Divx transcoding frustrations :(

[Ton]

Well, all sounds very familiar.

I've had so much weirdness playing Divx over MVP, that I now resort to recoding the movies to MVP-specs for watching on the MVP.

I am running an MVP-only system though (no PC in the living room (well, just the two laptops ofcourse ))

Took some time to work out all the mencoder options for scaling / filtering the resulting mpeg file, but it's finally coming together.

I am now slapping together a little program that will autmatically rescale all (well most) movie-files to MVP specifications. It may be fast enough to do on-the-fly transcoding (getting 60+FPS on my AMD 3000+).

//Ton

[habile]

Well, all sounds very familiar.

I've had so much weirdness playing Divx over MVP, that I now resort to recoding the movies to MVP-specs for watching on the MVP.

I am running an MVP-only system though (no PC in the living room (well, just the two laptops ofcourse ))

Took some time to work out all the mencoder options for scaling / filtering the resulting mpeg file, but it's finally coming together.

I am now slapping together a little program that will autmatically rescale all (well most) movie-files to MVP specifications. It may be fast enough to do on-the-fly transcoding (getting 60+FPS on my AMD 3000+).

//Ton

Hi Ton - did you ever get it finished? I'd like to recode all of my recorded TV to keep the file sizes down on my network storage - I only usually watch them on the MVP or windowed media player on another PC or PocketPC.

C.

[klyndt]

What ever happened to this? Did it die?

Thanks,
Klyndt

[fvfv]

Well, all sounds very familiar.

I've had so much weirdness playing Divx over MVP, that I now resort to recoding the movies to MVP-specs for watching on the MVP.

I am running an MVP-only system though (no PC in the living room (well, just the two laptops ofcourse ))

Took some time to work out all the mencoder options for scaling / filtering the resulting mpeg file, but it's finally coming together.

I am now slapping together a little program that will autmatically rescale all (well most) movie-files to MVP specifications. It may be fast enough to do on-the-fly transcoding (getting 60+FPS on my AMD 3000+).

//Ton

Ton. I do not know if you have answered this in a different post, but I do use the search button and cannot find the answer.

What you describe here is exactly what I am looking for. What is the best command line that you can use with mencoder to convert a 4x3 PVR350 recording that has the stupid left and right bars (Some people call this pillar box) so that I can play it full-screen (filling the screen with zoom, not stretch) on a 16x9 Plasma TV ?

[Ton]

Well, I have finished it, and posted it (in another thread....). Here's the link to the latest version http://forums.gbpvr.com/showpost.php?p=1...stcount=63.

I am planning to do a rebuild to .NET 2.0 soon, but that should not change any of the abilities of the program.

You should also check out the ZProcess and PBS ffmpeg replacement tools, they are pretty closely related to what I'm doing...

Regards,

[gEd]

Just wondering whether any of you MVP users have tried Zprocess?

Quote from wiki:

Whenever you use a MediaMVP and wish to view an AVI, GB-PVR doesn’t actually play the AVI, it automatically transcodes it to an MPG file, and the MediaMVP plays that file. That means that the very simple act of playing a video file across your network on your MediaMVP now requires a lot more muscle. When you use the Trans2MVP transcoding profile, you are able to preset the quality, dimensions, cropping, padding and CPU priority.

[edit] 1 minute too slow....

[zehd]

Well, I have finished it, and posted it (in another thread....). Here's the link to the latest version http://forums.gbpvr.com/showpost.php?p=1...stcount=63.

I am planning to do a rebuild to .NET 2.0 soon, but that should not change any of the abilities of the program.

You should also check out the ZProcess and PBS ffmpeg replacement tools, they are pretty closely related to what I'm doing...

Regards,

The one thing I have not done yet with ZProcess, and might not get around to it it the zoom of a 4x3 so there are no vertical lines, left and right. That's because in order to fill the screen you'd need to chop of the top and bottom...

I'm one of those puritans that think that if a TV show is in 4x3, I should see it in 4x3... The last thing I want to is to lose picture by cutting the tops and bottoms...

But yeah, ZProcess does everything else, (in it's latest release) it expands a 16x9 divx to fill a 16x9 TV. It gives you the option of strecthing a 4x3 to fill, or use pillarbox...

[fvfv]

The one thing I have not done yet with ZProcess, and might not get around to it it the zoom of a 4x3 so there are no vertical lines, left and right. That's because in order to fill the screen you'd need to chop of the top and bottom...

I'm one of those puritans that think that if a TV show is in 4x3, I should see it in 4x3... The last thing I want to is to lose picture by cutting the tops and bottoms...

But yeah, ZProcess does everything else, (in it's latest release) it expands a 16x9 divx to fill a 16x9 TV. It gives you the option of strecthing a 4x3 to fill, or use pillarbox...

I am certainly not puritan myself, but I kind of value more the life of my new 50" plasma burn tendencies when viewing 2 hours of left/right or bottom/top black bars. So I do not mind chopping a bit on an actor's head and preserve the life of my TV. What I cannot stand is a 4x3 image STRETCHED TO 16X9. The only exception to the Zoom mode would be on sports where the actual score board is chopped off.

[fvfv]

Well, I have finished it, and posted it (in another thread....). Here's the link to the latest version http://forums.gbpvr.com/showpost.php?p=1...stcount=63.

I am planning to do a rebuild to .NET 2.0 soon, but that should not change any of the abilities of the program.

You should also check out the ZProcess and PBS ffmpeg replacement tools, they are pretty closely related to what I'm doing...

Regards,

Ton: What do I need to do on mvprecoder.xml to change the behavior of the program so that the 4x3 recording from the PVR350 is ZOOMED to 16x9 (Removing Black Bars on either Left/Right or Top/Bottom). It looks like this tool defaults to Adding the bars.

[Ton]

Well, if you want 16:9 output, you should change the horizontal and vertical scale to match your TV-set....

That would be these:
<MVP_Width>352</MVP_Width>
<MVP_Height>288</MVP_Height>

So assuming you're on PAL, I would set these to:
<MVP_Width>720</MVP_Width>
<MVP_Height>576</MVP_Height>

That's because the offical DVD-spec says that 16:9 is only available on this size (for NTSC it's 720 by 480).

Then you might also look into the aspect-ratio:
<!-- Start forcing aspect changes when movie aspect is larger then this value -->
<MVP_Resize>1.4</MVP_Resize>

that's the ratio at which point it starts adding black borders. The default value of 1.4 is good for a 4:3 set (allows a little overscan, then starts resizing), but on a 16:9 set, you probably want to change this to something in the "1.8" to "2.1" range... I'd probably try with a value of 1.9 to start with, so:
<MVP_Resize>1.9</MVP_Resize>

I think that should get you started in the right way...