From Gerhard Monzel AT sap.com
Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 09:36:34 +0100

While producing mpeg videos, you have to give special attention to the
desired image size of your output video (this is a big difference to
avi-encoding). Because mpegs, especially VCD and SVCD can be played in 
consumer players, there are some restrictions in "resizing" !
Usually image sizes for VCDs are 352x240 (NTSC) or 352x288 (PAL), for
SVCD 480x40 (NTSC) or 480x576 (PAL) -> some consumer players can play VCD
sized videos as SVCDs too and vice versa.

As a further difference to AVIs, the aspect ratio of the video is stored
in header of the mpeg-videos. Therefore most players (pc and consumer
players) will display the right image proportions no matter what X/Y dimensions
your video is encoded.

In your case of a 720x576 vob in 16:9 aspect ratio, you should use
480x576 as destination image format (PAL) and (force) apsect ratio to 16:9.

The resulting video will look like expected on PCs with e.g. mplayer,
which will honore the aspect ratio, but many consumer players have problems
switching to 16:9 format in VCD/SVCD mode -> in this case you need a resizer
capable of generating  black bars on top/bottom of your video.

This canīt be done with the trancode resizer, but with the internal mpeg-
module resizer (I mean -y mpeg not -y mpeg2enc). You can also mix the resizer
of transcode with the resizer of the mpeg-module too.
 
On base of this knoweledge you will concluse, that following options
should produce a "original" looking picture on a 4:3 aspect ratio:

"-B 5 -y mpeg -F s,3 ..."

"-B 5"   => 720x416 (formats image near to 16:9),

"-F s,3" => 480x576 (formats image to SVCD size with black bars on top
(80 pixels) and botton (80 pixels), so it will look well on 4:3 display.

Because of using only high speed resizing options, the transcoding
process will run in better speed than using zoom or other slow rescaling 
options. Unfortunately transcode itself canīt handle black bars for output 
video (in AVI world there is no need of this feature and transcode begans as
AVI transcoding tool). Of cause this described solution wonīt work
with other export modules e.g. "mpeg2enc" (it lacks of internal black bar
resizer).

There is no suggestion to calculate filesize for mpegs with variable bitrate
(usually used in SVCD mode), because filesize depends on kind of your
source video (luminances, motion etc.) and the quality value (quant_value)
you are using while encoding. Only the max. possible size is known by the
max. bitrate restriction for SVCD and the count of frames.  
to avoid problems with oversized mpeg-files (wonīt fit on CD), the mpeg-
encoder module can forced to split the encoded file in several parts.
The size per part in MB is given by the "max_file_size"-Parameter used in
conjunction with a user-profile 
(-> remember option -F s,3,<name of user-profile>, where this profile may 
look like:
max_file_size = 700 
...

The encoding speed in SVCD-mode varies in a wide range, because of the
big influence of bitrate control method: the encoder calculates the actual
bitrate for all frames of one GOP (group of pictures) and if the max. 
bitrate limit is exceeded, the whole GOP will be encoded again with a higher
quantizer value until bitrate fit into limit. Bitrate (for SVCDS) depends
mainly from "quant_value" (lower value / better quality -> higher
bitrate). In conclusion higher quality leads often to lower speed, so itīs
your decision what is more worth for you :-)
But there there are some tricks to reduce bitrate for mpeg-2 typed streams
without loosing much quality:
- use of parameter "qscale_type = 0" in your own user-profile (worth to try)
- use image size 352x288 instead 480x576, but with smaller "quant_value"
  (3-5) in your user-profile 
  (most consumer SVCD players have no problem to play such sized streams)
maximum effect results in combination of both hints.

To observe actual bitrate during encoding you should set transcode option 
"-q 2", so you can run short encoding turns to find out the best quant_value
settings.

To test the maximum encoding speed you should use option -F 1,3 
so Youīll see how much the SVCD bitrate control will drop speed.

Common problems:
----------------
Green artefacts may be caused from wrong resizing too, please try with
options of the above description.

Using "-V" option (needed to encode mpegs) will force import modules to
use internal YUV-format instead of RGB.

But there are several different YUV-Formats and for example some of it
has swapped chroma (UV-) components.

Weird color on encoded mpegs is not a bug, therefore you can use the "-k"
option to "reswap" the croma components.


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