Phil Ehrens wrote: > 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.
Gah! Foolish me... I left out the most important difference... I forget about this because to me it just seems natural to do it... Since I compensate for overscan, my dvd's show 15% more of the picture than commercial dvd's, AND the bitrate is effectively 15% higher because I don't waste bits on that part of the picture that would otherwise be lost to overscan. By the way, my peak bitrate overstep is only a deviation from the dvd standard, the mpeg2 standard allows it... Mpeg2 decoding chips are designed to the mpeg2 standard, afaik.
