Replica now uses a program called procoder to help speed up render time. I dont think it's as good as CCE. Thank GOD aNBc did an internal for me to download (with no opening trailers (2 groups ive seen now that can do that)).

I'm sure they both work ok, I just want the best release available.

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picked up last night. this movie is an instant classic to me! seems like it took a long time for this to make it to dvd. maybe it's just because i dont recall seeing a screener for this. anyway yes the bitrate may be a little low, but the picture appears to still be very sharp. plus its only a comedy anyway, not an action fest which would require a higher bitrate. 8.5/10/9

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Ack... I picked up this one not knowing there was a aNBc release with a few extras and higher bitrate (aNBc's is ~1600kbit/sec higher).

It's nice to have a complete, but video was ehh on this release. Watched the movie, liked the movie... But the video didn't look even like a 3500ish. Maybe the original retail wasn't all that hot to begin with, or as JoshNya said, the new encoder they chose just ain't as good.

Personally, I dunno why any group would stray from CCE. If they want to cut on passes, 4 pass + the initial 1 pass VBR is more than enough in most cases. After a while the passes are just become a novelty IMO. And each pass is around 1 hour, so going from 6 or 7 passes to 4 will save them time. At least I rather see that that a new encoder which may be of poorer quality.

The DVD is complete though. With trailers, grr... If you are picky like me, start adventuring to the aNBc path. If you don't care and/or have a 27" TV, enjoy this release in crystal clear video.

Video 6/10 - Wasn't impressed at all on the big screen. Maybe I am also a little hard on them because I didn't release there was a higher bitrate version out there. Video is watchable, especially for a comedy, but far from nice.

DVD-R 7/10 - Completes are nice to have, but as I've said before, not if they are going to harm the actual movie quality alot. Especially if you are the type that will never even hit the "special features" menu on the disc. The saving grace is that this is a comedy and video is secondary to the actual humor of the movie.

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I personally prefer Procoder in a lot of cases. And if anyone used it already, it surely doesn't save time, heh. 2 VBR mastering quality procoder takes as long as 4-5 passes and looks better in most cases. Besides Procoder is running on 100% CPU on my 3ghz and CCE only 90% CPU. If you encode movies yourself, just compare qualities. But despite that fact, I don't think groups really use Procoder.

I believe the bigger groups just all do CCE incl. Replica but I believe a lot of groups eventually cut down on passes (like do 4pass and write 7 in nfo) cuz you can't find out the difference anyways.

I do a lot of copies for myself and trust me, not all grps writing 7pass in their nfo really do it because I often achieve better or equal quality on lower bitrates keeping some more extras on the exact same movies. Release-wise, it's all a matter of race after all.

Having watched Bad Santa Replica without knowing (or before) there was a different release out, I couldn't say it had lower than usual quality, so I don't care much about numbers.

There are a gazillion rels out there that I'd rip differently for myself not being race rushed. But I believe internal of them all isn't exactly what the world has been waiting for....

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I will have to look into this procoder... I've been a CCE guy for so long that I guess I am getting stubborn thinking nothing better can come along.

Has anyone else heard good stuff about ProCoder?

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its made by canopus, who offer incredibly good hardware video cards. its not as expensive as CCE tho, and covers a larger range, so i'd be tempted to say CCE used properly will be better than procoder.

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Yes, Cinemacraft is more expensive than Procoder, if you go by the more expensive ring is the better one rule you'd come to that conclusion. Still a lot of people dealing with encoding are of the opinion that it looks better.

I personally can't generally tell which one looks better. One thing I always prefer Procoder over CCE every time is CG/Cartoons. Using the regular quantization matrix in CCE you always get a lot of compression artefacts around sharp edges of characters or whatever (reason for this is that sharp edges cause high frequencies which are compressed more by the DCT than low frequencies). I tried using the even QM which made the whole picture blurry. Overall result looks much better in Procoder.

BTW: don't forget to set intra DC to 10 when encoding with procoder, the value is a bit hidden in advanced options

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quote:

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Originally posted by Extractor
Yes, Cinemacraft is more expensive than Procoder, if you go by the more expensive ring is the better one rule you'd come to that conclusion. Still a lot of people dealing with encoding are of the opinion that it looks better.

I personally can't generally tell which one looks better. One thing I always prefer Procoder over CCE every time is CG/Cartoons. Using the regular quantization matrix in CCE you always get a lot of compression artefacts around sharp edges of characters or whatever (reason for this is that sharp edges cause high frequencies which are compressed more by the DCT than low frequencies). I tried using the even QM which made the whole picture blurry. Overall result looks much better in Procoder.

BTW: don't forget to set intra DC to 10 when encoding with procoder, the value is a bit hidden in advanced options

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Well yeah, most cartoons are short, at a certain bitrate, it doesn't really matter that much because there is just enough bandwidth left to compensate quantization even on higher frequencies.

I've been working in DVD production and usually for CG graphics there's a different quantization matrix used than for natural picture which makes sense because the MPEG Standard QM is focussed on natural images. The regular QM quantizes low frequencies at a higher resolution than high frequencies. For instance DC (upper left) value is up to 10bit (11bit is lossless DCT), highest frequencies are devided by 90+.

Now this makes sense when you think about natural pictures. Where would you easier spot a distortion? In a field of even looking objects (you know how every object is supposed to look like) or a field of grass (you don't know how a single straw looks anyways)?

Artificial elements mostly have sharper edges than natural elements (like you have text where one pixel is black and the next pixel is white), transcoded (DCT) this means higher frequencies in the spectrum. As high freq. are compressed most, you have the effect I just descirbed. That is also why you often see compression artefact around pretitle text in movies etc.

In CCE 2.60+ there's even a predefined profile for CG. This is the one I've experienced no good results.

As for the image quality priority in 2.50 I usually take a value of 15 for movies anyways. Of course the more you slide this option to COMPLEX, the more bitrate is allocated to higher frequencies (incl. edges)... in other words, this is nothing else than alternating the QM or multiplying it with a certain scale... just in an easier way.

Of course all these differences I'm talking about are minor (at a reasonable avg bitrate), I'm not talking about great deals in quality difference but they're visual to a degree.

As for other reviews, check forums dealing with video encoding (I don't wanna link to other forums here) but you'll find enough talking about this. I mean, I got both so I don't have to decide for either one of them... it is just that JoshNya made it sound like it's some kind of cheap "tool"... probably withouth having experimented with it (and other encoders) as much as I did.

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Extractor,

Exactly. Since most cartoons are short, the left over bandwidth is more than enough in most cases. Especially movies like Finding Nemo could have had a movie only VBR bitrate of 8500 and been beautiful (on a dual layer retail disc). But what irks me is that they decided to make it 3.8 gigs for the movie and completely make it look like shit. But now I am going off topic Back to the main convo...

The best CCE is still 2.50 IMO. And you're right, the 2.60 CG/Cartoon settings are useless. The image priority is still one of the better things going (in 2.5).

I've seen pre-title artifacting even on retail copies (Matchstick Men was the worst recent example... moving water with credits over it... eek!)... And unfortunately there is no way any encoder can re-encode that to make it look better (better than the original I mean). It's pretty scary that some DVD productions houses DON'T even know how to use CCE or encode in general. Look at Brother Bear retail DVD... It was the worst thing I've ever seen, especially for a digital transfer.

What I am trying to say is that no matter what the encoder, we are already working from an initially encoded movie, which means we re-encode all the artificating and problems from the original retail into larger artifacts and larger problems. OR, we blurr it to hell and hope nobody notices.

I guess I will run the tests on 3250kbit/sec and 4500kbit/sec natual image, and then 3250/4500 on a cartoon. Of course VBR on each. But I know that if ProCoder is good, then everyone will have different opinions which is better. But I have a feeling that ProCoder won't offer as sharp of an image (pre-test hunch) on natural, but will have as a result less artifacting. I will set the Intra DC to 10 as you suggested also in ProCoder for the tests.

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porco556, yes, you see such stuff also on Retail encodings, because they can't (or don't) adjust the QM just for the pretitles... I was just refering to "artificial edges" problem in general to help understanding what I'm talking about. I know it was unnecessary information for you since you know what you're talking about.

A lot of production houses use Sonic's SD-Encoder series (SD-2000 flagship costs approx $18000-20000) unfortunately, wrong setting won't help a good encoder, lol.

I generally suggest Intra DC 10 for any 3000k+. Even at 3000k the bandwidth can spare 10bit resolution of the basic chroma or luma values. For SVCD 8bit or 9bit makes sense though.

Last edited by Extractor on 06-08-2004 at 03:17 AM

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quote:

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Originally posted by Extractor
... it is just that JoshNya made it sound like it's some kind of cheap "tool"... probably withouth having experimented with it (and other encoders) as much as I did.

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It is cheap, compaired to CCE... just wanted to add my .02.

I've tried Procoder once on a simple sample of Matrix Reloaded, with all the digital green and black backgroud. CCE 2.5 just blew it away. Granted I'm no expert in Procoder as I am with CCE, but the results were clear CCE was alot more advanced. But reading your posts maybe I'll retry the experiment with your settings, but I doubt I'll ever stray from CCE.

Nice thread BTW. Hopefully VCDQ wont clear this one like last time

Last edited by JoshNya on 06-08-2004 at 01:32 AM

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I agree, great discussion with people dealing with video encoding.

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quote:

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Originally posted by JoshNya
Nice thread BTW. Hopefully VCDQ wont clear this one like last time

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Yeah! It's been a nice educational trip. We should have more technical chat more often. It's the only way to learn.

Extractor is very knowledgeable (at least more knowledgeable than me... I am mostly good at being picky ), and as I have a feeling, the ProCoder vs. CCE will be down to personal preference judging from what I understood. But there is the next issue, Extractor might know how to use ProCoder well, maybe Replica doesn't Just like the DVD production houses never bother learning how to use their exprensive nice toys. Here's hoping...

I've used CCE myself for ages (when I discovered SVCDs in 1999 around) and it's been CCE version 2.5 since

I myself will give ProCoder a try at very least to say I've tried and tested it. But who knows, I might like it too. I'll do those tests this weekend or something. Pretty busy week

See you guys next release (at least next Replica ProCoder release)

Last edited by porco556 on 06-08-2004 at 03:23 AM

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I'm having major issues with burning this to disc. When I try loading the .img into Nero it tells me there was an error reading it and when I extract the info from the .img file Nero tells me there are file reallocation errors. anybody able to tell me what's going on? I've grabbed this twice now and am having the same issues.

Thanks.

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notsoboo, don't use Nero for DVD stuff at all, not perfect with it.

Use DVD Decrypter, its small and free program, which once you install it, all you have to do is right clik on the .img file and the top option should be Burn Using DVD Decrypter, thats what i used with this and had no problems with it.

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wow, awesome. Thanks!

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