bitrates,settings and codecs,Oh my!

[montrealfilmguy]

Hey guys and gals!

This newbie's getting better every day.

Just love that part

You know when your brain starts combining knowledge together to create a better result

This clip with THAT sound with THIS cut...Wow!

Anyways,been practicing cutting and editing stuff to do my own Hollywood film trailers from dvd clips.

See what you do is get this tiny program called AOA dvd ripper here

http://www.aoamedia.com/

Easiest program in the world.

Now the trial never expires but only lets you copy 10 minute clips
So you can copy either chapters (under 10 minutes) or set your own time duration ( say from 1h 35m to 1h 37m )

You delete the audio,edit your cuts,put some great music to it and TA_DAA!!

Your very own Hollywood trailers.

Now my question is this,

First time i tried with my dvd of The shining it worked great,and im pretty sure i didnt have to change the bitrate settings,but today i tried Return of the king and had to change from the default 5.00 to a much higher 43.000.00 which got the image looking like a million bucks

Is there a bitrate setting that works for all movies or is it different for every one
Is there one for great quality and time efficient rendering wise ?

Cause i just dont know.43 thousand ? 100 thousand ?

Anyone can throw some info my way ?

Thanks a lot.

montrealfilmguy

[ATR]

montrealfilmguy

Oh, my, indeed! You have been busy.

I understand you to say that you are ripping DVD-VIDEO from the DVD disc, but what are you converting it to? I have only just begun to look into this. Here is the first search:

How to create a DivX file from a DVD with Guide of AoA DVD Ripper
http://www.sharewareguide.net/articl...vd-ripper.html

In the above, it looks like 1500 kilobits per second is the selected bitrate, but with the following considerations:

• if 1500 kilobits per second is too high, lower
• if 2200 kilobits per second, most players will not recognize the output

I will give you some numbers with which to play:
1024 bits in 1 kilobit
1024 kilobits in 1 megabyte
To convert kilobit to megabytes, divide kilobit by 1024.

Higher bitrate, better quality, larger file size

Did you find a VBR (variable bitrate) setting in AOA? I did not see it. That setting seems preferred in certain cases.

As a reference point, if you look in Premiere Elements Burn Dialog, the highest bitrate setting (DVD-VIDEO) is 8 Mbps (aka 8 megabits/sec) = 8192 kilobits/s. Oddly enough, some reports coming out from other forums suggest that DVD-VIDEO (PE4) comes out better at a bitrate lower than 8. Odd.

From the ads, it looks like AOA can convert a DVD Movie to AVI, DivX, VCD, SVCD. Is the AVI = DV AVI? How many types of conversions have you tried and, more importantly, what do they look like in playback on the computer?

To be continued (check out my numbers to make sure I am not leading you in the wrong math direction).



To be continued....
ATR

[montrealfilmguy]

hey there ATR!

i didnt play around much,since it literally converts to AVI directly.i think.

See,once it creates the clip i can simply go get it and put it in the timeline.

Quality is near perfect i would say.

But i couldnt tell you fer sure if the AVI is DV-AVI.

montrealfilmguy

[montrealfilmguy]

forget about that trial software i mentioned.

I thought you could copy a whole bunch of clips as long as they were under 10 minutes as stated by the software,but the clips keep overwriting the last ones you do,so you can only have two at any time

Oh well, guess i'll have to buy it.

And its literally for doing trailers,you know.

I'm the last guy who wants to start copying entire films.
I have buddies who do this,like they have 200,300 films copied
and i'm always thinking,thats great maybe in 30 years,one of your buddies will go "you know,ive never seen Police academy 14 "
and you go " finally yes i have a copy !"

i have a list of films to buy on dvd,about 50
20 are my favorites and 30 are classics that i think people ought to see one time in their lives.

Thats it.

But i digress..
Dont try the trial.

montrealfilmguy

[ATR]

montrealfilmguy

OK, I downloaded the AoA DVD Ripper.

First, I headed over to ripping DVD-VIDEO to AVI. There I had only two choices of codec:
Microsoft Video 1 and Xvid MPEG-4 Codec

What options did you have for AVI and which one did you select?
.
As for Bitrate, did you notice that the Xvid MPEG-4 Codec has a Bitrate Calculator included in the Settings/Configure? See Target quantizer….calc. With Microsoft Video 1, there was only a Temporal Quality Ratio slider with what appears to be a default set of 0.75. I am not familiar with this parameter which I believe to be other than bitrate itself. I have seen Temporal Quality defined as way pixels change from one frame to another. This needs more looking into to see how this parameter works.

Now for the Microsoft Video 1 codec. This has been described in more than one place as an obsolete codec and does not appear to be Microsoft DV AVI since:

• Properties Windows Media Player, does not say DV AVI
• When you import this into Premiere Elements, you need to render. With a known DV AVI, you do not.

Now for what works and what does not. Keep in mind that these output files are not Microsoft DV AVI.
Microsoft Video 1 Codec. If I rip DVD-VIDEO to AVI with this codec, the AVI file has great playback in Windows Media Player. In addition, if I bring it to the Premiere Elements 2 or 4 Timeline, I get good quality video audio playback on the Timeline.

Xvid MPEG-4 Codec. If I rip DVD-VIDEO to AVI with this codec, I can take the AVI file and get great playback in Windows Media Player. BUT, in Premiere Elements 2 Timeline, I get black video, but do get good audio. If I take this same file into Premiere Elements 4 Timeline, I cannot open it at all. I get a message about an unsupported audio data rate.

This is as far as I have gotten into looking at this software. No verdict on AoA DVD Ripper versus Adobe Media Downloader.


Let us know how you are progressing.

To be continued…

ATR

[ATR]

montrealfilmguy,

After hitting "Submit Reply", I saw your last post. What can I say?

It was interesting....moving forward to delete the software.

ATR

[ATR]

Wait a minute.

Overwriting you say? Are you taking the time to change the name of the file for each of your 10 minute projects as well as browse for the Output Directory set????

ATR

[montrealfilmguy]

What ?

changing the name of each fi...?


@##$%^^&^$%&^$$#$%^&^&^%$#&&&**&(&$#@#


LOL

i'll sheepishly admit i did not try that yet.Again not too many tomatoes towards the face please.

montrealfilmguy

[ATR]

I will delay deleting the AoA DVD Ripper software here until you check.

I am almost sure that aspect was described in the product literature/how tos?????

To be continued

ATR

[montrealfilmguy]

oh man..

To quote the great Bugs " What a maroon! "

yes it works fine with many clips if you rename them right after copying each one

So for LOTR i keep writing..

Liv tyler horse chase
Hugo recalls Mt Doom

etc,etc,

Thanks ATR.

Now for a long night of creating a LOTR trailer.With my dunce cap on.