Instrumental Anime Project

Org Profile · Post by **Otohiko** » Sun Dec 12, 2004 7:46 pm

Hmm... well if you ask me, Ararat (at least to me) doesn't look any less odd in 16:9 than in 4:3 - maybe I'm just too used to it, but in fullscreen it looks sqeezed.

Personally, I would suggest letterboxing it and keeping the video at original size, but I actually didn't think the stretching was too bad.

**

In fairness, Ararat was finished pretty much months before we even started talking about having two different-sized sections...

Songbird21 · Post by **Songbird21** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 2:55 am

rose4emily wrote:Ummm... Song... was there some part of the "Forbidden Memories" narrative that you forgot to submit? I thought it was odd, at first, that you only submitted one file for that one, while most narratives came as sets of two or three files - but then I just figured that Helen wrote an especially succinct narrative. Looking at the one she just put up here, though, the rest of it does seem familiar from when I was making my first attempt at recording the narratives.

MEEP! Sorry I coulda sworn I uploaded all 3 files. They are uploading now. Gomen *ducks*.

Bakadeshi [AuN Studios] · Post by **Bakadeshi [AuN Studios]** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 9:26 am

once I again I didnt realize there was respnses to this thread since its not sendimg me notifications for some strange reason. Guess I should just check here every day

Anyway, glad to see the project is nearing its end. Can't wait to see the fullscreen sample. I'll download it today after work, assuming its up and ready.

As for the DVDs, I can handle all the formating and such, thats not a problem. If it will be a problem to get all the files in mpeg2 from you, then perhaps I can just get the narritives/intros/credits segments from you and get the actuall videos from the various editors (assuming all of you are capable of encoding to mpeg2) and put it all back together here on the dvd. Would save me the trouble of splicing it up into chapters so you can skip through it that way also.

rose4emily · Post by **rose4emily** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 1:53 pm

Jasper-Isis wrote:Personally, I'm still in favor of having smaller 512x384 and 512x288 resolutions. Having them any bigger is a bit of overkill and still takes a heck of a lot of time for broadband users like me to download. A smaller resolution would also increase the video quality of some videos that were submitted in relatively LQ. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the Warrior's Dance segment encoded from a 352x240 MPEG-1 file? If it isn't, well, not to be harsh, but it certainly looks like it was. The original version looks great in terms of video quality, but the loss of detail in the beta file is definitely noticeable.

What I should have done was request the high-resolution copies in the first place. Unfortunately, I really didn't know better at the time, nor was I aware of the fact that most segments were going to be submitted as second-generation encodings.

The problem I ran into with the smaller encodings (the 512-width ones) was that they did remove a lot of detail, and had much more visible artifacts, but did not actually make the files all that much smaller. The increased resolution from 512w to 768w only increased the size of each segment from about 350 to 450 (not counting all the things that weren't in the first test encode), and did make the videos that were submitted in larger resolutions (quite a few were submitted as 720x480 anamorphics, without aspect tags, hence some of the aspect-ratio confusion) look much cleaner (compare, for instance the two encodings of "Oratorio of Ghibli" to see the vast improvement [as in, it looks like a first generation DVD stream] in the second encode). The two videos that didn't fare so well at the larger-size encoding were Song's (which was submitted at a relatively low resolution), and the latter portion of mine (which has gone through so many generations between my choice of source and the fact that I lost the original version of the file that it probably wouldn't look great in any encoding).

The "softening" isn't really a matter of scaling up the resolution of the videos, so much as it is the 3x3 partial gaussian unsharp convolution that I applied in the filtering stage to help smooth over the edges of existing macroblocks and prevent edge aliasing with the scaling op. If you look back to the first test encode, the smaller one, I used similar filtering without the scaling - and the video was incredibly fuzzy. The larger size actually helps it to retain its sharpness while keeping the gradients smooth and the amount of detail per macroblock to a reasonable level. The best example for comparing the two encodings on this angle would be "Forbidden Memories" - look at how much less "mosquito noise" there is around the edges, and how much sharper the lines appear to be when comparing the two in fullscreen playback.

That "fullscreen playback" part is probably the trick here. A very small video tends to look sharp and hide artifacts when shown at native resolution because it fills a very small portion of the view plane. But, when viewed in fullscreen mode, these things are all very much revealed. Scaling prior to encoding allows the encoded stream to work with more input data, and therefore better capture the original video. This output may look "softer" or "blockier" in native resolution (depending on the state of the input stream before encoding), but will look much better in fullscreen more - as less after-the-fact scaling must be applied. The 8px by 8px encoding macroblocks are a constant (at least until H.264, with its 4px by 4px macroblocks, matures), but when a video is blown up by a factor of two or three, they become 16px by 16px or even 24px x 24px macroblocks, and thus highly visible on even casual inspection.

---

The audio issues do appear to be an index problem. I haven't found a fix yet, but most certainly will find one - even if it requires encoding everything again as Huffman or DV streams, and putting the pieces together in Final Cut (which would be a BIG pain, but might be necessary). There are a few quicker (and possibly better) solutions I'd like to try, but I at least have a fallback if all else fails.

I haven't been able to reproduce the video problems yet. Actually, I haven't yet had a chance to try reproducing the video problems yet. Afraid I've got a lot on my plate right now and that might have to wait until Friday. I have fetched the source for the XviD MPEG4 codec, which is what I'll try next if it turns out the problems you are experiencing appear to be a bug in either libAVCodec, or a bug in WMP/DivX/DirectShow that might as well be a bug in libAVCodec, given the relative popularity of the software in question.

Still leaves me somewhat at a loss for how one "standard" can produce so many mutually incompatible implementations of the exact same encoding logic. If developers keep doing this, we might as well throw standards to the wind and go back to proprietary everything - at least then it should work with what it's labelled to work with.

rose4emily · Post by **rose4emily** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 3:41 pm

Okay, so I finished some of my work more quickly than I thoought I would this afternoon, and took a little time to check out the copy of the Fullscreen section that I downloaded back to my computer from Kalium's server and:

I can't reproduce any of the glitches you are encountering. So, it's probably not a network thing. It's probably software incompatibilities.

Unfortunately, encoding all of those videos takes several hours, so I might have to hold off a few days before I can try an XviD with 192 kpbs audio encoding. I'd run the encoding process overnight, but I'll have to look up and try the settings of the unadorned XviD encoder first - which will probably take some time. Otherwise I'd be shooting in the dark and probably not get anything resembling the best possible results.

At least we can be fairly assured that we won't have to repeat this process for the Widescreen section, once we get everything figured out.

---

Is "A Boy I Knew" stretched? I hadn't noticed, and I'm pretty sure I didn't do anything to stretch it out in the encoding process, but I can try a little pan-and-scan (minus the "pan" part, really) to correct it if a lot of you think it's off.

Bakadeshi [AuN Studios] · Post by **Bakadeshi [AuN Studios]** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 5:53 pm

On the glitches, I beleive that is a software incompatibility issue. I once encoded something to Xvid/mpeg4 using mplayer for Linux, and tried playing it on windows PCs, and the earlier versions of Divx did produce artifacts. However, I don;t have problems with ffdshow or the latest 5.x versions of Divx playing that same file, however I did notice quality seemed a little lower than in the linux partition. I'm downloading the file from Kaliums server now, so I will post if I see any artifacts in the encode. (using latest version of ffdshow)

jasper-isis · Post by **jasper-isis** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 5:58 pm

Jasper-Isis wrote:The problem is that some Fullscreen videos were submitted as Widescreen.

Whoops! I meant it the other way around: Some widescreen videos were submitted as fullscreen.

Stress has really been getting to me these days.

Can't wait for Christmas break... ahhh...

rose4emily wrote:nor was I aware of the fact that most segments were going to be submitted as second-generation encodings.

Yeah that's the thing. Submitting to a multi-editor project in a distribution codec totally defeats the purpose of using DVD source in the first place. The end result would be just as if we'd used downloaded anime footage. Unfortunately, it cannot be helped at this stage without having everybody resubmit their segments in the highest possible quality and having Rose4Emily reencode all of those...

______

Bakadeshi: I have TMPGEnc Plus 2.5. Want me to use the DVD profile for NTSC with Linear PCM Audio? I always use that setting, plus 2-pass VBR, for DVD-making.

...Actually, scratch that. Just remembered that I've already done the encoding a few months back and the files are already sitting on my computer.

They come to 236mb total. Add in everybody's else's videos... I hope you have ample HD space.

I doubt that everybody here has TMPGEnc Plus 2.5 and can encode DVD-compliant MPEG-2 with the exact same settings, so it's best to have one person do ALL of the encoding. Actually, I can do all the encoding for you if you want... it'll just be a little tedious to pass the videos back and forth. But since this is a DVD, it makes sense to aim for the best video/audio quality possible.

But yeah, getting best-possible-encodes from the editors individually and then the nice "wrapper" segments from Rose4Emily is the way to go. For those who submit in widescreen, you'll (or I'll) have to use Avisynth (or some other frameserver) to add black borders to the top and bottom. There might be some other little issues that pop up along the way, but with the submission quality problem squared away, the rest should be relatively stress-free.

I know a few people who are very interested in picking up a few copies.

Not that I want to rush you or anything... but it seems that we're a little more popular than we might think.

Bakadeshi [AuN Studios] · Post by **Bakadeshi [AuN Studios]** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 7:08 pm

it is Kaliums ftp that has the file right? I can;t seem to get in >.<

unless it has changed from what DWP has posted on his project status page.

As for the DVD issue, I am capable of encoding to mpeg2 DVD format, I have the pro version of tempgenc also, probably same version you got.

One thing I can think of, is if not possible for each person to encode to mpeg2, encode to quantizer 1 full quality Xvid single pass for maximum quality and recode that to mpeg2. loose a little quality, but shouldn't be too noticable, and be alot smaller than submitting a huffy.

I have all the tools to do any neccisary reformatting, and have successfully created DVDs before, so I already have a basic understanding of all thats involved. One thing is not to encode to mpeg2 audio, use PCM or AC3, some players freak out with the mpeg2 audio for some reason. It could be the fault of the authoring program however.

anyways, If we decide to go this route, I'll post settings to use for your mpeg2 encodes, for those who are capable of doing so. Or I may just make a profile for all the tempgenc users to use.

jasper-isis · Post by **jasper-isis** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 7:53 pm

Yes, that sounds good. A single-pass quantizer 1 Xvid is, practically speaking, the next best thing.

I'll forward you the pm with the direct link to the beta. Although I think you should have gotten it already...

downwithpants · Post by **downwithpants** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 9:14 pm

i think chris' original video for 'a boy i knew' is stretched.
spirited away should have an aspect ratio of 16:9, although his video on the org has a 4:3 aspect ratio.

i don't have an mpeg-2 encoder, but i thought that rose4emily does and would be able to encode all our vids in mpeg2.