What Format do most of you use ?

SS5_Majin_Bebi · Post by **SS5_Majin_Bebi** » Thu May 29, 2003 1:01 am

Yes, thanks heaps. At least now I know that I don't have to stop using VBR. I like using only the amount of kbps a scene needs and nothing more. VBR is a neat way of doing it.

iserlohn · Post by **iserlohn** » Thu May 29, 2003 6:53 pm

I use CBR because I'm lazy...that and my computer is slow, meaning that having TMPEG make me a noise filtered 2 pass VBR file will take up to 36 hours for me to encode, since I leave it on idle cycles only (so I can, you know, USE my computer)...

IMHO, people who do 6 or 9 or whatever passes are just getting ridiculous and anal. Digital video is never perfect, and if you wanted the best quality possible you'd dump it onto either analog 1" tape or D9 or BetaSP. However, chances are you don't have access to those formats and nobody looking at your video will either. The closest you could really do is a nice MPEG-2 or a DV encode (which is, what do you know, CBR 24Mbit/sec).

Oh, and to everyone who says XviD is the greatest thing ever, I only have about 75% true compatability with XviD encodes. Some things come out fine, some I have to keep bouncing on the "flip video" option back and forth, and some just jitter like hell. I *really* don't feel the need to upgrade my codec every week either just to watch a four minute AMV or a digisub that someone else will have done in a less screwy format.

re: mpeg-4 vs. mpeg-1, at least mpeg-1 is mpeg-1 is mpeg-1. There are so many flavors and alternate versions of mpeg-4 that it's unlikely to have a future in a few years (esp. since MPEG-7, MPEG-12, and MPEG-21 are in the works).

Anyhow, I have ranted enough in this thread.

the Black Monarch · Post by **the Black Monarch** » Fri May 30, 2003 12:08 am

Garylisk wrote:Oh yeah. And I hate XviD and it's incompatible ass.

Word.

SS5_Majin_Bebi · Post by **SS5_Majin_Bebi** » Fri May 30, 2003 12:12 am

the Black Monarch wrote:
Garylisk wrote:Oh yeah. And I hate XviD and it's incompatible ass.
Word.

Mike?

the Black Monarch · Post by **the Black Monarch** » Fri May 30, 2003 12:26 am

Tab. wrote:Xvid is far superior to divx even using the default settings and has the exact same level of support (if not more) as far as compliancy/portability goes.

*coughcough* BULLSHIT *coughcough*

I've exported one video after another after another in both DivX and XviD codecs at equal bitrates, and DivX owned XviD EVERY TIME. XviD just comes out too goddamn grainy! Even my trusty Gaussian Blur, which virtually eliminated all fuzzing and grain in my DivX videos, was powerless against XviD's irritating bullshit.

I just upgraded from DivX 5.02 to 5.05, and I'm totally creaming my pants. I swear, when it comes to cel animation, it looks like it has twice the bitrate as before, but with even smaller filesizes! The one-minute Sonic the Hedgehog intro doesn't even look compressed when I export it at 2 Mbits/sec. Unfortunately, CGI (and probably live-action) seems to have suffered in the process, and it doesn't seem to handle high-motion scenes as well as it used to.

I'm starting to get a little annoyed at people saying that Mpeg-2 is always DVD quality with huge filesizes. Yes, DVDs are encoded with Mpeg-2, but the codec itself only looks as good and takes up as much space as you tell it to! You can make a 1 MB Mpeg-2 video that looks like crap if you want to.

For the record, despite what ErMaC says, I couldn't play any XviD-encoded videos on my computer until I installed the XviD codec.

Zarxrax · Post by **Zarxrax** » Fri May 30, 2003 1:06 am

I don't see where everyone gets all this stuff about having to upgrade your codec every week to play xvid. All you do is install ffdshow! Never touch ANYTHING again. And about there being so many flavors of mpeg-4, thats incorrect. There is ONE mpeg-4 standard. Divx didn't exactly follow the standards exactly so they dont have exactly compatable mpeg-4 streams. Xvid however, was designed from the ground up to be an exact implementation of the mpeg-4 specs. And about fansubbing groups doing weird shit with xvid, thats true, but thats because they are freaking idiots that dont know jack about proper encoding for distribution :\ Don't blame the codec, blame the encoder.

Zarxrax · Post by **Zarxrax** » Fri May 30, 2003 1:13 am

Black Monarch: sorry, forgot to respond to you in my last post.
Don't be so quick to say tab is spouting bullshit. I know that he has researched and knows what he's talking about here. It could very well be that you simply configured something badly in xvid (though leaving it mostly at the defaults should be sufficient).
But why on earth are you using a gaussian blur on your video? You want your video to look SHARPER not blurrier! Blurring the video looks absolutely terrible IMO. If you need to remove grain just try some spatial and temporal smoothers, they actually clean grain and noise a LOT better than a blur can anyways, and they dont blur (at least not at nearly the same level).

trythil · Post by **trythil** » Fri May 30, 2003 1:57 am

Zarxrax wrote: But why on earth are you using a gaussian blur on your video? You want your video to look SHARPER not blurrier! Blurring the video looks absolutely terrible IMO. If you need to remove grain just try some spatial and temporal smoothers, they actually clean grain and noise a LOT better than a blur can anyways, and they dont blur (at least not at nearly the same level).

Well, blurred images compress better than sharply-defined images...

But yeah, even still, it's a bad idea. I don't know if Black Monarch has run into this problem yet, but there are some situations that you absolutely CANNOT run a blur filter on without losing vital visual information.

The only example I can offer is my own: Play "always" with a temporal smoother; have it smooth across two frames. The segment from 01:24 -> 01:30 will be destroyed -- Rei's mouth won't look like it's actually moving, because the mouth movements are blurred together.

Everyone lipsyncs better than me, so they don't run into this problem. However, I'm sure there's other situations where spatial or temporal blurs will wreck an image...I just have yet to find them

vincentpricemil · Post by **vincentpricemil** » Fri May 30, 2003 2:10 am

I prefer MPEG1. Good quality, and most everyone can play MPEG1.

P.S. Good to know there's at least ONE other Deadpool fan out there.

the Black Monarch · Post by **the Black Monarch** » Fri May 30, 2003 2:36 am

Zarxrax wrote: Black Monarch: sorry, forgot to respond to you in my last post.
Don't be so quick to say tab is spouting bullshit. I know that he has researched and knows what he's talking about here. It could very well be that you simply configured something badly in xvid (though leaving it mostly at the defaults should be sufficient).

One test was using the exact unmodified settings from when the codec was first installed. The same went for DivX during that test. DivX looked a lot better. Next question?

Zarxrax wrote:But why on earth are you using a gaussian blur on your video? You want your video to look SHARPER not blurrier! Blurring the video looks absolutely terrible IMO.

I use it because there's a huge decrease in noise, and I can't tell the difference in sharpness at all. It also doesn't hurt that it reduces the filesizes of my live-action videos by about 33%. This may have changed with 5.05; I haven't tested that yet.

Zarxrax wrote:If you need to remove grain just try some spatial and temporal smoothers

Sorry, I can't find that button in Premiere.