AHD Internals Present: How to Encode. Last update: 7 Septemb September er 2011
Programs: The tools of the trade.
AnyDVD HD | You can easily find a copy on Demonoid, get the latest version to keep up with changes in AACS. A decrypting tool for Blu-ray discs, as well as HD-DVD.
eac3to eac3to is a powerful demuxing tool for Blu-ray discs and HD-DVDs. It allows a user to extract chapters, video streams, audio streams, and subtitle streams. It can also demux high definition audio, particularly TrueHD, into individual wavs for transcoding with other tools, such as DTS-HD Master Audio Suite. A tool that every encoder needs.
Haali Media Splitter Used for splitting matroska files into individual streams for ffdshow to decode. Also used by eac3to to mux to matroska.
eac3to Arcsoft 1.1.0.0 decoder Only version 1.1.0.0 offers bit -perfect decoding of ALL DTS-HD tracks, including 6.1 DTS-ES. 1.1.0.7 has problems with DTS-ES 6.1. These Arcsoft decoders for eac3to will allow you to perform bit-perfect decoding of audio tracks - a must. Install with the instructions included in the archive.
DTS-HD Master Audio Suite | You can easily find a copy on Demonoid. DTS-HD MAS is the professional tool used by studios to transcode DTS audio and is therefore the b est choice for encoding DTS audio at home. It can encode both regular DTS and DTS-HD MA, as well as all other forms.
Oggenc2.87 using aoTuVb6.03 Extract and put oggenc2.exe oggenc2.exe in in the eac3to folder. This will allow you to encode Ogg Vorbis audio. We are placing it in the eac3to folder because that will later be added into our PATH variable.
AvsPmod A powerful tool for creating and editing AviSynth scripts (.avs). Also used for taking proper screenshots of encodes and making comparisons between source and encode as well as between two different encodes.
MeGUI The most full featured GUI for video encoding, contains many different tools and their GUIs - most importantly, x264.
ffdshow tryouts The most popular video decoder for encoding, supports AVC, VC-1, and MPEG-2 among others. Not the fastest, but is of high quality. If ffdshow does not become your default DirectShowSource decoder, use Win7DSFilterTweaker to make it so; it should be straight forward.
FFMPEGSource This will allow you to use FFVideoSource . Grab the 32-bit version, which is the second download.
DGDecNV | Look for: DGDecNV.v2.0.2.8.x86-CRD
DGDecNV is a frame-server for AVC/VC-1/MPEG-2 AVC/VC-1/MPEG-2 and indexer - comes with a powerful deinterlacer and is faster than using DirectShowSource/ffdshow. DirectShowSource/ffdshow. Requires a compatible nVidia GPU.
TIVTC Used for performing IVTC.
mkvtoolnix mkvtoolnix is a package of tools for the container matroska . Most important is the tool, mkvmerge , which allows you to mux multiple video, audio, and subtitles streams into one container - chapter support too! Comes with a GUI for simple use, as well as a header editor for, well, editing headers (data like titles and language).
Adobe Audition | Non-essential. Rarely used, the only time you will need this is if you need to cut audio and mkvmerge splitting won't do it right (ex. Lord of the Rings and other multi-disc titles).
1. Ripping your retail disc: Because retail discs are a re the shit.
Confirm that AnyDVDHD has removed all protection f rom the disc. Most important is the removal of AACS. However, region coding is a good thing to remove as well. See Seehere here for an explanation from Wikipedia and here for a color coded map of regions.
We will use AnyDVDHD itself to rip the disc. Right click the tray icon and go to Rip Video DVD to harddisk...
Ensure the source and destination are correct and begin to rip the disc.
2. Demux the source: Oh hey he y look, this info is valid for remuxers too! Notice: In step one, I used a retail copy of The Dark Knight . In the rest of the guide, I am using a downloaded BD.
The following steps will be using eac3to's command command line interface (CLI)
We will begin by adding the path to eac3to to our PATH environment variable using these directions. Also make sure you have installed the Arcsoft eac3to decoders from above.
Now fire up your command prompt . First, we will ensure everything has been installed properly for eac3to. In command prompt , type: eac3to -test What you want to check for is that eac3to reports ArcSoft DTS Decoder (1.1.0.0) works fine and Haali Matroska Muxer {version release date} is installed.
Now that we have verified that eac3to and i t's dependencies are installed and working properly, we can move on. You should create a directory where you will store all the files. For this guide, we will create a folder on our E: drive. Our folder path will be E:\Encoding\Mr and Mrs Smith Change drives in command prompt by typing E: Now change the current working directory by typing cd "E:\Encoding\Mr and Mrs Smith" Quick Tip: You can drag and drop a folder from Windows Explorer into command prompt to have the full path inserted for you - no typing long paths! Use the up and down arrows to go back and forth between previously used commands.
Now we are ready to begin with eac3to commands. We will begin by analyzing the BD. The syntax is eac3to "full/path/to/bd" so for this example, we will type eac3to "E:\Mr and Mrs Smith 2005 Blu-ray 1080p AVC DTSHDMA 5.1-TTG" and eac3to will return with some output that will look similar to this:
1) 00800.mpls, 00800.m2ts, 2:00:00 - Chapters, 28 chapters - h264/AVC, 1080p24 /1.001 (16:9) - DTS Master Audio, English, multi-channel, 48kHz - AC3, Portuguese, multi-channel, 48kHz - AC3, Spanish, multi-channel, 48kHz - AC3, Chinese, multi-channel, 48kHz - AC3, Thai, multi-channel, 48kHz - AC3, English, stereo, 48kHz - AC3, English, stereo, 48kHz
- AC3, English, stereo, 48kHz
Some Blu-ray discs will have more than one playlist appear, however, this particular BD has only one main playlist, and we will select this by using this command: eac3to "E:\Mr and Mrs Smith 2005 Blu-ray 1080p AVC DTSHDMA 5.1-TTG" 1) and eac3to will output:
M2TS, 1 video track, 8 audio tracks, 20 subtitle tracks, 2:00:00, 24p /1.001 1: Chapters, 28 chapters 2: h264/AVC, 1080p24 /1.001 (16:9) 3: DTS Master Audio, English, 5.1 channels, 24 bits, 48kHz (core: DTS, 5.1 channels, 24 bits, 1509kbps, 48kHz) 4: AC3, Portuguese, 5.1 channels, 448kbps, 48kHz 5: AC3, Spanish, 5.1 channels, 448kbps, 48kHz, dialnorm: -27dB 6: AC3, Chinese, 5.1 channels, 448kbps, 48kHz 7: AC3, Thai, 5.1 channels, 448kbps, 48kHz 8: AC3, English, 2.0 channels, 224kbps, 48kHz, dialnorm: -27dB 9: AC3, English, 2.0 channels, 224kbps, 48kHz, dialnorm: -27dB 10: AC3, English, 2.0 channels, 224kbps, 48kHz, dialnorm: -27dB 11: Subtitle (PGS), English 12: Subtitle (PGS), Portuguese 13: Subtitle (PGS), Spanish 14: Subtitle (PGS), Modern Greek 15: Subtitle (PGS), Chinese 16: Subtitle (PGS), Icelandic 17: Subtitle (PGS), Hebrew 18: Subtitle (PGS), Portuguese 19: Subtitle (PGS), Indonesian 20: Subtitle (PGS), Korean 21: Subtitle (PGS), Chinese 22: Subtitle (PGS), Thai 23: Subtitle (PGS), Chinese 24: Subtitle (PGS), Chinese 25: Subtitle (PGS), Chinese 26: Subtitle (PGS), Chinese 27: Subtitle (PGS), Korean
28: Subtitle (PGS), Korean 29: Subtitle (PGS), Chinese 30: Subtitle (PGS), Chinese
We will want to extract the chapters, video stream, main audio stream, commentary tracks, and subtitles of our choosing(we will just use English and Spanish in this example). Our command will be:
eac3to "E:\Mr and Mrs Smith 2005 Blu-ray 1080p AVC DTSHDMA 5.1-TTG" 1) 1:"Mr and Mrs Smith Chapters.txt" 2:source.mkv 3:HDaudio.dtshd 3:dtscore.dts -core 8:commentary1.ac3 9:commentary2.ac3 10:commentary3.ac3 11:English.sup 13:Spanish.sup This will create a chapter file i n .txt format, a source.mkv for our video track, DTS-HD MA audio track, the core from the DTS-HD track, all three commentary tracks, as well as the English and Spanish SUP (PGS) files. When dealing with spaces in filenames, you MUST use quotation marks ("). The file extension for DTS-HD MA is .dtshd OR .dtsma . Use the -core switch to extract the DTS core from the HD audio. If dealing with a TrueHD audio track, the file e xtension is .thd (if you extract the embedded core as well with .thd+ac3 extension, understand thatmkvmerge will strip the embedded track from the audio. You should extract the embedded track separately and include it if you are remuxing). For encodes to feature DTS audio, you should extract TrueHD audio to multiple wavs using eac3to /path/to/bd 1) 3:lossless.wavs and then encode a DTS stream using the DTS-HD Master Audio Suite.
For more on eac3to, check out the official how to use page, and below is a list of common extensions.
AVC (Raw Stream) | .h264 VC-1 (Raw Stream) | .vc1 MPEG-2 (Raw Stream) | .m2v AVC/VC-1/MPEG-2 | .mkv DTS-HD MA | .dtshd OR .dtsma DTS | .dts TrueHD (MLP only) | .thd TrueHD (and embedded AC-3) | .thd+ac3 AC-3 | .ac3 LPCM | .pcm OR .lpcm OR .wav FLAC | .flac Single Channel WAVS | .wavs Chapter file | .txt PGS Subtitle | .sup
SRT Subtitle | .srt ASS/SSA Subtitle | .ass/.ssa
If you want to encode your commentary track to Ogg Vorbis, extract the commentary to wav using eac3to commentary.ac3 commentary.wav and then converting the wav to ogg by using oggenc2 commentary.wav -q 1.0 -o commentary.ogg
If you want to convert these PGS (.sup) subtitle files to a text based format like SubRip (.srt), seethis guide. Be sure to check out the other subtitle articles in the Wiki for more conversions between different formats!
This is how my command prompt looks after completing all the steps:
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7600] Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. reserved.
All rights
C:\Users\Echo>e: E:\>cd "E:\Encoding\Mr and Mrs Smith" E:\Encoding\Mr and Mrs Smith>eac3to "E:\Mr and Mrs Smith 2005 Blu-ray 1080p AVC DTSHDMA 5.1-TTG" 1) 00800.mpls, 00800.m2ts, 2:00:00 - Chapters, 28 chapters - h264/AVC, 1080p24 /1.001 (16:9) - DTS Master Audio, English, multi-channel, 48kHz - AC3, Portuguese, multi-channel, 48kHz - AC3, Spanish, multi-channel, 48kHz - AC3, Chinese, multi-channel, 48kHz - AC3, Thai, multi-channel, 48kHz - AC3, English, stereo, 48kHz - AC3, English, stereo, 48kHz - AC3, English, stereo, 48kHz
E:\Encoding\Mr and Mrs Smith>eac3to "E:\Mr and Mrs Smith 2005 Blu-ray 1080p AVC DTSHDMA 5.1-TTG" 1) M2TS, 1 video track, 8 audio tracks, 20 subtitle tracks, 2:00:00, 24p /1.001 1: Chapters, 28 chapters 2: h264/AVC, 1080p24 /1.001 (16:9) 3: DTS Master Audio, English, 5.1 channels, 24 bits, 48kHz (core: DTS, 5.1 channels, 24 bits, 1509kbps, 48kHz) 4: AC3, Portuguese, 5.1 channels, 448kbps, 48kHz 5: AC3, Spanish, 5.1 channels, 448kbps, 48kHz, dialnorm: -27dB 6: AC3, Chinese, 5.1 channels, 448kbps, 48kHz 7: AC3, Thai, 5.1 channels, 448kbps, 48kHz 8: AC3, English, 2.0 channels, 224kbps, 48kHz, dialnorm: -27dB 9: AC3, English, 2.0 channels, 224kbps, 48kHz, dialnorm: -27dB 10: AC3, English, 2.0 channels, 224kbps, 48kHz, dialnorm: -27dB 11: Subtitle (PGS), English 12: Subtitle (PGS), Portuguese 13: Subtitle (PGS), Spanish 14: Subtitle (PGS), Modern Greek 15: Subtitle (PGS), Chinese 16: Subtitle (PGS), Icelandic 17: Subtitle (PGS), Hebrew 18: Subtitle (PGS), Portuguese 19: Subtitle (PGS), Indonesian 20: Subtitle (PGS), Korean 21: Subtitle (PGS), Chinese 22: Subtitle (PGS), Thai 23: Subtitle (PGS), Chinese 24: Subtitle (PGS), Chinese 25: Subtitle (PGS), Chinese 26: Subtitle (PGS), Chinese 27: Subtitle (PGS), Korean 28: Subtitle (PGS), Korean 29: Subtitle (PGS), Chinese 30: Subtitle (PGS), Chinese E:\Encoding\Mr and Mrs Smith>eac3to "E:\Mr and Mrs Smith 2005 Blu-ray 1080p AVC
DTSHDMA 5.1-TTG" 1) 1:"Mr and Mrs Smith - Chapters.txt" 2:source.mkv 3:HDaudio.d tshd 3:dts.dts -core 8:commentary1.ac3 9:commentary2.ac3 10:commentary3.ac3 11:E nglish.sup 13:Spanish.sup M2TS, 1 video track, 8 audio tracks, 20 subtitle tracks, 2:00:00, 24p /1.001 1: Chapters, 28 chapters 2: h264/AVC, 1080p24 /1.001 (16:9) 3: DTS Master Audio, English, 5.1 channels, 24 bits, 48kHz (core: DTS, 5.1 channels, 24 bits, 1509kbps, 48kHz) 4: AC3, Portuguese, 5.1 channels, 448kbps, 48kHz 5: AC3, Spanish, 5.1 channels, 448kbps, 48kHz, dialnorm: -27dB 6: AC3, Chinese, 5.1 channels, 448kbps, 48kHz 7: AC3, Thai, 5.1 channels, 448kbps, 48kHz 8: AC3, English, 2.0 channels, 224kbps, 48kHz, dialnorm: -27dB 9: AC3, English, 2.0 channels, 224kbps, 48kHz, dialnorm: -27dB 10: AC3, English, 2.0 channels, 224kbps, 48kHz, dialnorm: -27dB 11: Subtitle (PGS), English 12: Subtitle (PGS), Portuguese 13: Subtitle (PGS), Spanish 14: Subtitle (PGS), Modern Greek 15: Subtitle (PGS), Chinese 16: Subtitle (PGS), Icelandic 17: Subtitle (PGS), Hebrew 18: Subtitle (PGS), Portuguese 19: Subtitle (PGS), Indonesian 20: Subtitle (PGS), Korean 21: Subtitle (PGS), Chinese 22: Subtitle (PGS), Thai 23: Subtitle (PGS), Chinese 24: Subtitle (PGS), Chinese 25: Subtitle (PGS), Chinese 26: Subtitle (PGS), Chinese 27: Subtitle (PGS), Korean 28: Subtitle (PGS), Korean 29: Subtitle (PGS), Chinese 30: Subtitle (PGS), Chinese Creating file "Mr and Mrs Smith - Chapters.txt"... v02 Extracting video track number 2...
a09 Extracting audio track number 9... s13 Extracting subtitle track number 13... a08 Extracting audio track number 8... a03 Extracting audio track number 3... s11 Extracting subtitle track number 11... a10 Extracting audio track number 10... a03 Extracting audio track number 3... a03 Extracting DTS core... v02 Muxing video to Matroska... a10 Removing AC3 dialog normalization... a08 Removing AC3 dialog normalization... a09 Removing AC3 dialog normalization... a03 Creating file "HDaudio.dtshd"... a03 Creating file "dts.dts"... a08 Creating file "commentary1.ac3"... a10 Creating file "commentary3.ac3"... a09 Creating file "commentary2.ac3"... s11 Creating file "English.sup"... s13 Creating file "Spanish.sup"... Added fps value (24 /1.001) to MKV header. Video track 2 contains 172616 frames. Subtitle track 11 contains 946 captions. Subtitle track 13 contains 867 normal and 13 forced captions. eac3to processing took 42 minutes, 13 seconds. Done. E:\Encoding\Mr and Mrs Smith>
3. Preparing your AviSynth script... and so it begins. Below are three (3) options for loading your source file. Choose any one (1). The instructions below are using DirectShowSource.
Open up AvsPmod . Drag and drop your source.mkv to create the first line. By default, it will read DirectShowSource("path\to\source.mkv") Delete the last parentheses and append: , fps=23.976, convertfps=true).AssumeFPS(24000,1001) so that the first li ne reads something like
DirectShowSource("E:\Encoding\Mr and Mrs Smith\source.mkv", fps=23.976, convertfps=true).AssumeFPS(24000,1001) substituting 23.976 for the framerate of your source if not 23.976, and 24000,1001 as well - other common framerates are 24.000 and 25.000. In AssumeFPS, the first number is the numerator and the last is the denominator, 24000/1001 is approximately equal to 23.976. For 24 and 25 fps source material, simply use 24 or 25 as the numerator and 1 as the denominator.
The instructions below are using ffvideosource.
Open up AvsPmod . Drag and drop your source.mkv to create the first line. By default , it will read DirectShowSource("path\to\source.mkv") Change DirectShowSource to FFVideoSource and press F5 to refresh. It will appear that AvsPmod has frozen, THIS IS NORMAL, this is when your source mkv is being indexed. It will take a good while to index, depending on the source.
The instructions below are using DGSource.
Launch DGIndexNV. Drag and drop your source mkv onto the program window. Choose to crop if a window appears saying that the source stream specifies cropping. Go to File > Save Project or hit F4 .
Open up AvsPmod . Drag and drop your newly created .dgi f ile to create the first l ine. By default, it will read DirectShowSource("path\to\source.dgi") Change DirectShowSource to DGSource.
The following instructions apply to all methods. Deinterlacing wrote: If you are dealing with one of those rare interlaced BDs (or not so rare if a BBC production), you will need to perform deinterlacing within your AviSynth script, so that your encode is progressive. Seethis link to read about interlace dectection and methods of deinterlacing. Underneath the following spoiler is a deinterlacing guide written by Donald A. Graft . Note that those instructions are not dependent on the usage of AviSource(). You will need to download the appropriate fil ters for this guide (those mentioned).
Decomb Plugin for Avisynth (Version 5.2.3) Tutorial
by Donald A. Graft Table of Contents
Introduction
Telecide()
Step 1. Determine and Set the Field Order
Step 2. Set up Pattern Guidance If Appropriate
Step 3. Set up Postprocessing
Decimate()
Step 4. Setting Up Decimation
Refinements
Introduction This document is a tutorial for Decomb. It provides a cookbook procedure for applying Telecide() and Decimate() correctly to process a given clip. It doesn't cover FieldDeinterlace() as that is fairly easy to figure out from the Decomb Reference Manual.
Please refer to the accompanying Decomb Reference Manual for a detailed description of Decomb and it parameters.
Telecide() Telecide() recovers progressive frames (by finding and aligning matching fields). Do not use Telecide() on streams that do not contain telecined progressive frames, such as pure interlaced video.
Step 1. Determine and Set the Field Order It is essential to set the field order properly for correct rendering. The field order is obtained from Avisynth and can be set using the AssumeTFF() or AssumeBFF() functions in your sc ript before invoking Telecide(). Set AssumeTFF() for top field first; use AssumeBFF() for bottom field f irst. Because setting it correctly is so important, you are strongly encouraged not to make assumptions about the field order of a clip, but rather to verify the field order using the following procedure.
To determine the field order, make an Avisynth script that serves the raw clip without any processing. If it were an AVI, then just AviSource() would be used. For our examples, we'll use AviSource(). Add a script line to separate the fields using top field first, as follows:
AviSource("your_clip.avi") AssumeTFF().SeparateFields()
Now serve the script into VirtualDub and find an area with motion. Single step forward through the motion. Note whether the motion progresses always forward as it should, or whether it jumps back and forth as it proceeds. For example, if the field order is wrong, an object moving steadily from left to right would move right, then j ump back left a little, t hen move right again, etc. If the field order is correct, it moves steadily to the right.
If the motion is correct with AssumeTFF().SeparateFields(), then your field order is top field first and you must use AssumeTFF(). If the motion is i ncorrect, then your field order is bottom field first and you must use AssumeBFF(). If you want to double check things, you can use AssumeBFF.SeparateFields() to check correct operation for bottom field first.
Let's assume we have a top field first clip i n the following steps. You would of co urse use the correct field order for your clip. So far, then, our script is as follows:
AviSource("your_clip.avi") AssumeTFF() Telecide()
Step 2. Set up Pattern Guidance If Appropriate Often you know from the nature of a clip what telecining pattern (if any) is used and therefore what the pattern of field matches should be. Telecide()'s pattern guidance feature uses that information to improve the field matching. Pattern guidance is controlled by the optional guide parameter. It has 4 possible values: gu ide=0 means disable pattern guidance; guide=1 means use 3:2 pulldown guidance (24fps ->30fps); guide=2 means use 2:2 guidance (PAL); and guide=3 means use 3:2:3:2:2 guidance (25fps->30fps).
First decide if your source clip is PAL. If it is, and if it has progressive content, you can almost invariably set guide=2 to use PAL pattern guidance. Of course, if your clip does not have progressive content, it will not help you, and you shouldn't be using Telecide() at all! So for PAL, we can skip to Step 3 with our script looking this so far:
AviSource("your_clip.avi") AssumeTFF() Telecide(guide=2)
If we have an NTSC 29.97fps or 30fps source clip, things are trickier. First we have to determine whether the clip contains 3:2 pulldown material. There are several tests we can apply. First, serve the clip raw (no Decomb or other processing) into VirtualDub. Then step through the frames in motion areas. If you see a repeating pattern of 3 clean frames followed by 2 interlaced frames, that is 3:2 pulldown. Typically, movies will use 3:2 pulldown.
Looking for the 3:2 pattern as described above is not foolproof, because for animations there are duplicate frames that can make it hard to see a clear 3:2 pattern.
Second, you can serve the following script into VirtualDub and see what Telecide() reports about i t (remember
to use the correct field order as you determined it above).
AviSource("your_clip.avi") AssumeTFF() Telecide(guide=1,post=0,show=true)
Serve this into VirtualDub and step through several typical sections of your clip. If Telecide() reports "in-pattern", or "in-pattern*", then it is locking onto 3:2 pulldown. If it reports "out-of-pattern" or continuously jumps in and out of pattern lock, then it is not locking onto a consistent 3:2 pattern.
If you determine that your clip has a lot of 3:2 content, then you should go ahead and set guide=1. If there is not a lot of 3:2 content, or you have any doubts about the nature of the clip, then you should set guide=0. We will assume that we have a lot of 3:2 content for the next steps. Therefore, our script so far looks like this:
AviSource("your_clip.avi") AssumeTFF() Telecide(guide=1)
Step 3. Set up Postprocessing Postprocessing is the process by which frames that come out of the field matching process still combed can be detected and deinterlaced. The postprocessing modes are controlled by the post parameter: post=0 means disable postprocessing; post=1 means calculate the metrics but don't deinterlace; post=2 means calculate the metrics and deinterlace accordingly; and post=3 means calculate the metrics, deinterlace accordingly, and show a deinterlacing motion map for frames that are detected as combed. There are two more advanced modes as well; please refer to the reference manual for details.
We will adopt a standard procedure for setting up postprocessing. First, we will enable the metrics and show them as follows (note we are carrying forward previously determined settings -- you would use the ones you earlier determined for order and guide):
AviSource("your_clip.avi") AssumeTFF() Telecide(guide=1,post=3,vthresh=25,show=true)
Serve this into VirtualDub and play through the clip while examining frames and the displayed vmetric values. The value that applies to the frame as matched is the one in brackets that starts with "chosen=", e.g., "[chosen=27]". Let's just call that the vmetric value. Any vmetric value greater than vthresh defines the frame as interlaced. You want to fi nd the vthresh value that correctly distinguishes combed frames from non-combed frames for your clip. You'll easily be able to identify the frames thought to be combed because a) the vmetric value will be greater than vthresh, b) the progressive/interlaced indicator will say i nterlaced, and c) the frame will have a white deinterlacing motion map overlayed on it. There's no way you'll miss them!
Your chosen vthresh may not be perfect and if it is not you should err on the side of caution. It's better to catc h
some progressive frames than to miss some combed ones.
Let's suppose that our vthresh value that distinguishes combed from non-combed frames is 30. Now create the following script with post=2 (carry over your determined previous settings, as always):
AviSource("your_clip.avi") AssumeTFF() Telecide(guide=1,post=2,vthresh=30,show=true)
Serve this and play it into VirtualDub. As you step through you should see the progressive frames passing through untouched while the combed ones ones are deinterlaced.
If you are not happy with the deinterlacing of the combed frames and want them "hit a l ittle harder", you can reduce the dthresh parameter. Also, if you prefer interpolation to blending for the combed areas, you can change the blend parameter. Refer to the reference manual for the proper use of these parameters.
Our script so far then is:
AviSource("your_clip.avi") AssumeTFF() Telecide(guide=1,post=2,vthresh=30)
There are two more important things to say about postprocessing before we move on. First, there is a subtle difference between post=2 and post=4 which might affect you. The reference manual describes the differences in detail. Setting post=2 will often avoid making gross frame blends at scene changes, but i t can make deinterlaced video sequences jerky. Setting post=4 retains the smoothness of deinterlaced sequences, but may make frame blends at scene changes.
Second, you may find that you need different vthresh values for different parts of your clip. If so, use Telecide's manual override capability to specify values for different frame ranges as needed. Refer to the reference manual for details.
Decimate() As a side effect of performing field matching for 3:2 pulldown, Telecide() emits duplicate frames and leaves the clip at its original frame rate. Decimate() detects and removes these duplicates and sets the frame rate down appropriately.
Step 4. Set up Decimation If your clip is PAL, you do not require decimation and you are finished!
If your clip has 3:2 pulldown, you will need to decimate the clip. Simply add a call to Decimate(). Our final script then looks like this:
AviSource("your_clip.avi") AssumeTFF() Telecide(guide=1,post=2,vthresh=30) Decimate()
One thing to be aware of i s that you may not always want to decimate 30fps material. Fo r example, if your clip is a hybrid of 3:2 progressive and normal interlaced video, if you decimate it you'll make the video portions jerky. Often with such clips it is better to leave them at their original frame rate by omitting Decimate().
Refinements
This manual has described only the basic parameters and procedures required to quickly master Decomb. There are many more parameters that you can use to adapt to unusual and difficult situations. Please refer to the Decomb Reference manual to begin exploring this additional functionality.
Here is one example of a refinement so you'll understand what I am talking about: Suppose you have a noisy off-air capture and you are experiencing matching failures. You can add some extra noise tolerance to Telecide() by increasing the value of the nt parameter. You will find many such little gems in the Reference Manual. It makes great bathtub reading.
If you are using DGDecNV, you can use the function deinterlace=1 to enable single rate deinterlacing or deinterlace=2 to enable double rate deinterlacing. If dealing with an HDTV stream in a TS container (as they always come in TS unless remuxed), you will be using single rate deinterlacing in nearly ALL cases. You will also need to perform IVTC once you have deinterlaced with DGDecNV, but only if the FPS is 29.97 (IVTC is not necessary for sources such as 1080i50, where the native framerate is 25p but was encoded as 1080i50 for Blu-ray compatibility). Do this by adding TFM().TDecimate. as a new line, before any crop, resize, or other processing. Your script may look like DGSource("E:\Encoding\HDTV\source.dgi", deinterlace=1) TFM().TDecimate. Crop(0, 140, -0, -140) Spline36Resize(1280, 534) and result in a final FPS of 23.976 (audio will still sync because during playback, your player performs all these steps behind the scenes).
Now we are going to crop the video if necessary. Cropping removes the black borders found on Blu-ray discs and HDTV transport streams to preserve aspect ratio. If your video is truly full 16:9, then skip this step. Otherwise, continue reading. Cropping is made very easy in AvsPmod . Go to Tools > Crop Editor . Adjust the values for cropping until all black bars have been removed. You should skip around scenes to find a relatively bright frame so that you can see the black bars well defined. Should you overcrop, any part of the frame that is lost will become inverted in color. Only crop vertically OR horizontally - doing both
will cause media players to stretch the picture when being displayed on an HDTV. If there are one or two black pixels on the left or right of the picture and you have already cropped vertically (same applies if cropping vertically leaves one pixel of black - you should always crop in multiples of two to maintain mod2), you can use the FillMargins filter to fill it in. So now the second line of your script should look something like this: Crop(0, 140, -0, -140)
FillMargins wrote: Extract the files to the plug-in directory of AviSynth (C:\Program Files (x86)\AviSynth 2.5\plugins OR C:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\plugins | x64 and x86, respectively).
Syntax: FillMargins(left, top, right, bottom) Please add FillMargins command after cropping and resizing.
Example script: DirectShowSource("E:\Encoding\Mr and Mrs Smith\source.mkv", fps=23.976, convertfps=true).AssumeFPS(24000,1001) Crop(0, 140, -0, -140) Spline36Resize(1280, 534) FillMargins(1,0,2,0)
We will now resize the video, if we are encoding 720p. Go toTools > Resize Calculator.... Adjust the slider until the horizontal resolution is 1280 (if you cropped vertically) or until the vertical resolution is 720 (if you cropped horizontally). Click apply and AvsPmod should append a third line to your script that looks something like: Spline36Resize(1280, 534) There are multiple resize filters that you can choose from, read this for more info.
Spline36Resize wrote: Spline36Resize(1908, 800, 6, 140, -6, -140)
is the same as:
Crop(6, 140, -6, -140) Resize(1908,800)
Your script should now read similar to this (assuming no deinterlacing):
Using DirectShowSource wrote: DirectShowSource("E:\Encoding\Mr and Mrs Smith\source.mkv", fps=23.976, convertfps=true).AssumeFPS(24000,1001) Crop(0, 140, -0, -140) Spline36Resize(1280, 534)
Using FFVideoSource wrote: FFVideoSource("E:\Encoding\Mr and Mrs Smith\source.mkv") Crop(0, 140, -0, -140) Spline36Resize(1280, 534)
Using DGSource wrote: DGSource("E:\Encoding\Mr and Mrs Smith\source.dgi") Crop(0, 140, -0, -140) Spline36Resize(1280, 534)
Go to File > Save Script or CTRL+S to save your new Avisynth script - save it in your encoding folder.
More on AviSynth internal filters and external filters (external links).
4. Testing and the final encode: The meat and potatoes.
To perform a test encode, you will need to append the following l ine to the end of your script: selectrangeevery(1440,24) This will select 24 frames from every 1440 frames to encode, which should give you a good representation of the entire source, so that you can see how x264 wil l behave in dif ferent scenes. This also happens to be 1 second for every 1 minute of footage, meaning that the final size of your test will be 1/60 of the final size of the encode (good way to estimate final size when using the CRF method of encoding). You can choose to use more or less than 24 frames, depending on the length of your source.
selectrangeevery wrote: Syntax: SelectRangeEvery(clip clip [, int every] [, int length] [, int offset] [, bool audio])
SelectRangeEvery(1440,24,2400)will select 24 frames from every 1440 frames beginning at frame 2400.
Open up MeGUI, we will first adjust MeGUI settings. Go to Options > Settings OR Ctrl+S , and in the Main tab, set Default Priority toLow (it does not make the encoding process any faster by setting to very high). In the Extra config tab, in the Auto Update section, choose Use development update server and check Always backup files when needed (development update server will keep you with the latest version of each tool - I have personally not run into any i ssues related to using the development server, but if using the stable server gives you peace of mind, go ahead). In theExternal Program Settings , check X264: enable 64 bit mode if you have a 64 bit OS and CPU.
In the Input tab of MeGUI, under Video Encoding , browse to your Avisynth script, from here on referred to as "encode.avs", and open. A video preview window will open up, go ahead and close it - it is a helpful reminder if you have left OSD on in ffdshow however. In the output section, set your output filename to something like "Mr and Mrs Smith 720p TEST 1", where you can easily recognize what is what. Obviously, change the number at the end with each test, so that you don't overwrite previous tests.
Set Encoding Settings to x264: *scratchpad* and click config .
For a full li st of options, what they do, how they behave, and what our recommendations are, seehere. To learn about reading the x264 stats output, see this.
Recommended starting settings for testing:
Live Action wrote: x264 --level 4.1 --pass 2 --bitrate 10000 --stats ".stats" --deblock -3:-3 --min-keyint 24 --bframes 16 --b-adapt 2 --ref 4 --qpmin 10 --qpmax 51 --vbv-bufsize 30000 --vbv-maxrate 38000 --qcomp 0.7 --rc-lookahead 60 --aq-mode 2 --aq-strength 0.75 --merange 64 --me umh --direct auto --subme 10 --trellis 2 --output "output" "input"
2D/3D Animation wrote: x264 --level 4.1 --crf 16 --min-keyint 24 --bframes 16 --b-adapt 2 --ref 4 --qpmin 10 --qpmax 51 --vbv-bufsize 30000 --vbv-maxrate 38000 --qcomp 0.7 --rc-lookahead 60 --aq-strength 0.6 --merange 64 --me umh --direct auto --subme 9 --trellis 0 --output "output" "input"
Settings to play with (see settings glossary for more information):
--bitrate/--crf
--deblock
--bframes
--qcomp
--aq-mode
--aq-strength
--me (only raise from umh to esa or tesa, NEVER LOWER)
--rc-lookahead (only INCREASE)
Achieving AHD Gold + DXVA status requires the following:
AHD Gold
CABAC = 1
ref = 4 (ref=9 if 720p) | Can be different and still achieve AHD Gold if compliant with DXVA r ules
analyse = 0x3:0x113 (for DXVA compliance - disable P4x4 macroblocks) or 0x3:0x133 (not DXVA)
subme = 7 or higher (internal standards require 9 or 10, generally 9 only if trellis is disabled; see trellis. subme=11 is new and if you have the CPU for it, go for it.)
me_range = 16 or higher (internal standards have it as usually me_range=64, although it can vary from me_range=24 to me_range≤256 depending on the me algorithm used (64+ with umh, 48+ with esa, 32+
with tesa, 24+ if with testing it proves to be fine with tesa)
trellis = 1 or 2, or deadzone is 10,10 or lower (always use trellis=2, unless dealing with animation, in which case you can either leave trellis=2 or set trellis=0 and adjust deadzones to ≤10 on both inter and
intra levels; try 8;6)
bframes = 3 (Raise --bframes until the last percent is below 5% for the most significant compression. In this example, use --bframes 7). x264 [info]: consecutive B-frames: 0.8% 1.4% 7.2% 23.0% 19.4% 43.4% 3.6% 1.3%
rc = 2_passes or crf (final bitrate should not exceed 65% of the source bitrate for 1080p (75% absolute hard max, if dealing with an especially compressed or grainy source), and no more than 40% for 720p unless absolutely necessary)
DXVA
analyse = 0x3:0x113 | Like previously stated, disable P4x4 macroblocks.
720p encodes:
ref= 09 (max. resolution = 1280x728)
ref= 10 (max. resolution = 1280x654)
ref= 11 (max. resolution = 1280x594)
ref= 12 (max. resolution = 1280x546)
1080p encodes:
ref= 4 (max. resolution = 1920x1092)
ref= 5 (max. resolution = 1920x872)
ref= 6 (max. resolution = 1920x728)
Remember: The goal of encoding is to preserve as much detail as efficiently as possible, i.e. attaining transparency without an excess of bits.
When you have found the settings that work best, delete t he line that starts withselectrangeevery() from your AviSynth script and save. Reload the script in MeGUI to ensure that it was saved properly, and begin your final encode. Make sure your final file name does not overwrite your source! Ensure that there is enough disk space for the encode to complete!
5. Take comparison screens: Transparency is the name of the game.
Open up AvsPmod again. Have your encoding script open and then open up a new tab using CTRL+N. Drag and drop your finished encode onto the new tab. Edit to ffvideosource if you encoded using ffvideosource or DGSource. If you are using DirectShowSource, be sure the append the additional commands like in the original script. If you used DirectShowSource, and in turn, ffdshow, go to video decoder configuration in the ffdshow folder in your start menu > OSD > check Current frame and Frame type (as well as OSD) > and Apply . You may adjust the horizontal and vertical position if you wish for the OSD to appear on the source screens if you had to crop. OSD on source screens are not necessary.
OSD with ffvideosource requires that you append this line to the end of your script: ffinfo(cfrtime=false, vfrtime=false)
If for some reason your encode is either 1 frame more or less than the source when you load it i n AvsPmod, you can use the Trimcommand to shave off a frame from either the source script or the encode script. The Trim command is Trim(startframe,endframe) and keep in mind that there IS a frame 0.
Use the slider to jump around the video and to look for a frame that will be a good indication of overall quality. Try to find frames with faces as well as frames with a large background. When framecounts match in AvsPmod, using the scroll wheel on your mouse will flip between the two scripts and frames. Right Click > Save image as... and select a save destination.
6. Muxing: We can rebuild him, we have the technology.
Fire up mkvmerge GUI. Go to File > Options. Under mmg, check Disable header removal compression for audio and video tracks by default . IMPORTANT! - By removing header removal compression, you are increasing playback capabilities on certain hardware players. For any picture based subtitle t racks, i.e. PGS (SUP) or VobSub (IDX/VOB), you must disable compression for each track manually.
Drag and drop your encode.mkv, audio tracks, and subtitles into the input files setion of mkvmerge. Go Tracks, chapters, and tags and highlight the first track. Under General track options , set language (to whatever is correct), set default to yes (for the main audio track if you have commentaries - set commentary to default NO), and DO NOT force any tracks. If no track is set to be the default track then mkvmerge will promote the first track of each type that it finds to be the default track.
In the Global Tab, load your chapter file.
Now set an ouput filename and select a location and start muxing.
Last edited by Deadlybart356 [PM] 2 months, 4 weeks ago
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