Author Topic: Press Conference Videos (Read 11472 times)

NinGurl69 *huggles · « **on:** May 11, 2004, 09:36:37 PM »

Hey PGC, what was the source for the press conference videos that were recently uploaded? DVD? VHS?

Sorry to say this so bluntly, but those videos had disappointing quality. Particularly in the "important" videos (like Zelda), frames were often erroneous, the images were very twitchy as if the field-order was backwards (leading me to believe you have the originals on DVD), and the file sizes were unreasonably large thanks to uncompressed audio.

I understand these might've been a rushed job, but I don't think they're fit for distribution yet. In any case, if you'd like some help with encoding videos using DivX (tips, how to's, etc), I'd be happy to help (i use DivX Pro, licensed).

[or send me a copy of the press dvd, and I'll encode them for you *_* ]

Bloodworth · « **Reply #1 on:** May 11, 2004, 11:04:16 PM »

You know I was rather bothered by the problems myself once I got them back to my place to upload. They were on a press DVD, but I looked at it again, and it seems that twitching problem in particular was even in the original files slightly and may have gotten exaggerated when Windy compressed them. I'll see if Jonny's interested in sending them to you for higher quality.

BigJim · « **Reply #2 on:** May 12, 2004, 02:09:30 PM »

I was going to suggest the opposite -- sort of. The size of these videos is crazy.

In case Windy didn't know, the audio is being encoded at 1024kbps. I guarantee you that is at least 4x the bitrate of the source material, and probably a lot more. There is no reason for a 30-second, 360x260 video of DS or GBA content to be 9 megs while using Divx.

I just re-encoded PGC's Mario 64x4 video (at 500kbps for video, 64kbps for audio), and it looks and sounds identical to PGC's video, but it's 2.15MB, not 9.6MB!

You could be saving your servers a hell of a load, and saving readers a lot of DL time.

NinGurl69 *huggles · « **Reply #3 on:** May 12, 2004, 03:30:49 PM »

"and the file sizes were unreasonably large thanks to uncompressed audio"

I already commented on the audio size. This issue doesn't really concern DivX, nor would I put Windy/PGC at fault for not compressing them properly. You'd need a decent audio compressor, like an AVI-compatible Mp3 compressor, to get the nice quality/size ratios.

~~~~~

That twitching problem's making me very curious. None of Nintendo.com's nor IGN's same videos display the twitch. What's the exact video format of the originals?

Bloodworth · « **Reply #4 on:** May 12, 2004, 10:48:14 PM »

I think I'm going to overnight the B-Roll to Rick actually. Thanks for the offer.

NinGurl69 *huggles · « **Reply #5 on:** May 13, 2004, 12:05:20 AM »

When the improved encodes are available, everything will be happier.

BigJim · « **Reply #6 on:** May 13, 2004, 04:20:56 AM »

Didn't catch your audio comment. I used Dr. DivX for my compression -- the audio sounds fine running it through that program... whatever codec it uses.

RickPowers · « **Reply #7 on:** May 14, 2004, 04:59:17 PM »

Don't worry, I should be able to fix it all up once I get it.

NinGurl69 *huggles · « **Reply #8 on:** May 14, 2004, 05:28:31 PM »

Coolness.

But if ya run into any hurdles, I'd like to hear about them.

chaos · « **Reply #9 on:** May 15, 2004, 03:11:56 PM »

I thought i'd put this here seeing how its kind of similar
When I try to download videos or audio from this site (and others) it always cuts me off right at the start saying download complete which it isnt
It seems to have something to do with the computer not knowing how much its actually downloading and so cuts of at the start
Im on a 56k modem and use DAP would it have anything to do with either of these or it something wrong with the server
If its got nothing to do with the server sorry about bothering you but if you have any ideas it would be aprecciated

Thanks

RickPowers · « **Reply #10 on:** May 15, 2004, 04:16:38 PM »

Zelda trailer is updated. It's 21MB for the full-res video, and just over 13MB for the 360x240 video. The audio has been cut to 21kHz, but I didn't compress it much at all, because it sounded terrible whenever I did. There was indeed some minor stuttering in the source video, even on my 3GHz behemoth, and compression only exacerbates that. However, this is fantastic quality considering the source files were over 200MB. There is only one instance of artifacting that I can see that I'm not happy with, but nothing would clear it up. Overall, I think the new files are great. Hit the homepage and download them, let me know what you think.

I'll compress the other stuff too, later on ...

snacky · « **Reply #11 on:** May 15, 2004, 05:56:05 PM »

Not compressing the audio is a massive space waster. You can save 4.5 megs on audio alone just by encoding to mp3 at a reasonable bitrate. ~96kbps mp3 would sound perfect to most non-audiophile people using ordinary computer speakers.

As for the video, it's always a good idea to use a deinterlace filter before encoding to an mpeg4 implementation (DivX is an mpeg4 implementation). It gives you a lot better quality per bitrate.

I realize I'm just some random guy to you, but if you'd be willing to spare the (admittedly humongous) bandwidth to let me see the source just once, I'm confident I can give you a file that's both several megs smaller and visibly better looking. If you're willing to believe this random guy has some experience with squeezing the best quality-per-bitrate out of interlaced content, let's work something out.

RickPowers · « **Reply #12 on:** May 15, 2004, 08:26:15 PM »

No, we really can't post the original source, because it would take forever to upload, asynchronous connections being what they are. However, feel free to e-mail me the sort of settings for the DivX encoder you'd suggest. I'm using Adobe Premeire Pro as well.

snacky · « **Reply #13 on:** May 15, 2004, 08:54:01 PM »

You'd probably consider the software I use to be user-hostile. It is mplayer/mencoder. This command-line video software is very popular among Linux users, mainly because it can play pretty much every media format out there.

For encoding, if you want divx in an AVI container, mencoder is a good choice. I use it mainly because you can do an absolutely insane amount of tweaking of encoding parameters, and every once in a while it is actually useful

Also it has some decent filters, including a choice of deinterlace filters which usually do a much better job than the deinterlace filters the Windows crowd seems to be using.

In case you decide to download the win32 port of mencoder, here is a command line that'd probably do pretty well:

mencoder original.avi -vf lavcdeint -oac lavc -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:acodec=mp3:abitrate=96:mbd=0:v4mv:vlelim=-4:vcelim=7:precmp=2:cmp=2:mbcmp=2:cbp:trell:vbitrate=1400 -o finished.avi

You can probably see why some people don't use mencoder - it's a little complex and you have to learn a lot of options. These options should get it down to around 13.5 megs and I'm pretty confident it would look better than what you have now, mainly because of the deinterlacing.

sycomonkey · « **Reply #14 on:** May 15, 2004, 09:26:24 PM »

ACK!!!

THERE IS NO DEINTERLACING!!!

Divx hates it when you don't deinterlace. It's like it's trying to compress a brick.

edit: Listen to the mencoder guy, he speaks wisdom.

KDR_11k · « **Reply #15 on:** May 15, 2004, 10:00:33 PM »

Quote
Originally posted by: chaos
I thought i'd put this here seeing how its kind of similar
When I try to download videos or audio from this site (and others) it always cuts me off right at the start saying download complete which it isnt
It seems to have something to do with the computer not knowing how much its actually downloading and so cuts of at the start
Im on a 56k modem and use DAP would it have anything to do with either of these or it something wrong with the server
If its got nothing to do with the server sorry about bothering you but if you have any ideas it would be aprecciated

Thanks

Maybe DAP is triggering the anti-DoS protection. Ever tried using your browser's default downloader?

NinGurl69 *huggles · « **Reply #16 on:** May 16, 2004, 02:33:40 AM »

I'll checkout the high-rez version tomorrow when I'm on a decently fast connection. Hearing that the stuttering is still present captures my interest. Deinterlacing is easy to take care of, but stuttering is not so obvious, where one should analyze/change the field order of the source that's input into your transcoder.

Rick, what is the exact format of the source files? Are they video files sitting on a DVD/CD (what's the file extension?)? Or are they MPEG-2 video streams you had to rip off a DVD?

Pod · « **Reply #17 on:** May 16, 2004, 04:07:25 AM »

It's really nice with all the videos you're providing now, but so far I've tried with every single video-player I could think of, and none of them are able to play these files, not even the latest official DivX Player... :-'

BigJim · « **Reply #18 on:** May 16, 2004, 06:18:39 AM »

With all due respect, I think something still has to be set incorrectly for a 1 minute DivX file to be 21 megs.

With Divx, a full 2 Hr movie at high resolution should be able to fit onto a 700MB CD. At a rate of 21 megs a minute, that CD would be filled up in 33 minutes.

Have y'all tried Dr. Divx that's available on Divx.com? There is a 15 day trial version that is very 1-2-3 simple, and has easy customization for resolution, audio/video bitrate, deinterlace, and Divx's proprietary filters.

I use it all the time and it works very well. I re-compressed the High-Res Zelda video using 1000 kbps on video, 96K audio, and the file came out to 9.1 megs.

ssj4_android · « **Reply #19 on:** May 16, 2004, 08:18:19 AM »

Anyone know how XviD compares to DivX?

ssj4_android · « **Reply #20 on:** May 16, 2004, 08:25:28 AM »

I just compared PGC's Zelda DivX to Nintendo's quicktime. Nintendo's looks better. Just stick with that.

snacky · « **Reply #21 on:** May 16, 2004, 08:55:25 AM »

XviD is better than most DivX implementations, but libavcodec's DivX implementation beats it IMO. XviD "cheats" a little by encoding too little info in the motion vectors and then making up for it with low quantization. The result is video that looks pretty good in still shots but has an unfixable muddy, "swimmy" look to it when it's in motion. Ironically, this means XviD has poor fidelity on the low-frequency blocks -- yet these are precisely the macroblocks that can most easily be brought to high fidelity!

Anyway, both are great codecs but they will likely be entirely superceded by something like H264 someday...

RickPowers · « **Reply #22 on:** May 16, 2004, 09:16:05 AM »

Ok, I think the deinterlacing was the trick. FYI ... there are many settings that if I use them in the Codec screen with DivX Pro, it'll crash the player, but if I use them in Premiere Pro, they work fine. Anyway, I'm re-encoding the full-res video again. My first test came in at 9.6MB with ADPCM encoded audio (no MP3 Encoder is built into Premiere Pro, sorry), but this should be just fine.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, I'm intentionally trying to stick with doing everything in Premiere Pro, so that once we get these little things ironed out, I can just batch process everything else. That's why I'm not taking any suggestions on other programs to do it with.

To answer the question, no ... the original files are on a DVD DATA disc, not a video disc. It's a 200+MB RAW AVI they've given us, so I'm not ripping video.

Zach · « **Reply #23 on:** May 16, 2004, 09:25:19 AM »

ok I need help, I am having trouble with these videos, and I really want to see them. whenever I try to watch it, my computer tells me "this file type is not supported by aol media player."

BigJim · « **Reply #24 on:** May 16, 2004, 10:10:34 AM »

For what it's worth, Dr. Divx will batch encode too.

Zach, you need to go to divx.com and download the free divx drivers. If after that AOL won't play them, you need to play them with another program, like Windows Media Player.

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Author Topic: Press Conference Videos (Read 11472 times)