Multiple Passes in DVD-RB

[drfsupercenter]

Hi,

I have a couple movies that just don't look good on 2-pass HC mode. A friend of mine said he backed some up using 4pass and the copies he showed me looked great... but my question is, how do you do that?

And can HC do 4 pass? I don't want to pay for ProCoder or CCE or whatever and as far as I know, HC's the best free one.

Also, does the temp folder take up more space then? Or still the 4GB or so?

[blutach]

HC is a 2 pass encoder. That's where it ends. If you want more than 2 pass, go for CCE, but jdobbs recommends no more than 3 anyway.

Just make sure you use "Best" profile with HC and ensure your bitrate is high. It doesn't hurt to do the bitrate redistribution, either.

The size of the temp folder will not change.

Regards

[drfsupercenter]

CCE is pay-ware, though, isn't it?

Is there a free one that will do more than 2 passes? The movie S.W.A.T. is one of the titles I have sitting on my hard drive but can't get rid of because it looks hideous at HC 2-pass. Same with Transformers. I don't know why, maybe it's because they used such a high bitrate (Transformers is movie only, not even special features)...

If doing a 2 pass on HC looks bad (and I'm sure it does say High), what would you suggest that's free? (or shareware)

[blutach]

Yes - but there's various versions.

If the BRs high (like over 4000 or even 3500), it should come out great on HCEnc, using the standard matrix. Check you're using the correct matrix for the bitrate.

Regards

[drfsupercenter]

Hmm, how do I set the bitrate?

All I see is Settings - HC Settings - Quality/Speed Selection - BEST (slowest)
There's no "high", from what I can see.

Or are you talking about an option outside of DVD-RB? How do I check the matrix thing? I just see a couple options, not a whole array of them.

[blutach]

The BR is set automatically in the free version. You can tweak it for each segment with RBOpt. In the pro version, you have the segment viewer.

Regards

[drfsupercenter]

What's RBOpt? Is that a sub-program?

[blutach]

Look at the DVDRB forum at Doom9 - it's in a sticky. Or google.

Regards

[drfsupercenter]

OK, so I got the program, but I still have a few questions.

They talk about lowering the bitrate on special features. On movies like Transformers, there ARE no special features, it's all movie. So would that make it pointless? Or am I supposed to do each scene differently? Is it automatic, or do I have to mess with it?

And if I overshoot, will DVD-RB automatically lower it so it fits on a DVD5?

Also, what encoder would have been used on a 4-pass encode?

[blutach]

If there are no extras, you'd look at each segment and adjust them individually - this is what RBOpt is about. It is not automatic, but there are settings that can enable you to tweak cells individually instead of VobIDs. Play around with it.

The only encoder for more than 2 pass is CCE.

Regards

[drfsupercenter]

OK, I'll try it... I usually only use one-click mode so usually there's no input on my part other than the folders.

[blutach]

Well, you'll be in 3 click mode now. Do a prepare and then tweak.

Regards

[BR7]

You could also try AutoQMatEnc.You can put it up to 3-4 passes.It's smart enough to know when more passes are needed, so at times it will do 2 passes,3 passes and so on

[blutach]

Is that the one that encodes with a different matrix on each GOP BR7?

Regards

[BR7]

Yes it is