Welcome to Doom9's Forum, THE in-place to be for everyone interested in DVD conversion.

Before you start posting please read the forum rules. By posting to this forum you agree to abide by the rules.

 

Go Back   Doom9's Forum > Capturing and Editing Video > DV

Reply
 
Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
Old 16th March 2008, 15:52   #21  |  Link
mattsmith321
Registered User
 
mattsmith321's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Austin, TX
Posts: 14
Quote:
Originally Posted by Southstorm View Post
Have you checked out HCenc? Its a very good Mpeg2 encoder, and there are a few gui's that work with it for batch converting.
The only things I've tried so far are:
  • TMPGEnc 2.5 ($37) - The first two times I tried it, it didn't work. I just tried it (to get the error message again) and it worked just fine. However, the extension was .m2v and there was no sound. Not too good for my first attempt.
  • TMPGEnc 4.0 XPRESS ($100) - Very nice! It does exactly what I want. I can drag and drop a group of files onto it and walk through about 4 screens and leave the defaults and click Start and I'm good to go. The only issue I'm having at the moment is that Windows Media Player and QuickTime don't like the output. But I'm sure that is a codec thing.

The price for XPRESS is a little more than I want to pay but at this point, I'm willing to pay it just to put myself out of my misery. If the differences between the encoders are as minimal as this example, then paying the extra $100 for ProCoder is not worth it to me (not too mention the no trial and awkward purchasing process).

I'm almost out of your hair. There maybe a couple follow-up questions.
__________________
Matt Smith
mattsmith321 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 18th March 2008, 04:26   #22  |  Link
mattsmith321
Registered User
 
mattsmith321's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Austin, TX
Posts: 14
OK, I'm done. I can move forward with the rest of my life now

As mentioned above, TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress worked out great for encoding my clips to MPEG2. It two attempts to get a good DVD out of it.

On my first attempt, I took the encoded clips and created the DVD in Adobe Premiere Elements (APE) 2.0. I got kind of worried because it seemed to actually be re-encoding the video. When I played the DVD on my TV, it was very choppy/stuttered/odd/not right.

Figuring that APE had something to do with it, I decided to try to create the DVD in TMPGEnc DVD Author 3. When I got to the Simulation screen, I received a message that MPEG-1 Audio Layer II was not the best format and that the source audio should be converted to either PCM or Dolby.

So, back to TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress. While changing the audio to Dolby, I thought I saw a setting that indicated the interlacing on the clips was being read as Top Field First. From everything I've read, the DV clips should be BFF. So before re-encoding, I made sure that they were all set to BFF.*

I took the newly encoded clips and ran them through DVD Author and created another quick test DVD. When viewing the new DVD, two things were immediately apparent**:
  • Quality - One of my clips was shot indoors and had some frames of the ceiling texture (with motion). In the first DVD, the paused image contained lots of pixellation/blocky artifacts. The second DVD, while obviously not perfect given the conditions, was much better.
  • Smoothness - The choppy/stuttering motion from the previous DVD was gone.

So, my birthday is coming up this weekend and I think I'm going to buy myself a copy of TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress***. I may have to go back for DVD Author or and editor, but I'll be busy for a little while encoding what I've got.

Thanks everyone!


*In comparing the first and second round of encoded clips, I can't tell any difference when watching them or looking at stills, so I think the Field Order was set to BFF originally. This potentially means that APE introduced the artifacts and the choppyness. But I haven't gone (and probably won't go) back to definitively prove it.

** To give you an idea how much better, I had my wife watch both DVDs to see if she could tell a difference. While not trying to discredit my wife, she is normally oblivious to the nuances that drive me up the wall. However, the differences were significant enough between these two tests that she could easily tell the difference.

*** While ProCoder came out in some of the tests in the threads I linked to, it would be lost on me (I think there was a wine analogy in one thread). TMPGEnc may not have been the best, but it wasn't as criticized as some of the others. I'm happy with my decision so please don't burst my bubble.

Thanks again!
__________________
Matt Smith
mattsmith321 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 18th March 2008, 04:31   #23  |  Link
mattsmith321
Registered User
 
mattsmith321's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Austin, TX
Posts: 14
Two last little requests:
  1. Move this thread - I initially posted in Xvid because that is the format that I thought I was going. However, since it became a DV to MPEG2 thread, this thread should probably go in DV or MPEG-2 Encoding
  2. How do I get the .mpg clips to play in Windows Media Player? It says that it is acquiring the codec but then only plays the audio. Admittedly I haven't searched yet, but if anyone has any pointers ...
__________________
Matt Smith
mattsmith321 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 18th March 2008, 04:50   #24  |  Link
Guest
Guest
 
Join Date: Jan 2002
Posts: 21,901
Quote:
Originally Posted by mattsmith321 View Post
Move this thread
Moved to the DV Forum.

Quote:
How do I get the .mpg clips to play in Windows Media Player?
You need a DirectShow codec that supports MPEG2. The easiest thing is to install ffdshow.
Guest is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 18th March 2008, 06:09   #25  |  Link
mattsmith321
Registered User
 
mattsmith321's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Austin, TX
Posts: 14
Quote:
Originally Posted by neuron2 View Post
You need a DirectShow codec that supports MPEG2. The easiest thing is to install ffdshow.
Thanks! I had ffdshow tryouts [rev 1723][2007-12-24] installed. I uninstalled, rebooted, re-downloaded, re-installed (still same version) and selected the appropriate checkboxes to get it to work with MPEG-2. It works now.

You have no idea how happy I am right now
__________________
Matt Smith
mattsmith321 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 24th April 2020, 19:31   #26  |  Link
mattsmith321
Registered User
 
mattsmith321's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Austin, TX
Posts: 14
Hey Matt!

This post is from your future self. Because our main computer crapped out and we don't have access to the video we converted way back then, I decided to revisit again. Check out this thread for more details about how I did it his time and got much better results: https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.p...57#post1908957

Hope that helps. Be sure to get a Synology NAS box sooner than later. Also, Plex is great to access the home video content but comes with it's own issues as well.

Take care! Come see me some time.
__________________
Matt Smith
mattsmith321 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 24th April 2020, 19:53   #27  |  Link
videoh
Useful n00b
 
Join Date: Jul 2014
Posts: 1,667
Quote:
Originally Posted by mattsmith321 View Post
This post is from your future self.
Love it! I'm not the only schizoid on this board.

BTW, DV sucks for backup.

Y'all come back now!
videoh is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 26th April 2020, 18:56   #28  |  Link
DJATOM
Registered User
 
DJATOM's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2010
Location: Ukraine, Bohuslav
Posts: 377
FFV1 is good for backup or intermediate purposes, as well as HEVC lossless (if you have an RTX card).
Former is limited to 8 and 10 bit formats, while FFV1 can store even 16 bit clips.
__________________
Me on GitHub
PC Specs: Ryzen 5950X, 64 GB RAM, RTX 2070
DJATOM is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT +1. The time now is 13:24.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.11
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions Inc.