Forum Archive Home -> DVD to AVI/MP4/WMV/MKV -> What is the best/easiest way to convert ripped movies keeping best quality?
| What is the best/easiest way to convert ripped movies keeping best quality? | ||||
| Emanef posted 2008 Jul 31 12:02 | ||||
| I can see from the numerous posts I've searched through that this is not a new topic, but I'll be specific in what I am asking and hopefully I won't irrirate too many people by asking....! Here goes....!
I have loads of dvd's, and I'd like to convert my favourites (probably around 300/400) to a smaller format to store on my NAS drive so that I can access them from all over the house. These are the issues I have and need to work out: I have an Iamm NTD36HD media player, that plays most formats but not hi-def or H264. However, I've ordered a Popcorn Hour which does, and it may be that I get a second to replace the Iamm if I get on with it. Therefore, I need to decide whether I should go straight to H264 and not have access on the Iamm (I could use my Xbox 360 for wartching those files for now if needby), or should I stick with Xvid, which I can play on everything (including the Asus EeePC I've ordered! Woo hoo!)? Xvid or H264? I've been using Auto GK for Xvid for ages, and am pretty familiar with it. It's generally good, but one thing I find annoying is not being able to lock the resolution and have multipass. Setting to a percentage gives a fixed resolution, but it's only single pass and generally a larger file. I'd rather lock the resolution because I'm watching them on a 42" TV (or 32" in the bedroom), and once the resolution gets reduced the media player is having to upscale, and it's clearly not as good a picture as the correct resolution. I know H264 is the 'super new high compression format', but; - does it really give much better quality video with higher compression? - Is there any decent programs that can convert quickly and are fairly each to use (and batch files)? Theoretically, what size would an H264 file be to an Xvid of the same movie at the same quality (I realise they're all different, but if you take any movie and convert into both and compare)? Xvid If I stick with XVid (and probably AutoGK), what is the best way to convert keeping the resolution and giving best quality? ie, as near to that as the orginal DVD/mpeg source? H264 If I go down this route, what are the best programs to use? Not as in the most effective but you need a science degree to use (!), but that is fairly straight forward to use and gives good results quickly? Also, can anyone recommend a good guide to getting settings for DVD quality, and that explains what difference the bit rates makes? Apologies again for asking what has been asked god knows how many times, but if anyone can take the time to give me some good advice hopefully I can stop posting these stupid questions (and maybe it may help someone else in a similar position!) Cheers guys (and gals where applicable!) | ||||
| jagabo posted 2008 Jul 31 13:51 | ||||
| h.264 does give better quality at low bitrates. But it will take 4 times longer to encode.
Test your DVD player and Popcorn Hour: keep the frame size 720x576 (or 720x480 for NTSC sources) and encode at constant quality with the DAR flags set to the proper DAR. That way you'll lose no resolution. But not all players support DAR flags properly. For Xvid I usually use Single Pass, Target Quantizer mode with a Quantizer of 3. That is a little lower quality than the source but I find it an acceptable compromise of quality vs file size. When I use x264 (not very often) I usually use a fixed quantizer of ~22. For easier seeking I usually set the keyframe interval to smaller values. 100 for xvid, 50 for h.264. | ||||
| redwudz posted 2008 Jul 31 15:14 | ||||
| I've been using FairUse Wizard for H.264 conversions. Easy to use and fairly quick (For H.264 :lol: ) with a quad core computer from ripped DVD files. | ||||
| Emanef posted 2008 Aug 01 02:20 | ||||
| I've not tried Fairuse, simply because when I installed it I realised I had to rip to ISO, which I hadn't done so didn't bother continuing with it, but I may give it a go over the weekend.
Jagabo, thanks for that. What software do you use that lets you choose those settings? | ||||
| jagabo posted 2008 Aug 01 06:58 | ||||
| When I rip a DVD I use DVD Decryptor in IFO mode to rip the main title (or for TV series, each episode) as a single VOB. I then use DGIndex to index the VOB, AviSynth to frameserve (and do any processing), and VirtualDub to do the compression to XVID AVI. That last step is where you set up all the Xvid controls. I don't encode to h.264 that much but I've used VirtualDub (plus x264vfw), AviDemux, and x264. | ||||
| Emanef posted 2008 Aug 02 04:29 | ||||
| I'm giving Staxrip and Fairuse Wizard a whirl....
I'm trying H264 at the moment, just to try to compare file sizes and conversion times. My PC is a Core 2 Duo E6300 (1.6ghz, so not shit hot) with 2 GB. I also have a laptop with a 2.6 Core 2 Duo Penryn (6mb cache) and 3 GB memory, although I prefer to leave the desktop doing the converting (I'm looking to upgrade to an E6700 2.6ghz Core 2 Duo when I see one on Ebay for a reasonable price, which should give it more grunt). Firstly, is there any way to keep the full resolution in Fairuse? It lists all the resolution options, but none are full size (they tend to be from 720x384 downwards). Second; Staxrip seems to be a lot more flexible, but that means there's loads of options that confuse me! What are the best settings to use for keeping full resolution and pretty much full quality (ie similar quality to the original DVD)? I'd rather have one setting that I use for all movies, so coding to a set filesize is not neccessarily ideal (as I have no way of knowing what the best filesize for each is unless there is a calculation based on running time mulitplied by X mb per minute (ie, 8 mb per minute of video, x 60 would mean 480mb for an hour, that sort of thing). Does anyone know of a comparison chart that lists comparable bit rates and file sizes for the different codecs (like on the DVD 'What is it?' page on here)? I'm new to H264 but once I understand the basic settings, differences, etc I should be ok. I tried a set of Terminator 2 last night using Staxrip, and ended up with an Xvid of 2423mb (720x576, 219kbps) compared to the 1659mb with AutoGK (smaller resolution, 624x272, 448kbps). I also did an .mkv conversion and ended up with a 1331mb file with a res of 720x576. What sort of settings, for example, would a movie downloaded from iTunes store or similar be? | ||||
| jagabo posted 2008 Aug 02 08:06 | ||||
| file size = bitrate * running time
This is universal to all codecs. The question is what quality you will get at a certain bitrate with different codecs. That will depend on the frame size, frame rate, and nature of the video. Here are a few examples: http://forum.videohelp.com/topic349367.html#1837447 Both are 720x480. One is 1 kbps, the other 67000 kbps. Both were made using Xvid in constant quality (target quantizer) mode. Both look nearly identical to the source video. DVD sources won't be at either extreme but the "right" bitrate will vary. I don't care about the exact file size so I usually use constant quality encoding, as noted earlier. Although my Divx/DVD player supports DAR flags, and I usually use an HTPC to view files anyway, I usually resize to square pixels resolutions for greater compatability. Typically 704x400 for 16:9 material, 640x480 for 4:3. With Xvid at Target Quantizer = 3 I usually get files between 800 and 1500 MB. If you use h.264 encoding you can probably get that down to around 2/3 to 3/4 that size with the same general quality. | ||||
| Emanef posted 2008 Aug 03 09:52 | ||||
| Ah, ok.
Right, an update.... I'm struggling to get a decent H264 file. I've done a couple but playback is unpredictable (sometimes it plays, sometimes it freezes, etc). Plus it's generally taken about 6/7 hours to convert. For now I'm going to go back to Xvid and concentrate on that. I'd rather be doing them to H264 but it takes too long, plus Xvid is pretty much compatible everywhere. Fairuse Wizard - I actually like this as it's easy to set up for both H264 and Xvid, but unfortunately it won't let me force to full resolution so that's not good for what I need. Staxrip - I'm liking this one as I can set the resolution, both for H264 and Xvid, but unfortuantely there doesn't seem to be an English manual for it and I don't know what all the settings mean! Handbrake - I couldn't complete a H264 encoding as it kept freezing. I'm trying it with an XVid at the moment on my other PC. I'm also now trying the method you said you use; DGIndex to index the VOB, AviSynth to frameserve, and VirtualDub to do the compression to XVID AVI. That's actually pretty straightforward when you work out how to do it. I'm running that at the moment to see what result I get. A couple of questions on things you've said Jagabo.... why do you only use 1 pass and not 2 pass? And why constant quality? Would a 2 pass not give similar results with a smaller file size? Also, should I use the latest versions of Avisynth and VirtuaDub for xvid? | ||||
| jagabo posted 2008 Aug 03 11:03 | ||||
With 2-pass encoding you pick the bitrate (and hence the file size) but you don't know what the quality will be. In single pass target quantizer mode you pick the quantizer (and hence the quality) but you don't know what the file size will be (and it takes half the time to encode since it only requires one pass). When the file sizes match the quality is pretty even between the two methods. 2-pass does have an advantage when you are shooting for very low bitrates. Target quantizer mode is a mathematically constant quality mode. 2-pass VBR adjusts a little better for "visual" quality. Try this: encode a movie in single pass target quantizer mode with a quantizer of 3. Note the final file size (average bitrate). Now encode using 2-pass VBR mode with the same average bitrate. Compare the two results.
It's not absolutely necessary to have the latest versions. | ||||
| Emanef posted 2008 Aug 03 11:24 | ||||
| Ah, ok, I'm with you. So I just need to do a few comparisons on the quantiser settings to see what I'm happy with.
One last question, more on the AVC side of things (and then I'll try a few more tests and leave you alone for a while!).... I've read that X264 is the better codec to use, but neither Staxrip nor Handbrake seem to let me specify X264, only H264 with either an mp4, mkv or avi wrapper. Also, does Virtualdub not do AVC? | ||||
| Midzuki posted 2008 Aug 03 11:33 | ||||
| H264 is the compression "method";
X264 is the encoding application. As for VirtualDub, there exists a Video-For-Windows version of X264, created by DeathTheSheep. Keep in mind that the AVI container does not support the so-called advanced features of H264. | ||||
| jagabo posted 2008 Aug 03 11:37 | ||||
Exactly. With Xvid here's what I find: At a quantizer of 2 the frames are nearly identical to the source even if you look at enlarged still frames. At 3 you will see a little macroblocking if you view enlarged still frames but you won't notice at normal playback speed. At 4 you may notice a little macroblocking at normal playback speed if you watch closely.
You can use x264vfw to add h.264 encoding to VirtualDub. But the AVI container is not well suited to h.264 video. It can be done though. And quality will be similar to any other h.264 encoder/container. If you want to play with h.264 encoding you will be better off with AviDemux. It's a lot like VirtualDub but supports many more output containers like MP4, MKV, OGM, etc. | ||||
| Emanef posted 2008 Aug 04 02:18 | ||||
| I've tried a couple at H264 (with Staxrip) using a quantizer of 18, mkv container. I did The Ststaion Agent (around 1.5 hours run time) and got a file of 1500, which seems quite large. VideoLan seems to struggle playing back; it plays and I can forward for about 20 mins, but any further and it just freezes. That took abut three hours, as I had it on single pass fast setting. I'm going to try at a quanitzer of 23, see if that makes much different to the size/quality.
I've also tried a couple of Xvids using the method you use (frameserving to Virtuldub), but for some reason I cannot get any audio. I'm using Lame as the audio output for Vdub. Any suggestions? Cheers | ||||
| FulciLives posted 2008 Aug 04 02:58 | ||||
| XVID4PSP is a nice encoder for MKV or MP4 using H.264/x264
It can also make files that are compatible with the XBOX 360 or PS3 which is nice because they make great media players (if your computer isn't near the TV and mine sure ain't close). - John "FulciLives" Coleman | ||||
| jagabo posted 2008 Aug 04 07:00 | ||||
18 is considered near lossless, hence the large file size. 22 or so is a better compromise of quality and file size.
MPEG2Source() does not include audio. DGIndex should have created a separate audio file (usually AC3). I import that into VirtualDub and leave it as-is. If you want to convert to MP3 be sure your AC3 decoder is set to downmix to stereo. VirtualDub has a problem importing some AC3 files. I use VirtualDubMod when that happens. You can also specify an audio source within your AviSynth script: video=Mpeg2Source("file.dga") audio=WavSource("file.wav") AudioDub(video, audio) | ||||
| Emanef posted 2008 Aug 05 02:24 | ||||
| OK. Well with Xvid I am finding that a quantiser of 3 gives good results and reasonable file sizes. I'm going to try a couple more variations on that but I think that's the xvid settings decided for me.
Not quite so sure with X264 though. The file sizes are better but playback is patchy. I'm wondering if that's because I'm using too high quality settings. Does a pc find it harder to play back a H264 file that is large (ie with less compression but higher bit rate) or smaller (more compression but less bit rate and data to deal with)? I'm going to try a few X264 conversions with quantisers of 22-25 to see what the results are. I may have a look at that Xvid4PSP when I get the chance, but I'm finding Staxrip my favoured choice at the moment. | ||||
| jagabo posted 2008 Aug 05 06:40 | ||||
| In general h.264 video does take more horsepower than Xvid. Both to compress and to decompress. I could see where a 1.4 GHz Tbird might not be sufficient for full D1 video.
If you want to squeeze a little more quality out of Xvid (x264 too) turn off B-VOP. B-frames are encoded at lower quality than I and P frames (even in target quantizer mode). The idea being that it's ok for a some frames to be encoded with lower quality because a higher quality I or P frame will come along and clean up the image in a frame or two. File size will go up about 50 percent without B frames though. This also makes decoding easier and gets rid of the packed bitstream problem that can occur with some set-top players. | ||||
| Emanef posted 2008 Aug 05 08:08 | ||||
| Eek! Need to change my profile! Not had that for a while! Core 2 Duo E6300 in my desktop and 2.6ghz Penryn in my laptop!
I'll give that a go though, anything to squeeze out a little more quality. I've got a couple of conversions going on at home (I'm at work at the mo) so I'll check them when I get home. I'm basically doing a load of the same movie to be able to compare side by side, and then will narrow down those and try a few other movies. | ||||
| Midzuki posted 2008 Aug 05 09:01 | ||||
The player/media splitter/codec used may make a difference too. Believe it or not, a 1.5GHz Pentium IV can playback H264 @ 1024x576 @ 25fps without a problem. 720p and 1080p are monsters of a worse type, of course. | ||||
| Emanef posted 2008 Aug 05 14:04 | ||||
| Computer details updated!
I'm after the best compromise of minimum file size and maximum quality, so I don't think I'll bother with turning of B frames (not yet anyway). I've used Shrink DVD to create four 30 minute files of dvd rips so that it's quicker to convert at different settings to compare. Midzuki.... no chance an Asus EeePC 901 with an Intel Atom 1.6 will play back H264 is there?! | ||||
| Emanef posted 2008 Aug 06 12:46 | ||||
| Right, I've done a few conversions at Xvid and H264 at different settings, so I'll post my results shortly.
For H264.... which wrapper is best? MP4 or MKV? Is there much difference between them? Is one more supported than the other? | ||||
| poisondeathray posted 2008 Aug 06 12:53 | ||||
I personally think .mkv is better because it supports basically everything - all video and audio codecs. Not all devices (such as portable players) support .mkv, however. .mp4 has compatibility issues with AC3 audio, but more portable players support this container. So if you wanted 5.1 audio, you'd have to convert to 5.1 AAC. Also, when you have h.264 it has to be encoded with specific (limited) parameters to be compatible with most portable players - not a big issue if you have a modern PC. If you are finding h.264 playback suffering because of your pc specs, coreavc is known to use much fewer CPU cycles and can allow playback of some files otherwise unplayable on lower end pc's. (Unfortunately, not free) | ||||
| Emanef posted 2008 Aug 06 15:29 | ||||
| I don't really play back movies on my laptop or PC. I usually use my media player, but as it's connected to a 42" plasma (the media player upscales and gives a very good picture) I want a good quality conversion.
My media player won't play H264 files as it's not powerful enough, but I've got a Popcorn Hour on the way which will, and if I get on with it I'll get a second to replace the current player. XVid is better for me as it's more supported, but H264 does give better quality for less space. 5.1 isn't an issue for me, I'm happy with stereo, so have been using mp3 for xvid and aac for H264. I may try CoreAVC, although my PC's should be powerful enough for H264. | ||||
| jagabo posted 2008 Aug 06 20:42 | ||||
| CoreAvc Pro may be a little more efficient on a single core system but it's main benefit is it's multithreaded. So you can squeeze more out of it on dual (or more) core systems. | ||||
| Emanef posted 2008 Aug 07 12:20 | ||||
| Bugger! Just trying to test my test conversions on my Xbox 360.... it sees the XVids but not the H264 files! I know MKV isn't supported, but I thought mp4 is! | ||||
| poisondeathray posted 2008 Aug 07 12:43 | ||||
| Same thing applies with playback - the xbox360 profile is limited
http://blogs.msdn.com/xboxteam/archive/2007/11/30/december-2007-v ... k-faq.aspx AVC Level 4.1 or lower, Keep 3 or less reference frames, Max 3 B-frames, no B-pyramids, only 2 channel AAC for audio. Keep bitrate <10Mbps, but max bitrate spikes have been known to screw up playback when using VBR | ||||
| Emanef posted 2008 Aug 07 12:56 | ||||
| Ah, ok. I burned them to a DVDRW to test; two played (two at Staxrip's HQ Slow CRF 22 setting (one with a quantiser of 20, one with 22), but the two with a quantiser of 18 wouldn't play, said not compatible. They don't want you playing files of higher quality on it unless you buy it from them then, eh!
"Keep 3 or less reference frames, Max 3 B-frames, no B-pyramids" What do each of these actually mean, in plain English?! Most of the glossaries I've found have been pretty complicated! | ||||
| Emanef posted 2008 Aug 08 12:27 | ||||
| Right, I'm getting there....!
Few more questions.... X264 - what's the difference between Quality and Quantiser settings? Iv'e done a few test conversions on two movies, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas and 30 Days of Night. I did one XVid at constant quality, quantiser 3, and two x264; both at StaxRip's HQ Slow CRF 22 setting, but one with quality set to 20, the other with quantiser set to 20. I did both movies at each of the same settings, and it's the last two that I'm having interesting results with. 30 Days of Night were: Xvid - 1,079,980kb X264 Quality 20 - 1,078,534 X264 Quantiser 20 - 1,063,210kb I also did X264 quality 22 - 738,749 & Quality 18 - 1,622,826. All the X264 were at HQ Slow CRF 22 setting. This seems to indicate similar in the Quality and Quantiser settings, which seems to bear out what I read (that Quality is slightly better but they do similar quality) However, my Fear & Loathing (this time at Single Pass, good setting) filesizes were quite different: X264 Quality 20 - 1,077,646 X264 Quantiser - 1,555,194 This is quite a difference from the 30 Days of Night tests! Is there a logical explanation to that? I appreciate all movies are different, but wouldn't there be similar size differences between similar types of encoding? So I guess, I'm ultimately asking, should I use Quality or Quantiser?! Cheers for all the help so far, btw guys, it's been a real help having informed advice! :thumbs: I'm impatiently waiting for my Popcour Hour to arrive so I can test them properly on a big screen to properly compare the difference, as it's all on PC screens at the moment, so it's hard to tell what quality I will finally need! At least if I can familiarise myself with the different settings it'll make it easier when I can test properly! | ||||
| jagabo posted 2008 Aug 08 13:01 | ||||
| http://forum.handbrake.fr/viewtopic.php?p=1607 | ||||
| Emanef posted 2008 Aug 08 18:43 | ||||
| Cheers Jagabo. That's actually really helpful.
So basically, as I understand it, there's no reason to use two-pass unless I want to maximise the quality and minimise the file size at the same time, but that would mean the time consuming task of a single pass to get the best bitrate, and then a two-pass to squeeze the most in. That's not what I want (or can be arsed!) to do.....! I have far too many to convert! So... in a similar way to an average bit rate MP3 encode (where you set the ave, min and max), with CRF it aims to give an ave target quality but increasing/reducing quality when needed within its parameters, compared to CQP, which would be like a fix bit rate MP3, giving a constant quality, but not benefit from increasing or reducing when needed. * So the HQ Slow CRF setting probably seems best for me. On my tests, a quality setting of 20 seems to give a similar file size to an Xvid of constant with a quantiser of 3, 18 gives around 33% higher, and 22 around 33% smaller. I will wait until the Popcorn gets here and I can compare before I decide, but it'll be then down to (I'm hoping!) whether the 22 gives similar results to the Xvid and I'm happy with that, or the 20 gives better quality for a similar size to the Xvid. I'm finding that an average 100 min movie takes about an hour to convert to Xvid, and about 2-2.5 to do an X264. Not as bad as I previously thought it might be, plus if I can hunt down a cheap E6700 CPU that'll increase my CPU from 1.8 to 2.6 and double the L2 cache! I see light at the end of the tunnel! Just hope it's not an express train.....! * I only compare with MP3 as I've plenty of experience of converting and editing audio so it's easier for me to equate to! Audio is easier as it doesn't have all the different frames, etc! | ||||
| poisondeathray posted 2008 Aug 08 19:05 | ||||
| You'll find that x264 scales much more efficiently with more cores, about 1.8-1.9x per core linearly even up to 16 cores (and probably more)
XviD only scales to about 2 cores, maybe 1.2-1.3x then levels off with no appreciable gain after 2 cores. DivX is better for multithreading than XviD, it scales up to 3 cores then levels off after 4 cores. You can also tweak settings on x264 to make it run much faster, or slower with more quality; it is highly customizable. Also, you might want to research Popcorn Hour compatible settings for x264. I doubt it support all the features/settings. | ||||
| Emanef posted 2008 Aug 08 19:23 | ||||
| What do you mean by more cores? Are you referring to when coding/playing back on multi-core PC's? Or something completely different?! I'm finding my feet here, man.... don't push my head back under too far at once!
Yeahh, I have been looking on the Popcorn user board. There are still a few issues with some mkv files, but according to the mods they are due to release a firmware update that should correct any probs people are having with picture freezing. For the time being I'm going to convert to both xvid and X264. Increases the time but I can queue them up and leave it running through the day, and at leasy I know the xvid's will playback! Hopefully it'll be here within the next week so I'll have a better play then! | ||||
| jagabo posted 2008 Aug 08 19:33 | ||||
Yes, he's talking about encoding speed on multicore systems. In my tests Xvid gains about 60 percent performance going from 1 to 2 cores (the amount varies depending on the settings used and the particular video). Going from 2 to 3 cores only gets a little more. Maybe 30 percent. Going from 3 to 4 got no more improvement. (All this testing was done on a quad core Q6600 with VirtualDub in fast recompress mode and by setting the number of threads in Xvid.) X264 scaled much better. In the range that poisondeathray indicated. I've only tested up to 4 cores though (Q6600 CPU). | ||||
| poisondeathray posted 2008 Aug 08 19:44 | ||||
| Sorry to confuse! I mean more CPU cores for encoding.
So if you use a quad core for encoding, it is about 3.6-3.8x as fast as an equivalent single core using x264, but using XviD it's only 1.5x as fast going from single core to quad. Depending on the settings used, x264 can be faster than XviD when you have an overclocked quad, and definitely with a dual quad (dual socket) setup because of the scaling. The quality is definitely better with x264 at any equivalent bitrate. I say this because the next generation chips to be released in a few months have a new version of hyperthreading technology that has "logical cores." So a quad core would then have 4 physical cores plus 4 logical cores for a total of 8. The scaling on preliminary sample shows about 150% faster from previous generation of quads. It's not a big problem when you are encoding standard definition like DVD, but if you eventually want to do higher definition (like blu-ray), the encoding time slows down considerably Q6600's (Intel quad core) are about ~$199 right now, the next generation "Core i7" quads will start around $300 but are on a new platform (i.e. your current motherboard will not work with it). Just some info for future purchase decisions so you don't get "burned" Cheers | ||||
| jagabo posted 2008 Aug 08 19:50 | ||||
That's higher than I would expect given that the P4's hyperthreading rarely added more than about 15 percent (in the real world). Hope it's true. | ||||
| poisondeathray posted 2008 Aug 08 20:00 | ||||
Yeah HT v.1 was kind of a bust :) I'm excited for Nehalem generation CPUs These results for x264 are very beta with an early bios and suboptimal memory configuration; so expect slightly better at launch time. Only problem is single threaded apps see only a minor gain, maybe 3-5%. (Sorry for hijacking your thread!) Reference: http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3326&p=6 Other good reference reading www.nehalemnews.com  | ||||
| jagabo posted 2008 Aug 09 09:04 | ||||
| Thanks, I missed that article at Anandtech. My first question was whether the big improvements were from the hyperthreading or from other architectual changes. But the single threaded Cinebench results imply that the other changes don't help much. | ||||
| Emanef posted 2008 Aug 09 11:00 | ||||
| Ah, ok cheers. Interesting reading. I'll be sticking with dual core for the time being though! I don't game or playback video on mine, the main grunt I need it for is video converting and recording guitar, so dual core is fine for me for now. Once I get hold of an E6700 chip it'll give me a boost and cut down encoding time to around 2 hours, which I'm happy with for now!
I think I will be sticking with the mkv (hmm, although mp4 would play back on Xbox 360 as well as the Popcorn....) and using the CRF quality 20. It gives a similar size to the Xvid constant quantiser 3 but better quality. Next I need to work out how to get subtitles into my X264's! I don't think Staxrip can do it, or at least I can't seem to find the option to! | ||||
| Emanef posted 2008 Aug 11 17:15 | ||||
| The Popcorn is here! I'm trying to work out what settings are best, but to be honest, I can't see [i]too[i/] much diffence between quality 20 and 22, but it is slightly noticeable I'm thinking I'll settle for 21 as it's marginally better than Xvid with a quantiser of 3 and a smaller file. I need to get a hard drive in there really, as trying to stream over Homeplug at the other end of the flat is not ideal! It's fine for smaller files but larger higher quality files aren't quick enough. That's tomorrow night's job! | ||||
| jagabo posted 2008 Aug 11 17:30 | ||||
| Try a scene with a lot of fog or smoke. You may see some posterization aritfacts. | ||||
| johnnyl1 posted 2008 Aug 16 11:13 | ||||
| Hi emanef,
Just come across this thread and its quite similar to what i'm trying to do so very interested in your results. I too have the popcorn hour and was using fairuse to convet my dvd's to xvid with quantiser value of between 2 and 3. Before converting all my dvd's though decided to do bit of research and come across a lot of hype about the 264 codec and the mkv container. The popcorn hour has a really long winded and complicated tutorial on how to convert dvd to h264 for the popcorn. Decided to just use fairuse (a basic 1 click option). However it encodes at h264 L5.1. Popcorn doesn't seem to handle this too well (jerky playback) and after searching the forums found popcorn only capable of handling h264 L4.1 and lower. At the moment considering just using xvid but would be interested to see your results. regards J edit: popcorn hour does handle h264 L5.1. I was attempting to change the profile to L4.1 using h264info, but when demuxing (mkvetract) the mkv file created by fairuse discovered it consisted of the sound file and an avi file! A container within a container, didnt know this was possible. Anyway, extracted the h264 from the avi using yamb and muxed it together again (mkvmerge). Worked just fine on the popcorn without going near h264info. I guess the problem was due to h264 not being well suited to the avi container as other forums suggest. Something for other fairusers to look out for. | ||||
| jagabo posted 2008 Aug 16 11:26 | ||||
| Yes, h.264 can usually encode to 1/2 to 3/4 the size of Xvid with similar quality. But it takes a lot longer to encode and more CPU power to decode.
Peronally, I hate the MKV container. I find it to be pretty much a write-only container. | ||||
| poisondeathray posted 2008 Aug 16 11:34 | ||||
| @johnnyl1 - you can convert your stream to L4.1 with h264info without re-encoding.
You can use more comprehensive solutions like MeGUI to customize your encodes. You can even use the downloadable profiles verified to work on standalones, such as TviX and Popcorn Hour | ||||
| FulciLives posted 2008 Aug 16 13:15 | ||||
| XVID4PSP can do MKV from a DVD Video and the result will be a Level 4.1 H.264 video along with the original audio from the DVD plus subtitles if you want it.
It is fairly simple to use. - John "FulciLives" Coleman | ||||
| FulciLives posted 2008 Aug 16 23:59 | ||||
| I have a VOB sample. Just like you would have from a DVD Rip.
I loaded it into XVID4PSP and converted it to MKV format. Download it and see if it works for you on the Popcorn. The file is small so it won't take long. The sample MKV is called popcornsample.mkv Link ---> http://www.mediafire.com/?ug9ynj994jo If you want to try and replicate the process then download my VOB sample. It is called sample.vob Link ---> http://www.mediafire.com/?xycztgklm1x If it works I can post a short tutorial of what I did but really it isn't hard. Just select MKV from the list of formats ... change the audio to AC-3 (in this case the audio in the VOB was MP2) or set the audio to copy (when it is a DVD with AC-3 audio like most) and use the default video setting or one of the other settings with the same name but a lower number (I used 18 instead of 21). - John "FulciLives" Coleman | ||||
| johnnyl1 posted 2008 Aug 17 15:02 | ||||
| Thanks fulcilives, Really appreciate you putting those files up. Not so many forums as helpful as this one. Worked a treat on the popcorn. Going to try a few full length dvd's with xvid4psp. Hopefully its as straightforward as fairuse as i've quite a few dvd'd to get through. thanks also to poisondeathray, will also try h264info and MEgui but thinking it might be a roundabout way of getting what i need. regards John | ||||
| macblob posted 2008 Aug 18 21:48 | ||||
| I ran across this thread searching for the same answer. I want to be able to convert all of my movies, TV Series, etc., to a high quality file and store them on a hard drive too. This way I can access them any time by use of Windows Media Center and the Linksys DMA-2200 media extender.
I am finding that I need to buy another hard drive and get a hard drive server, so I can put maybe 3 or 4 hard drives in it. My movie collection is at 200+ and so is my TV series collection. In my Dual Core Processor Gateway GT5432, I have used Hauppage PVR-150, Hauppage HDR-1600, ATI All In One Wonder HD 650 USB to capture regular TV series and watch them when I wanted to. Now I have a Pinnacle PCTV To Go HD Wireless and a dedicated Motorola DCT-6416 III for my High Def movies and shows. Had to buy the Pinnacle Remote Kit for Windows Media Center, just to be able to use it in Windows Media Center. Viewing everything and anything I want to watch that I have recorded at the touch of a button is the ultimate goal. But using less hard drive space with little to no quality degradation is the key. DVDFab for ripping. VideoRedo/TVSuite for TV series commercial cutting. This morning I used Nero 8 Ultimate to convert (VOB) Surfs up to H264 compliant *.mp4. It took 2 hours for that conversion. 3Gb down to 1.12 Gb's. 5.1 Stereo. 1 Pass Came out pretty darn good. It still would be nice if a conversion only took 30 minutes and kept all the qaulity with less than 1 Gb. Someday. | ||||
| Emanef posted 2008 Aug 19 12:38 | ||||
| I've still not played too much on my Popcorn Hour as I've ordered a 750gb drive for it and am waiting for delivery.
I have, however, been busy converting a load of my DVD's to X264 format, so this is how I've been doing it..... After all the advice from the guys in this thread I settled on doing them to x264 in the mkv format. I've been using StaxRip and keeping the full resolution (it defaults to a crop). I'm then using the CFR 22 Slow setting with a quality setting of 20. Using this I either get a file that's small and high quality (ie 700mb to 1200 for a 90-140 min file) or one that's almost double that. The ones that are double that I re-convert using the same settings, but then change it to a 2-pass and specify a filesize of around 1 to 1.2gb. The 2-pass takes longer but gives a smaller file for the same results, but it's quicker to do the quality of 20 setting first as two out of three are fine like that. I'll post back an update once I've got them all on the Popcorn and have tried them ;) | ||||
| poisondeathray posted 2008 Aug 19 13:00 | ||||
| That's the problem with CRF mode, filesize might be way bigger or smaller depending on the source.
Complex scenes with lots of detail, motion, colors need more bitrate to make each frame "look" the same quality as the CRF setting. So an "action movie" might be 2x as big as a "drama movie" If you don't care about filesize, it's usually the better way to encode (and faster!) | ||||
| jagabo posted 2008 Aug 19 13:10 | ||||
| Noise, like in off air or VHS recordings, is also a big sucker of bitrate. | ||||
| johnnyl1 posted 2008 Aug 19 18:05 | ||||
| Hi emanef,
I just edited my first post. I know you're not using fairuse but just wanted to correct the post. I've found popcorn hour quite capable of handling h264 L5.1 after fixing the mkv created by fairuse. regards J | ||||
| Emanef posted 2008 Aug 22 17:25 | ||||
| My 750gb drive should arrive so I'll be chucking that into the Popcorn and copying over all the MKV files I've converted.
I'm having a problem with a few of them though. Staxrip says there's a problem with the PID. Any ideas how to correct that? I've tried converting a couple of the files from VOB to MPEG (after using VideoReDo's Fix Stream) but it still says the same for the MPEG files as well. I quite liked Fairuse, btw, but my main issue was that it wouldn't let me keep the full resolution and always wanted to resize it. | ||||
| Emanef posted 2008 Aug 24 05:09 | ||||
| Just thought I'd update on how I'm getting on with this....
Instead of using Slow HQ CRF2 with quality of 20, I've been using the same setting but on two-pass, and using the compressibility check to gauge the size/bitrate. Takes a bit longer, but seems to give good results, and I presume it gives a better filesize for similar but vbr quality compared to the fbr Quality 20. I'm having a problems with a few dvd's that Staxrip (or more acurately I think, DGIndex) is having not being able to find the audio/video streams, but I'm trying to work that out (hence my other thread!) | ||||
| jagabo posted 2008 Aug 24 07:40 | ||||
Not really. They are two sides of the same coin. The main difference is this: in one you select the quality, the file turns out whatever size is required to deliver that quality. With the other you select the file size, the video turns out whatever quality the encoder can give you at that size. In the end, quality is similar at similar file sizes. | ||||
| Emanef posted 2008 Aug 25 10:56 | ||||
| Ah, ok. Most have been fine on the one pass, Qual 20, but some have been too large. U-Turn came out at 3.5 gb! It must have miscalced something, so I had to do that as two pass! | ||||
| jagabo posted 2008 Aug 25 11:07 | ||||
| Q=20 is a pretty high quality setting. I find 22 to be a good compromise for casual viewing. |
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