configuring sage for best X264 quality and size

[bluenote]

(Second try to post this in a public-forum-approved manner, sorry guys)

I've seen some files on the net that have been encoded with really good H.264 results (~115 - ~120mb for a 40 minute video), and I really want to duplicate this quality in the sage transcoder. Along with the size being really minimal, the picture quality is pretty damn good on my SD tv, AND the cpu usage is relatively low on playback.

I've tried hacking around the Apple-TV transcoder lines in the sage.properties files, with not a lot of luck -- the size is too big, and the CPU usage is high enough that its sometimes choppy and any OSD displays are not very responsive. Here's a screenshot of a GSPOT output of what I want to duplicate.

What I'm looking for (ideally) is a transcoder format config line for the sage properties file to duplicate the output that I've describe (as shown in the screenshot). Here's another description of the encoding of the same file:

"VIDEO: 290Kbit/s X.264 (H.264) Codec rev. 600 (Twopass), 23.976fps
AUDIO: MPEG Layer3 64kBit/s High Quality Mode, Average Bitrate (ABR), 24.000 Hz Stereo (~62kBit/s)
"

Thanks for any help!

Cory

EDIT: attached a different screenshot that should be more clear and easy to read

[evilpenguin]

The short answer is: you can't. Those people...

a) Start with the highest quality source (HDTV or at the very least a digital transmission of an SD stream)
b) Heavily process the video (Crop, cut commercials, apply sharpening/denoise/deinterlace/IVTC filters) using avisynth.

As for the performance difference, that video is only 250 kb/s where as the videos you make in Sage is upwards of 1000 kb/s.

[bluenote]

Thanks for the reply EP,

having said that, I don't suppose you want to take a shot at creating a transcoder format config line to match as close as possible those settings? Ive made some more modifications myself (starting with the Apple-TV setting) and gotten a pretty good result (at least, good enough for my home-environment, SD tv, amateurish efforts). The file size is pretty good (~300mb) the PQ is undistinguishable from my source, however it still seems pretty intensive and sage gets sluggish when playing, as opposed to being very responsive with the other files I have. The only difference I can see is that Im using AAC audio and not mp3, and they are in an AVI container.

thanks for any help,

Cory

EDIT: note that 300mb isnt bad when you figure my files dont have commercials or cropping, so they are +50% longer than what Im comparing to at ~ 150mb...

[evilpenguin]

I encode my videos a bit differently, so I don't know much about Sage's profile system

[bluenote]

ooh, that looks nice. I don't much like Sage's manual compression, so that would solve a problem I haven't started to worry about just yet.

I dont want to change my look and feel though. Is that a dealbreaker? if I just import SageMC Im guessing a bunch of stuff is going to change for me without any further modification. ?

Cory

[evilpenguin]

SageMC isn't an import, its an entirly new UI for Sage. I personally love it which is why I use it and write stuff for it

[bluenote]

Hi Ep

I'll have to check it out because I certainly want to improve upon the launching and compression management that sage (doesn't) have.

Just for the sake of information for yourself and anyone else reading this thread, I got an (unexpected) email reply from the author of the files I was referring to -- it sounds like this is just achieved through the magic of H.264 and a high quality source. Here's those comments:

Originally Posted by email

Since i don't know the software You're using, I can only give you simple parameters like bitrates etc.

Video: X264, Twopass, Bitrate ~340 Kbit (don't mistake with KiloBYTES), leave the rest of parameters on default
Audio: MP3 ABR (Average Bitrate) ~64 Kbit, 44000 or 32000 Hz, HQ mode, compressed using original LAME command line tool (gives the best quality)


This is all You need. You must find these settings in Your encoding software. I myself use VirtualDubMod, LAME command line tool, and sometimes Winamp and CoolEdit to correct or recompress the sound.

Thanks for taking an interest,

Cory

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by cnovak

it sounds like this is just achieved through the magic of H.264 and a high quality source. Here's those comments:

There's got to be a little bit more to it than that. This person is *atleast* applying IVTC to knock the video down from 60/29.97/25 fps to 23.97 fps. But given the lowbitrate of the encode its possible that they're starting with a video that was already encoded from its original source.