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Sunday, July 25, 2010

Encoding cartoons in AVCHD

2010.7.25 1.38
How far can we compress a 21 min cartoon in 720p HD and keep a good quality.
Would you believe me that you can reach a file size from 75 MB and it still looks acceptable?

If you do not understand the RF:xx, read Shrink your video files first.

 RF:20, High Profile, 23.5 Mb first minute
Video: 3043 Kbps Audio: Dolby Pro Logic II 160 Kbps
this high encoding results in a ca 500+ MB large file




RF:20, High Profile



RF:20, High Profile




RF:25, normal, 12.7 MB first minute
Video: 1605 Kbps Audio: Dolby Pro Logic II 160 Kbps
this encoding results in a 190 MB file


RF:25, normal
RF:25, normal

---

RF:28, normal, 9 MB first minute
Video: 1107 Kbps Audio: Dolby Pro Logic II 128 Kbps

  RF:28, normal
  RF:28, normal


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RF:28, High Profile, B frames:16,  8.6 MB first minute
Video: 1141 Kbps Audio: Dolby Pro Logic II 128 Kbps
this encoding results in a 130 MB file




RF:28, High Profile, B frames:16

RF:28, High Profile, B frames:16



---

RF:30, High Profile, 7 Mb first minute
Video: 831 Kbps - Audio: Dolby Pro Logic II 128 Kbps

RF:30, High Profile

RF:30, High Profile
----

RF:33, High Profile, B frames:16, 4.9 MB first minute
Video: 601 Kbps - Audio: Dolby Pro Logic II 64 Kbps
this encoding results in a 75.3 MB file and the viedo is still looking good but the audio I rather have in 128 Kbps what would result in a 85 MB file

RF:33, High Profile, B frames:16

RF:33, High Profile, B frames:16

If you don´t mind the not so good encoding in the light rays of the first few seconds (first screen captures), you can have an otherwise good quality at around 100 to 130 Mb for the whole 21 min episode and we are talking 720p HD with good quality sound.
That so beats encoding in AVI and SD quality with 175 Mb file sizes as we did in the olden days were we tried to get 4 episodes on one CD.
Hurray


BUT WHAT IF we look through the whole show and look very hard for flaws?
Then we find some things why the higher compression is maybe not what we want.
In an extreme situation when the scene changes fast or there is also a lot of fast bright / dark changes then things get kind of ugly.

RF:25



RF:28




RF:33




Since these changes are very fast from light to dark and back, the dark parts get neglected much more than the bright parts which are in much better shape. You have seen the worst parts above and normally your eye might not notice them but in fast moving scenes there are very short small areas of visible compression artifacts.

So for my personal taste right now I will stay in the RF:25 area (where I do my normal encoding and digital camera video re-encodings) and experiment a bit more with some settings to see what more can be optimized.

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