H.264 Question

hur · Post by **hur** » Wed Feb 20, 2008 9:42 pm

Hi,

I just purchased VS+. My main reason to purchase it was to convert my home videos which are in 480i mpeg2 to 720p H.264 format.

I am able to create a AVCHD DVD and AVCHD 1080i file.

Is there any way to create an AVCHD profile or in other words H.264 profile of my liking e.g. 1280x720 2mbit/s.

At the moment I only see two profiles in the list 1920x1080 & 1440x1080 and the bit rate is very high.

Other issue that I am having is WinDVD 8 Silver can only play AVCHD DVD it is not able to play a AVCHD file that I just created.

The reason I am trying to do this is because upconverted files look much better on my 50inch HDTV. mpeg2 HD files take up lot of space.

2Dogs · Post by **2Dogs** » Thu Feb 21, 2008 2:54 am

seems like an odd way to go about things, and it would entail a heck of a lot of pc power to convert the video to high quality 720p H.264.

For example, if I convert a standard resolution mpeg2 file to the same resolution H.264 using the highest quality settings, it takes about six hours per hour of video using a 1.8GHZ Core 2 Duo cpu.

Do you not have an upconverting DVD player? They can upconvert standard DVD's for playback on an HDTV. Whilst the results can never be as good as playing HD video, say with a Blu Ray player, they still look better than standard resolution DVD. There might even be some end of the line HD-DVD players on the market soon at knock-down prices, and they apparently do an even better job at upconverting standard resolution video.

hur · Post by **hur** » Thu Feb 21, 2008 3:41 am

2Dogs,

Thanks for your reply. I do not want to create a DVD I just keep the files on the media center pc harddrive to view it on the tv. I have been using x264 to convert my files. It can encode 1 hour mpeg2 to h.264 5000 kbps 720p in less than 30mins, and quality is great. The only difference is that VS+ is hardcoded to use 15000 kbps (Is there any way to change that) . Since I am using a quad core cpu I am able to convert 1 hour in about two hours. x264 is freeware I have paid for VS+ that is why I want to use it.

Well my questions is. Is there any way to modify AVCHD export profiles?

Thanks,
HUR

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Thu Feb 21, 2008 3:50 am

hur wrote:......VS+ is hardcoded to use 15000 kbps (Is there any way to change that) ......

It is not VideoStudio that is hardcoded to use 15000 kbps it is your capture hardware. On one of my computers I have a Hybrid TV card.
When I capture analogue TV I can alter the bit rate to one of my liking - so if I am recording a 1 hour TV program I can use a high bit rate, but a 2 hour recording I use a lower bit rate - so that it will all fit onto a DVD. When I capture Digital TV the bit rate is fixed at 15000 kbps.
This is so whether I use VideoStudio or the software native to the TV card - WinTV2000.

hur · Post by **hur** » Thu Feb 21, 2008 4:03 am

sjj1805,

I respect your opinion, but I think that is not correct. I can take a tiny 10 second 1900kbps wmv file included in windows as a sample and it converts to 17999kbps file. Size goes from 2MB to 14MB. I am talking about AVCHD format now.

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Thu Feb 21, 2008 4:38 am

We are obvioulsy talking at crossed lines. AFTER capture YES you can alter the bit rate.

Lets us start with the basics:
Please view the following links:
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so that we can then view your system specifications.

2Dogs · Post by **2Dogs** » Thu Feb 21, 2008 5:47 am

hur wrote:2Dogs,

Thanks for your reply. I do not want to create a DVD I just keep the files on the media center pc harddrive to view it on the tv. I have been using x264 to convert my files. It can encode 1 hour mpeg2 to h.264 5000 kbps 720p in less than 30mins, and quality is great.

Fair enough. The encoding I was referring to was actually using x264, with an open source freeware program called MeGUI, but with the emphasis on maximum compression, and therefore using the highest quality profiles. That program can also make almost 100% use of all four cores of a quad cpu, so encoding would obviiously be singnificantly quicker on your pc using a quick profile and what sounds like a high video bitrate.

hur wrote:The only difference is that VS+ is hardcoded to use 15000 kbps (Is there any way to change that) . Since I am using a quad core cpu I am able to convert 1 hour in about two hours. x264 is freeware I have paid for VS+ that is why I want to use it.

Trouble is the x264 codec is superior to H.264, having more configurable features resulting in better compression for a given file size - but VS can't use it. VS is quite limited in its H.264 encoding options.

hur wrote:Well my questions is. Is there any way to modify AVCHD export profiles?

The only profiles I've been able to modify have been DivX and Xvid - you can create video with a custom resolution, and vary the video bitrate, use different encoding profiles up to "insane" quality. You might give Xvid a shot - and of course it's open source freeware. When you use two pass, the first pass will produce a temporary file, used when you run the second pass, which generates the finished output. Not quite as good as x264, but then you're not looking for maximum compression are you?

I wonder if you could play a DVD from folders on your HTPC and use an upscaling DVD player as an upscaling pass-thru device.

hur · Post by **hur** » Thu Feb 21, 2008 4:00 pm

2Dogs,

Thanks a lot for your suggestions. I will give divix a try. I hope in future VS+ will allow H.264 profile to be modified. Actually you can modify it when creating a dvd. It just does not allow it when exporting it to a file. So what I did is I created a dvd with bit rate I want, and then imported it back into VS, that way I ended up with a file with a resolution and bit rate I want. I think that is too much work. For the moment I will stick with mediacoder/x264 to create H.264 files, and use VS for editing only.

I have about over 500GB of videos my goal is to up convert all to 1080 res, and reduce the size to at least half, only h.264 can help me achieve that goal.

Thanks,
HUR

etech6355 · Post by **etech6355** » Thu Feb 21, 2008 5:30 pm

When you learn how to use VS11+ it's not that hard to make an avc/h264 720x480 or 720x5756 avc/h264 video at any bit rate you want along with VBR or CBR encoding, pcm/dolby 2/0 or dolby 5.1 audio.
Just use your source standard defintion mpeg2 video files.

On my systems 1280x720P doesn't look any better, I also had to double the frame rate to display source video that was interlaced to display correctly at 1280x720P. That's using interlaced source video, unless you have a very good de-interlacing method that can produce smooth results. Otherwise general de-interlacing the video plus upconverting it can make you sick after watching it for 10 minutes. At least that's been my experience with footage that has a reasonable amount of motion in it.

You can search the forum and read the manual.