Im pretty much a newb to the encoding world. Ive chosen Mainconcept as my AVI to DVD program of choice but the Advanced Video Settings are over my head a bit, was wondering if someone could quickly explain or recommend what to do with them. Particularly motion search pixel movement (off, on? If on what value?). Thanks for any help..
It's very difficult to find guides for MainConcept but here are my settings and I'm extremely pleased with the encoding quality. Noise Sensetivity - 1, Noise Reduction - 30 (click NR or NS to switch), Motion Search Mode - 11 (changes Search Method to 11 on Detailed Settings page), enable User quant matrices, and enabling Input video is RGB16-235 solved a color issue I had, Motion Search Pixel Movement both to 12 ( read that these are excellent quality settings) and opening Picture Coding Extension > Intra-DC Precision and setting to 0 (8) for bitrate to 5000 kbps, 9 (1) for bitrate to 6000 kbps and to 10 (2) for 6000+ bitrate. Returning to the Detailed Settings page, you can now set Search Range to 31. The manual is not very clear, but after much experimentation, these are the ones I've settled on.
Awesome stuff mistycat, thanks for sharing your knowledge. You're right mainconcept guides are few and far between.
Another excellent quality setting is found on the Video Setting page. I set maximum bitrate to 9000, average to 0 and click on minimum. This opens the Constant Quantization window which I set to 5(lower values give larger file size but I don't see too much difference). Then, you may set avg and min, as you wish, which locks the CQ window at the value you set. I just found this after using MC for a long time, so you may not know of it. Also, I didn't mention this but enable 1/2 pel search on the Advanced Video Settings page (I think it already is by default). Good luck