Carl Karsten wrote: > Phil Ehrens wrote: > > >I'm not suggesting that the crap programs available for Windows and Mac > >are worth 2 cents, but Linux video software is in a pretty messy state > >overall. Still no decent editor, and no decent subtitling program. > >Transcode can make dvd's that totally blow away even the best commercial > >dvd's, by the way... But I don't know why. Unless all the "pros" are > >total idiots. > > In what way is the tc produced dvd better?
Use of available bits. I just made a dvd with an *average* bitrate of 2.8, and a peak of 13. The source was a beautiful h.264 hdtv capture. By balancing the use of the nr filter in ffmpeg with the msharpen filter of transcode, I achieved a dvd that preserves fine detail amazingly well, loses a little low contrast edge detail in dark scenes, and has nearly zero mosquito noise. It's a two pass encode, and it has hard-coded fancy styled subtitles rendered by mplayer. The peak bitrate is outside the standard, but it is only transient, so any player not made more than five years ago handles it without a buffer problem, since the average bitrate is so low. I've found that buffering problems start to occur at about 18 mbit transients with modern players. If the peak bitrate were hard limited to conform to the standard, it would yield some macroblocking in high motion scenes (there are panning shots with sword fights). I am particularly interested in the fabrics used in the costumes, and it is easy to differentiate between silk, cotton, and bast fibers on this dvd ;^) I have some dvd's that have an average bitrate of 1.8 with very static content that look about the same as a typical commercial dvd (with a bitrate of 4-6). Those have peaks below 8.
