TrBarry,

You are right about the bug in 1.85 of D2VAVI. You MUST click "reset" in the clip setting or else I cannot get AVIsynth with MPEG2DEC3.dll to read it.

If you could fix that too I will send $1 with the CD today. Leaving now ... so hurry

I am testing a sample from ABC movie...720p and DD 5.1



I got the video working with dvd2avi and avisynth... now with the 3/2 ac3 file... using Virtual Dub 1.4.8 from this thread I get the error when i try to preview



The requested audio compression is not compatible with the input format. Check that the sampling rate and the channel count of the input match those of the requested format.


My ac3 file when it loads into vdub...Fmt tag: 0x2000 SampFreq 48000 ,Channels 5, bitrate: 384 kb/s

Any ideas when to flip the switch to fix this?

Pierre

Virtualdubmod (I assume) has enough ac3 support to do a direct stream copy to mux in ac3 audio. But it does not currently have enough support to decode or preview it.

- Tom

You are right about the bug in 1.85 of D2VAVI. You MUST click "reset" in the clip setting or else I cannot get AVIsynth with MPEG2DEC3.dll to read it.

If you could fix that too I will send $1 with the CD today. Leaving now ... so hurry

Steve -

Uhhhhh, I'm afraid I'll have to forego that dollar. ;)

The DVD2AVI cropping (but not resizing) parms are honored by MPEG2DEC2 so you can crop visually in DVD2AVI. I intend to do the same for MPEG2DEC3 eventually, but not today. I believe the current default action of MPEG2DEC3 with cropping parms is to crash.

- Tom

Virtualdub mod works PERFECTLY witht eh AC3 streams. YOu can even cut the commercials out and it all stays in sync. Makes the HDTV2MPG irrelevant

sjchmura,

what am i missing to get the sound working? i have got virtualdub mod working well with the video, and i have the ac3filter installed and prioritized. when i open a vob (from dvd) in VDM, the ac3 track is there (0x80 mode 3_2 rate 448 kbps sample rate 48khz) and select 'keep audio as ac3', there are no errors on load. in the avi section, i have audio 1 selected AVI audio and Direct stream processing. however, when i encode, no audio is selected (as seen in the statistics window) and there is no audio encoded in the file.

any ideas? also, to load multiple vobs and encode them into one final avi, would i have to learn how to use avisynth?

thanks,
kevin

I'm still seeing issues with my virtualdubmod and AC3 encoding sessions. I encoded enterprise this week and it plays back with little fits and spurts where it skips forward really fast for a split second and then goes back to normal.

found this link from the virtualdub forums:

http://home.attbi.com/~blade66/

seems like this fixes my audio source problem. i am not at my home compputer, so i cant tell if the output was truly ac3, but it did at least encode sound.

k

Originally posted by sjchmura
Virtualdub mod works PERFECTLY witht eh AC3 streams. YOu can even cut the commercials out and it all stays in sync. Makes the HDTV2MPG irrelevant


At the risk of being perceived as a total Dumb F*...I cannot exactly figure out this next step...

1. I run VirtualDub
2. I load the avs script
3. I load the ac3 file

I can get this far...
I installed the WM9 VCM codec already

NOW WHAT? I dont save as avi , I see nothing looking like WMV formats...what do I do?

Pierre

First, make sure you are running under XP or W2K. Otherwise while the codec will say it installed it will not show up in vdubmod.

Choose Video/Compression/Windows Media (If it shows up). Set compression parms.

Choose Video/Fast_Recompress. This avoids converting everything to RGB and then to YV12. Goes faster and looks better.

Leave Audio at Direct Stream Copy but choose Audio/Interleave and enter the correct delay. The correct delay will be the end of the file name of the ac3 from DVD2AVI (including the sign, enter that too if "-")

Choose Save_Avi.

- Tom

well, i wasnt going quite the same route (with the avs script), but i might be able to help with the next step. in the video menu, make sure that 'full processing' or something is selected, then go back into the menu into the compression section. choose the windows media 9 (doing this from memory, so the exact words may be different) and click on configure. this will bring you into a stripped down version of the wme configurations. main thing to change is the vbr quality and the key frame frequency. that will set up your video.

i am not familiar with the avs script (i was trying to convert vobs, and i can load them directly into the version that i linked above). you also have to select the range of the frames that you need - i think this is where you are stuck. i had the same problem at first, that there was no save avi, because you are not selecting anything. use the slider at the bottom and the two buttons that look like fishing hooks to set the beginning and end of your file. at that point, there should be a menu path in the file menu called save as avi. that will save the file and execute your options.

can you play your file in preview mode? if so, and it shows the video and audio statistics, you should be good to go.

hope that helps, next post is for my issue!
k

oops, replying at the same time as trbarry. he is much wiser, so go with his suggestinos. i will also make sure to use the fast recompress - wasnt doing that before.

my problem is with the audio. i am not able to get the ac3 to work correctly - it reads the ac3 stream from the file, and displays the correct size (about 10 megs in this case), but when i encode the file, the audio portion expands to 35 megs. when the avi file is loaded into graphedit, the audio portion shows 48 khz, 192 kpbs, 2 channel. i confirmed that it is 2 channel rather than ac3.

i have 'source audio' and 'direct stream processing' selected. i guess i can try the avs route, but i was hoping to avoid the step of extracting the ac3 files. guess that is pretty painless, but i am wondering if anyone has the ac3 working directly in virtualdub.

trbarry - have you used the mpeg2-ac3 version of virtualdub, or are you just using virtualdubmod? the latter didnt work for me last night, producing no audio at all.

thanks,
kevin

thanks to trbarry and summit3907

I now see the options under compress menu, and can now proceed (until my next problem!)


Pierre

Friends,

I'm having a little trouble with vocabulary and revision numbers. I just to confirm that I've done the right thing.

I purchased the Elecard MPEG player, and the mpegdec.ax is version 2.0.0.2313, and the mpegdmx.ax from the Video decoder is 2.0.72.30204.

Are other people experiencing good results with these ax files?

Many thanks,

Nick

In virtualdubmod select DIRECT STREAM COPY and AC3 for audio.
For Video choose FULL processing

Select "opne with AVISynth script"
IN the drop down menu chose "open with Direct show filter"
Choose you *.ts file

That is all

I'm making pretty good progress... two questions:

1. Where is TSP2SP.ax in the Graphedit filter list? I can find SP to TSP, but there's no entry for TSP to SP... The tsp2sp.ax is loaded into the DVHStool directory, and I tried registering it manually, and it confirmed that it was registered.

2. Secondly, the first time I ran the encoder, it did a particular clip correctly. Now, even though I have different inputs/outputs selected, it seems to be fixated on the original clip! Somehow I'm not changing over to the new session settings, even though the correct files show up in the statistics...

Got any ideas?

I'm using the attached Elecard filter graph (renamed as .txt so it can be uploaded, rename it to .grf).

Everything seems to work, including 6 channel wave extensible sound, but where are the output files??? I don't see any filter property to set the output filename or type. What type should it be???

I'm rendering the Terminator3 trailer, which apparently is from an OTA source, because there's a separate video channel with a weather radar on it.

Note also that Ricka has version 2.13 of his DVHSTools posted.

As you can see, I'm just getting going here...

Originally posted by sjchmura
In virtualdubmod select DIRECT STREAM COPY and AC3 for audio.
For Video choose FULL processing

Select "opne with AVISynth script"
IN the drop down menu chose "open with Direct show filter"
Choose you *.ts file

That is all

I have encoded my test file, I get good video playback, but a delay on the audio. Finally my receiver interprets the SPDIF out as Dolby Digital.

I use the delay reported by dvd2avi , in my case -396ms. I entered this number in the box, when one chooses Audio...Interleave. However I think I did not make the default delay 160 ms value to zero.(i am trying this now to see if it works)

Is there any other audio adjustment require to ensure sync? I am not doing anything that removes frames.

As to your post above... i am using the virtualdub 1.4.8 ac3 that had a link to in this thread. I have not found any menu items that correspond to open with avisynth or open with direct show filter....


Pierre

VIrtualdubmod 1.4 is MUCH friendlier and will Open with AVI synth and has better AC3 support.

Get it from sourceforge.net - virtualdubmod

When using the Elecard demux, etc., encoding HD into Windows Media with six channel audio works very well. About the only issue is that if you click on the InterVideo Audio Decoder, it says wave_extensible, which is correct, but just 16 bits instead of the 24 selected in the encoder. Maybe a newer version of the iviaudio supports 24 bits?

1. Now, the problem is that with several test .ts files, there's a second video stream (for example, weather radar), and if this is the case, Windows Media Encoder dutifully renders the main video stream, but with no audio.

2. Anyone have any suggestions? From reviewing all the posts, it seems that this is a common issue, and if someone can give me a little bit more of the 'big picture' of what we're doing, it would be helpful.

3. When I select a file to render in GraphEdit, how does it know to use the Elecard .ax files that I've registered?

4. Finally, I notice, using quality level 95 or 98, there is a slight loss of red from the WMV-encoded audio compared to the HD input. Is this some kind of color space issue, and what to do about it? The loss is really rather slight, but I'm trained to see these things!

Otherwise, great progress was made the past 2 days, and thanks to all for your help...

Nick

I too have noticed an anti-red shift. However, Joe has posted he has not noticed it - and even sowed screen shots.

Graphedit uses the window default filters. IF you get Zoomplayer, click tools, click register filter manager you can see ALL the filters installed adn their prioroty.

By changing prioroty (to say 80000) and rebooting windows uses those as default.

Thinking this over, the red shift is probably a MPEG 2 decoder issue, at least it is in the consumer electronics world. So has anydone done a test of MPEG 2 decoder filters versus color shifting?

Nick

Nic -

I problably don't have the sensitive color eye to do this myself but if you follow the VirtualdubMod method in this thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=49349) you will have 2 oportunities to see a preview of the MPEG2 decoding at full resolution. That is in both the DVD2AVI preview window and in the VirtualDubMod preview window. Also, the DVD2AVI preview can be viewed in RGB or YUY2 format. In the RGB case it can also be shown with or without Full Luma Range (called PC/TV color conversion on that menu).

I'd be curious where you think the problem begins.

- Tom

edit: BTW, I don't think HDTV is exactly the same color space as DVD. I know my Toshiba has a DVD/DTV setting to adjust for this but I'm not really sure of the difference. I don't know if it just affects Full Luma Range or also red levels.

HDTV is definitely a different color space than NTSC, and if your display driver/PowerStrip allows, switching between D65 and NTSC will produce some color shifts.

Real basic question: so how come Media Encoder only encodes the video when the .ts has two streams in it? What should I do to make it work? In bits and pieces, the thread has information about doing this, I think, but a really simply explanation would help.

Nic,

If you want to encode a substream, demux it to a separate MPEG2 file first, then input that file to the encoder.

Color accuracy is pretty good with HDTV to WM9. Not perfect, but pixel by pixel much better than MPEG2 from BBMPEG or TMPGenc. Don't judge by the split screen when encoding. One half is affected by the overlay settings, the other is not.

Joe

Just a note: Make sure you use Windows Media Player 9. I was getting jerky playback on one PC using WMP 7. Upgrading to 9 fixed it.

Instead of dragging it on here I opened a separate thread on the HDTV color space issue (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=245827).

- Tom

Jamoka,

Thanks for the reply. What's the easiest way to demux the .ts into separate MPEG2 streams? When I put the .ts into GraphEdit, there's one video stream, and another video plus audio stream.

Also, on 1920 x 1080 material, there is some combing in the moving parts of the WME output file. What's a likely reason for this, and how can it be fixed?

I'm using the Elecard demuxers and decoders. No problems at all with multichannel sound!

All the best,

Nick

Using HDTV to MPEG, what happens is that it produces an MPEG2 file with the video stream that I want, but there's no soundtrack.

This is the ESPN demo reel, recording OTA, and one channel has a weather radar feed, no sound,while the other channel has the sports demo reel with appropriate sound.

???

There are several ways to split out the streams from a ts file. I usually use Graphedit. Connect a "Dump.ax" filter to the demultiplexer output pin of your choice.

The MPEG tools in TMPGenc will also demultiplex individual streams.

Xmuxer might be worth a try. It might demux and remux to a program stream with 1 audio and 1 video stream without losing sync. That would make it a little easier to transcode to WM9.

The combing can be a difficult problem if the MPEG2 stream is flagged improperly. If checking the "deinterlace" box in WM9 doesn't help, an AVIsynth script with decomb.dll usually can be successful. Lots of variables to adjust.

Joe

Ticking the deinterlace tab in the WME did the trick. Of course, there always seem to be bad edits here and there, but otherwise the output looks great. There's a detect button that apparently scans the input file and it, too, recommended deinterlacing.

By the way, for computer use, should the target output frame rate be 60Hz?

I'll try the demuxing strategies later today. So far, so good.

Can you guys (Jerome, Jamoka, SJChmura) do me a favor and do a right click on your mpeg2dmx.ax and mpgdec.ax files and tell me what version number is reported on the version tab. I swear I've installed every version available from Elecard and have never seen the version 2.0.62.21205 that Jerome reported in his original post for the demux filter. I'm trying to isolate a problem I'm having right now and just want to rule out the elecard file version as a culprit.

Plus, given that there are at least 5 different versions of these files floating about, I think it would be helpful to nail down exactly what version works best for everyone.

Can someone help me here? I'm just starting to try to learn how to do this. I successfully installed all of the appropriate Elecard filters to the point where I can render a .ts file (in this case, the Matrix Reloaded trailer from the superbowl) in Graphedit, manually build a graph connecting it to the Elecard video decoder and Intervideo audio decoder, and have it playback in graphedit in proper audio/video sync (though full resolution playback is choppy on my system). But that's where the success stops. From there, I have several problems, all (I think) interrelated:

1. When I render a .ts file in Graphedit, the default audio/video filters it automatically selects for the video output are my Sonic Cinemaster v 1.5 filters. This happens despite the fact that I've now set (in Zoomplayer's registered filter manager, as per the Troubleshooting guide) the Elecard Video filter and Intervideo audio filter to have higher merit than any other video or audio filters. I am indeed doing this on my HTPC, so I have just about every video and audio filter known to man installed on my system. Nevertheless, setting these proper filters to the highest merit doesn't make them the default choices in Graphedit. I have them both set to 00800100, which is higher than any other filters and at the same merit level as the Elecard Demultiplexer. Still, the default filters that come up in Graphedit are the Cinemasters.

this, I'm sure, leads to...

2. WME hangs every time I select a .ts file as the source. I can't get this to stop happening. I have the merit adjusted as noted above, with Graphedit open and set up properly (though I have to manually configure all the filters), and it just hangs every time.

possibly unrelated is....

3. Another thing that happens by default when I render the Matrix Reloaded transport file is that, in addition to connecting the Video 1 output pin to Cinemaster Video Decoder and the AC-3 output pin to Intervideo Audio Decoder, it connects a Video 2 pin to ffdshow. I believe it's a subchannel broadcasting the local radar from where it was recorded, but again, I can't get it to go away. I have to manually delete that chain in order to get normal playback. Not to mention connecting it to ffdshow makes no sense. I can't get this to go away either.

Anybody have any suggestions???? HELP!


Dan

Gonk,

WM9 may try to use some filters even though their merit value is low. Sonic Cinemaster, PowerDVD, and Ligos have all given me that problem. Try unregistering or uninstalling those and see if the encoder works.

Patja,

I have 2.0.20.20626 on this pc. The different versions have made no difference with my encoding.

Nicholas,

In general, try to match the output fps to the original source.

Joe

I am using the VitualDubmod/WM9VCM/dvd2avi/avisynth method...it is the only technique tha gets my 5.1 working.

I have had a couple of "Avisynth" crashes mid encode...some error with cannot read ....i need to write the error message down , I know

I suspect errors in the stream causing this, asit happens all the time with one file...how can I "fix the stream" ?

Pierre

I suspect errors in the stream causing this, asit happens all the time with one file...how can I "fix the stream" ?

It is usually garbage in the stream that causes this. I successfully fixed one a couple days ago by:

0) Before encoding be sure to "save processing settings". This will keep track of any deleted sections. Without this you will never be able to match up a bad frame number.

1) Write down the record number where the error occurred. You have to do this before you close any boxes.

2) Starti Vdub again with the file (hopefully you previously did a "save processing settings" you can reload. Reload it. Check to make sure audio is also loaded like before.

3) Select edit/goto and choose a frame number about 10-20 past the bad frame. Then click on the "select end of range" icon.

4) Select edit/goto and choose a frame number about 10-20 before the bad frame. Do not try to get there by passing over the bad section usiing the mouse or arrow keys. Click on the "select beginning of range" icon. There should now be a small highlighted section.

5) Hit the delete key to delete the bad section, including matching audio.

6) Use the left and right arrow keys to scroll a few dozen frames in each direction to see if it still blows up. If it does, repeat and delete a wider range.

7) Save processing settings to remember the deleted section. Try again.

It worked for me.

- Tom

Originally posted by trbarry
It is usually garbage in the stream that causes this. I successfully fixed one a couple days ago by:

0) Before encoding be sure to "save processing settings". This will keep track of any deleted sections. Without this you will never be able to match up a bad frame number.

1) Write down the record number where the error occurred. You have to do this before you close any boxes.

2) Starti Vdub again with the file (hopefully you previously did a "save processing settings" you can reload. Reload it. Check to make sure audio is also loaded like before.

3) Select edit/goto and choose a frame number about 10-20 past the bad frame. Then click on the "select end of range" icon.

4) Select edit/goto and choose a frame number about 10-20 before the bad frame. Do not try to get there by passing over the bad section usiing the mouse or arrow keys. Click on the "select beginning of range" icon. There should now be a small highlighted section.

5) Hit the delete key to delete the bad section, including matching audio.

6) Use the left and right arrow keys to scroll a few dozen frames in each direction to see if it still blows up. If it does, repeat and delete a wider range.

7) Save processing settings to remember the deleted section. Try again.

It worked for me.

- Tom

Tom,

Thanks for the step - by - step

God knows I need it

Pierre

I too had the situation where I could get graphedit handling of a .ts or .tp file from either MyHD or 169time/AVX-1/Mits HD2000/DVHSTool BUT not get the WM Encoder 9 to recognize the .tp/.ts file.

I also had no issue getting the dvd2avi to avisynth to work (though I question the quality of my work).

In order to finally get the WM Encoder 9 method to work, I did have to UNREGISTER the sonic cinemaster filters completely. Adjusting the merit of the Elecard filters via Zoom Player's filter manager to higher than sonic ones DID NOT work. Unregistering the sonic filters was the key!

By the way, I tried many different versions of the Elecard stuff and finally bought the latest. At least for me, the version sensitivity mentioned early on in the guide was a dead-end. I have tried several different versions since and ALL have worked!

I now have a set of batch files that register or unregister filter sets depending on what I want to do. It works with a minimum of fuss for me so I am mostly content.

I did not figure this out on my own, I thankfully got some coaching along the way from some experts here (many thanks again!).

My remaining issues deal with selecting the best parameters/settings for the WM9VCM compression and other format changes (deinterlacing, scaling, etc.).

My main system is a P4 2.4GHz. Using the VirtualDubMod path seems to be much slower than the straight WME9 method.

I look forward to our experienced brethren here on the forum helping us with some more "cheat sheets" on good settings for the more common encoding tasks. As many have noted, 5.1/AC3 sound can only be done via the WM9VCM codec and VirtualDubMod/Avisynth method. I have been successful with the process but the quality of my encoding has been very poor.

Regards,
George

REally??

The Virtualdubmod/Avisynth produces superior encoding at the same speed. 2-pass works WIHT ac3 - a god send.

I am using

mpeg2dec CPU=5 IDCT=5 with the streath og the chroma=25 and Luma=45 for 720p TRUE HDTV sources

Chroma=20/45 for Upconverts
The upconverts are scaled with TRBarry's YV12filedresize (takes every other field and 1/2 width compression)

UNDOT (trbarry) is also used

Frame for frame I can honestly say I prefer the WM9. There are fewer MPEG2 classic ringing artifacts compared to the 8GB stream

For the 2-pass stuff at 720p (crop -16,-8) I am using 1000000 bit rate. AC3 -2pass performance 1 notch from the left. I am getting about 1:5 compression and 7 FPS encoding with my P4-2.7

Given the pain of the WME and the fact you can just keep the AC3 I see it as a godsend.Easy and works and far superior results with the MPEG2DEC deringing/deblocking - especially for upconverts. UNDOT() works great too.

My ability to encode 1-pass in WM9 Encoder just died. Not sure why.

This is REALYL REALLY weird. Been playing with a bunch of filters but have it

Graphedit Elecard-> Elecard Video
-> Intervideo audio

Plays back fine in graph edit.

However, in WME it loads the file (for a few minutes then crashes!!!

Anyone experience this? Plays fine in graphedit and dies in encoder. I reinstalled the encder but to no avail

OK I won't worry about my elecard versions if nobody notices problems from version to version. For the record, I'm using the ones from the registered MPEG2 player. mpgdec.ax 2.0.0.2313 and mpeg2dmx.ax 2.0.72.30204

The thing I'm seeing that concerns me is slight occasional jerkiness in playback.

Do you guys see any odd discrepencies in frame rates reported in WME during encoding. For example, I'm encoding a video source 29.97 FPS, there are no dropped frames reported, but the current and average FPS shown in WME vary during encoding. For example it shows average video output FPS of 29.77.

sjchmura, WM9 encoding has died on me a couple of times. In both cases, after hours lost trying to find the problem, it turned out a recently installed application (Vegas 4 and then Mainconcept Mainactor) was causing filters not to work properly, even though everything looked fine in Graphedit.

That is it - I did install the Maincept demo of something. How did you gix it? I unregistered their filters

Uninstalling the application did it. During the uninstall you will be asked if you want to uninstall the filters. Strangely, that is not necessary.

can someone write down a quick guide and software needed for the virtualdob mode wm9 encoding....please!
Thanks

Gabor,

I have plans to update the encoding guide with this information. I have been too busy to get to it lately, but will do so as soon as I can. Perhaps in a few days.

--Jerome

Originally posted by jamoka
Gonk,

WM9 may try to use some filters even though their merit value is low. Sonic Cinemaster, PowerDVD, and Ligos have all given me that problem. Try unregistering or uninstalling those and see if the encoder works.
I never had this problem so long as I set the merit value of unwanted filters to 00200000 (MERIT_DO_NOT_USE).

--Jerome

Thanks Jerome. That does it.

Joe

720p and 1080i Bit rates = what are people using?

What are people using for 2-pas sendocing of 1280x720p anmd 1080i??

With 2-pass 720p bit rates of 1000000 look really good. This i sabout 1GB/42 minutes.

Adding some anti-deringingi and deblockinhg helps the compression. Also using the slider 2 clicks form teh left is about 5% more compression.

Last week, I did some demos of Windows Media 9 HD encoded video/film clips with multichannel WMA sound, and the audience was blown away. They couldn't get enough of it.

Many thanks for all the help that you forum members provided. I learned a lot from this experience, and certainly could not have been successful without all the assistance and demo material provided by you.

hp is delivering a dual processor workstation on Monday, so on to 1920 x 1080i!

What rez/bit rate did you end up showing them?

1280 x 720p, around 6 mbits/second typically...

At 6mbits what complexity were you using? I find that you canobtain a 15% improvement in 2-pass encoding at the highest perforamance setting (slowest) compared to the fastest. However, I really cannot see a difference in quality.

For fast moving action 9mbit 2-pass seems pretty transparetn to me with AC3 intact

for those following this thread, i wrote this in the the T2 HD thread on non-square pixels and aspect ratio control:

i was trying to figure out how to deal with the aspect ratio as well, and i noticed that there is an option in the encoder that might solve these issues on encoding. if you select 'allow non-square output' in the compression tab, and then select 'anamorphic 16:9 (4:3)' in the pixel format field in the video size tab, it seems that wme will properly perform the anamorphic squeeze on the encoder and playback.

i tested this with a basic 480x720 vob file - using square pixels, the ratio was 3:2 as expected. but with the settings listed above, the verticle size was squeezed to what looked to be the correct 16:9 setting. i confirmed that eth file output was still 480x720 (showed that in both the encoding output and the file properties), but it definely displaying at a different aspect ratio on playback. this might be the aspect ratio control that amir referenced.

there are a few other options in that box as well, including anamorphic 2:1 (maybe for 2.35?) and custom. proabbly worth checking out these options. this looks like it will remove the requirement of changing screen resolution to acheieve the proper aspect ratio playback - the setting will be 'hardcoded' upon encoding.

can some other folks please confirm if this works for them?

kevin

I don't think anyone here has provided a clear answer so basicly how do you guys determine what the bitrate is to use for your 2 pass encodings? There is no calculator that will do that and how do you guys get your precise bitrate to use? thx

Sarge,

There are many calculators that will do that. Google for "bitrate calculator" and take your pick.

Joe

1280 x 720p, around 6 mbits/second typically...

Nicholas,
Are you using single pass VBR or two pass encoding and what were the encoder settings you used? Also what was the display/resolution?

CAn you see a difference betweeen 3mbits and 6??? I surely cannot for ALias or dragnet.

Originally posted by jamoka
Sarge,

There are many calculators that will do that. Google for "bitrate calculator" and take your pick.

Joe

I'm talking about 2 pass WM9 bitrate calculator though and none exist on the web so far. Well at least not to my knowledge...

I am having trouble loading a couple of my merged transport files into WME. I just tried to load the HBO Fifth Element and WME just hangs. I thought it may have to do with the one pixelation that occurred during the transmission, but if I load the minute file containing the glitch it loads just fine. I am using HDTVtoMPEG2 v1.10 to combine the minute files into one.

Is anyone else having the same difficulty? Normally small files load within a few seconds and larger ones in well under a minute.

--hardwired

I'm using a 1920 x 1200 display usually, and the encoding was single pass, 90 or higher video quality, 5.1, 24 bit, 48 kHz sampling. Right now I'm setting up a dual 3.06 Xeon workstation and will have some new results to report shortly.


In my experience, there should be a huge visual difference between 3 and 6 mbits. By the way, keep in mind that Alias is an extremely low budget show, and the film stock isn't the best.

Another point, all my displays are DVI LCDs or DLPs. The actuity (and therefore your ability to see a difference) will be considerably reduced using analog connections to an LCD, let alone a CRT. The point spread function with DVI LCDs is excellent.

Well,

Alias is filmed in HD and shown at 720p

There is no comparison to the 480i dfigital substream - see for yourself.

Don't rip on my favorite show - not kind :) Low budget - actually not at all

1280x720p @3mbit 2-pass encoding is fantastic. Again, 1920x1080 is 50% more pixels

I'm just setting up a dual 3.06 GHz Xeon workstation, and so far, seem to be able to encode 1920 x 1088 to 1280 x 720 at 7 mbit quality at about one-half real time. That is, a one minute clip takes 2 minutes to encode, so a 90 minute movie will take about 3 hours. Hyperthreading is enabled.

One question: the server came with a simple sound device that apparently just drives the speaker inside the server box. When I encode clips, there's no sound levels showing in the bar graphs. The output from the Elecard 62.2105 demux always says AC3 stereo, although the clip is definitely 5.1.

I've tried setting 5.1 in control panel/sound and in zoom player.

If the audio side of the WM encoder is set to 5.1, it complains that the input file format is not compatible, but when set to stereo, proceeds to encode, but the resulting files don't have sound.

Is is possible that one has to have a working 5.1 sound device on the system in order to work with 5.1 audio inputs?

Nicholas,

Off topic but you might try turning of the hyperthreading off on your system for better performance. Most of the tests that I have read on on dually Xeons show a significant decrease in encoding time when HT is off. FFIW...

On a single CPU system I have seen HT improve WM9 encoding 20-50% ... why are the 2 CPU worse?

Hyperthreading seems to be a mixed bag; some activities profit some don't. http://www.2cpu.com/Hardware/ht_analysis/ is one of the articles that points this out.

Using dvd2avi/avisyth/virtualdubmod with wme9...

Just encoded csi miami episodes...resized to 1280x720, and used tomsmocomp (i think to deinterlace right?...well had in in there for whatever it did)

averaged 1-2 fps....took like 24 hours per episode


Used fast recompress


This seems slow on my 2.4 p4 256mb system


Pierre

"This seems slow on my 2.4 p4 256mb system"

The big speed thing is that performance slider in the WME parms screen. It only needs to be about 1 click from the left but mine keeps sneeking back over to the right, and I forget it and then have to wait.

- Tom

Yes, there is a


5-fold speed increase
10% decrease in compression effeciency.

I can encode on my P4-2.7/400mhz RAM system (1GB ram)

1280x720p
undot()
unfilter(-5,-5)
decimate(5)

at 7FPS 2-pass encoding

Originally posted by sjchmura
Yes, there is a


5-fold speed increase
10% decrease in compression effeciency.

I can encode on my P4-2.7/400mhz RAM system (1GB ram)

1280x720p
undot()
unfilter(-5,-5)
decimate(5)

at 7FPS 2-pass encoding


CSI episodes are 1920x1080i

What setting would you use to encode to 1280x720...do I let WME do the resize and deinterlacing , or use simpleresize and TomsMoComp?

Pierre

Simpleresize. YOu could also go to 960x540p and use TrBarry's
YV12selecteevenresize or whatever it is called. This will take 1/2 the fields and adn so a simple resize on the horzontal. Then go to

decimate 5

and you get 24fps :)

I really need to get a hyperthreading chip. Saw some benchmarks showing 70% faster encoding at the same clock speed with WM9

Originally posted by mpenton
Hyperthreading seems to be a mixed bag; some activities profit some don't. http://www.2cpu.com/Hardware/ht_analysis/ is one of the articles that points this out.

This may be true of other codecs but not WMV. The problem occurs when on a dual CPU system, the two threads of the codec wind up on one CPU (in each of its "hyper" threads). This causes the performance to drop since due to shared resources in a single CPU, you don't get anything close to linear scaling that two CPUs provide with a good multi-threaded codec.

In case of WMV and dual CPU, the thread scheduling occurs properly and both CPUs get used. You do not get anything from hyperthreading since there are only two threads in the video codec. However, the audio codec does use HT but given how much lower its CPU requirements are, you are unlikely to notice its improvement.

So the net is that enable HT should do no harm with WMV 9 encoding.

Amir
Microsoft

Amirm,

I thought - need to find them - that on a single CPU wm9 encoding was signficantly faster with HT compared to the same clocked non-HT?? Is this not true? If so it will save me $400.

I just upgraded to P4PE with 3.06 HT. Hyperthreading is currently enabled so XP is showing 2 CPU's. I was not aware that this would happen. I am getting terrible stuttering with audio and video for WMV playback. Should I disable HT in my BIOS?

Dan.

Did your encoding preformance improve?

I have not tried enconding anything yet. I was hoping to get perfect playback working before I moved on to that.

How are you guys getting YV12 to work with Virtualdub?

I downloaded Virtualdubmod, installed AVISynth 2.51, etc. Everytime I try to load a file I get this error.

Thanks,
Joe

Joe -

That error only occurs on the preview (or maybe for WME) when you do not have a recent version of Xvid or Divx installed. Both of those furnish a YV12 decompressor.

I have no way of telling whether YV12 can really be passed all the way to WME or whether it is decompressed first behind the scenes, though it would likely make a decent speed difference.

Maybe Amirm might know?

- Tom

Thanks Tom.

I'm pretty sure YV12 is working in the WM9 encoder. I have the MPEG2 decoder set to only output YV12. I'll reinstall XVID and see if that fixes it.

Joe

Hi Joe,

I think it's a Xvid YV12 decompressor too. When I first tried VirtualDubMod, Fast recompress (YV12) didn't work. Then I installed a latest Xvid built and it works.

regards,

Li On

I installed XVID 04102002-1 _ALPHA, and it's still the same. The scripts load and encode just fine in WM9, but I can't load any YV12 scripts into Virtualdubmod without getting that error.

I'm using this

Loadplugin("mpeg2dec3.dll")
Mpegsource("c:\14Test\a.d2v")

Do I need a different decoder for YV12 with Virtualdubmod

EDIT - Never mind, I installed DIVX and that fixed it.

Thanks


Joe

Originally posted by jamoka
I installed XVID 04102002-1 _ALPHA, and it's still the same.

2002 is way too old! A recent built shoud solve the issue.

regards,

Li On

"I installed XVID 04102002-1 _ALPHA"

I hope that's not what you have been using to compare Xvid to WME. ;)

- Tom

No, I just grabbed that one today to try to get this working. I'm going to give your color space converter a try and needed YV12 to test some things first.


Joe

I agree - FAST recompress will NOT work with virtualdub - FAST recompress is needed to preserve YV12 - correct?

I agree - FAST recompress will NOT work with virtualdub - FAST recompress is needed to preserve YV12 - correct?

Not completely correct, or at least not complete.

Virtualdub prefers to convert everything all the way to RGB. Fast recompress was implemented so you could keep the data in YUY2 (or YV12 or whatever it was) without converting if your compression codec could handle whatever Virtualdub was reading. In that case Virtualdub may still convert it for the preview window but will pass the YUY2 or YV12 unconverted to the compression codec.

I use fast recompress with WME all the time recently, meaning that Virtualdub is not converting the input and output data first to RGB. But that doesn't mean that my YV12 isn't being converted into something else like YUY2 if WME is asking for that.

- Tom

Originally posted by trbarry
Joe -

That error only occurs on the preview (or maybe for WME) when you do not have a recent version of Xvid or Divx installed. Both of those furnish a YV12 decompressor.

I have no way of telling whether YV12 can really be passed all the way to WME or whether it is decompressed first behind the scenes, though it would likely make a decent speed difference.

Maybe Amirm might know?

- Tom

This is from memory but I believe YUV12 is supported in WMV codec. Some apps convert this to RGB though on the way in. The encoder shouldn't.

Amir

Originally posted by sjchmura
Amirm,

I thought - need to find them - that on a single CPU wm9 encoding was signficantly faster with HT compared to the same clocked non-HT?? Is this not true? If so it will save me $400.

HT in this version of the encoder gives us 15 to 20% boost in performance. This may improve in the future but this is the boost we can get right now.

Amir
Microsoft

Originally posted by amirm
HT in this version of the encoder gives us 15 to 20% boost in performance. This may improve in the future but this is the boost we can get right now.

Amir
Microsoft

Hey amir, I heard that YV12 isn't working properly in this version of the encoder, what do you have to say about that? Also can we expect a new version of the WME encoder within the next few weeks? When can we expect the final version of the VCM windows media encoder? Thx

I would also like to know if Microsoft has plans to support 5.1 channel WMA sound in the WMAudio Decoder DMO directshow filter. This issue has been raised countless times both here and on the Microsoft Windows Media newsgroup with nary a peep from Microsoft.

--Jerome

Bogdan at Moonlight/Elecard just provided me with version 1.26.0.30409 of their Odio Dekoda. It appears to support multichannel decoding of AC3 into LPCM, and the resulting files are recognized at 6 channel by Windows Media Encoder.

Who did you email to test this? Why not just use Intervideo or AC3Filter (freewqare)

I was setting up my dual 3.06 Xeon box, and was having trouble finding the right version of the audio decoder from Intervideo (it was installed on another chassis, inconveniently located in Honolulu while I'm on Maui). So, necessity, etc., and I tried out the Elecard Odio (already having a paid license for their demux), and when I reported some issues on using it for 6 channel sound, they promptly sent me the latest version. By the way, does anyone have definitive identifying information for which version of the Intervieo iviaudio.ax is the right one? There's 4-5 that I know of: all the same file name, various sizes, dates, etc.

Originally posted by sjchmura
Did your encoding preformance improve?

I still haven't tried encoding yet, but disabling Hyperthreading fixed all my video and audio stuttering problems.

Dan.

I am having difficulty loading some of my source files captured from HBO-HD into the WM9 Encoder.

I am capturing to 250MB files, and use HDTVtoMPEG2 to trim the begin and end and combine to a single transport file for loading into WME. Some of my files processed this way will initially attempt to load in WME and then just hang with CPU utilization at 100% and no more disk activity. On a problem source file I tried loading the individual 250MB files to try to find if there was a specific file that contained a problem, but they all loaded succesfully individually.

I managed to encode by loading the files as 63 individual sources but had some problems not to mention the aggravation of dealing with the repetition. For one, I had to increase Virtual Memory since it would bomb out 20% way thru with the default setting. Then it would halt after processing file 45 with the message encoding configuration has changed (I checked the wme file and it hadn't - sounds like a bug). I then wound up encoding the remaining source files to a 2nd WMV file, but have no way I know of to combine or append WMV files together. The serial process is also significantly slower in encoding.

Maybe I need to use another editor/combiner utility or possibly a utility to diagnose problem transport streams would be useful? I did try DVHS capture graph to combine the source files into one and had the same result. Maybe someone else has seen the same problems and can offer some advice. I am using the Quality VBR method only.

--hardwired

2 things to try.

1. Use HDTVtoMPEG 1.09 to combine the files into MPEG2 instead of ts.

+/or

2. Use TSPCap in Graphedit to combine the files instead of HDTVtoMPEG

Joe

Hey Guys,
I need some help from you all.Please help me out ....I installed all
the necessary software you all discussed here on the WM9 encoding
topic.Let me write down my experience and questions :
1.With the method from jsaliga the Elecard Quality method I
successfully created a HD 1920x816p wm9 version of the Lord of the
Rings.The audio was in sync ,video 23.98 fps play very well.
When I used the avisynth method the audio was ok but the picture was
"funny" Funny means that at many parts of the movie
the picture was shaky like the framrate wasn't correct.Doesnt matter
what fps I used it was always the same.But with elecard method
it is not happened ....Any idea why ?? It should be the other way
around isn't it ???
2.Than the virtauldubmode method.Eveyrhint is installed but when I
opened the avs file through -open file via avisynth- the program
just closed.I could open the avs file through open video file option
however.
3.When I had a script which made a 720p WM9 version of the 13th
floor movie.I had telecide() and decimate(cycle=5) commands
in the script.When the movie was done the audio was not in sync with
video.I of course put audio interleave - audio screw correction
-473 ms which was the number in the ac3 file.When I took out the
decimate(cycle=5) command and leave it at 29.97 fps audio video
was in sync and everything was perfect....Successfully created wm9
720p.
4.But when I wanted to make the 1080p version of the same movie
using the same script of course removing simpleresize(1280,720)
command just leave the cropbottom(8) to take out the gray
line....when the movies was ready audio not in sync and I noticed
it is not in sync because the 1080p avi is playing smooth no (I have
a pentium IV 2.4 ghz computer) ...but it is playing smooth
because it plays slow....it doesn't play at the right
speed......this is my biggest question WHY ???

Anybody has any idea what do I need to do to make this all work
please help me out
Thanks
Gabor

Gabor, I am not an expert in your encoding process (joe, tom and others are). But your 2.4Ghz system is not fast enough for 1080p playback. You need to test it on a faster machine (2.8Ghz or 3.0). Otherwise, you will experience lots of problems including sync, frame drop, etc.

Amir
Microsoft

The problem is that the 1920x816p version of LOTR plays well skipping frames but still audio and video is in sync.But with this case audio plays correct and the video is obviosly slow...no skipping frames just plays slowly.

I see. Try one thing though. Set the bitrate very low (say, 3 to 4 mbit/sec CBR). That should reduce the CPU load enough to see if that is the issue. The quality will drop but that's not the point of the test.

Of course, this is to give you something to do until we hear from the other experts :).

Amir
Microsoft

I would have to agree - 2.4 is not fast enough.

On my 2.7 with a GB of 400mhz RAM used 95% of CPU time playing 1080p clips with VMR (ATI 9700)

Once you have a bunch of wmv's, or wme encoded avi's...what do you do with them?

Do you just burn them to a DVD as data (i think this is the answer), or is there some other format /conversion , etc... that is best ...Then are these files playable directly from the HTPC DVD, or do they need to e copied to HD first ( ie is there some data rate /transfer issues)


Pierre

Does the Windows Media 9 Encoder support YV12 input? (like from AVISynth) Will it take YV12 straight through from input to output without resampling?

How about the WM9 VCM driver?

Well thanks for the ideas but i dont think it is the speed of the processor the problem...the reason i think this because the 1080p wmv version plays with audio video in sync with each other ...lot of frama dropping of course but in sync.....however the 1080p avi file is compeltly out of sync and the video plays smooth.....as we say we need 3.0 ghz to play 1080p so why the avi plays smooth....because it plays the video slower than the video ...why??? I have no clue....i use the same process for 720p and it is perfect.....Any ideas ???

Just as a side note - the Performance slider DOES affect quality under some circumstances.

I am archiving uoconverted Enterprise episodes to 960x540
Targeting 1000kbit
2 pass video
1 pass 50% VBR audio

Well,

With the performance 2 notches from teh left I get GREAT quality with
YV12everotherlineresizeonehalf (can't remember TrBarry's filter name - sorry)
unfilter (-20,-20)
undot ()
decimate (5)

File sieze is 280megs for 40 minutes - INCREDIBLE.

However

At 1 notch from the left I get

Filesize 300megs
Crappy banding etc.

ow if I increase the bitrate to 2000K I see no difference.

So, the quality does matter if you are shooting for small bit rates. To be honest, 960x540 (using Trbarries 1/2 filter to take every other line and chop in half) works so damn well and looks great on my 57" tv I see no reason for anything better for upconverts

Originally posted by sjchmura
I would have to agree - 2.4 is not fast enough.

On my 2.7 with a GB of 400mhz RAM used 95% of CPU time playing 1080p clips with VMR (ATI 9700)

I agree as well. I started out with a 2.4GHz P4 and playing files encoded at 1440 x 1080 was, for the most part, ok but I did run into occasional frame drops and stutters. I am now using a 3.06GHz P4 and have no problems at all even at 1920 x 1080. Still, for 1.77 and 1.85 to 1 movies I encode at 1440 x 1080.

FYI, there is a dedicated turnkey WM9 encoding system for sale in the AVS classifieds in case anyone is interested in additional encoding bandwidth.

--Jerome

sjchmura,

when opening your files (i assume a d2v with mpeg2dec3), do you assign any cpu value? it seems that you are softening the picture with two filters already - are you are still pleased with the sharpness of the result?

i have been working on some xfiles episodes (from dvd) and am still working on getting a good balance between size and quality. for the time being, i have found the following to work pretty well for viewing on 36" direct view:

mpeg2source(cpu=4)
telecide, decimate
undot
bicubicresize(480, 360, 0, .75)

with vbr 90 for video, and slider at 1 from right, this brings the video portion down to about 285 megs for 43 min. i have been keeping the ac3 sound (through vdm), but i think i will try a few passes through wme. the audio is 192 dolby surround, so i assume i would pick 2 channel audio. i believe that wma still maintains the cues needed to decode to 6 channels correctly. can you confirm this?

you seem to be getting same filesize with audio and video and 3x the pixels! i know the bitrate scaling isnt linear with frame size, but that is a big differece to still produce 'great' results as you say. i can see some loss of detail on stuff like background walls, but nothing that i would notice if i weren't looking for it. i think i will try to do an episode without resizing (still you would have 1.5x as many pixels as i) and follow your script to see how it works.

thanks,
kevin

ps - i think the resize filter might be 'reduceby2'?

I will post the AVS synth script as soon as I get home.

It is the Y12reduceby2 Trbarry filter - I will find it. It is taking every other lin e(so 1080i becomes 540p and just chops it in half)



Yes, I am also softening with CPU=5 I think - I will check. THe Undot/unfilter (-20,-20) looks great.

I guess detail vs. noise - I take lack of noise. I think seeing skin look like skin instrad of MPEG2 "crawling dots" is not really loosing detail. I can still read the "Enterprise" patches on the arms of the people so that is enough detail for me. Archer still has all his wrinkles. Anything else - I really don't care about since the detail was never there to begin with.

The slider REALLY matters at these bit rates. WIt hthe slider all the way to the right it is INCREDIBLY slow but you gain 10-15% more compression. The quality is MUCH better with 2 pass encoding and the slider 2 notches from the left.

Since enterprise is 2.0 AC3 192 I am using just VBR 75% 2 channel. Sounds great. The low rumble of the ship is still there.

At <300megs/episode it is nice to just keep on my HD and watch or put the whole season on 2 DVD';s.

Will post later.

Steve

Why would you encode "Enterprise" at 960 x 540? That's way more resolution than is in the broadcast.

Why would you re-encode "The X-Files" if you already have the DVDs?

why does anyone store their dvd's on the harddrives? the idea is that it is more convenient to access the files from your hard drive rather than have to find the disc, squash the 'pcfriendly' crap (yes, i know you can disable it), sit through the FBI warnings, sit through the 'previews' (particularly on disney dvds), select the episode or version from the dvd, sit through more montage stuff, sit through the studio intros, and finally watch the dvd or specific episode.

i dont know about you, but the flashy menus that seem to be more prevalent on today's dvds just piss me off. if i want to select a particular chapter to watch, why am i forced to watch 10-15 seconds of stock footage or something (SW Episode I is among the worst) just to select the scene?

personally, i would prefer to be able to access any of the 6 seasons of the xfiles, or any of the other 40 or so dvds in my collection, just by navigating to a file on the hard drive rather than fishing out the the proper dvd from the collection of 45 xfiles discs or 40 other movies. storage is cheap, and if one cant tell the difference in PQ between the dvd and the compressed file, then the convenience is worth it (to me at least).

just my thoughts.
k

I bet you've spent far more time re-encoding stuff than you'd waste watching DVD menus and warnings. Plus, the DVD is still much higher resolution than what you're encoding to.

Jerome,

Are you sucessfully archiving with AC3 audio and any plan to add step-by-step instructions to the guide at the beginning?

I run phantom front since my audio setup does not have a front center but I do have a rear center. With this setup I can only get 4.1 playback (no rear center) with the MAudio Revo as it will not do pseudo 6.1 matrixed rear center with phantom fronts as my Denon will.

Also, curious for DD2.0 audio source if you guys are using 2 channel or 5.1 channel WM9 audio encoding. I have been sticking with 5.1 WMA encoding for everything and I think the DD2.0 tracks are suffering from a lower volume level than usual.

balazar - no hard feelings, but you can say the same thing about tweaking an htpc in general. if it isnt something that you enjoy doing, then one should just buy a blackbox dvd player and be done with it. anyway, to each his own.

hardwired, i wrote up some steps here (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=255043) that show how to keep the ac3 with the wm9 files.

k

Enterprise is broadcast at 1920x1080i - upconverted from the 480p source.

Yeah,

960 x 540 is way higher than the ~640 x 360 that you're starting with.

.

THe source the UPN chicago gets is 848x480p. They upconvert that to 1920x1080i and BROADCAST IT.

I receive it as 1920x1080i. This is NOT HD as it is upconverted - albeit looks good

So I downconvert, after cropping - to about 832x365.

848 x 480p? How do they get something better than what the rest of us are getting?

From what I have read about the filming of enterprise

Enterprise (the live actors) are shot at HDTV resolutions
The CGI is done at 848x480p (EDTV) - should make DVD transfer easier.

Thus no one is broadcasting HDTV Enterprise

So whatever they are upconverting we get 1920x1080i - but it does not look great - just good. There are alot of artifacts.

Regardless of how it's produced, it reaches affiliates as an analog standard definition signal. That's roughly 640 x 360 (after you remove the letterbox bars).

"Enterprise" airs in HD in Australia.

Well, then UPN is upconverting 640x360 to 1920x1080i and broadcasting that.

But the shows effects are NOT in HD. They are simply rendered in widescreen 480p.

Originally posted by jamoka
WM9 is great for DVD backup. Just load the .vobs, either singly or as a sequence, then encode.

Joe

I just can't seem to get this to work. I have no problem loading the VOB into WME encoder. However, whatever I do I can' get the output file to be above 1000Kb/s. The resulting playback is very jerky. What the heck am I doing wrong?

Cheers,
Steve

EDIT -----

I was just being an idiot. I forgot the regfix for WinDVD.

Originally posted by hardwired
Jerome,

Are you sucessfully archiving with AC3 audio and any plan to add step-by-step instructions to the guide at the beginning?
Hardwired,

Yes, I have AC3 working fine with VDub Mod. I would really love to update the guide with that information. But right now my home theater is a disaster area and I need to get this place into shape. I don't know when, or if, I will have the time to do it.

I need to get another projector and get the broken one I have here out the door. If you want to hear the whole sob story you can give me a call and I'll tell you all about it.

--Jerome

are both directx sdk need 8.1b and 9.0

thanks..

also what is the differences, I heard that 8.1 works better with zoomplayer to make graphs for it and drop them in to playback hd streams in it, but that is any ot issue. any opinions tho.

also what are the regedit fixs for windvd.

Thre is a new Graphedit for 9.0. YOu need to download the SDK

BBQ has posted a link to new PowerDVD filters. I believe I have the video decoder working with HDTV WM9 encoding, but haven't taken the time to deregister all the other video filters to make sure. Lotsa droped frames, but there might be a registry key for that.

Joe

Jamoka,

Howare you?

Where is the BBQ link? I did a search but did not find it.//.

Steve

Does anyone know if Windows Media Encoder works in 8 bit or 10 bit sample space?

Hi Steve,

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?threadid=260937

Nicholas,

I think Amir answered the 8 vs 10 bit question at some point. You might seach his username.

Joe

WMV9 only supports 8-bit YUV samples. In the future, we may support higher resolution but for now, this is the maximum bit depth per component.

Joe and Nicholas know this but to avoid confusion, the above refers to the resolution of individual Y or U/V samples -- not the resolution of the resulting pixel on output (which is typically 24-bit RGB by the time it comes out of the graphics card DAC). Current MPEG-2 HD broadcast standard is also 8-bits per component. 10-bit is useful in post production and capture in order to have more headroom. For delivery, 8-bit is sufficient for consumer use.

Amir

jamoka,

i think the registry key you need for the dropped frames (and also ffdshow connection) is

\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Sonic\Cinemaster DS DVD\2.5\Videodecoder]
"AllowAllRenderers"=dword:00000001


kevin

Thanks, but I think it's some deinterlacing problem. It wants to give 17.98 fps.

DolbyDigital 5.1 encoding of WMA via the Nforce boards is working now with the latest Nforce drivers - sort of. I'm getting everything but the front L channel over SPDIF.

Edit - The L front channel is working, but the L front LED on the audio panel is stuck at 0.

Joe

what is the regfix for windvd menationed about. thanks

Originally posted by tonyb100
what is the regfix for windvd menationed about. thanks

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\InterVideo\Common\VideoDec] "NOVIDEODROP"=dword:00000001

I think

Cheers,
Steve

This might be a silly question. However, has anyone successfully done the following:

Used just WME (i.e. not a frameserver) to do a two-pass multichannel (5.1) encoding of any content (dvd or hd)?

For the life of me I can't seem to get it to work.

I have a Revolution 7.1 sound card and the WinDVD EX version that came with it.

I need help before I pull the rest of my hair out. ;)

Thanks,
Steve

IT wil only work if you select VBR Quality or CBR for audio.

2-pass audio will NOT work -but 2-pass VIdeo+1pass audio works.

Also, the AC3 must be PERFECT or the encoder will stop. SOmetimes I need to run ac3fix.

Originally posted by sjchmura
IT wil only work if you select VBR Quality or CBR for audio.

2-pass audio will NOT work -but 2-pass VIdeo+1pass audio works.

Also, the AC3 must be PERFECT or the encoder will stop. SOmetimes I need to run ac3fix.

Using a one pass audio, I am able to get it working with AC3Filter. However, it still won't work with the WinDVD filters. There seems to be two major problems.

1) The WinDVD filters don't want to pass 6 channel.
2) The audio that does show up seems to be really really fast (like all the audio for the entire clip is compressed and played in the first couple of seconds)

I have tried various combinations of reg fixes for the 6 channel problem

audiochan
audio
forceaudiomin (or something like that)

AC3Filter seems to help. It was the only way that I could get 2 pass encoding of HD clips using just WME. With that said, I would really like to be able to encode VOBs using just WinDVD filters.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Out of curiosity -- is it possible to make 6 channel output stick for WinDVD in graphedit?

Thanks,
Steve

Yes,

I am using the WinDVD 4 filters. I select:

1. In windows XP control panel 5.1 speakers - this is ESENTIAL
2. In Graphedit you can select 5.1 decoding

It just works.

I am using

Elecard Demuxer
Elecard MPEG2 2.0 (old version - registered)
Intervideo Audio

What demuxer are you using?

Yes,

I am using the WinDVD 4 filters. I select:

1. In windows XP control panel 5.1 speakers - this is ESENTIAL
2. In Graphedit you can select 5.1 decoding

It just works.

I am using

Elecard Demuxer
Elecard MPEG2 2.0 (old version - registered)
Intervideo Audio

What demuxer are you using?

Here is a tip for anyone that wants this to work but doesnt want to pay $20 for the elecard demuxer. If you have WinDVD 4, download the trial install of the Elecard filters. After you install them copy this file :

C:\program files\common files\elecard\mpeg2dmx.ax to some place safe.

Now un-install the elecard filters and make sure the elecard directory within the common files directory has been deleted. Now simply register mpeg2dmx.ax using the instructions at the beginning of the guide. You can now encode to wmv9 using the elecard demuxer without the annoying little watermark in your recordings. It will use the Intervideo video decoder from WinDVD 4 thus eliminating the elecard watermark.

#1 - I just don't think you should post this stuff here. Many of us were/are devlopers - be sensitive please

#2. It was always the encoder they were charging for- NOT the demuxer

That being said I don't think anyone can get it to work right with large frame sizes - what intervideo decoder are you using? Elecard->intervideo would PLAY but not transcode for me.

Why is the Elecard filter needed at all. I've been using the method documented by summit3907 (I hope I gave credit where it belongs...) to encode vobs to wm9 on my recorded HD files and it works fine. I just searched my whole computer but I cannot find a mpeg2dmx.ax filter and dropping a .ts file on graphedit is unable to produce a graph to play the file. However I am able to use DVD2AVI and produce a .d2v file that I load into vdubmod via an avs file. This gets encoded with wm9 using the ac3 file. I have produced 10+ wm9 files from recorded HD this way so far. Is there another way to determine if this filter is loaded on my system?

If you install the elecard MPEG2 filters you can load the TS directly into WM9 Encoder.

BUt I agree - avs is the best method "Jamura Method" :) to be precise. THis is what I have using

enterprise.avs
enterprise.ac3

2-pass encoding for video
VBR90% for audio

Intervideo audio filters to retain 5.1 sound.

This is the first version of AviSynth 2.5 that no longer contain the beta label. This comes after a lot of bughunting, with great feedback from many users.

A lot has been done to help transition from AviSynth 2.0. Be sure to update all plugins for AviSynth 2.5, when upgrading - a link to the avisynth.org filter collection can be found below. Much additional documentation can also be found om avisynth.org!

A big thanks to everyone here at doom9 for good spirit and great feedback!

Enjoy!

Download from the SourceForge project page (http://sourceforge.net/projects/avisynth2/).

Official homepage:
http://www.avisynth.org/

AviSynth filter collection:
http://www.avisynth.org/~warpenterprises/

Changelist:
* Added light version of "ffvfw" to the installer. No "Cannot locate decompressor (YV12)" messages.
* Added ConditionalFilter, that returns one of two sources based on an expression.
* Added conditional filters:
o AverageLuma(), AverageChromaU(), AverageChromaV() functions. Returns a float from 0 to 255 based on the average pixel values of a plane.
o YDifferenceFromPrevious(), UDifferenceFromPrevious(), VDifferenceFromPrevious() and YDifferenceToNext(), UDifferenceToNext(), VDifferenceToNext().
o LumaDifference(clip,clip), ChromaUDifference(clip,clip), ChromaUDifference(clip,clip). They return a float value between 0 and 255 of the absolute difference.
o RGBDifference(clip1,clip2), RGBDifferenceFromPrevious(clip), RGBDifferenceToNext(clip).
o YPlaneMax(clip, float threshold), YPlaneMin(clip, float threshold), YPlaneMedian(clip), YPlaneMinMaxDifference(clip, float threshold). Threshold is a percentage, on how many percent of the pixels are allowed above or below minimum. The threshold is optional and defaults to 0. There are similar funtions for U and V.
* Added ScriptClip(clip, string function, [show=true/false]). This will return the clip returned by the function evaluated on every frame.
* Added FrameEvaluate(clip, script) - Similar to ScriptClip, except the output of the filter is ignored. This can be used for assigning variables, etc.
* YV12 <-> RGB conversions now use an intermediate YUY2 conversion to achieve better chroma upsamplig. As a result of this ConvertToRGB now also take an "interlaced=true/false" parameter.
* Added ImageWriter.
* Added "show" parameter to ConditionalFilter. This will overlay the results on the screen.
* Added dynamic compiled limiter.
* Implemented Belgabors patch for exporting plugin functions.
* Build date is now (semi)automatically updated in version.
* Added script functions: IsYV12(clip), IsPlanar(clip), IsInterleaved(clip)
* Loads of documentation updates.

Bugfixes:
* Fixed cache hints a bit up.
* Hopefully fixed jumping frame bugs in temporalsoften.
* Fixed crashed in temporalsoften on some setups.
* Fixed I420 / YV12 mismatch in Interleave.
* Fixed problems with implicit last giving problem with multiple filter instances of ScriptClip/ConditionalFilter.
* Many ImageReader/Writer fixes and updates.
* Fixed bug when height > 512 in RGB -> YV12 conversion.
* AviSynth now mimics VDubs way of handling dropped frames to avoid problems with buggy codecs.
* Trim now returns (x-1) frames as supposed.
* Fixed stereo setting in BlankClip
* Fixed float point exceptions being thrown in some applications, based on the CPU register settings. (Especially Delphi-based apps)

Optimizations:
* Added MMX RGB24->YUY2 conversion.
* Minor changes to existing RGB32 -> YUY2 MMX.
* Minor speedup to ISSE limiter.
* Added SoftWire dynamic compiled horizontal resizer. Approximately 10-15% faster - maybe even more on P4.

Changes:
* AviSynth will now attempt to deallocate framebuffers, if memory usage is 25% above default values or SetMemoryMax().
* Improved rounding precision in ISSE YV12 <-> YUY2 conversions.
* Improved chroma upsampling quality in planar YV12 -> YUY2.
* Better chroma alignment on interlaced YUY2 ->YV12.
* Slightly better precision in audio conversion.
* ApplyRange now checks if size and colorspace are the same.

Given a high-quality Windows Media version of a DVD, what's the recommended procedure for burning a DVD with an MPEG-2, DolbyDigital version of the Windows Media file? I realize this involves multiple encoding, but that may not be a problem for our requirements.

Basically we want to use Windows Media for economical distribution, DRM and PC-centric playback, but there may also be a need to burn a DVD that will play in a stand-alone DVD player unit. This all is within the context of using paid-for, properly-licensed content and the content owner having agreed to the usage scenario.

There are bits and pieces of this on the thread, but if some kind soul could summarize the steps, it would be most helpful.


nbedworth@hawaii.rr.com

sjchmura,

a few pages back, you stated

quote and snipping
" Just as a side note - the Performance slider DOES affect quality under some circumstances.

With the performance 2 notches from teh left I get GREAT quality with
YV12everotherlineresizeonehalf (can't remember TrBarry's filter name - sorry)
unfilter (-20,-20)
undot ()
decimate (5)

File sieze is 280megs for 40 minutes - INCREDIBLE.

However

At 1 notch from the left I get

Filesize 300megs
Crappy banding etc.

end quote"

i ran into something similar last night. i had encoded a difficult sequence (dark room with spotlights) looking for banding differenced between the settings. i made several encodes at vbr 90, 93, and slider 1 notch and 2 notches. i was doing an a/b through zp with the multiple instances allowed, opening up both files at the same time and go to a specific frame to look for differences.

what i discovered is that the postprocesing that occurs on the playback only works on one file at a time! and that postprocessing had a MAJOR effect on the quality i.e. banding on playback. regardless of which file i opened, the first one looked great, and the second (or third etc) looked terrible with very obvious banding like it was in 8 bit color.

when i viewed the files one at a time, i was very hard pressed to see a difference between the 1 notch and 2 notch files. granted, the 10-15% file size increase is consistent, but it encodes 2.5 times faster for my material. i am curious how you tested your files - both at the same time or sequentially? and if sequentially, did you still notice that banding?

thanks,
k

ps - have you followed the new thread at doom9 regarding the upgraded decomb filter? it purportedly greatly enhances the quality of hybrid material like the enterprise episodes you are encoding. therad here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=54456) and more info here (http://shelob.mordor.net/dgraft/journal/journal.html)

i havent tried this out yet, but i have gotten very nice results on the current version extracting progressive frames during the "switch to video 'staring so and so' graphic layovers" on the xfiles episodes with these lines:

telecide(guide=1, gthresh=20, mthresh=2.0)
decimate(mode=3, threshold=1.0)

pps - what are the proper quote flags that people seem to use?

Wow - that is a great point. I think I was comparing them side by side.

I will have to check this out for myself :)

For the upconverts - instread of doing DCOMB this is MUCH faster

YV12InterlacedReduceby2()

This takes you from 1920x1080i upconvery to 960x540 every other scanline.

Then

decimate (5)

To get 24FPS

I can crunch through stuff at almost 60FPS doing this. Thus, the encoder becomes the bottleneck.

I need to check this out. The 10-15% smaller file size IS real however :)

STeve

Is there an easy way to fade up and fade down the begin and end of a transport stream? I am not familiar with all the avsynth workings and just thought someone might know.

Thanks,
David.

here you go

http://www.avisynth.org/index.php?page=Fade

kevin

@sjchmura

what system do you have to get 60 fps? alas, i am without a hd cap card (waiting for cable support) so i am limited to transcoding dvds. with this script, vbr 90 20% performance (1 notch from left), i get about 17-18 fps with the following script (used currently for transcoding xfiles dvds).

mpeg2source("C:\DVD\XF_S4_D1\VIDEO_TS\ep1\ep3.d2v", cpu=4)
Telecide(guide=1, gthresh=20, mthresh=2.0)
Decimate(mode=3, threshold=1.0)
bicubicresize(480,360,0, 0.75)
undot()
unfilter(-5,-5)

i am quite happy with the result (1.7 gb to 220-270 mb per episode and keeping ac3 sound), and it looks very nice on my sony 36hs20, but not sure how it would stand up to a 60" or larger tv due to resizing. then again, i dont have a larger display, and probably wont for a while! with the performance at 40% (2 clicks), i was getting 5-6 fps. this is on a p4 mobile 2.0 ghz 256 mb laptop.

seems that you soften quite a bit more (cpu=5, unfilter -20, -20 if i remember. i tried cpu=5, but it was too soft for the res i was running), so perhaps that lessens the load on the encoder. still, 60fps with any setting is far from what i have gotten, and you are runnign at a much higher final res than i am.

thanks,
kevin

ps - do you do any batch encoding? i started a thread but got no love - ac3 seems to crash the script-based batch for wme.

SOrry - I am no where near 60FPS - more like 5-8FPS :)

What I meant was the YV12reduceby2 is VERY VERY fast thus the rate limiting step IS the encoder :)

The UPN signal just sucks. I have played with ALOT of softening etc and have settled on "softer" = better for the UPN feed :)

For HDTV stuff like ABC I just encode :)

If the transport stream contains a Dolby-Digital EX track, is it possible to encode to in WM9 using a 7.1 audio-track (assuming both rear-centers are identical since the source is only 6.1)?

Filip

flingier,

from the help file of the encoder:

"Sourcing from multichannel audio files
Using Windows Media Encoder, you can encode multichannel audio, which means you can encode audio for a surround sound playback in six (5.1 audio) or eight (7.1 audio) channels. The format is specifically designed for CD, DVD, high definition television, and digital cinema audio programs. Your content source must be one of the following:

A single 6-channel or 8-channel file that has a WAVE_FORMAT_EXTENSIBLE format. For more information, see the Microsoft Web site. If you are sourcing from an 8-channel file, it is recommended that the sampling rate and bits per sample of the source file and the encoded content match."

i believe there are sound encoding programs such as soundforge et all which can save a file in this format. note that the 8-channel file is the only way to encode 7.1 audio - the 6 mono files only works for 5.1, and 8 mono's wont work for 7.1.

i suppose you might be able to put together some combination of filters which extracts 7 mono waves from the dd-ex file (do any pc-based audio decoders handle dd-ex?), then copy the back center into two rear surround channels, then load the 8 mono files into soundforge and save as WAVE_FORMAT_EXTENSIBLE, then load into encoder. quite a bit of work.

i know the besweet package on doom9 does some nice work with audio (such as easy extraction of mono waves from dd and dts), but i think it is limited to 6 channels.

kevin

Hi,
Has anyone been able to use this for hdtv files captured with HiPix? I have used graphedit to combine the ts files into one per the instructions but WME will not take it as an input. It says it is an invalid format or corrupted or does not exist. I get the same thing if I try one of the ts files. I just want to stop now if this is a dead end.
Thanks,

I need some help no matter what kind of file I put in the open box of windows media encoder It just freezes up. I can play TS file from my hard drive and vob files and MPG but when I try to encode anything it freezes the only thing I can record is pictures. What could cause this? Do I need to format? When I drop a ts file into graphedit it gives me the graph that is shown on page 1 of this guide. Please give me a little help. ( I have all filters installed)

This is still a graph issue. Try to uninstall WInDVD/PowerDVD etc, use Zoomplayer to UNREG ALL those filters, and start over again.

Your computer is NOT freezing - right?

This is still a graph issue. Try to uninstall WInDVD/PowerDVD etc, use Zoomplayer to UNREG ALL those filters, and start over again.

Your computer is NOT freezing - right?

I have the filters sorted out but when I try and encode star wars epII from HBOHD the colors are wrong the fox logo is blue. Do not know what is doing it. Tried another mpeg2 decoder that didn't help

Originally posted by summit3907
flingier,

from the help file of the encoder:

"Sourcing from multichannel audio files
Using Windows Media Encoder, you can encode multichannel audio, which means you can encode audio for a surround sound playback in six (5.1 audio) or eight (7.1 audio) channels. The format is specifically designed for CD, DVD, high definition television, and digital cinema audio programs. Your content source must be one of the following:

A single 6-channel or 8-channel file that has a WAVE_FORMAT_EXTENSIBLE format. For more information, see the Microsoft Web site. If you are sourcing from an 8-channel file, it is recommended that the sampling rate and bits per sample of the source file and the encoded content match."

i believe there are sound encoding programs such as soundforge et all which can save a file in this format. note that the 8-channel file is the only way to encode 7.1 audio - the 6 mono files only works for 5.1, and 8 mono's wont work for 7.1.

i suppose you might be able to put together some combination of filters which extracts 7 mono waves from the dd-ex file (do any pc-based audio decoders handle dd-ex?), then copy the back center into two rear surround channels, then load the 8 mono files into soundforge and save as WAVE_FORMAT_EXTENSIBLE, then load into encoder. quite a bit of work.

i know the besweet package on doom9 does some nice work with audio (such as easy extraction of mono waves from dd and dts), but i think it is limited to 6 channels.

kevin

Using WinDVD, it didn't allow me to go beyong 5.1 even when set to 7.1 but after installing PowerDVD 5 and configured for 8 speakers (7.1), it was no problem at all anymore. 5.1 DD-EX was decoded to 8 tracks and WM9 encoded to 7.1.

In WM9, 7.1 encoding only works in CBR mode for audio, 'quality mode' only goes to 5.1.

Filip

Has anyone noticed an issue of encoding with the elcard demuxer set to subpicture enabled. This has become an issue for me because, with OTA from my local ABC station (I do not know if the problem is national), if subpicture is not enabled then the elcard demuxer sees 2 AC3 streams (???). One of these is the correct stream and one produces a buzzing sound. Sometimes the defualt system graph picks the correct AC3 stream and sometimes not. If the default graph picks the wrong stream then I get only a buzzing sound the the WM9 audio. If I set the demuxer to subpicture enable then only one AC3 track is found(???). This is the correct track but I get a WM9 error with these demuxer settings. Does anyone have any ideas?

Lain

Excellent thread! There is a lot to sift through here. Can I get by with smooth playback on an Athlon XP 2000, 512DDR and GF 4 Ti4200?

I have played around with WM9 encoder and noticed that on the fly encoding really takes a toll on a slower system. (I can't believe 1 yr ago my system was considered fast). I would capture uncompressed first and then compress afterwards so I don't loose any frames.

I don't want to change computers so can you recommend any lower resolution settings that would not result in jerky playback on sub 2.5ghz machines?

craig,

what specifically are you trying to do? most people will probably recommend that you capture and encode separately for the reasons you note - on the fly encoding is cpu intensive. if you dont have disk space problems, you might want to capture using a huffy lossless codec (very easy on processor) and then encode later. that way you dont have to change computers, and you will not have any dropped frames?

what material are you capturing? do you really need to encode in real time? what res are you using now? you should be able to play back most resolutions on that machine, except maybe 1920x1080, provided you encode them after the fact.

k

Summit,

Exactly- I would not do on the fly encoding anyways. My gripe is just the statement the a 3 ghz PC is needed for 1080i playback. Its very frusterating when less than a year ago 2ghz was considered fast.

However, my satelite provider mostly broadcasts SDTV (limited HDTV) thus I would be capturing from a Bt848 video capture card hooked directly to my PC equiped with the appropriate frame server software. Then I would encode to WM9 format. The question is what resolution is non-HD tv?

Hence I would then encode with wm9 to that format so that I basically have a digital VCR capable of being programmed to record at certain times.

I would then set the PC to output the media to my 46" HDTV- even if the format is not 1080i. I want at least excellent SDTV format. What resolution is SDTV and is my Athlon xp 2000/512ddr/ GF 4 128 mb up to the challenge?- mind you the mobo supports Barton 3000+, but then thats another $400Cdn!. And that too will become obsolete in a year anyways. Can I get by with an Athlon 2000+?

I am not made of money and I don't intend to mortgage the house to upgrade a perfectly decent 2ghz computer. Its outlandish that Microsoft would have us all change our PCs for sake of WM9. There must be some tweaks or scaling that can compensate for slower computers.

i believe standard tv (non-hd stuff) is typically 640x480 resolution. when you capture, make sure you capture at this resolution. encoding should be done at the same resolution. i guarantee you will have no issues playing back 640x480 on your computer. i have encoded some dvds at 720x480, and they play back on my 1.7gh with about 30% cpu.

kevin

Thanks Summit,

Been playing around with WME 9 and so far so good. I capture from virtualdub using huffyuv codec, which produces a lossless video capure at 640x480. Only thing is file size is gigantic at 400 mb per min- thats right- no type 4-0-0 megabyte or four hundred megabytes!

Anyhow, WM9 produces an awesome quality file. However, encoding time is 12min per 1 minitute real time. I suspect its due to the huge source file and the fact that I am using a two-pass encode. Even a 3ghz system is going to be very slow. Is that normal? Is something wrong with the installation of WME 9 or is there a direct relationship between source file size and encoding time.

I'll have to try encoding an already compressed divx avi file and see if it takes the same time.

Question: What is the best way (quality wise) to set the interlacing option in the WM9 encoder to preserve the natively interlaced content (NTSC made-for-tv broadcasts) ?

I will probably play it on the NTSC LCD projector; however the primary focus is preservation without averaging out lines / dropping fields, etc., unless there's no way to watch it acceptably on a natively-progressive environment.

PS My capture card is going to be the ATI AIW 9800 Pro...

Thanks

Alec

craig,

huffy is doing pretty well to get down to 400 megs/min, when you consider uncompressed 640x480 is about 1.6 gigs/min! i captured a 30 min stream once and came up with a 13 gig avi file. if the space concerns are a problem, there are some cpu friendly mpeg2 encoders out there, perhaps even one that came with your capture card. of course, you are going to have some loss on the capture, and you will be encoding the content twice, but you can probably capture at 6-8000 kbps without much noticable quality drop. compared to the 28000 kbps for the huffy, this should cut your storage requirements considerably. most dvds are encoded at this bitrate, and their quality seems pretty good :)

regarding the speed, there is a slider under tools > options > performance tab. it is normally set one from the right. you can greatly increase the speed (about 4x faster on my computer) by moving this one from the left the file sizes will be about 10-15% larger, but the quality is not really affected, at least what i can see on my 36" direct view.

alec, the only way i know in the encoder to keep the interlacing is by selecing the 'maintain interlacing' on the processing tab. however, if you are watching this on a projector, unless you are running an interlaced resolution, you will proabbly see considerable 'flicker' since the progressive projector is displaying interlaced material. further, in my experiments, maintaining the interlacing greatly increased the file sizes. if you plan on watching this on a regular, analog ntsc tv, then you might want to maintain interlacing. otherwise, i would highly recommend deinterlacing. i think some folks say the one in wme is pretty good, but i think the standard is TomsMoComp (http://www.avisynth.org/users/warpenterprises/files/tomsmocomp_25_dll_20030121.zip). but to use this you have to learn how to use avs scripts and such. a guide for that is here (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=255043). note that you can just open the avs script directly in wme (using both device and file option) and then encode it.

k

Summit3907 & All,

Thanks a lot for the advice.

It's not that I am married to the WME9 "preserve interlacing" idea - I'm just flirting with it.

Truth be told, I want to fully understand its benefits (if any) and implications with respect to Windows Media Player playback and also subsequent DVD encoding. And hence the following questions that I'm hoping folks could answer or opine on:

1. I've done some test encodings with this option on, and did not see particularly adverse artifacts when playing on the computer screen. Does WMP9 itself include deinterlacing on playback (at least when not maximized)? That would seem logical...

2. Does preserving the interlacing actually preserve the interlaced NTSC signal better than deinterlacing the signal prior to encoding, given some a/v stream bitrate "breathing room", say 2 megabits for 720x480x60i NTSC? By "preserving better" I mean minimizing the pixel by pixel, frame by frame, difference between the source and the encoded content (as decoded - outside of the potential contemporary progressive screen rendering issue).

3. MS says the chrominance subsampling schema is different when preserving the interlacing (mimicking that in NTSC DV/MiniDV, as opposed to that in DVD, which is in effect for the deinterlaced stuff). Note that I could later take the interlaced WM9 file and reencode it as progressive at whatever bitrate and format is suitable, etc., so the question really is what works better for accurately digitally representing the NTSC content (say OTA broadcasts or other analog sources) as "my" master copy.

4. Now here's an interesting question: if I subsequently want to make a [standard] DVD out of this Windows Media 9 content, taking interlacing AND chrominance aspects into account, am I better off starting with an interlaced WM9 source? This here is not a trivial question. There's a flag in the DVD content marking it as film (progressive) or video (interlaced). I am not exactly sure about the mechanics of what happens after that, except knowing that DVD's made of natively interlaced content appear to play better on standalone DVD players and regular TV's than content that's been deinterlaced. I understand that the issue is getting moot as flat screen TV's and projectors proliferate, but it's not really moot - future deinterlacers inside TV's and DVD players will get better and better as faster and faster embedded processors are able to run increasingly more mature / competitive / sophisticated deinterlacing and upsampling software. So we're back to the priority of preserving the content, this time in DVD form. I realize that DVD MPEG2 is 4:2:2 subsamplingh not 4:?:0 like on DV or interlaced WM9.

Please advise

Alec

Anybody using Autodesk Discreet Cleaner XL for 1080i/720P (TS files) - WM9 encoding?

Weird.. GraphEdit won't let me load the Multiple Async File Source filter (or any other filter for that matter)! Gives me "The filter could not be created. Resources used by this filter may already be in use. The specified module could not be found (Return code: 0x8007007e)" This probably has something to do with me upgrading to DirectX 9.0b...

I am using the "Quality VBR Encoding Using the AVIsynth Method" and I got to step 9. When I load my AVISynth script in Zoom player, I get the following error:

Plugin C:\Program Files\AVIsynth 2.5\plugins\simpleresize.dll is not an AviSynth 2.5 plugin.

Any ideas what to do?

I installed the latest version of AVIsynth and that fixed it. Do I have to register Link2?

Anyone managed a way to convert a .ts with an AAC soundtrack to WMV9 format?

Filip

How can I convert transport-stream (MPEG2 + AC3) to .AVI with an WMV9 videotrack and the original AC3 audiotrack??? I found such an AVI but have now idea how to create one myself :confused:

Filip

Hi Flinger,

You need to use the Windows Media 9 Video Compression Manager and Virtual Dub Mod to do this. You can find the latter on Source Forge and the former can be downloaded from Microsoft here:

Windows Media 9 VCM Download (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=0c99c648-5800-4aa3-a2fe-3de948689db8&displaylang=en)

--Jerome

jsaliga,

Could you post a link to the Virtual Dub Mod? I couldn't find it at:

http://sourceforge.net/search/

thanks

I have them all installed but VirtualDubMod refuses to recognize the .ts file. Any help is appreciated

Filip

WM9 & Adobe Premiere.....


Heard a very interesting "story" at an adobe developers conference last Friday. Adobe has pulled out of the MAC Video editing market because Apple was killing them with their product (and aparently not supporting them with OSX exention documentation). In response, Adobe is putting all of their video apples with Mirocosft & XP - so much so that they will be coming out with a "Premiere WM9 encoding pack" which will allow Premiere to control the audio/video encoding process without any third party tools or Rube Goldberg like processes described in this thread. They said it would be free, but the DRM add on will be an additional fee.

Originally posted by sasha_j
jsaliga,

Could you post a link to the Virtual Dub Mod?

Here you go:

Virtual Dub Mod Project Download Page on SourceForge (http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=65889)

Regards,

--Jerome

Originally posted by FLingier
I have them all installed but VirtualDubMod refuses to recognize the .ts file. Any help is appreciated
I always converted my ts files to MPEG2 program streams with HDTV2MPEG version 1.09 before encoding with WME9 or VDubMod. I had problems from time to time with ts files and converting to MPEG2 got rid of them.

--Jerome

I converted a 1min. ts to mpg using HDTV2MPEG (v1.10 in case it matters since I didn't find 1.09). When loading it in VDubMod, I got a nice error saying :"An out-of-bounds memory access (access violation) occurred in module 'VirtualDubMod'." Tried on two machines and both report the same error.

Any suggestions?

btw, converting WMV but with WMA9 audio-track using WME9 works fine, but I'd like to preserve the original AC3 soundtrack since I can feed this to the receiver for decoding during playback leave the cpu for the video part.

Filip

Originally posted by FLingier
I converted a 1min. ts to mpg using HDTV2MPEG (v1.10 in case it matters since I didn't find 1.09). When loading it in VDubMod, I got a nice error saying :"An out-of-bounds memory access (access violation) occurred in module 'VirtualDubMod'." Tried on two machines and both report the same error.

Any suggestions?

btw, converting WMV but with WMA9 audio-track using WME9 works fine, but I'd like to preserve the original AC3 soundtrack since I can feed this to the receiver for decoding during playback leave the cpu for the video part.

Filip

I believe HDTV2MPEG (v1.10) has a bad MPEG output issue. You need to use HDTV2MPEG (v1.09) to convert to MPEG.

Any do you have download place for the 1.09 since I only found the 1.10? Or can you mail it?

Filip

Originally posted by FLingier
Any do you have download place for the 1.09 since I only found the 1.10? Or can you mail it?

Filip

I have it at home, I'll email you tonight.

Emailing it is not necessary. I put a link to it in the guide when I started this thread. Here it is again:

HDTV2MPEG Version 1.09 (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=1408610)

--Jerome

filip,

you can preserve the ac3 audio very easily in vdubmod. once the audio is extracted, just select ac3 from the audio menu and browse to your file. dvd2avi will tell you the delay in the file name, and using 500 ms preload and 32 ms interleaving works well for me.

k

I'm not sure about what I have to do in order to encode the video to WM9 and to keep the AC3 audio...
Can someone just tell me the steps to do it ?

Thx ! ;)

Originally posted by summit3907
you can preserve the ac3 audio very easily in vdubmod. once the audio is extracted, just select ac3 from the audio menu and browse to your file. dvd2avi will tell you the delay in the file name, and using 500 ms preload and 32 ms interleaving works well for me.


extracting ac3 worked, loading the .mpg created by hdtv2mpeg too but where is the audio menu you mention????

Filip

In more recent releases of Vdubmod it became the "streams" menu.

- Tom

Ok it works fine but there are 2 things I could not find... the "Allow nonsquare pixels output" and the "Pixel aspect ratio" which are very important for 2.35 movies :(

TrBarry (HD MASTER :)

What are your prefered XVID settings right now for say 720p BEST quality?
What build of XVID are you using?
Do you understand what options you CAN eneable and still keep it compatible with the new hardware players? It looks like the KISS players support the more advanced profiles but not ALL of hte advanced stuff.

WM9 is simple in this regard :) The new Wm9 players will be out January
Keep the bitrates <10000k and they should all work.

Originally posted by summit3907
filip,

you can preserve the ac3 audio very easily in vdubmod. once the audio is extracted, just select ac3 from the audio menu and browse to your file. dvd2avi will tell you the delay in the file name, and using 500 ms preload and 32 ms interleaving works well for me.

k
The audio is still not synchronized to the video (the sound is late), even if I use your preload/interleave values :(

sjchmura -

I don't use any of the Xvid fancy options. No b-frames, no qpel, no GMC. I haven't found any of them gains me that much in compression and all make it take more CPU time to decode. Also the newer options were less stable and compatible for a time, though that may all be fixed now.

So I've been lazy and have either been using WM9 or Xvid with just single pass CBR at 1280x720@24, not the most efficient but very predictable and the lowest decoder CPU. Xvid still has the edge for decoder CPU requirements.

Are you sure there is any KISS player that can play MPEG-4 with more than 480 lines? I didn't know that. But if there was then I would probably let that determine the Xvid options I used. My HTPC machine is still only a 866 P3.

Looking forward to seeing the hardware players but am skeptical on the release dates. ;)

- Tom

bango,

on the same tab where you put those values in, there is a box for 'audio skew correction' (vdm 1.4). put the value that dvd2avi put in the ac3 file name, i.e. 'heat DELAY -100 ms.ac3' you would put -100 into that box.

if you have already converted the file, you can still adjust the audio without re-encoding. on the video menu, select 'direct stream copy' to keep the video (assuming you already converted into wmv). choose 'direct stream copy' for the audio as well, and in the interleaving screen for the audio, change the delay to match the file name. save the file and see if that helps. if the audio is still off, play around with the delay values until you have something that works.

If you convert a TS file into a mpg2 does this change the video output to dvd instead of 1080I? I am using hdtvtompeg

Thx summit3907 ;)
What I do is... convert the ts file to mpeg. Then open the mpeg with dvd2avi, and the output .ac3 files says -455ms delay.
I use this value in VirtualDubMod, but the audio is still delayed.
I tried random values and -1000ms works better but still not perfect of course...

Ok... if I extract the AC3 and encode the video in WM9 with dvd2avi, and then use VirtualDub to add the AC3 to the WM9 with the delay given by dvd2avi, it works !

So then... last problem...
There are 2 things I could not find when encoding the WM9... the "Allow nonsquare pixels output" and the "Pixel aspect ratio" options which are very important for 2.35 movies :(

If you just choose to keep the input aspect ratio things turn out fine (crop out the black - XMEN looks good)

If I encode a 1080i HDTV 2.35 movie to WM9 1440*816, I have to specify that it's anamorphic and that it does not use square pixels... otherwise the picture won't be in 2.35...

bango,

what is your playback program? with zoomplayer, there is an aspect ratio adjustment which will very easily display the movie in the correct format. i think this is still missing from wmp.

if you use zoomplayer, just hit the 'r' key to switch between aspect ratios for a file. you might have to define a custom ratio for 2.35 films - this is what i do. i dont even bother looking at the encoding ratio since i can always adjust on the playback.

i suspect other media players have this function to, but i can't swear to it. and do make sure to crop the black out when encoding - saves space.

kevin

I do use ZP and I can use its aspect ratio adjustment, you are right.
But as the MS WM9 encoder has options for aspect ratio, I thought it could be used as well with the WM9 VCM...
Too bad...

you might be able to flag it, but if you use zp, there is no need to. there is an option in zp to auto-load definition files, so when you have the ratio set, just hit ctrl-d and it will save the definition file with the proper ratio. every time you load the file, the correct ratio will be chosen.

Bango,

Why do you want to take a 1080i movie and downconvert it to 816? Why not just keep as is and make 1080p? At 6000k 2 pass VBR you can get 2.5 hours/DVD.

Just curious

TrBarry,

You are right - you need 480p for most of them. The BRAVO will output higher but not sure about if that is only MPEG2 upscale or also MPEG4.

My sources tell me (who have seen the Samsung) the WM9 WMV is stunning at 720p as long as you don't exceed 9999kbit.

So I have been doing everything to keep in 2pass WMV on medium setting for encoder complexity. I can encode 45 minutes in 6 hours so I am happy :)

My laptop plays it back fine. That is one nice thing about WM9 - the DXVA has low CPU/heat so I get about 4 hours of video playback on my Compaq 2810T (ATI 9000) - compared to 5.5 hours of ms word :)

With MPEG2 I get 1/2 that.

Are saying that with DXVA WM9 playback is less CPU intensive than MPEG2? I thought it was the other way around, by a lot.

- Tom

Sorry,

What I meant to say was the DVD (MPEG2)+ Spinning the DVD is far more intesive then playback of my 300meg WM9 file on my 1GB laptop. The HD almost never spins - hence good battery life.

:)

Originally posted by sjchmura
Bango,

Why do you want to take a 1080i movie and downconvert it to 816? Why not just keep as is and make 1080p? At 6000k 2 pass VBR you can get 2.5 hours/DVD.

Just curious
I encode 2.35 movies in 816p, that means I encode just the movie, not the black bars.

Right but why compress the horizontal? Why not CROP -124, -124 and encode 1920x816?

The hozizontal is not a problem as it is stretched automatically.
I compress the horizontal because then the file is smaller and easier to play on small PCs. The difference is not visible anyway...

Are you sure 5.1 from wm9 will not work with nforce2 soundstorm.

Checkout this settting.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsXP/windowsmediaplayer/51audio.asp

perhaps the mutilmedia app in windows xp was not setup to use 5.1 speakers and only setup as 2 speakers hence only getting 2 channel playback from the nforce2. Setup the multimedia app for a 5.1 system or a 4.1 system and see what happens with the nforce and wm9 sound.

The 5.1 from Wm9 is broken on the NF2 boards that I have tried. the peoperl on the MSDN list have also seen this.

The 5.1 from Wm9 is broken on the NF2 boards that I have tried. the peoperl on the MSDN list have also seen this.

is this something that can be fixed in the future with a software or firmware update?\

If you really need AC3 then you should conisder encoding with the WM9 VCM and Virtual Dub Mod. Then all you need to do is demux the DD track from your ts with DVD2AVI and correct for the delay with AC3 Delay Corrector.

--Jerome

I've used this successfully a few times, with vdubmod, AC3, and the WM9 VCM. But I have not even used the AC3 Delay Corrector. I just enter the delay in vdubmod.

And if it turns out wrong thiis can be corrected in vdubmod by specifying direct stream copy for both audio & video, with different delays, trial and error.

- Tom

I had the privilege of viewing WM9 encoded HD on a well set up and calibrated G90 (AVS Forum member Ted White's machine). The material we watched was encoded using the single pass quality VBR method, some at Q90, some at Q85, material was either 1440x1080p or 1920x1080p depending on the quality of the source. The WM9 material was A/B compared with the D-VHS original at 1080i.

Overall impression: Picture quality wise it's a trade off between the elimination of scan lines at 1080i and the slight softening introduced by WM9. Reliability and convenience wise its a great step up from the D-VHS.

I took some frame captures from both the original MPEG-2 video and WM9 encoded versions and have posted the results for comparison here. (http://www.myhometheater.homestead.com/wm9compare.html)

Hi Chris,

I think there are some things that you can do to get your WM9 results alot closer to the original MPEG2 ts source.

If you are using HDTV film sources then you should NEVER be using WME9 deinterlacing. Also, if you are feeding the encoder with either the Elecard or Mainconcept MPEG-2 decoder output and resizing in the encoder to get 1440 x 1080 then you should expect some softening of the results. I have done my own comparisons shortly after posting this guide. I no longer use either of these methods for encoding.

Everything I do these days is with one-pass AVIsynth using the mpeg2dec3, decomb, and simpleresize plugins for AVIsynth. You pay a much smaller penalty in image fidelity with this method and decomb does a far better job with IVTC for film than WME9 deinterlacing. For stuff that won't meet my target bitrates with one-pass I will do two-pass bitrate VBR using AVIsynth.

I think you will find there are other benefits to going to WM9 beyond the elimination of scan lines. The elimination of interlaced motion artifacts is a big plus in my book. Using decomb to IVTC will do that. Simpleresize does not soften the picture nearly as much as resizing in the encoder. And staying away from Elecard and Mainconcept and using mpeg2dec3 in AVIsynth will generally yield a better image in the WM9 encoded results.

If you want to see how truely amazing the AVIsynth method can be then shoot me a PM.

--Jerome

Originally posted by trbarry
And if it turns out wrong thiis can be corrected in vdubmod by specifying direct stream copy for both audio & video, with different delays, trial and error.
Tom,

I have found that if I delay correct before encoding that I have never had a problem with audio sync.

--Jerome

Originally posted by sjchmura
The 5.1 from Wm9 is broken on the NF2 boards that I have tried. the peoperl on the MSDN list have also seen this.
Steve,

I think it is more correct to say that 5.1 on NF2 boards is broken...period. At least it was on the two NF2 boards I tried. All it did was take the main channels and duplicate them to all channels. It did this regardless of the source.

--Jerome

Originally posted by jsaliga
Steve,

I think it is more correct to say that 5.1 on NF2 boards is broken...period. At least it was on the two NF2 boards I tried. All it did was take the main channels and duplicate them to all channels. It did this regardless of the source.

--Jerome

man I am gonna be real pissed off if this is the case with the Asus nforce2 board I just bought. I should have just dumped the XP2500 and nforce2 and did the rev and hyperthread thing.

Anybody talking about this on the net anywhere? I can't believe something advertised as 5.1 encoding is really 2.1 encoding. Man i am so sick and tired of products being brought to market broken. Esp having to wait 6 months to a year for fixes.

For WM9 5.1 encoding with nforce2 and WinXP, try the 2.41 drivers. They are working for me.

Hi, I am a little confused on how to select my source. I downloaded a Sampe HD stream from FUSION's website. The extension is .tp. I selected as my source and it does not work. I also downloaded the Elecard filters and installed them. I don't know what to do with them.

I am also confused on where to get GRAPHEDIT. WHy do we need this. I could not follow on the thread because that part was vague. Can you help. All other settings are set to go on WME.

I did my best to read through the tutrial, but every step is complete except for the first one. I have no idea how to prepare the stream. The tutorial is excellent and the author stated that no one should be vague on posting anything about this process, however the actual tutorial itself is vague on the educational aspect of what a Transport stream is. How to we prepare it and what the filter stuff means. Anyone have any ideas on how to teach me to do this. I am planning on buying an HD card and setting up a SERVER and DATA STORAGE facilities for streaming HD content via WME.



Thanks

Abe

Originally posted by ApoDoc
Hi, I am a little confused on how to select my source. I downloaded a Sampe HD stream from FUSION's website. The extension is .tp. I selected as my source and it does not work. I also downloaded the Elecard filters and installed them. I don't know what to do with them.

I am also confused on where to get GRAPHEDIT. WHy do we need this. I could not follow on the thread because that part was vague. Can you help. All other settings are set to go on WME.

I did my best to read through the tutrial, but every step is complete except for the first one. I have no idea how to prepare the stream.


A ts or tp file is a Transport Stream, which is a MPEG2 file that is in a format that is made for transmitting OTA via Radio Waves.

GraphEdit is a Tool that comes with the MS DirectX SDK from Microsoft. It can also be downloaded from doom9.org (goto Downloads then under "Audio tools")

Graphedit is a tool that is used to visually setup DirectShow filters. This can be used to create custom playback filters or encode or in this case we are going to clean up a ts file.

Graphedit is really easy to use.
Start by dragging a TS or TP file into it and it should draw a graph of how windows would play that file.
You can insert other filters, by using the insert filter.

ok, Then how do I insert this as a source in Windows Media Encoder?

Originally posted by ApoDoc
ok, Then how do I insert this as a source in Windows Media Encoder?

Once you process the files using Graphedit, then you open WME9 and open the file that you processed.

There is also little tool that uses this if you don't want to use Graphedit.
It requires Java.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=318764

Still confused. Is there a tutoral on GRAPHEDIT. I insert the TP file and 4 boxes show up. After that I save it and open up ENCODER and I select this file and nothing happens??????????

Ok Try it this way.

Open Graphedit

Click on the "Graph" Menu
then Click "Insert Filters"
"Which filters do you want to insert?" will come up.
Expand "DirectShow Filters"
Find "File Source (Multiple Async)"
Highlight it and select insert.
"Select an input file for this filter to use" will open.
Find the ts or TP file that you wish to encode.
You will be back to "Which filters do you want to insert?"
Once again under directshow filters choose
"MPEG2 Transport to Source Packets"
Click "Insert Filter"
Now you will be abck to "Which filtesr do you want to insert?"
Under Directshow filters choose.
"TSPcap"
Now "Select an output file for this filter to use" will open
Put in a file name and a location for the file that will be outputed from this process.
Now close "Which filters do you want to insert?"
With your mouse click and drag from "Output"pin of your source file to "TransportPackets in" pin of "Mpeg2 transport to source packets"
This will draw a line with an arrow between the two filters pins.
Now with the mouse click and drag from the "SourcePackets Out" pin on the "Mpeg2 Transport to source packets" filter pin to the input filter "TSP Input" on the "TSPcap" filter pin (It will have the name of your output file in it.)
Now all three filters should be connected. Like this

File Source (multiple async)--->MPEG2 Transport to Source Packets--->TSPcap

Ok now click the play button on the Graphedit menu.
After a little time passes(depends on the size of your file) you will have a TS or TP file that is ready to be opened in WME9.

Thanks for the great post. However under the filters I do not see MPEG2 Transport to Source Packets nor do I see TSPcap. I have graphedit Buil 011008. I was in the process of doing everything per your instruction but the filters are not there. Just not my day. Any ideas!!!!!!!!!!

For TSPcap, you need to have dvhstool installed.
But... doing this is not needed... I can open my ts file in the WM9 encoder without doing anything to them via graphedit...
Though the encoding of the sound does not work... i get 2 secs of sound accelerated, and then nothin :D

Well. I just installed DirectX 9.0 SDK. I have the new graphedit. I applied all of your procedures and it worked, sort of.

First question. How long do I have to play the file in GRAPHEDIT.

I noticed the .TS extension.

Now I open up WME and it crashed (NOT RESPONDING) every time I select the new .TS file. Any ideas why this is happening?

This may be slightly off-topic but the expertise exists in the readers of this topic. I would like to monitor the 1394 output stream from the JVC HD1 camera on my laptop (Win2000). Does such a utility exist or can one be made with DirectX utilities? The capture program that comes with the camera only works on XP but it does not monitor a live stream. Could it be done if I upgrade the laptop to XP?

Donald

Originally posted by ApoDoc
Well. I just installed DirectX 9.0 SDK. I have the new graphedit. I applied all of your procedures and it worked, sort of.

First question. How long do I have to play the file in GRAPHEDIT.

I noticed the .TS extension.

Now I open up WME and it crashed (NOT RESPONDING) every time I select the new .TS file. Any ideas why this is happening?

Mine does the exact same thing.
Sorry can't help on this one, but I hope someone responds.

Well, this is one long thread. I hope someone can figure this out.

WME hangs sometimes... but most of the time you just have to wait until it loads correctly the .ts file... have you tried being patient and wait some minutes ? :)

Yes, I have.

Loading HDTV transport streams or MPEG2 streams into the WM9encoder is very fast and very easy - BUT - you must have the Directshow demultiplexer, video decoder, and audio decoder filters registered properly first. Decide which filters you are going to use, then register them with merit values high enough to automatically load before all others. You can not skip this step and be successful.

Using the Directshow filters in this way usually results in deinterlacing errors when converting the 1080i video to progressive video. Slower encoding, but better results if you use the AVIsynth method with Decomb.dll for deinterlacing/IVTC. For resizing, the WM9 encoder is far inferior to the AVIsynth Lanczosresize as well.
Joe

Exactly.
jamoka, maybe you know why I have no problem encoding the video, but the audio plays 2 secs accelerated and then stops ?

Jamoka,

I followed the above procedure the way it was mentioned. I am very serious about building a 12 drive RAID array for this. I am trying to figure out how to register and make this work. It keeps on forcing WME into NOT RESPONDING mode.

How do I register the filters and what procedures should I go through. I have no idea what your talking about. I am completely new to WME 9 and HDTV encoding. A quick crash course would be nice. I went through the entire thread. Hasn't helped. Its way to long.

Originally posted by jamoka
Loading HDTV transport streams or MPEG2 streams into the WM9encoder is very fast and very easy - BUT - you must have the Directshow demultiplexer, video decoder, and audio decoder filters registered properly first. Decide which filters you are going to use, then register them with merit values high enough to automatically load before all others. You can not skip this step and be successful.

Using the Directshow filters in this way usually results in deinterlacing errors when converting the 1080i video to progressive video. Slower encoding, but better results if you use the AVIsynth method with Decomb.dll for deinterlacing/IVTC. For resizing, the WM9 encoder is far inferior to the AVIsynth Lanczosresize as well.
Joe

I have tried all combinations of DS filters. I have went through the troubleshooting that is listed in the first post.
I am able to playback TS files without a problem.
By dragging a TS file into graphedit I get the following graph
File Source(Multi Async)----->Elecard MPEG2 Demultiplexer--->Video>InterVideo Video Decoder-->Video Rederer
---->Video>InterVideo Audio Decoder-->Reclock

I don't use the Elecard decoder since they are too process intensive.

I have tried many combinations but can't seem to find the right one.
I have over the past few years had many many DS filters installed so I don't know what kind of effect that can have.

Do you have a resource that could help me find out what the problem is.

I have also tried this method.
http://www.patjames.com/hdtvtowmv.htm

DVD2AVI crashed

The Registered Filter Manager in ZPlayer is the easiest way to change merit values of the filters.

In the Control Panel or Registry, make sure speakers are set to 5.1.

Use the Elecard Video Decoder for HDTV - the CPU requirement is almost identical.

Use 1Pass encoding until it's working correctly.

The transport streams must be undamaged for this to work. Even 1 small error in the video, audio, program, or transport stream can crash the encoding session. If DVD2AVI crashes, there are probably more significant problems with the stream. Even if the transport stream itself appears to play perfectly, there may still be invisible but fatal errors. If there are any visible glitches, pixelations, etc. on playback, the chance of successfully transcoding is small. In that case, it's usually best to trash it and recapture.

Joe

Originally posted by jamoka
The Registered Filter Manager in ZPlayer is the easiest way to change merit values of the filters.

In the Control Panel or Registry, make sure speakers are set to 5.1.

Use the Elecard Video Decoder for HDTV - the CPU requirement is almost identical.

Use 1Pass encoding until it's working correctly.

The transport streams must be undamaged for this to work. Even 1 small error in the video, audio, program, or transport stream can crash the encoding session. If DVD2AVI crashes, there are probably more significant problems with the stream. Even if the transport stream itself appears to play perfectly, there may still be invisible but fatal errors. If there are any visible glitches, pixelations, etc. on playback, the chance of successfully transcoding is small. In that case, it's usually best to trash it and recapture.

Joe

OK I have tried to only open a very smal TS file that has no visual defects.

Where can I download a TS file that is know to be good so that I can test it to make sure that is my problem before going any further.

On my system the elecard Video decoder uses ~80% cpu usage where the Intervideo uses ~40%.

I would guess one uses DXVA and not the other ;)

This is the reason why I have not invested time in learning about WME encoding. It is to complicated and a 25 page thread that goes nowhere does not help.

Does anyone out their for one final time know why WME does not respond and if so what did you do to remedy the situation.

Thank you

Abe

It is complicated and confusing. The only sure fire method to ensure this works is to use the Jamura (tm) method.

http://www.patjames.com/hdtvtowmv.htm

The reason why it does not work is that the directshow filters we have are (1) not made by ms (2) not intended for this purpose.

Supposedly DS ones in Nividia DVD 3.0 will be TS friendly.

There are $2000 codecs (supposdely) that work flawlessly.

Seriously if people would read and do exactly what is said in the 1st page of this thread, it would be easy...
Using VDubMod is not easier...

Bango, I am a bit condused since the thread talks about numerous ways.

The bottom line is that the AVIsynth/AC3fix way assures a perfect encode. Every single time.

Using the DS filters is simply hit or miss. Check out the MS WMTALk list to confirm these issues. MS knows all of the DS filters are broken for HD save the commercial (expensive ones)

I did everything on the first page 100 times. Are are loopholes. Why does my WME freeze?????????????????????????

Sjchmura,

Which expensive Directshow filters are working properly with HD transcoding? AVIsynth is great, but it would be a little easier with Directshow.

Apodoc,

Try encoding audio-only then video-only to narrow down the problem.

Joe

Originally posted by bdraw
Ok Try it this way.

Open Graphedit

Click on the "Graph" Menu
then Click "Insert Filters"
"Which filters do you want to insert?" will come up.
Expand "DirectShow Filters"
Find "File Source (Multiple Async)"
Highlight it and select insert.
"Select an input file for this filter to use" will open.
Find the ts or TP file that you wish to encode.
You will be back to "Which filters do you want to insert?"
Once again under directshow filters choose
"MPEG2 Transport to Source Packets"
Click "Insert Filter"
Now you will be abck to "Which filtesr do you want to insert?"
Under Directshow filters choose.
"TSPcap"
Now "Select an output file for this filter to use" will open
Put in a file name and a location for the file that will be outputed from this process.
Now close "Which filters do you want to insert?"
With your mouse click and drag from "Output"pin of your source file to "TransportPackets in" pin of "Mpeg2 transport to source packets"
This will draw a line with an arrow between the two filters pins.
Now with the mouse click and drag from the "SourcePackets Out" pin on the "Mpeg2 Transport to source packets" filter pin to the input filter "TSP Input" on the "TSPcap" filter pin (It will have the name of your output file in it.)
Now all three filters should be connected. Like this

File Source (multiple async)--->MPEG2 Transport to Source Packets--->TSPcap

Ok now click the play button on the Graphedit menu.
After a little time passes(depends on the size of your file) you will have a TS or TP file that is ready to be opened in WME9.






Ok, I did the following procedure. When I click on APPLY in the output screen on WME I get an error that states. " There are one or more codecs required. Do I need to insert Codecs into WME9. Or am I missing a step from above. This is all done in GRAPHEDIT and saved then opened in WME. Can some of your post your own procedures. My WME hangs and crashes.

Jamoka

Supposdely (on the MS Talk list) the pro ligos ones work flawlessly. I tried the 4.0 player ones and they did not work.

There was a large discussion about the ones that work. Somewhere on the horific MS site there is a WMTALK archive list. Search for my name and you can see my bitch and moan about the MPEG2 status in MS products for pages :)

Schmura,

I searched and couldn't find anything on the new Ligos filters. Are people claiming they have Directshow decoders that perform an accurate IVTC to 24fps without reading flags? Or something else. For Directshow decoding, it's those IVTC errors that are the showstopper for me. The flags are not reliable, so I would expect anything that depends on them to still be hit or miss.

Joe