MrSickle

Well, I've spent many weeks trying playing with different settings and different video rates and audio compressions. Finally I think I have found the settings I need. I am getting 19.11 FPS (which the movie is encoded at 19.97 FPS) but oddly enough, PocketMVP reports I dropped 202 frames, played 56532, total 56532. (I find that a bit odd) I encoded a NTCS show at 320x228 (rotated 90 degrees) because for some reason, 320x240 looked a bit stretched (anyone know why?) I just wasn't happy with the 15fps, and 24fps just didn't work out well. my video data rate is 250Kb/s and audio is 24Kb/s, 24000Hz. I'm using DVD2AVI, VFAPIconverter and Virtualdub. By the way, I have the 400Mhz Axim. I got 20fps by ripping the DVD with DVD2AVI set to "forced film" which makes the rip come out as 24fps. Then in Virtualdub, under "frame rate" I set the "inverse telecine" to "reconstruct from fields-adaptive" I was using Aviutil originally to set the frame rate to 60fps then decimating by 3 in virtual dub, but it was REALLY jerky and when encoding after using AVitutil, it's encredibly S L O W. This new method seems to make the picture quite a bit smoother and you are getting closer to 20fps rather than 15fps :)

fibrizo

2 questions. is there any point in using 24khz audio? I thought the axim only did 44,22,11,and 8... Is it downsampling but if it does do 24khz I would use it.

Is 19fps that much smoother than a well encoded 15fps film?

Also I like to strike a balance between filesize and quality... My total bitrate usually does not ever exceed 256kbits... acutally usually it's about 160...

MrSickle

I feel that the 20fps is a little smoother (still don't know why PocketMVP said I dropped some frames even though it reported that I played all of the frames) Of course, this could all be in my imagination. I am using Radium MP3 codec v1.263 for my audio encoding. It's supposed to produce better quality sound at lower bitrates than any other codec, and I would have to agree. Before that I was using 22khz and I think 32kb/s (I'm not sure which MP3 codec that was) and sound was ok. With the radium codec, I can get the 24Khz with the 24kb/s and it spares me some room to bump up the video bit rate a bit. To get 24Khz, in virutaldub, go to AUDIO settings then CONVERSION, select CUSTOM and input 24000 into the box and select the HIGH QUALITY box. But you have to make sure your codec can use 24000hz. I am encoding my Farscape DVD's and a 50 minute show will produce a 100MB file (give or take a few MB's) video @ 250Kb/s and audio @ 24Kb/s. The quality is excellent. BEcause I forced the video to film, it gets rid of a lot of the interlace artifacts that occur when compressing an interlaced source.
Another hint is if you use DVD2AVI, go to the audio section and select "Normalization" and normalize to either 99 or 100% It makes a big difference