I often find my 1080i/50 originated videos a bit too "soft" when converted to PAL DVD-compliant MPEG2 video (of course I understand it's been downscaled to 576 lines). I use Lanczos. Any other parameter I could adjust to achieve the sharpest possible result ?

I have tried the sharpen filters but they seem to lighten (brightness) the image. Does anyone recommend any settings that will not cause the image to brighten?

I only see a brightness change when using the sharpness filter with higher values; use lower values if you are using that filter.

You can also try the smart sharp filter which I prefer.
There's also the contour filter which can sharpen some details.

Thanks for the info!

I tried the smart sharp & contour filters using their default settings and did not see any sharpening effect occur. Do you have any settings you might recommend?

You have to play around with the settings as the default settings may be too weak. The settings will depend on your video footage and your own preferences.

It seems even thought the exact same sharpener filters have been around since i think the very first version of xpress, im shocked they havent added different sharpener filters to the mix. At the moment all i see are filters that contour and thats it which as you have said only brighten up edges and there not that good.

I would like to apply 2 filters to my video clip -- Smart Sharpness and Picture Crop. Which filter should I apply first to insure the best quality?

Currently decoding & encoding in TVMW 5.0 can be accelerated by using CUDA. While gaining the speed, CUDA processing is not that great in terms of quality to compare with CPU only. Hardware acceleration with similar to CPU processing quality can be achieved by using Intel Quick Sync technology. There are currently only several programs that can use this technology, like CyberLink Media Espresso 6 etc.

Would be great if TMPGEnc VMW 5.0 is one of those programs too!..

Check Preferences->Input/output format list->Intel Media SDK (Hardware). You should see "+" for Input and Output. If not, make sure the onboard GPU is active (sounds like you are also using a discrete NVIDIA GPU). You should see the "Intel HD Graphics" icon in the system tray. Normally you need to have a monitor plugged into the onboard GPU for this to be active. Motherboards that support Lucidlogix's Virtu technology can activate the onboard GPU with a single monitor connected to the discrete GPU. That said, I was not able to get this working with TVMW5, so I uninstalled the Virtu drivers, and plugged a "VGA Dummy" into the onboard GPU. I purchased one from EBay, but you could probably make one for a few dollars. Hint, you can setup your multiple displays so that the "fake" monitor touches the real ones in a corner, that way you can still do the Windows 7 drag and snap functions.

I purchased TVMW5 for the sole purpose of encoding 1080i STB captures to 720p using QuickSync, and it does a great job IMO. One-hour programs take 30 mins, about 4X faster than the single-pass x264 software encoder, with comparable quality (if you give it enough bandwidth). This is on an i5-3570K under Win7. TVMW5 seems to be finicky on the Intel driver version though, I remember having to re-install an older driver when an Microsoft's auto-update pushed a new driver onto the machine.

Intel needs to do a better job promoting Quick Sync support in video tools, it really is a killer feature in Sandy/Ivy Bridge CPUs, and like you mention, there are few applications that utilize it reliably at the moment.

Ironically, I came to this forum looking for CUDA issues. I just got a GTX 670, and while CUDA is recognized, it is not utilized (during encoding, load is split CPU/GPU: 100%/0%, which wasn't the case before. I am using the GEFORCE 306.23 driver from last week. Reverted to 301.42, same results.

Thank you for a great answer! I have a i7-2600K processor on a Z68 motherboard with a discrete video card GTX 570 (now a single monitor is plugged into it...) I don't know, what format 1080i to what format 720p you are trying to convert... I have a great success using CUDA decoding and encoding only AVCHD files (CPU/CUDA up to 30%/70%). When I deal with MPEG-2, CUDA does not help.

I will try to switch my monitor to the MB video output just to check if it works. Do I have to also adjust BIOS for Quick Sync to become active? Then if it works I might connect a second monitor (I don't have one...) Never heard of VGA-Dummy though...

Most motherboards will by default auto-enable the onboard GPU if a PEG device (PCI Express Graphics) is not found. Since you have a discrete GPU, you might want to force it on in BIOS. Then again, plugging the only monitor into the onboard GPU might override this. The BIOS may also have a RAM setting for the onboard GPU. In my experience, this doesn't have any affect and is not reflected in the Intel GPU driver information, but if you got lots of memory, it doesn't hurt to maximize it.

I mis-read the encoding Status display in TVMW5. The CPU/GPU load shown is only for the filters, not the encoding stage. Since the only filters I have are the default resizer/deinterlacer, neither of which are CUDA-accelerated, the load will always show 0% for CUDA. To test this, I added a Sharpness @100 (to make it obvious), and the status now reads:
... Pre-processing (CPU=15.4%, CUDA=84.6%)

Instead, I tried monitoring GPU load with GPU-Z. With CUDA encoding, it registers about 10% on the GTX 670 (about 4% for the Sharpness filter mentioned above). Tried it again with a relatively weak GT 430, and the GPU load was 60%, which makes me think TVMW5 does not utilize all the CUDA cores available.

My source files are H264 in a MPEG-TS container (HW:Hauppauge HD-PVR, SW:SageTV/MediaPortal), target files are AVC/H264 in either MP4 or MKV containers. I think all the hardware encoders only come into play during H264 compression, probably because CPUs have become fast enough to deal with MPEG-2 with reasonable speed.

I agree, for a given bitrate, QuickSync results in better image quality than CUDA, and is the preferred encoder given a choice.

@rasterX
Thank you for the good explanation. I'm currently evaluating MW5 on my Notebook - equipped with an Intel Core i5-2520M but I cant get QuickSync enabled. MW5 says its available but not usable. My Notebook as no discrete GPU and I've already tested it with external Monitors aconnected.

Do you have an idea how to get it to work?

Hi,

I always get 100% CPU usage and 0% CUDA during encoding.

This is not a problem except when it is encoding my CPU temp go to 100 C. I notice that when it is upscaling the video as well while encoding, the CPU temps are at its highest.

I do have my CPU watercooled and this is the only app that makes it go so high so my watercooling is working good.

I read somewhere in the help that even if you check CUDA, the app may decide not to use it. Is this true?

I have Enable NVIDIA CUDA and Use CUDA for filtering checked in Preferences and did the CUDA Optimization. My video card is GTX 560. I am also only using one filter while encoding but CUDA is 0% still.

1. Under MPEG Video Decoder in Preferences, do I also need to change MPEG-1 video decoder, MPEG-2 video decoder and MPEG-4 AVC video decoder from Standard decoder to NVIDA CUDA as well? or do I leave as Standard decoder for them?


2. How do I force the app the offload or share some of the work to the CUDA so that the CPU does not have to work that hard and thus lower my CPU temps?

Thank you

What kind of CPU do you have? I think if TVMW5 thinks that your CPU will be more efficient, it will use it instead of CUDA.

What types of filters are you using? I may be wrong, but I think CUDA is better at certain filters.

You can force it to use CUDA for decoding MPEG in the preferences, but that won't effect filter processing.

I have Intel Quad Core i930 overclocked to 4.2 Ghz with water cooling. I am using Contour filter.

Can you actually force the app to use CUDA? I tried CUDA for decoding MPEG in the preferences but it seems to still use CPU.

I think when I choose Contour and Smart Sharpness, it would use CUDA also. But that is the only combo I know that would activate CUDA.

1. Do you know of any other filter combo that would activate CUDA?

2. I actually don't want to use Smart Sharpness but the Smart Sharpness and Contour filter combo does activate CUDA.
So if I wanted CUDA activated, what setting do I have to put for Smart Sharpness in order minimize the Smart Sharpness effect (without any distortion by this filter to the image quality) and at the same time have CUDA activated?

Thanks

I don't think decoding is very intensive, so any CUDA usage might be negligible.

I don't know if adding filters just to trigger CUDA will help either; does the CPU usage go down? Remember that 100% CPU usage in TVMW5 doesn't necessarily mean your CPU is being used 100%; it only means that the output process is 100% CPU operated. So TVMW5 could say 80% CPU and still be using 100% of your cores. Confirm the actual CPU usage with a widget or something.

What format are you outputting? If you output to MPEG-4 AVC, you can choose the CUDA encoder instead of x264 (default). That way, it should use CUDA 100%.

Another suggestion is lowering the CPU priority for TVMW5 (or the TVMW5 batch encoder) and then run it in the background when encoding.

I use app called Core Temp and it shows the load of each CPU which is close to 100% load so I know it is using close to 100% of the CPU cores.

The temps from Core Temp show 2 of the cores reaching 100 C and the other two cores reaching 98 C which is two high for me.

I also note this high temp is when it is upscaling video when encoding.

1. Sorry for the dumb question but what is difference between decoding and encoding? I thought they are the same or at least both used in the process when converting video with this app.

2. "If you output to MPEG-4 AVC, you can choose the CUDA encoder instead of x264 (default). That way, it should use CUDA 100%."
So if I am not outputting to MPEG-4 AVC, I should leave it as Standard Decoder in for decoding MPEG in the preferences? Or should it still be changed to CUDA?

What I am doing is basicly converting video to be authored in Authoring Works 4 for Blu-ray. If I output to MPEG-4 AVC, my understanding is Authoring Works will fully render the video once again so there is no point doing it twice.
I would like Authoring Works to Smart Render so I chose Blu-ray Template in Video Mastering Works 5.

3. Is there a better way to encode video to Blu-ray than this so that Authoring Works can Smart Render and have the highest video quality?

4. Is there any image quality difference using CUDA encoder instead of x264 ?

5. I see the where you can lower CPU priority for TVMW5 batch encoder tool options -> task priority
but where do you do it in TVM5 itself ?

>1. Sorry for the dumb question but what is difference between decoding and encoding? I thought they are the same or at least both used in the process when converting video with this app.
>
Decoding is the opposite of encoding. Think of it as unpacking a .zip file; it's taking a compressed file and decoding it into usable data. Whenever you play a video, it has to be decoded so the decoding process for video files is usually pretty fast/unnoticeable.
Both processes are used in conversion but encoding is the more intensive process.

>2. "If you output to MPEG-4 AVC, you can choose the CUDA encoder instead of x264 (default). That way, it should use CUDA 100%."
>So if I am not outputting to MPEG-4 AVC, I should leave it as Standard Decoder in for decoding MPEG in the preferences? Or should it still be changed to CUDA?
>
I think you can leave it as CUDA if you want; the decoder used shouldn't matter too much. The encoder is the important part, but for MPEG-2, you won't really have a choice but to use the Standard Encdoer.
It's interesting that you are getting 100% CPU usage with the standard encoder. On my machine, I only get around 40% CPU usage (that's actual usage; in TVMW5 it says 100%) so I always thought the standard encoder was less efficient than the x264 encoder. When I output with x264, I always get in the 90-100% CPU usage range.

>What I am doing is basicly converting video to be authored in Authoring Works 4 for Blu-ray. If I output to MPEG-4 AVC, my understanding is Authoring Works will fully render the video once again so there is no point doing it twice.
>I would like Authoring Works to Smart Render so I chose Blu-ray Template in Video Mastering Works 5.
>
>3. Is there a better way to encode video to Blu-ray than this so that Authoring Works can Smart Render and have the highest video quality?

You are correct, encoding to h.264 would be a waste of time if you are using TAW4 to make a blu-ray. There really isn't a better way in this case.

>
>4. Is there any image quality difference using CUDA encoder instead of x264 ?

Since they are two different encoders, there will be some differences in how they encode video. I don't know exactly how noticeable those differences will be though; I always use x264. Maybe I'll try and do a 1:1 comparison if I have time.

>
>5. I see the where you can lower CPU priority for TVMW5 batch encoder tool options -> task priority
>but where do you do it in TVM5 itself ?

It's not as intuitive, but in the Encode stage, right-click the preview area and there's an option for task priority.

HI,

I am converting h.264 MKVs to DVD compliant for use in TMPGEnc Authoring Works 4.

I heard the order matters so the filters I have are as follows:
Filters:
color correction
color phase correction
smart sharpness
contour - wide instead of normal
smart sharpness
contour - wide instead of normal
smart sharpness
contour - wide instead of normal
Anti-flickering strength 256
Picture resize bicubic
Everything is set as default except where noted above.

Format:
VBR
Soften block noise
10-bit
Progressive
performance: slow

TMPGEnc Authoring Works 4 smart renders video.

I ALWAYS get flickering on fast moving scene changes when played on DVD player hooked to TV. Or maybe it is ghosting? I can't tell but it looks like flickering to me.

1. Is there a fix for this problem?

2. I also notice flickering sometimes when I just directly encode TMPGEnc Authoring Works 4 (full rendering) and not use Video Mastering Works 5.

Please help and thank you so much,
Tiff

What is the framerate of the source video? Interlaced or progressive?

HI tkrave,

I got info below for MKV file:

Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L5.0
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 16 frames
Format settings, GOP : M=5, N=59
Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 24mn 11s
Width : 1280 pixels
Height : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Title : H.264
Writing library : x264 core 118 r2085+614 d1cc25d

I think it is originally source 23.976fps progressive MKV.

I also tried setting to Interlace, Progressive, 3:2 pulldown playback an dinverse 3:2 pulldown in Format but did not help.

I am not sure if it would be flickering or maybe even ghosting. What I am actually seeing is choppy video on fast moving scene changes (and sometimes but not as much on normal scenes) when played on DVD player hooked to TV. I

Do you know what problem is? I am using the DVD-video standard mpeg file template in Format because I want it to Smart Render in TMPGEnc Authoring Works 4 (and it does with choppy video).

Thank you for your help, tiff

Are you outputting it as PAL DVD? If you output as NTSC, and keep the framerate at 23.976, I don't think there should be a problem. Choppy video can occur when you are changing the framerate.
Most DVD players can display either framerate, regardless of where you live (PAL vs NTSC territory).

Other things it could be:
What type of media are you burning to? DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW? Some players can't read certain media well.

How fast are you burning your disc? Try the slowest speed to make sure there are no errors when burning.

Oops, brain fart; 23.976 is not a compliant framerate for DVD-Video so it would have to be converted to 25fps or 29.97fps.

Try outputting it as interlaced and not progressive since DVD-Video has to be interlaced (unless it's VCD quality).

HI tkrave,

Thank you for taking time to answer my questions.

I am outputing NTSC DVD always and I don't think it is burning or media problem as I tried all at very low speed on different dvd players also.

1. Video Mastering Works 5 always selects 3:2 Pulldown playback when I first enter Format. Does the framerate and (progressive or interlace) in Format ALWAYS have to match the original source MKV (to prevent choppy video)?

I used another encoder software before and they always do all the settings automaticly for me so I never had to worry about it.


2. Do you recommend I choose DVD-video standard mpeg file template or select the MPEG File output template in Format?



3. Also, does adding the maximum number of filters recommended? Can you look at my filters above so far and make any recommendations on improving image quality?

What filters you think I should add or remove? Note I have 3 instances of Contour and Smart sharpness and then Anti-flickering set to maximum afterwards. I also set: VBR, Soften block noise, 10-bit and performance: slow in Format.
Can you give me your best advice of best image quality settings as regards to filters?


My goal is to have it smart render TMPGEnc Authoring Works 4 as well while having the best image quality settings.

Thank you again, Tiff

3:2 pulldown should be correct since that is for converting 23.976 to 29.97 fps, which is what is necessary for DVD compliance.
In general you should keep the same framerate UNLESS your target purpose requires otherwise. In this case, DVD-Video requires a different framerate, so you don't have a choice here.

I would just stick with DVD-Video output format template.

As for filters, I'm not sure if adding all of those are necessary. I don't know what the source video looks like, so I can't discern what filters are needed.
I don't think you need 3 instances of contour and smart sharpness-- that seems like overkill. Plus, you are going from a HD source to a SD output, so the output is probably already preserving as much detail as it can (as opposed to going from an SD source to HD output, where it cannot "create" more detail). Try an output without any of those extra filters enabled.
The filters also make output time longer, so you should really only apply filters if you have to. Is this seriously degraded video?

Another thing you might want to try is bypassing TVMW5 and importing the file directly into TAW4. You might need some directshow codecs to allow TAW4 to import your MKV though.

HI tkrave,

I tried everything you have suggested including all settings for (interlace, progressive, 3:2 pulldown, inverse 3:2) and all framerates (23.976 and 29.97).

I also tried different MKV files to see if the particular MKV is the problem and they all do the same thing. The similarity between all of them is that they were all originally encoded with x264. This is the same whether I feed the MKV directly into TMPGEnc Authoring Works 4 or use Video Mastering Works 5.

Do you think TMPEG standard encoder can not properly encode x264 source MKV files?

I looked closely at what I am getting. It looks like choppy video but only for about an instant then it disappears for awhile. It could also be considered flickering as it looks almost the same. There is vertical disalignment of the picture at a few horizontal lines on the TV and then it disappears is proabably the best way to describe it.

Do you have any other advice I can try?

Thank you again, Tiff

What is your output video bitrate?

What kind of DVD media is it exactly? DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW?

It seems that when I use sharpen filter along with Subtitle, the subtitle font also gets sharpened. Is there any way to avoid this?

The above was with the subtitle SRT file imported and not hardcoded subtitle.

In the Filter window, click on the "Edit filter list" button. The filter list editor window will appear.

Then, select the subtitle filter in the Filter list on the left hand side of the window.

Click the "Down" button until the Subtitle filter appears BELOW the Sharpness filter. That should fix the problem. Apparently, filters can affect all filters above them in the list.

Thanks tkrave I will gice it try