Good Live-Action Codec?

Kaji01 · Post by **Kaji01** » Sat Oct 25, 2003 5:42 pm

I'm playing around with my Live-Action GTO bootlegs just as a side project while thinking up ideas for things, and was wondering if anyone perhaps knew offhand of any codecs that worked better for compressed live-action footage (I figure that since formats that work for drawings doesn't always work well for photos and vice-versa, the same most likely applies to codecs...). Thanks for any suggestions!

Lyrs · Post by **Lyrs** » Sat Oct 25, 2003 5:46 pm

doom9.com

bootlegs = bad

Kaji01 · Post by **Kaji01** » Sat Oct 25, 2003 5:49 pm

I wouldn't have gotten the bootleg if there was an official release to be had. Beats downloading it...

DJ_Izumi · Post by **DJ_Izumi** » Sat Oct 25, 2003 8:34 pm

The site is doom9.ORG not com, but it's your best bet for ripping.

Zarxrax · Post by **Zarxrax** » Sat Oct 25, 2003 8:53 pm

You will use the same codecs. No need to switch.

Hitori · Post by **Hitori** » Sat Oct 25, 2003 9:46 pm

No no on the bootleg...

Kaji01 wrote:I wouldn't have gotten the bootleg if there was an official release to be had. Beats downloading it...

You weren't looking hard enough...

http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/detailview.html?KEY=PCBE-50348

Release Date: 2002/09/04

That's the official Japanese release!!

Kaji01 · Post by **Kaji01** » Sun Oct 26, 2003 11:04 am

My bad, I should have clarified a bit by saying there wasn't a release that had English on it, but either way that's a side issue. Thanks for the help, guys.

Lyrs · Post by **Lyrs** » Sun Oct 26, 2003 11:25 am

DJ_Izumi wrote:The site is doom9.ORG not com, but it's your best bet for ripping.

Thanks for the correction.
/end

doomhammerofdoom · Post by **doomhammerofdoom** » Mon Oct 27, 2003 9:22 pm

incase you didnt realise, anime is just video like any other movie, compressors are not bias towards the content of the video, the quality may only look slightly different to the human eye

trythil · Post by **trythil** » Tue Oct 28, 2003 1:23 am

doomhammerofdoom wrote:incase you didnt realise, anime is just video like any other movie, compressors are not bias towards the content of the video, the quality may only look slightly different to the human eye

In a way, they are. Most encoders are designed for live-action material -- they work best with the way that the gradual, slightly chaotic nature of the real world. Soft edges, noisy fills, that kind of stuff.

Most animation is the opposite of that. ("Most" referring to the fact that CG is homing in on the look of live-action.)

For example, one of the most common problems that you'll see with traditional cel animation encoded with MPEG-1/2/4 video encoders is the appearance of spots along sharp edges (and the blurring of said edges). This is because of the way that MPEG encoders work -- they rely on, among other things, the fact that humans can recognize objects if the object is presented as a whole before its details. Therefore, depending on bitrate, you lose and mar some of those fine details.

This can happen with live-action material too, but it's not as prominent.

So -- yes, encoders are biased as to what kind of material they work best with, but that doesn't mean workarounds and improvements don't exist.

- XviD has an animation mode under development.
- TMPGenc provides different quantization matrices optimized for cel animation.
- At the kinds of bitrates that MPEG-2 is really designed for, you don't see as many of these problems. Of course a crappy source and (to a lesser extent) bad encoding can still cause problems, but that's an entirely different issue