[MPlayer-users] Video quality

[Corey Hickey]

Martin Collins wrote:
> [Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read DOCS/bugreports.html]
> On Tue, 10 Jun 2003 14:36:32 -0700 (PDT)
> joe user <palehaole at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>>I tried using
>>lavc mpeg4 with vhq and the quality was not
>>acceptable.  Are my expectations too high, or is it
>>possible to get a good amount of compression while
>>retaining an image quality that is not too far off
>>from the quality of the original DVD?
> 
> 
> It is certainly possible, depending on what you mean by "a good amount
> of compression". Fitting an average length movie on a CD is realistic.
> There is a lot of useful info in DOCS/encoding.html.
> 
> Martin
> 

...and make sure you read DOCS/tech/encoding-tips.txt. A few steps are
absolutely necessary:

- crop out the _entire_ black borders (and any fuzziness at the edges)
- rescale to an appropriate resolution for your chosen video bitrate
- use -ofps 23.976 for "soft-telecined" NTSC DVDs (look for mplayer
saying "TELECINE detected")

For details, read encoding-tips.txt.

A very interesting comparison of several lavc options can (usually) be
found here:
http://rguyom.ath.cx/

My personal favorite settings, that result in good quality and take
forever to encode :) are below, but be sure to replace the crop and
scale values with something appropriate for your particular DVD.

for i in 1 2 ; do mencoder -dvd 1 -vop scale=720:304,crop=720:359:0:58 \
-sws 1 -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=800:vhq:v4mv:trell:\
precmp=3:cmp=3:subcmp=3:vmax_b_frames=1:qpel:vlelim=-2:vcelim=7:\
lumi_mask=0.05:naq:vqcomp=0.7:mbcmp=2:psnr:vpass=$i -oac copy -ofps \
23.976 -o pass$i.avi ; done


Have fun,
Corey