Firstly, write a script to load the video. AVISource("yourvideo.avi") should be all that's required.
The latest version of HCenc 0.24 is here:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p ... ost1389678
You can use that to encode to MPEG-2. Experiment with the settings to get a handle for which ones affect quality, or if you'd rather skip that part, copy and paste the following into Notepad and save it with an .ini extension. Then, load the .ini into HCenc, give it your AviSynth script, and set where you want the output .m2v file saved.
Code: Select all
*BITRATE 7000
*MAXBITRATE 7500
*2PASS
*PROFILE best
*ASPECT 4:3
*GOP 12 2
*DC_PREC 10
*PROGRESSIVE
*INTRAVLC 2
*CLOSEDGOPS
*LASTIFRAME
*MPEGLEVEL MP@ML
*MATRIX mpeg
*WAIT 0
Going from the specifications on the
contest entry page, it forbids using AC3 for the audio, which means you have to use MP2. Make sure the audio is at 48kHz, and then use twolame (probably through BeLight or something, I don't know of any GUIs for it since I use it through the command line on those rare occasions I need MP2) to encode the WAV to MP2.
I'm also assuming that the file you have is already 29.97fps and is supposed to be viewed as 4:3.
You can use the
free trial version of TMPGEnc to mux the video and audio together*. File->MPEG Tools. The Simple Multiplex tab should already be selected. Just give it the video and audio and tell it to go. Said trial version can be used to encode MPEG-2 for 30 days, but A) I have no way of knowing whether you've ever used the trial, which means the trial period is probably expired, and B) HCenc is free, and has pretty much equivalent - if not superior - quality.
*I don't mux them this way, but this is the only trustworthy, simple GUI-based solution I know of. I once again use the command line for this part, just like I do for the video and audio encoding.