TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress & Pulldown - Part II

[africanmarty]

What happens when you just leave TMPGEnc on Deinterlace when necessary and don't mess with anything else? Does it still happen?

pascalbrown have you tried the above advice, did it work ???

[Sagefox]

Under the GOP (Group of Pictures) tab, choose I Pictures only, and lower the GOP to 0. Make sure that the bitrate is 25,000 - 30,000.
Now your 24p clips will render in a couple minutes. No compression artifacts, and faster access times while editing.

This was all based off of my own experimenting after discovering this post.
Also note that it is ideal for this bitrate to choose 10 bit Dc component instead of nine. (Not much of a diff, just thought I should say)

[jabloomf1230]

Do you mean GOP max frames = 0? I assume that you do. I can't tell if that does a better job in terms of video quality, but it does speed up the encoding.

[pascalbrown]

pascalbrown have you tried the above advice, did it work ???

I did try this, and it didn't work.

Under the GOP (Group of Pictures) tab, choose I Pictures only, and lower the GOP to 0. Make sure that the bitrate is 25,000 - 30,000.
Now your 24p clips will render in a couple minutes. No compression artifacts, and faster access times while editing.

This was all based off of my own experimenting after discovering this post.
Also note that it is ideal for this bitrate to choose 10 bit Dc component instead of nine. (Not much of a diff, just thought I should say)

I also tried this, and all I saw was a serious degradation in image quality. I would suggest against doing this!

[Sagefox]

Make sure the bitrate is 30,000. 24 non interlaced frames is actually very easy compression, and so it requires less than 60i. If its 60i, then do not mess around with the GOP compression. Only if its 24p. W/ 60i you do have to set the compression at standard. I could post screen caps or video in 1080 if necessary. It really does work if all the settings are right.

[pascalbrown]

Are you suggesting to use these settings whilst performing the pull down? ie. Set the filter to do the inverse pulldown, then on the encoder options to choose the settings you have proposed? That is what I did, but it looked horrible.

Can you perhaps just explain fully where, when, and why you used these settings as it would help me to understand. Thanks.

[Sagefox]

Do you mean GOP max frames = 0? I assume that you do. I can't tell if that does a better job in terms of video quality, but it does speed up the encoding.

Yep thats it.
More compression leads to more bitrate for the image to work with, but harder access and more artifacting. And so I noticed that if the bitrate is high enough w/ no compression on 24p streams, you really do get the benefit of no artifacting w/out losing image quality. 30,000 is the sweet spot here - enough bitrate to capture every detail that was in the original file, and the filesize isn't too large. Its all good.

Its not much of a benefit to image quality, just a practical sweet spot.

[Sagefox]

Are you suggesting to use these settings whilst performing the pull down? ie. Set the filter to do the inverse pulldown, then on the encoder options to choose the settings you have proposed? That is what I did, but it looked horrible.

Can you perhaps just explain fully where, when, and why you used these settings as it would help me to understand. Thanks.

I'm pushed for time at the moment, but later I will post images and screen captures to make sure everything checks out right. This should work for you, I promise. My videos were rendered perfectly, so something must have been off.

[Sagefox]

I didn't know this at first, but you have been having some serious trouble w/ 24p in the first place. That makes all the diff. You see, I use an HG10, and I found out that I had to use Elecard, and not tmpg, to initially encode into vanilla HDV. Tmpg simply does not read avchd right, and as a result incorrectly writes it to HDV. And what happened next? Simply because the HDV it wrote was slightly off, the encoding took forever and the resulting video looked like crap cause it was a stuttering interlaced mess. The lesson: The File You Import Must Perfectly Match The HDV Profile. Otherwise everything doesn't work right. And so your issue must be before tmpg gets it. Whatever you use to capture is wrapping the files messily. Perhaps a setting is off. I knew when I got 24p right using the method in this thread because the video ran smooth as butter and Premiere said 23.976, two things I never had in conjunction w/ each other. Upon close examination, every frame was purely progressive.

But it took an hour to render 1 minute. And that just won't cut it when I make a full length. So I had to find a way to make it faster, while not losing any quality. (If I had a blowup distributed, this would be critical) Thats what the above is for. I cheered when the thing took 2 minutes to render and has less artifacting than before. It accesses fast too.

Everyone else has it and can benefit from this discovery. But for you pascal, I would suggest perhaps re-encoding the HDV you captured in a diff program as vanilla 60i HDV, and then importing it to tmpgenc. The prob. is happening before the file ever hits tmpgenc.

[Sagefox]

[africanmarty]

I didn't know this at first, but you have been having some serious trouble w/ 24p in the first place. That makes all the diff. You see, I use an HG10, and I found out that I had to use Elecard, and not tmpg, to initially encode into vanilla HDV. Tmpg simply does not read avchd right, and as a result incorrectly writes it to HDV. And what happened next? Simply because the HDV it wrote was slightly off, the encoding took forever and the resulting video looked like crap cause it was a stuttering interlaced mess. The lesson: The File You Import Must Perfectly Match The HDV Profile. Otherwise everything doesn't work right. And so your issue must be before tmpg gets it. Whatever you use to capture is wrapping the files messily. Perhaps a setting is off. I knew when I got 24p right using the method in this thread because the video ran smooth as butter and Premiere said 23.976, two things I never had in conjunction w/ each other. Upon close examination, every frame was purely progressive.

But it took an hour to render 1 minute. And that just won't cut it when I make a full length. So I had to find a way to make it faster, while not losing any quality. (If I had a blowup distributed, this would be critical) Thats what the above is for. I cheered when the thing took 2 minutes to render and has less artifacting than before. It accesses fast too.

Everyone else has it and can benefit from this discovery. But for you pascal, I would suggest perhaps re-encoding the HDV you captured in a diff program as vanilla 60i HDV, and then importing it to tmpgenc. The prob. is happening before the file ever hits tmpgenc.

sage so your saying that if you use this method you can get a perfect 24p stream if you use this method to do the pull down. But you much have a correctly captured HDV 60i stream first.

[Sagefox]

sage so your saying that if you use this method you can get a perfect 24p stream if you use this method to do the pull down. But you much have a correctly captured HDV 60i stream first.

Yes, and whatever HDV that Elecard's converter encodes avchd in, that's it. I suppose getting the right hdv off of tape can be a little more difficult.

[ZarbK]

I've been using this since the OP posted (last july was it? wow), and it works flawlessly. Just in case someone is curious and peeks in on this thread, here's basically what I do:

1) Capture from the camera using Vegas 8.
2) Use this great tool called 'MPEG-VCR' to basically step through the raw .m2ts and cut out the parts I don't want, as well as since I reuse tapes I get a few frames of distortion between scenes, I cut those out. You save as another .m2t, it doesn't do any encoding or compression or anything, it just cuts out the frames you don't want.
3) Run the new .m2t through TMPGEnc 4.0 Xpress following the instructions in OP's post.
4) Throw that into Vegas. Woo!

[Rumpelgeist]

I didn't know this at first, but you have been having some serious trouble w/ 24p in the first place. That makes all the diff. You see, I use an HG10, and I found out that I had to use Elecard, and not tmpg, to initially encode into vanilla HDV. Tmpg simply does not read avchd right, and as a result incorrectly writes it to HDV.

Instead of HDV you can output to WMV and set high bitrate like 25 or 30 if you want. Windows Media Encoder is pretty smart in detecting cadence and removing pulldown. I tried converting AVCHD from HG10 into WMV using about the same bitrate as source bitrate, and result looks pretty nice.

[Lou van Wijhe]

2) Use this great tool called 'MPEG-VCR' to basically step through the raw .m2ts and cut out the parts I don't want, as well as since I reuse tapes I get a few frames of distortion between scenes, I cut those out. You save as another .m2t, it doesn't do any encoding or compression or anything, it just cuts out the frames you don't want.

If it is cuts only and "M2T in-M2T out", AFAIK Vegas Pro 8 doesn't do any recompression either.

Lou

[Sagefox]

An interesting idea...
I shall try this wmv method.

[thebossman]

sage
i was wondering can i use sony vegas to convert the avchd format to another format and then use tmpgenc to remove the pulldown?
basically i want to replace elecard with vegas, is this a good idea?

with the elecard demo, im not getting audio from the finished product.
anyone know why?

[mikeD]

So, would the technique outlined in this guide be good if you want to mess around with your footy in AfterFX?

I remember reading about how AE doesnt like formats like m2t or mpeg.
Could someone do a writeup or tell me the steps that'd be best in removing pulldown and converting the footy to a format thatd be good for AE color correcting, effects, and compositing?

[africanmarty]

So, would the technique outlined in this guide be good if you want to mess around with your footy in AfterFX?

I remember reading about how AE doesnt like formats like m2t or mpeg.
Could someone do a writeup or tell me the steps that'd be best in removing pulldown and converting the footy to a format thatd be good for AE color correcting, effects, and compositing?

why don't you just record a 10sec clip and convert it to different formats and see what works best for you. i use mpeg/m2t and AE7 works just fine.

marty.

[grahamko]

Hi, I have a bit of a newbie question about HDV 24p editing:

I'm using Premiere 3.20. Rather than putting all my raw footage through reverse pulldown processing in TMPGEnc and then editing it in Premiere, would it make more sense to capture the footage in Premiere in the weird 29.97 frame rate, edit it that way, export a video and then process the final video to remove pulldown in TMPGEnc? Or would that not work?

It would just be more more convenient to process the final 5 minute video than the 90 minutes of footage that I'm editing down.

Thanks!

[Paul Tarlevs]

So can somebody confirm that this is the official way to do it in TMPgenc?

Or is there a thread that shows the official and best way?

[DaFireMedic]

So can somebody confirm that this is the official way to do it in TMPgenc?

Or is there a thread that shows the official and best way?

There's no "official" way, but the method laid out in the first post of this thread works very well.

[chico_stang]

I use this method and it works.

[africanmarty]

I use this method and it works.

+1

- Marty

[Paul Tarlevs]

A BILLION thanks to Propellerhead on the other TMPGEnc thread for playing around with TMPGEnc and posting his findings as well!!! I Gave this a whirl too, and basically decided that TEMPEnc 4.0 is the "be all end all" for the HV20 24p mess for me. It did EXACTLY what I wanted it to do. Basically follow 'Propellerhead's' set up instructions, summed up as (I like when I have numbered steps for my pea brain, so sorry if you don't, just scroll)

1. Capture (I'm a Vegas guy)
2. Import into TMPGEnc
3. Click "Filters" button
4. Make sure "Deinterlace" is checked
5. Change Deinterlace Mode to "24fps special animation"
6. Change Deinterlace Method to "Inverse Pulldown"
7. Click "OK"
8. Click "Format" button
9. Chose "HDV format MPEG file" (double click it)
10. Click "MPEG output" in 'non-standard settings' box on the right
11. Click "yes" when the warning box comes up (who reads those anyway?)
12. Change framerate to '23.976'
13. Change DC Component to '9 bit'
14. Change Display Mode to 'progressive'
15. Save as template if you'd like
16. Go to Encode and encode, of course

Output file looks great. All properties read HDV .m2t at 23.976

I import back into Vegas and editing goes great

To check further, I downloaded the Premier CS3 trial (thank god for high speed internet...bandwidth hog Adobe programs sure are!) and imported the new file into that (I used the HDV 1080p30 settings, and just did a little property changing). Upon importing the new file/playback, there was a goofy red full frame screen for the first few frames, but it just pixelates out quick and played fine. I have played with AE7 a while back and I assume "rendering on the timeline" refers to having to play the file first to get it to play back "smoothly". This new file played back at real time, and didn't seem to be rendering while playing. Here's some links for your own testing to see if I'm backasswards on my assumptions I've been doing this right. I know it's an exta step of encoding, but it's fast, it's a batch render, you can apply other effects, all for only for just under a $100.

Raw 24p HDV with TV mode on & shutter speed at 1/48
http://hv20.info/yopu/TMPGenc 60i-24p start.m2t

Encoded TMPGEnc with Pulldown completed
http://hv20.info/yopu/TMPGEnc 24p after.m2t

Please tell me this is all the way it's supposed to be as I'm sick of screwing around with this pulldown fiasco...

One question, why not just change 24p instead of 23.976?