A few questions regarding Macroblocking.

Hellmaster Inu · Post by **Hellmaster Inu** » Tue May 16, 2006 12:43 am

Well I plan to make a DBZ AMV covering the entire Cell Saga from beginning to end. Then it hit me that my copy of the Cell Games - Nightmare's End DVD that I own unfortunately has a ton of macroblocking on the episode where Gohan defeats Cell. Here's a screencap showing just an example of what I'm talking about.

http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/628/pdvd018as.jpg

I've for the most part skimmed through A & E's Technical Guide to All Things Video & Audio mk2 about cleaning up the footage and I've tried to at least make the macroblocking less noticeable, only to have failed results. Anyone experienced with this think that this footage that has such horrible macroblocking is even salvageable?

Now onto my second question. After I ripped the MPEG-2 file off my DVD that I wanted to use for footage and opened it in DGIndex to create a .d2v file, I noticed in previewing the footage in DGIndex that even though the footage is interlaced, there is no macroblocking present. Now after I had created a .d2v file for it and added the following to my script:

Telecide(order=1,guide=1)
Decimate(cycle=5, mode=2)

While it does indeed get rid of the interlacing, the macroblocking is now present. Why does this happen? It would be nice if I could just get rid of the interlacing without getting the macroblocking. -_-

CHAMELEON_D_H · Post by **CHAMELEON_D_H** » Tue May 16, 2006 2:38 am

WOW!!! this amout of macroblocking is scary! I can't even make out the character shown.... If it's in only one episode, check that episode as it might need a diffrent script from the rest.

gangstaj8 · Post by **gangstaj8** » Tue May 16, 2006 4:05 am

Yeah, that is bad. I don't know the series, but it looks like there's lots of color loss too. It looks bad enough that it could've been a serious error when it got ripped or indexed. I know you said the preview looked fine other than interlacing, but I still think there's a possibility of a serious data error. Have you tried reripping or reindexing? Can't think of anything else that would create such a serious problem. You should probably post your entire script too.

Keeper of Hellfire · Post by **Keeper of Hellfire** » Tue May 16, 2006 4:47 am

This is for sure not produced by the deinterlacing. And it doesn't look like the usual macro blocking due to strong compression, cause the blocks would imho be square, not rectangular like these. Correct me if I'm wrong. Did you by any chance apply a mosaic effect?

Kariudo · Post by **Kariudo** » Tue May 16, 2006 9:29 am

so is this what you see when you open it up in a media player (or vdub(/mod))? or is this what you see when you are editing the footage.

if you see this when editing, what codec are you using to compress your clips for editing (or what method form EADFAG are you using)?

Hellmaster Inu · Post by **Hellmaster Inu** » Tue May 16, 2006 1:46 pm

Keeper of Hellfire wrote:Did you by any chance apply a mosaic effect?

Nope

Kariudo wrote:so is this what you see when you open it up in a media player (or vdub(/mod))? or is this what you see when you are editing the footage.

Both. From what I hear, every copy of Funimation's Cell Games - Nightmare's End DVD suffers from horrible macroblocking on the episode where Gohan defeats Cell. When I'm watching the episode on my DVD player on my TV, the macroblocking is present. When I'm watching the DVD on my computer in PowerDVD, the macroblocking is present. When I'm editing with the footage using .avs files, the macroblocking is present. It's only when I had ripped the MPEG-2 file off the DVD onto my hard drive and opened it in DGIndex and previewed the footage, the footage was interlaced, but there was no macroblocking.

Kariudo · Post by **Kariudo** » Tue May 16, 2006 2:29 pm

hmm...might be a bad encode (on funi's part)
make sure that you are saving your clips with a lossless codec (can't hurt to be safe)

you might also want to play around with TDeint or TIvtc, found here
not sure if it'l help any, but once again, at this point it doesn't hurt to try

Pwolf · Post by **Pwolf** » Tue May 16, 2006 2:49 pm

holy shit... you sure you didn't get a bootleg?

Pwolf

Hellmaster Inu · Post by **Hellmaster Inu** » Tue May 16, 2006 3:04 pm

Kariudo wrote:make sure that you are saving your clips with a lossless codec (can't hurt to be safe)

It's not that I've saved my clips with a loseless codec, it's that I'm opening the .avs file in Windows Media Player after adding:

Telecide(order=1,guide=1)
Decimate(cycle=5, mode=2)

to my .avs script so it will get rid of the interlacing, but there is the same horrible looking macroblocking on it, even with the .avs file, before I have bothered to convert it into an .avi file using a loseless codec.

DJ_Izumi · Post by **DJ_Izumi** » Tue May 16, 2006 3:41 pm

Who ever encoded that DVD should be fired. Chinese pirates could do better.