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05 February 2009

Question about converting DVDs to AVIs... My boyfriend is currently converting most of his DVDs to AVIs so we can have a central media server and clear out some space in the house (no, it's not for redistribution or file sharing of any kind). →[More:]He is having some trouble with one of the DVDs and wants to know if anyone has the answer:

I am moving some of dvd's to avi format using AutoGK. I use AutoGK
cause I don't know enough about video encoding to use GK and I really
like the ease of use for AutoGK. All was going well until I got to my
first anime title (Cowboy Bebop) and then it gets weird. Ok, weird to
me. All the other things I have encode, so far, are 43 minute tv shows
and they get down to 350 to 450 MB per episode. I'm good with that.
But Cowboy Bebop at 24 minutes each is running 400 to 500 MB per
episode. Turning on "Force cartoon mode" makes the files even bigger,
by about 70 MB. To me this does not make sense. I would think that a 24
minute anime would take less space then a 43 minute live action show
using the same settings. Any ideas on why this happens and how to
overcome it with AutoGK?

post by: evilcupcakes at: 22:52 | 7 comments

OMG, the "more code" failed. So sorry about that!

posted by evilcupcakes 05 February | 22:57

Have you looked to see how the original file sizes stack up compared to the original sizes of other DVDs you've been transferring? The Cowboy Bebop DVDs may have been created with less compression, yielding therefore bigger file sizes.

posted by taz 06 February | 00:44

Taz
Ok, to compare some rl numbers one episode of Buffy is 1.7 GB (42 minutes so about 40MB a minute) before I convert it and one Bebop is 1.1 GB (24 minutes, about 45MB a minute) so yes, it seems a little bigger.

Is there some other stuff I can look at to give you a better idea about how each is compressed on the DVD or VOB file? Great question by the way :)

Bedtime now but I'll be back in the morning. Thanks much

posted by evilcupcakes 06 February | 02:09

*laughing* I'm totally not an expert, though I'd be very interested in seeing whatever technical information is provided.

This article talks about how difficult it is to encode animation, and I've seen other comments about compression for anime, so it apparently has special considerations.

I hope someone has more info, but you might check this forum (I've linked to the dvd-to-avi, etc section).

posted by taz 06 February | 04:34

btw, over here about the autogk cartoon option it says:

.cartoon as quoted by the creator of XviD, "enables some mechanism in the motion estimation which drops (instead of encoding them) more macro blocks. The result is a more stable, a little less detailed image. Exactly what you need for cartoons like Futurama or the Simpsons." In short, if you are encoding American style cartoons, use this, if you are encoding anything else (including Japanese anime such as Dragonball Z) do not use this option.

posted by taz 06 February | 04:58

It doesn't suprise me that the files encode bigger. I guess that most video encoding algorithms are optimised towards live action. Unfortunately, there's probably nothing you can do.

posted by seanyboy 06 February | 10:28

Thanks for the links Taz.

I'm gonna keep poking at it and maybe I'll give GK another shot but that may well put me back to sleep :)

If there are any other suggestions, I'm all ears.

posted by evilcupcakes 06 February | 10:59

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