Guest ray Posted December 17, 2002 Report Share Posted December 17, 2002 I've now spent two full days plus (holiday) testing all the possible settings of the encoders and codecs to get the very best possible quality from the media player on the SPV. I've tested ver 7.1 and 9 of the MS Encoder and WM Media Video / Audio v7, 8 and 9 and MPEG-4 Video v1 and v3. I set up many test conditions for as many possible permutations as was reasonable. For each test I used a 2 minute clip of the main chase/crash sequence from The Blues Brothers. Apart from being a brilliant movie, this section has loads of action in both daylight and semi darkness ideal for testing out the SPVs capabilities. If a result was good, I would then re-test with the same settings but for an 8 minute segment. I finally tested with the full movie. The best settings I can find (IMHO) are as follows: Encoder: MS Encoder v9 Audio: Windows Audio ver 9 Audio mode: CBR Audio quality: 20kbs, 22khz, mono Video: Windows Video ver 7 Video mode: Bit Rate (VBR) peak Video Size: 176x132 (to fit media player skins from Q-Rious – excellent post) Video Frame rate: 12 fps Video bit rate (average): 75k Video bit rate peak: 175k Peak buffer size: 2 seconds Key frame interval: 1 second My criteria for what was a ‘good’ result were: a) Video size had to be 176x132 to make the video as large as possible. b)The video image had to fill the entire available screen. The BB movie is widescreen and leaves black areas top and bottom. I used ‘Pan and Scan (4/3)’ in DVXx to crop the original MPEG left and right so that it would fit pretty much exactly. Using video size crop in MS Encoder didn’t seem to work properly so it had to be done at source. Although you are losing the left and right of the image I didn’t it makes much difference to the overall effect / movie experience especially on such a small screen. c) The frame rate should be fast enough to make the movie watchable with minimal jitter/drop out. I found 8 fps too slow and difficult to watch for long periods. Using anything above 12 meant dropping the video bit rate with subsequent loss of video definition. d) The audio track should not pause unless you got a call or other processor hungry SPV event and the audio should be good enough quality for movie music. e) The video should be as free of dropouts / jitters as possible. You do get the odd one or two with the settings above but they aren’t really noticeable. Very occasionally (once every few minutes or so) you get the system wait event popping up. This was acceptable. f) The image quality had to be as near perfect as possible with clear definition. g) The file sizes mustn’t be two big. The Blues Brothers movie is long - 2 hours and twenty minutes and the file size ended up as 67 meg. This is large but I was assuming a 128meg SD card as a minimum which would hold a movie and some music tracks. Stuff I tried: I tried MPEG-4 v1 and 3 – v3 suggested by Chris Benjaminsen (Q-Rious) in his excellent post but found even at 8 fps there was audio and video dropout, the quality was not good as I would have liked and the files sizes were bigger. I’d be delighted to be proved wrong though Chris. Peak buffer size: I found that reducing this to two seconds gave the best result. I tried 1 second but ‘seemed’ to make the quality/movement slightly worse. Above 3 or 4 ditto. Key frame interval: Interesting one this. I tried everything from 12 to 1 seconds and 1 second seemed to be the best. This improved quality and did not increase file size much if at all. My thoughts on this are that the SPV has to do less work interpolating the intermediate frames with more keyframes. However I’m certainly no expert on this stuff. Video bit rate (average): Tried many different variants. Above 75K the dropout increases to make it annoying. The contrast and brightness improved dramatically above 50K. Video bit rate peak: Increasing this didn’t increase the file size – I guess because the average rate roughly determines the size. I tried reducing and increasing the peak rate at various average rates but 175K peak ‘seemed’ to be the optimum for 75K average. Suggestions: Lower quality audio settings if you are happy with it and add the reduced kbs to the video stream. Try not to load any games which may hog the processor/memory before running the media player. Do they ‘unload’ after a while? This seems to happen with media player itself and Chris suggests when copying the new player skins. Decrease the frame rate and increase the video rate if you are happy with less smoothness in the action. Some movies have less action, are dark and you may want better quality for each frame. DVD conversion: DVD Decrypter to extract the movie files to hard disk. DVDx to convert them to MPEG1 – VCD format 352 x 288 1150kbps video and 224kbs audio. I chose 352x288 because it is close to double the size of 176x132 and gives undetectable stretching distortion of the picture. I chose MPEG1 because it appeared to encode quicker than MPEG2. No timings for this though. I chose 1150kbs and 224kbs respectively because of initial file size and because it would provide a good quality ‘base’ for the WM Encoder input file. I think you can use DVDx to extract direct from DVD to MPEG1 but I prefer files on my hard disk first. Please let me know if you can improve or you think any of the above is incorrect. Thanks to everyone for everything that fed into this, especially Chris Benjaminsen for the skins and ASX info. If anyone asks I won't supply any of the BB clips, for obvious reasons. I’m afraid you’ll have to use your own DVDs to try this out! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest chewie Posted December 17, 2002 Report Share Posted December 17, 2002 Just checked my email Ray, and then saw your post! And what a wonderful post it is. I have just this minute finished encoding the bourne identity from DVD. I'll have to do it all again now and try your settings! again, good post :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest mashkhan Posted December 18, 2002 Report Share Posted December 18, 2002 Nice one Ray. A very good post. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest chrishoo5 Posted December 18, 2002 Report Share Posted December 18, 2002 you know.... it would be wicked if anyone that converted a movie could put it online somewhere for downloads.... for people that don't have the kit to convert themselves maybe ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Paul [MVP] Posted December 18, 2002 Report Share Posted December 18, 2002 I think that's pretty illegal :D P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest madu Posted December 18, 2002 Report Share Posted December 18, 2002 Chris, since it would be illegal - reproduction&distribution of copright material... noone can actually put up a movie or anything else like this... Trailers and short videos, maybe some cartoons like southpark or simpsons could be put up on ppl's servers (doubt bout simpsons though).. It is now a big issue with entertainment industry, so I guess if someone did put up a film - they would get f***ed over for that.. And it would mean many people downloading large amounts of data, so you would need a host that would serve the files. PS: Most of SouthPark is in Real media, any way of converting to WMV, AVI?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest chewie Posted December 18, 2002 Report Share Posted December 18, 2002 ^ Realone producer? I'm sure that someone will have made a piece of software that can convert! I have been playing around with WME and i still cannot decide which is better, mpeg or WMV encoder 7. I have Tenacious D, badword her gently (its a cartoon music video, Very funny) converted. It has no copywrite restrictions, so if Paul allows me to host it on Modaco, i will certainly put it up for everyone. Its only 1.6Mb too :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest chrishoo5 Posted December 18, 2002 Report Share Posted December 18, 2002 point taken ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ray Posted December 18, 2002 Report Share Posted December 18, 2002 Chrishoo5 / Chewie - Just try the settings above. I think you'll be convinced that the WM 7 codec with variable bit rates wins hands down over MPEG4 - for the SPV. You must use MS Encoder v9 not v7 for this. I'd like to post a clip of the BB movie as the quality produced is excellent. However, I can't and won't because of the legal implications. Buy the DVD - the original not Blues Brothers 2000 - it is fantastic with great music. It holds the worlds record for the destruction of most cars in any movie. A couple of things I forgot to mention in the post. WM Encoder 9 can take forever between the end of the 1st pass and the beginning of the 2nd pass of the file conversion. For the BB movie, I guess this is because of the length - 140 minutes. One time I waited for 20 minutes during this time while converting the BB movie and thought WM9 had crashed. Another time 10 minutes, another an hour! I suggest starting the process before going to bed. If you get up in the morning and it still hasn't finished it has crashed! If WME9 does crash then I suggest you chop the MPEG in half using MPEG Tools or similar then resplice after conversion to WMV using Asftools or Easy Video Joiner. Having said all this you shouldn't have any trouble with 90-100 minute movies. If you still have problems then increase the size of your virtual memory and decrease the size of the original MPEG1 file - say to 500kbs video and 128kbs audio. I think size matters with this program :wink: It's a bit of a hassle all this but it's worth it in long run. I cocked up with the file size of the BB movie - it will be a hefty 96 meg - but it is a very long movie and you want quality right? :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest chewie Posted December 18, 2002 Report Share Posted December 18, 2002 Just try the settings above. I think you'll be convinced that the WM 7 codec with variable bit rates wins hands down over MPEG4 - for the SPV. You must use MS Encoder v9 not v7 for this. Wait wait, i am uising Windows Media encoder 7, and i only have the options to encode with windows video V7 or windows video V8, no V9. Any ideas? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ray Posted December 18, 2002 Report Share Posted December 18, 2002 Grab yourself a copy of the beta (release candidate) version of MS Encoder 9 from the MS Windows Media website: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsme...der/default.asp Use the WM 7 codec VBR (Variable bit rate) for video and make sure all the settings are as specified in my original post. Audio is WM codec v9, video is WM codec v7. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest chewie Posted December 18, 2002 Report Share Posted December 18, 2002 ah, nice one Ray Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest chewie Posted December 18, 2002 Report Share Posted December 18, 2002 May seem like a stupid question ray, but how the hell do i get WME to use the profile i made? it isnt in any list anywhere at all when i am using the wizard! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ray Posted December 18, 2002 Report Share Posted December 18, 2002 Make sure you are using WM Encoder 9 - see above. Don't use the wizard at all or just use it to set up the basics - input/output file name and so on. Don't worry at this stage what other options you pick. When you are at the main window click Properties - it make take a few seconds to be enabled. As this is pre-release software there may bugs and delays in waiting for certain things to happen. Be patient. You should be able to enter all the specifics from this dialogue box - just click the tabs Sources through to Attributes. I'll try and post some screens a bit later. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest chewie Posted December 18, 2002 Report Share Posted December 18, 2002 I'm with ya! I was using WME9 but it just that my profile didnt show up in the wizard. must be a bug! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ray Posted December 18, 2002 Report Share Posted December 18, 2002 Can't do screens - not enough time. For those new to WM Encoder 9 click Properties at the main screen after you have gone through the wizard or quick start with defaults. I suggest you use a small clip - say 2 minutes - as a trial. Make sure the input file is not too big (high quality) to start with. See the first post. Sources tab - Source should be 'Source1' or similar. Click Source from: 'File'. Browse for the MPEG1 (or other format) input file if not correct. Output tab - Click 'Archive to file' and browse/enter the output file name. Compression tab - Click Edit button. Enter Audio - CBR - Windows Media Audio V9 Enter Video - Bit Rate VBR (Peak) - Windows Media Video V7. Click top tab next to 'General' - should have ????kbs on it. Enter the settings as per my first post - make sure the 'Same as Video Input' is not checked and enter the video size 176x132. Check everything is correct on both tabs and hit OK. Video Size tab - the video cropping didn't seem to work on this and I had to do it in the source file within DVDx. Someone may be able to get this working. Attributes tab - enter the title. This should overide the file name when viewing on the SPV. Done. Hit Apply, wait for it to do it's stuff and then hit Encode at the top of the main window. Remember, there will be two 'passes' of the file with what can be a long wait in the middle if it is a big file and where you think WME9 is doing nothing. The rest should be in Help. Don't forget to load Q-Rious' enhanced player skin to accomodate the increased dimensions of the video image. Good luck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ray Posted December 19, 2002 Report Share Posted December 19, 2002 Chewie - Did you try out the settings on the Bourne Identity? How did it come out? I've tried a few more variants but still come back to mysettings in the first post. The file size is a bit big (.68meg per minute) but I'm sure this is the best quality video you will get. I've managed to get cropping working in Media Encoder 9 so no need to pre-process the MPG file in Divx. Not sure why or how yet. It may have been the input file I was using. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest chewie Posted December 19, 2002 Report Share Posted December 19, 2002 ^ not im WM9, the settings that i used did work supprisingly well for a action film! I'll have a crack at it in WM9 over the weekend though, and let you know the results! In the meantime, if anyone wants a copyright free, rather funny music video which i made using Chris Benjamins original post (although after i have done it in WM9 with Rays settings i will be posting a comparison topic) you can find it here :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ray Posted December 19, 2002 Report Share Posted December 19, 2002 The cartoon clip looked good. Looking forward to results of your other movie with my settings. Shame I can't post The Blue Brothers clip. The definition down to the small writing in the intro and credits is excellent. I've reviewing the BB movie on the SPV and have now noticed a little more jerkiness in the really fast action scenes. This may be down to the other apps loaded beforehand. Suggest that the video bit rates be reduced to 70K and 165K respectively. Sacrificy a little bit of quality for slightly better play. I've now remove all shortcuts/apps in the Startup folder to speed things up as suggested in another post. Keep you posted about results with media player. It would be nice to get some feedback from a few people and then post a 'definitive' statement of settings options that people can hook into immediately without going through a long thread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Scoobyroo Posted December 20, 2002 Report Share Posted December 20, 2002 Great thread guys, please keep up the good work! I have just ordered an SPV and am hoping it will arrive tomorrow, all the talk in here is not helping subdue my impatience! :D As I travel from WSM to London around three times a week I tend to pass the time by watching a DVD or downloaded DIVX’s. Whilst we all know this is not wholly legal, I don’t completely take the mick! My take on it is that if a film is any good, it’s worth buying (my bulging DVD collection will testify to that). A good example of this was ‘Fast and Furious’... I never would have gone to see it at the movies or rented it from my local Blockbuster, it just wasn’t my kind of movie. As I’d heard some good things about the movie from friends, I recently downloaded it on DIVX and really enjoyed it! Sure, it’s a bit of a popcorn movie but it’s also good fun. Needless to say, I went out and bought it on the weekend and it now stands proud alongside other uncovered gems in my collection. Anyway, I’m completely off topic here. I guess what I really wanted to say that the thought of being able to convert a movie and watch it on my SPV (all be it not the best quality) is pretty appealing. Especially if it means I don’t have to keep lugging my laptop too and from work everyday. I look forward to receiving my SPV tomorrow and trying out some of the suggestions here… and a definitive guide would be much appreciated by all I’m sure. Some questions if I may. The 256MB SD cards are pretty expensive; do you think I’ll be able to get away with a 128MB? I’ve heard that the SD cards are slightly faster than the other compatible cards (is it the MMF or MMS????) and hence better. Is this true? Using the same conversion settings as the carton posted by Chewie, I can expect an average film to take up around 70MB of storage space? How long will a 90 minute movie take to compress to these settings? (sorry, I know it depends on processor, initial file format, etc… but is it likely to be minutes/hours?) Will the SPV battery last for the duration of a 90 min/120 min movie? Isn’t there a problem with the backlight switching off on the SPV. If so, is there a way to keep it on whilst watching a movie? Sorry I haven’t really got anything constructive to input into the tread at the moment, but let me play with my new toy over the weekend and hopefully that will change! Cheers ‘Scoob’ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest chewie Posted December 20, 2002 Report Share Posted December 20, 2002 Some questions if I may. You may :( The 256MB SD cards are pretty expensive; do you think I’ll be able to get away with a 128MB? you might be able to squeeze two movies on a 128, The Bourne identity which i converted came in at about 68Mb, You will be able to get a 256mb card for around £90 of ebay.co.uk I’ve heard that the SD cards are slightly faster than the other compatible cards (is it the MMF or MMS????) and hence better. Is this true?SD cards are faster, but in the case of the SPV's reading time, i dont think it makes that much difference Using the same conversion settings as the carton posted by Chewie, I can expect an average film to take up around 70MB of storage space? Yeah around that! How long will a 90 minute movie take to compress to these settings? (sorry, I know it depends on processor, initial file format, etc… but is it likely to be minutes/hours?)Well, if you are converting a divx, you will have to use a proggy like Virtualdub to convert it into a normal avi, as Windows media encoder can't convert from divx. That will probably take you about 1hr30mins on a 800mhz PC. It will then take about 20 mins to convert that avi into a wmv. Will the SPV battery last for the duration of a 90 min/120 min movie? I have no idea :D Isn’t there a problem with the backlight switching off on the SPV. If so, is there a way to keep it on whilst watching a movie?Yep that is a problem, you will have to keep hitting a key on the keypad to turn the light back on. The issue is supposdley gonna be fixed with an over the air update. Sorry I haven’t really got anything constructive to input into the tread at the moment, but let me play with my new toy over the weekend and hopefully that will change! No problem :( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ray Posted December 20, 2002 Report Share Posted December 20, 2002 Scoobyroo - I've seen a post somewhere here for £103 (+ vat?) for a 256 meg SD. I bought mine from Value Media including a USB port for £113+VAT (I think). Worth having the port for copying lot/large files across to the SD card. 128mb should be less than half the price. With the settings posted you should get a movie and some music on a 128. Get a 256 if you can afford it. I've just encoded a 90 min movie in just under 50meg. A lot less movement than the Blues Brothers so would probably explain the reduced MB per min. Or vice versa. Yes, supposedly faster than MMC but I'm not sure what is faster - copying, reading? Seen some posts for this although I don't know the technicalities behind it. See above. I think Chewie's cartoon was converted at different settings than mine. Constant Bit Rate? The encoding to MPEG takes longer than the duration of the movie. On my machine about 30% longer but my PC is quite old. The encoding to WMV 25% less than the movie length? Something like that. All in all 4-6 hours. I've run each process overnight - no other apps running. To be honest I think my enthusiam will wane eventually for putting movies on the SPV unless I get a faster PC. Load a game - another post somewhere. I think Hexacto Tennis may leave the screen on after you exit the app. A bug. Trouble is I think the game may stay running after exit so may affect the performance of the movie if you are using optimised settings. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest muude Posted December 20, 2002 Report Share Posted December 20, 2002 I have a 128 MB MCC and on it I have "The 51st State" and "Don't Be A Menace To South Central While Drinking Your Juice In The Hood" (Ghettoblaster) and i naddition I have 2 small music vidz and 4 mp3s..... Can't see the big problem there... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest tiger33 Posted December 21, 2002 Report Share Posted December 21, 2002 Great post but i dont think i'll be using the SPV to watch movies whilst we still have this backlight problem hope this update comes soon As anyone else had the call from Orange yet? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest HelloDave Posted December 21, 2002 Report Share Posted December 21, 2002 Well, if you are converting a divx, you will have to use a proggy like Virtualdub to convert it into a normal avi, as Windows media encoder can't convert from divx. That will probably take you about 1hr30mins on a 800mhz PC. It will then take about 20 mins to convert that avi into a wmv. 20 mins from avi to wmv! You must have one fast 800MHz pc - It takes my 1.4GHz Athlon a bit less than the length of the video (although I do have about 10 other progs running at the same time)! In another topic I posted an alternative to using VirtualDub so that Media Encoder can read DiVXs directly (ish) which is harder to set up but much faster in the long run and there's no loss of quality because you don't compress the movie twice. See http://www.modaco.com/viewtopic...der=asc&start=0 near the bottom of the page. On the subject of the backlight problem, I set the "backlight timeout" to never in Settings...power management when I want to watch a long video and the backlight still goes off occasionally, but after much longer; normally about every 5 minutes or more. Only problem is when you set the timeout back to normal afterwards you have to wait for the backlight to go off before the new setting kicks in, and when the timeout is set to never...i'm sure you see the problem! It does go back to your previous setting eventually, just after a few minutes when the backlight turns off again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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