[MEncoder-users] Formatting video for DVD

[Francois Visagie]

On Nov 12, 2007 3:06 PM, Ross Clement <rossclement at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> I am not yet anywhere near "pushing the boundaries" of mencoder usage. And
> given that mencoder is a complex system, and I wish to understand what I'm
> doing, I'm not going to try for some "ideal" set of parameter settings just
> yet.
>
> But can people look at my current "typical" parameters for taking DV and
> converting it to dvd-compatible MPEG-2, and suggest what I might try next?
>
> This seems to produce a reasonable result, but I'd like it better, or the
> same or similar results for a lower bit rate.
>
> In particular, I've read somewhere that having more than four passes does
> not give noticeable improvements in quality. But I'm only using two passes.
> Would using four passes give me a better result?
>
> #!/bin/bash
>
> echo "encoding " $1
>
> mencoder "$1" -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd:tsaf -ovc lavc -oac lavc
> -lavcopts
> vcodec=mpeg2video:vrc_buf_size=1835:vrc_maxrate=9800:vbitrate=5000:keyint=15:vstrict=0:trell:mbd=2:acodec=ac3:vpass=1:aspect=4/3:ildct:ilme:top=0
> -srate 48000 -af lavcresample=48000 -vf hqdn3d=3:2:3:3 -o /dev/null
>
> mencoder "$1" -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd:tsaf -ovc lavc -oac lavc
> -lavcopts
> vcodec=mpeg2video:vrc_buf_size=1835:vrc_maxrate=9800:vbitrate=5000:keyint=15:vstrict=0:trell:mbd=2:acodec=ac3:vpass=2:aspect=4/3:ildct:ilme:top=0
> -srate 48000 -af lavcresample=48000 -vf hqdn3d=3:2:3:3 -o "$2"

Hi Ross,

In my experience the brute force method works best. If the best
results is what you want.

Take the options suggested in the man pages for making high-quality
DVDs, try them out one after the other on a short representative video
clip, apply some judgment (some options don't operate entirely in
isolation but influence the behaviour of others) et voila. What I did
was to also turn on PSNR measurement and to dump each attempt's
console output to unique log files, enabling me to also take into
consideration that (somewhat) more objectively measured information.
In case you were going to ask for the command line I arrived at ;-),
I'm still in the process for MPEG-2, but this is the approach I
previously used for XviD encoding with spectacular results.

Regards,
Francois