VFR questions

Archive of historical development discussions
Discussions / Development has moved to GitHub
Forum rules
*******************************
Please be aware we are now using GitHub for issue tracking and feature requests.
- This section of the forum is now closed to new topics.

*******************************
Post Reply
VenturaBumm
Posts: 9
Joined: Mon Jan 21, 2008 7:26 pm

VFR questions

Post by VenturaBumm »

I have the new build and one disc i am always having trouble with is "Oh Brother Where Art Thou" it tends to skip at constant bit rate. Now when i turn on VFR that goes away.. However I have a question. Is VFR safe for a touch or ipod? Is this a safe setting for all my movies? Or should it only be set on the ones that i see issues with? Help lost and confused.
nightstrm
Veteran User
Posts: 1887
Joined: Fri Mar 23, 2007 5:43 am

Re: VFR questions

Post by nightstrm »

If you are using the latest SVN build, then yes, as far as I have been able to tell in testing, it is safe to use on all NTSC content. I have enabled it for all of my encodes, and have not had any issues with playback on any of my devices (Mac, AppleTV, iPhone).
jbrjake
Veteran User
Posts: 4805
Joined: Wed Dec 13, 2006 1:38 am

Re: VFR questions

Post by jbrjake »

It should work with everything, and in my testing VFR plays fine on an iPhone.

However, be aware that it's very new, and still experimental. No guarantees it will work with every DVD or play back on everything...it just hasn't been tested enough to make sure. HandBrake's method of VFR such a crazy way of doing things that if you go by established references like the MP4 FAQ, it's not even *possible*. My hope is that one day it will be the default way of handling frame rate in HandBrake, used on everything unless you tell it otherwise.

Which is to say....theoretically it's a safe setting for all your movies, but until it's been used by more people on more DVDs, I can't make any promises.
dynaflash
Veteran User
Posts: 3820
Joined: Thu Nov 02, 2006 8:19 pm

Re: VFR questions

Post by dynaflash »

jbrjake wrote:My hope is that one day it will be the default way of handling frame rate in HandBrake, used on everything unless you tell it otherwise.
Hehehe, it is here in my world, I just finished recreating all of my presets to use vfr. Period. Run it on everything and call it good. Thanks jbrjake :)
cvk_b
Veteran User
Posts: 527
Joined: Sun Mar 18, 2007 2:11 am

Re: VFR questions

Post by cvk_b »

VenturaBumm wrote:Help lost and confused.
Heh. Normally, asking for support (especially in the dev forum) for a new unreleased feature will get you in a heap of trouble.... but I think everyone has a soft spot for this one because it's so effin' cool.
Cavalicious
Moderator
Posts: 1804
Joined: Mon Mar 26, 2007 12:07 am

Re: VFR questions

Post by Cavalicious »

I was thinking the same...
jbrjake
Veteran User
Posts: 4805
Joined: Wed Dec 13, 2006 1:38 am

Re: VFR questions

Post by jbrjake »

Well, I felt guilty since I haven't updated the unlinked VFR wiki article since all the changes in the past few weeks ;>
Cyander
Experienced
Posts: 94
Joined: Tue Mar 20, 2007 9:19 pm

Re: VFR questions

Post by Cyander »

cvk_b wrote:Heh. Normally, asking for support (especially in the dev forum) for a new unreleased feature will get you in a heap of trouble.... but I think everyone has a soft spot for this one because it's so effin' cool.
Effin' cool? That is all? This is practically a freakin' god-send!

I like the idea of being able to make Japanese animated series available from my iTunes library. The catch is that soooo much of it is oddly telecined due to VFR. Parts being 30fps, and others being 24fps. DVD players have no problem detelecining this stuff for me, but I have yet to find a good Linux/Mac tool that can handle this sort of material.

Now that I see it is in 0.9.2, I am gonna hammer this build with a few test discs. Ranging from simple like Full Metal Panic, some odd like Vandread, and then the hell known as Evangelion (one of the most complicated VFR encodes known).
jbrjake
Veteran User
Posts: 4805
Joined: Wed Dec 13, 2006 1:38 am

Re: VFR questions

Post by jbrjake »

Cyander wrote:Effin' cool? That is all? This is practically a freakin' god-send!
=) I hope I didn't oversell it -- if you haven't tried it yet, you might be disappointed. There's a reason I'm working in comb detection for 0.9.3. It does work damned well most of the time, though.
I like the idea of being able to make Japanese animated series available from my iTunes library. The catch is that soooo much of it is oddly telecined due to VFR. Parts being 30fps, and others being 24fps. DVD players have no problem detelecining this stuff for me, but I have yet to find a good Linux/Mac tool that can handle this sort of material.

Now that I see it is in 0.9.2, I am gonna hammer this build with a few test discs. Ranging from simple like Full Metal Panic, some odd like Vandread, and then the hell known as Evangelion (one of the most complicated VFR encodes known).
I doubt it'll be able to handle NGE :( As far as I know, that *requires* using YATTA and manually setting different telecine patterns for different parts. Pullup, the filter all this hinges on, is very good, but it's not that perfect. With some comb detection passing the ivtc'd frames that still need it to the deinterlacer, we'll be able to get rid of more artifacts.

My test anime for this has been Fooly Cooly and Blue Seed -- I've also been using Futurama as an animation test. VFR works well on all of those. :)
Cyander
Experienced
Posts: 94
Joined: Tue Mar 20, 2007 9:19 pm

Re: VFR questions

Post by Cyander »

I have had a chance to try it, and at least in the case of Ghost in the Shell, produces something virtually identical to the DVD. Deinterlacing turned off and I am not getting artifacts. I have yet to try the other series like Vandread and Full Metal Panic though. FMP is a known problem child (30 fps open/close, 24 fps everywhere else), as is Vandread (30 fps CG, 24 fps everywhere else).

NGE (US Platinum release) actually comes through surprisingly well. There seem to be a couple dropped frames during a frame rate change, but that is it. It is still the best NGE encode I have been able to produce by a long shot. I played back a 29.97fps encode from 0.8.0, and a 0.9.2 VFR encode on my Apple TV, and it was literally night and day. 0.9.2 is watchable, and actually hard to find the errors just by eyeing them. I can't stand to watch a 0.8.0 encode of any anime, really.

So far though, I am actually quite pleased that it has actually made it feasible for me to start ripping some of my anime DVDs again. :)

Update: Yeah, there is still some combing being left behind in the FMP opening, and during the switches between animated and CG in Vandread. Mostly there though... running it through a fast deinterlacer seems to do the trick in at least hiding the combing during action sequences.
jbrjake
Veteran User
Posts: 4805
Joined: Wed Dec 13, 2006 1:38 am

Re: VFR questions

Post by jbrjake »

Nice to hear that it works with GitS -- Stand Alone Complex is what got me interested in detelecining, after I saw the hassle a friend of mine went through with AviSynth.

I'm impressed NGE is watchable =)

The switches between animated and CG might be helped by the strict breaks setting for detelecine (either turning it on with 1 or turning it...more off? with -1), and if using fast deinterlacing helps, then I'm very hopeful comb detection after detelecining will work well on FMP and Vandread.
Cyander
Experienced
Posts: 94
Joined: Tue Mar 20, 2007 9:19 pm

Re: VFR questions

Post by Cyander »

Well, the US release of SAC is problematic to begin with because the DVD encodes are messy to begin with. There is stutter and the like in 1st Gig that you will never get rid of because it is in the source you have to work with. The upshot is that I am not seeing any combing, and the stutter in the MP4 is the same as on the DVD.

NGE is watchable, and on top of that, the combing is pretty minimal. The filter is definitely getting confused, but turning anything else on just makes it worse. Motion is preserved correctly, which is the hardest thing about NGE.

Well, I tried fast deinterlacing, and it is cheating. It actually makes things less watchable, but gets rid of the combing. With VFR + Detelecine, you get really crisp & sharp lines. Nearly on par with the encodes you see from fansubbers. If you turn on fast deinterlacing as well, you lose those lines and they become pixelated again. :(

I do agree that good comb detection will help though. In the case of FMP, VFR gets confused in high motion scenes (the opening sequence is the best example in the series), and combs until things settle down again. Vandread likes using a lot of switches and high motion, and so while the high motion is actually not a problem at all for it, the switches will comb for a few frames depending on the situation.

Once the comb detection hits SVN, I'll take a look.
Post Reply