHz PCM stereo audio. About 26GB of files, not counting the bonus materials. They played great as-is, except for sawtooth effect resulting from the interlacing. As you must know, video is interlaced, and that is further complicated in NTSC because of telecine (aka 3-2 pulldown) when 24 frame film is scanned to 30 "frame"/60 field video. (PAL telecines by speeding the film to 25 fps, which is a better match for 25 frame / 50 field/sec video)

For more info, study this article:

http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volume_7_4/dvd-benchmark-part-5-progressive-10-2000.html

The interlacing and pulldown is VERY noticeable on a computer, which is by nature progressive scan. A good MPEG/DVD player software can compensate to some/great extent on the fly. Same with a progressive scan DVD set-top. I decided to compensate in the encoding, which is something TMPGenc can do. On the second page of the wizard you are asked about content of video source, with the choices "Video movie" (default) and "Film movie". Select "Film". This results in two changes to what TMPGenc does: First, it applies an inverse telecine filter (aka IVTC) to the source, which intelligently recombines every 10 fields into 4 progressive movie frames - in other words, what I was calling "24p". (23.97 actually) Second, it sets a flag in the MPEG that tells the player to redo the 3-2 pulldown (to 29.97 fps) on playback...IF NECESSARY. It would be necessary for a TV. But it isn't necessary for a computer or a progressive-scan monitor, which are what I primarily use for DVD watching.

I believe that IVTC can be done better and smarter BEFORE the movie is encoded than afterwards. A second benefit is that the movie can be more efficiently encoded when it is 24p.

The final result IMO was stupendous. I was happy enough with the visual quality that I changed my mind about encoding at 8000 Kb/sec across two discs, and went with 4300 2-pass VBR on a single disc. 8000 was only a marginal improvement, at the cost of flipping two discs. And remember that the source was laserdisc, which is slightly shy of DVD quality.

But I would caution you that your mileage may vary. The quality of the IVTC filter's output is very much dependent on the quality of the telecined source. (Read the link above to understand the issues.) I suspect I was lucky...the Sony camcorder's DV chip produced good clean material, and I did minimal editing. The original laserdisc transfer may have had something to do with it too. But I think that a Sony digital camcorder with passthrough makes an awesome capture card...if you have enough disk and are running XP.

Star Wars is 2.35:1 aspect ratio and is letterboxed on the laserdisc. For the heck of it, I trimmed 60 lines of the top and the bottom of the frame, and then specified 16:9. This can be done in TMPGenc. That worked, too.

I also extracted the bonus materials for a second disc. Now that I've worked through the issues and made all the mistakes, I will do the other two movies in the trilogy, and can put away those clunky laserdiscs.

[colinbr]

Star Wars is 2.35:1 aspect ratio and is letterboxed on the laserdisc. For the heck of it, I trimmed 60 lines of the top and the bottom of the frame, and then specified 16:9. This can be done in TMPGenc. That worked, too.

If you had to remove 120 lines, does that mean you ended up with just 720x360 resolution? If so, how does that get stored on the DVD as 16:9 which is AIUI 720x480 (in NTSC-land)?

[Dr Mordrid]

DVD "Widescreen" 16:9 is anamorphic (horizontally squeezed).

http://www.smr-home-theatre.org/dvd/anamorphic/Anamorphic.html

The same goes for the better 16:9 DV cameras that are also limited to 720x480/576.

"Letterboxed 16:9" is a 720x360 image in a 720x480 frame and often used in cheap DV cams and 4:3 DVD's.

Dr. Mordrid

[colinbr]

Just to clarify, so DVD/MPEG has a "letterboxed-mode" than can be used to encode video at 360 lines?

(I guess this uses less space on the disk than encoding the complete 720x480/576 with its black lines top and bottom?)

[dchip]

bitz4brainz, thanks for the details. I might play around with all this in the near future. TMPGEnc has so much that I haven't explored yet.

[Dr Mordrid]

Letterboxing is most often done by scaling the widescreen HD content to fit a 720 wide frame, which can be done automatically in MSPro7 by applying non-square pixen rendering and setting up the Media Source Options correctly.

In fact once MSP7 is set up this way you can easily mix 4:3 and 16:9 footage in projects of either aspect ratio since 16:9 will be letterboxed to a 4:3 frame and 4:3 will be pillared in a 16:9 frame. Even the Source window will automatically change aspect ratio to match the clip it's trimming. Drop-dead simple.

It can be done manually by applying a stationary moving path & scaling it to horizontally fit a 4:3 frame in previous builds.

Dr. Mordrid

[bitz4brainz]

colinbr,

TMPGenc allows you to trim the original image before encoding. What is left after trimming is then resampled/resized to 720x480 (if that's what you specified for the output). So, if you take 120 lines off (60 top, 60 bottom) you get a 16:9 cropping of the original - 720x360 as you said (but see NOTE). TMPGenc then stretches that back up to fill the 480 lines. Thus, you get an anamorphic rendering. TMPGEnc also sets the 16:9 flag in the output. The player sees this and does one of two things:

1. If it knows you have a widescreen TV, it sends the picture as-is and the TV stretches the frame wider to fill the screen. Now you have a normal (unsqueezed) 16:9 picture.

2. If it thinks you have a regular TV, it flattens the image to 360 lines again and adds the black letter boxing. Now you have a letterboxed 4:3 picture.

If you have PAL, the numbers are different but the principle is the same.

NOTE: Remember when you do the arithmetic, that DV has nonsquare pixels (720x360=2:1), but your computer has square pixels (640x360-16:9). Can be confusing.

NOTE2: When I trim StarWars with a 2.35:1 aspect, I still have some of the old letterboxing that I captured from the laserdisc. But that's fine because that also keeps the subtitles from the Solo/Greedo scene.

NOTE3: Trimming and resampling to anamorphic does not restore resolution that was already lost in the original letterbox transfer. But it does encode a bit more efficiently, better preserving what quality is there. It also results in a DVD that automatically handles your playback setup.

Hope that helps.

[colinbr]

you get a 16:9 cropping of the original - 720x360 as you said (but see NOTE). TMPGenc then stretches that back up to fill the 480 lines. Thus, you get an anamorphic rendering.

I see, so there is no 720x360 letterbox mode on the DVD itself (that would require the player to scale/interpolate the 360 lines up to 480 which it would probably make a poor job of in real time).

You said that the quality of the DVD was very good, so presumably Tmpgenc makes a good job at interpolating from 360 to 480 lines. This is probably easier to do on a progressive source. I wonder how well it can convert from 360 to 480 lines on interlaced source material where alternate lines are from different instants in time.