Video Studio 9

[DarrenD]

Thanks for the info on other parameters. My previous MSP 7.01 settings were:

Video encoder quality 50
Closed GOP every 1 GOP
I frames 12
P frames 3
CBR-6000 (due to VBR bug on 7.01)
Motion search 11 (seems to be associated with quality slider at 50)
Do half-pel search TICKED
Noise sensitivity 5
Auto-set motion vectors Horz pel movement 15
Auto-set motion vectors Vert pel movement 15
Intra DC Precision 2 (=10 bits)
MPEG Layer 2 (VE DVD version does not seem to want to do AC-3) - 224Kbps

It seems that I have already set all of the values that you have already mentioned so I guess that's as good as it gets for me.

Am I opening a can of worms by asking about alternate GOP structures? I am not too familiar with this subject but have noticed others on DMNForums talking of shorter GOPs.

[Dr Mordrid]

Short GOP's are certainly one way to manage the bit-budget in the favor of quality, with a short GOP making for higher quality I-frames.

The DVD standard theoretically supports any GOP length up to an 18-GOP with a 15-GOP being the "recommended" setting for NTSC (15 & 12 GOP's for PAL).

Smaller GOP's certainly should work for "normal" DVD as long as the max bitrate doesn't get pushed over the DVD maximum of 9600 kbps, the sequence header is set to 1, you use a closed GOP and the VBV buffer is 224 kb.

HDV puts an I-frame every 6 frames (a 6-GOP) instead of every 15 frames as in NTSC SD DVD (12 for PAL), This makes the I-frames, and the subsequent P & B frames that are calculated from the I-frames, of higher quality. Short GOP's should work the same way for SD DVD video.

Of course HDV also uses a High MPEG-2 profile, which is something SD DVD cannot use. The High profile allows for things like a DC of 12, higher resolutions (up to 1440 wide) etc. SD DVD is stuck with a "Main" (read: average) profile.

My suspicion is that this will be like high bitrates (> 8000 kbps) on DVD-recordable media: some players will work with short GOP's and some won't.

Dr. Mordrid

[Brian Ellis]

Note that HDTV is still undecided in PAL-land. This is why you don't see much in the shops. At the most, you will see sets marked HD-ready, meaning that the display will take in signals of 768p, 1080p and 1080i, all at 25 fps, provided you feed in the appropriate signals from an external device. It is unlikely that broadcasters will reach consensus in the near future.

[Dr Mordrid]

Off the MPEG subject for a bit, here are oher VS9 improvements...

DV to DVD Wizard

Capture DV audio to Dolby Digital (I get the DD option with analog MPEG captures too)

Improved chroma keyer

Scan DV tape

Movie Maker Wizard: automatic project themes

Slideshow Wizard: auto pan/zoom (Ken Burns effect) w/themes

SmartSound: automatic audio styles and duration (somewhat improved over VS8).

You can ger more SmartSound track discs here;

http://www.smartsound.com/

And remember that VS9 is often the testbed for new MSPro features.....

Dr. Mordrid

[cDynamics]

I see you found it...

Hi,

As we are starting to see, there is a way to pass along "scenes" to the ULead Authoring packages

But there are problems with DV .avi's, and even mpeg's encoded by MSP.

It works best when encoded outside of MSP (like a DVD Recorder or the MC Standalone encoder). You out the externally-encoded mpeg on your MSP timeline, add in your CUE points, and use Smart Render on the output (but check the box to add key frames at the cue's).

For DV export, it works best when the DV video doesn't have alot of pieces joined together -- like a school play where the timecode doesn't keep changing.

btw, I noticed several mentions of the 9600kbps max bitrate -- just a typo by that should be 9800kbps for the video, and I believe it's 10080kbps overall (video+audio+subpictures...)

[Dr Mordrid]

9600 ~= 9800 when you have carpal tunnel in both hands

Dr. Mordrid

[paulw]

I hope that Smartsound is a feature of MSPRO 8 when it comes out.