Starwars Episode II Settings

[and_bez]

Just wondering as since starwars episode II is a really long movie, i would try for the first time to do a 2 cd rip, usaually i always do 1 cd.

Those it take the same amount of time to do 2cd Rip?

Anyone recommend some good settings for encoding 2cd rip of episode II.

Thanks.

[setarip]

"Does it take the same amount of time to do 2cd Rip?

Yes...

[UncasMS]

- use a high resolution like 704 x XXX
- go for a very good resizer (lanczos is my number one choice!)

i would NOT use
- GMC (anylonger)

[Enchanter]

i would NOT use
- GMC (anylonger)

Why is that so? And can you also tell me the reason why so few here recommend QPel (I have my own reasons too, but would like to find out whether they agree with yours)?

[UncasMS]

well, let me start with GMC:

i have done some intense testing and comparing with RESIZERS, DE-NOISING and compression lately - e.g. brotherhood of the wolves: done 12 times (the entire movie)

i do prefer high quality rips and thus in most cases i go for a 2cd rip

with GMC turned ON i realized quite some degree of ...well how do i put it since english isnt my native tongue... slightly visible noisy artefacts around high-contrast edges.

the sharper the resizer, the more visible those artefacts became.

i normally used sharp/precise bicubic for my conversion. the reason why i started testing brotherhood of the wolves, braveheart and later on the normal editon of lord of the rings (special extended editon will be my next pleasure ) was my curiosity about LANCZOS resizer and CONVOLUTION3D for de-noising.

the results got better little by little but the closer i looked at those files the more critical i became.

you normally dont watch most of your files that close/critical and thus one might not spot the problemzones or see big differences but i soon grew tired of those very little flaws and after some research on the net i came across this GMC option, which i considered usedfull before.

i turned it off and my image-quality looked better.

slightly of course, but i did see differences and thus an option that actually slows DOWN the transcoding process and on the other hand DECREASED my video-quality is an option that deserves to be DEACTIVATED for me from now on!


for q-pel
i've only tested this feature very few times. i did NOT realize any improvement in image-quality.
because every pro-feature (such as gmc, b frames, q-pel) slows down the conversion, therefor, i dont see any reason to use it.

++++

btw LANCZOS and CONVOLUTION are truly great and i will hardly do any conversion without them from now on.

[Enchanter]

I haven't done any DivX 5 testing with GMC option turned off. I'll try that later and see how the quality goes. I'm currently working on one animation movie, on which the DivX 5 codec fails miserably (actually the codec is not particularly good with anime 75% of the time).

As to the QPel, I didn't notice any quality difference either, and in fact, CPU usage shot up significantly for the playback, which really isn't desirable.

And where can I find those resizers? I might give them a try as well, though I'm a bit wary on resizers that result in sharper images and hence make them harder for the codec to compress. Anyway, it never hurts to try.

Thanks, Uncas.

[Batman]

I saw a great 2 cd XVID SWEpsII rip. You may want to use the xvid codec.

[UncasMS]

Lanczos should be part of the latest avisynth and Convolution can be found through the search engine of your choice (got it via google)


lanczos does not in a sense sharpen the picture more, it simply works better/more precise though i'm not able to put into words, how exactly it does so!

and lanczos in combination with convolution can lead to impressive results when it comes to very good looking rips with long playing time using low space.

i did lord of the rings (the normal version with 170 min total playing time) on 2cds with 2 languages and i was very impressed by the quality of this long movie.

take a look at a dark and at a bright scene and keep in mind that focussing on the ring has nothing to do with blurriness in picture one.



+++++++++

[Enchanter]

I see what you mean there. The picture does look, somehow, better and not necessarily sharper. However, it would be a good thing if I can do an apple to apple comparison. Would you mind posting the same pictures, this time resized with the conventional Bicubic resizer. Thanks, Uncas.

[UncasMS]

i wont do that for numerous reasons:

- i would have to re-do the WHOLE film in order to have comparable kbps-settings throughout the entire movie

- jpg compression for the screenshots might be a misleading factor

- it's always hard to judge a movie by looking at screenshots

it would be much better if you converted some sort of a short vob file for yourself - make sure to pick bitrates that will face facts.

this way you would be able to see and compare the movies for yourself.

[gonzo4904]

Originally posted by and_bez
Just wondering as since starwars episode II is a really long movie, i would try for the first time to do a 2 cd rip, usaually i always do 1 cd.

Those it take the same amount of time to do 2cd Rip?

Anyone recommend some good settings for encoding 2cd rip of episode II.

Thanks.

I just finished my divx encode of EpII. I used a one pass setting, with the bitrate at 950 I think. Audio @ 56, and it came out very nicely.

two files 575MB & 430MB

[khp]

You really should think about using 2 pass encoding, better quality and much better filesize prediction.

What resolution did you use ?

I just did a 1395 MB rip of SWeps2 at 704*304, with 192kbps AC3 audio, which I can definetly recommend.