[MEncoder-users] Product suggestion: Encode Decision List

[James Hastings-Trew]

RC wrote:
>> Here's one background example. If a movie contains both progressive as
>> well as interlaced content, you generally have three choices:
>>
>> 1) encode as if it's all progressive if you don't worry too much about
>> best representation of interlaced content
>> 2) encode as if it's all interlaced if you don't worry too much about
>> best representation of progressive content
>> 3) if you are concerned about best quality, split the file at each
>> content type boundary, encode each segment separately and then
>> recombine
>>     
>
> A good deinterlacer, like yadif and pp=lb, shouldn't have noticable
> (negative) effects on progressive video, so I don't see this as much of
> an issue.
>
> The same is true for some ivtc filters (namely: pullup).
>   
I agree with RC. My methodology is to detect the frame rate of the 
source (using MPlayer) - if its film rate I use the pullup,softskip 
filter. If its mixed rate and mostly film or hard telecine, I use 
pullup,softskip,yadif=0. If its video rate I just use pp=lb. yadif=0 
won't do much of anything to a progressive frame. No matter what you do 
with video, deinterlacing is going to leave some kind of artifact - 
either as ghosts, or motion hiccups - because you are altering the 
contents of each frame. I prefer to have smooth motion so I use the 
simpler filter (pp=lb) on such material.

WMV is a format that allows for variable frame rate, and the problem is 
that once content is encoded that way, it becomes very problematic to 
convert it to any other format - you have to "discover" the original 
frame rate or pick a very high frame rate that is common to both film 
and video (119.88 fps), and duplicate the missing frames. Either option 
is a pain in the ass. The point I am trying to make here is that 
variable frame rate formats are not very common, or portable, and in my 
opinion should be avoided accordingly. Just putting that out there.