meguIV: The Official Akiba-Online DVD Encoder (v1.0.1.1)

[Vitreous]

Version: 2.0.36.0

I see - I've recently been noticing that MeguIV is slower than a fully updated meGUI + latest plugins and I think this is the reason. Manao has actively updating MaskTools v2 of late, and his recent work has been rewriting core functions in assembly. TGMC uses these functions a lot so it benefits greatly. The latest version (alpha 44) is stable and I've used it for a couple of rips. I think it's a good enough reason for a new version of MeguIV, but first have a look at the next post (which I want to keep separate for linking)

[Thx for the tip btw]

 

[Vitreous]

QuickTGMC 3.32 - A flexible high-quality deinterlacer

meguIVit is an addon to meguIV that includes this QuickTGMC script. It's the easiest way to install and use QuickTGMC. I'll keep this page up to date though.

QuickTGMC is a very high quality deinterlacing script for AviSynth. It is controlled by a presets system that allows the user to select a ripping speed to suit their source/hardware. There is extensive HTML documentation in the zip file, including basic usage, multithreading tips and a full description of all the settings.
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QuickTGMC 3.32
Plugin Package
Latest changes: Minor bug fixes

Installation
- Install an MT version of Avisynth (get SEt's 32-bit 2.6.0 version)
- Extract the QuickTGMC script into your Avisynth plugins folder. Overwrite or delete any previous version.
- If you don't already have the required plugins then follow the text instructions in the plugin package to copy them into the correct locations

<There used to be further instructions and examples here - all that information is now in the zip file>

 

[Rollyco]

I don't really understand why I didn't include a more recent version. I must have overlooked it. I shall do some testing of alpha 44 and release an updated version of meguIV if it works out.

 

[Vitreous]

I don't really understand why I didn't include a more recent version.

He only just started work again in April after two years of no development. I missed it until recently.

 

[anandneemish]

Thanks guys for making the tool even better.

 

[astrayred]

Vitreous: Do you have any information as to the change in file size with change in settings?

From my experience, slower settings in TGMC produce smaller file sizes, because of well, according to Didee lower bob shimmer.

Before re-stumbling onto this thread, in the past my settings for a good and fast and yet small rip is as follows:

SetMTMode(2,4)
DGdecode_mpeg2source("D:\Raws\CWP20.d2v")
tempgaussmc_beta1u(1,1,0,0,0,0,edimode="--",SVthin=0.0,pelsearch=1)

Distributor()

SetMTMode(5,4)
FFT3DGPU(mode=2,precision=2,plane=4, sigma=1, sigma2=2, sigma3=2.25, sigma4=1.5)
MT("LimitedSharpenFaster()",4)

I know that file size can be managed by encoding first to lossless and then 2-pass x264, but I'm worried about wear and tear on my hard disk from writing 60 Gb+ worth of data everyday. So I use CRF@23@Slower with aq-mode 2.

 

[loveIdols]

I'd like to share a tip I found:

Also, DSS2 seems to work better than DirectShowSource for me. I'm comforted by the fact that it's supposedly frame accurate. You can use DSS2 if you have Haali Media Splitter. Just dig around in its program folder for "avss.dll", and move this to your Avisynth plugins folder.

For me, DirectShowSource was crashing with VirtualDub and AviSynth+MT. DSS2 works fine and it seems a bit faster.

I know that it might not be too usefull for DVD material, but for deinterlacing and re-encoding WMV material it helps.

 

[Vitreous]

Vitreous: Do you have any information as to the change in file size with change in settings?

I focus on quality rather than size, but from what I know:

It's true that the slowest settings (e.g. 221 or 222) produce smaller files because the larger temporal smoothing radius denoises more (and removes more bob-shimmer). Although it also removes grain from the source, which I'm not so keen on.

Your settings are close to the fastest you can do with plain TGMC, although by setting edimode to "--" it means you're using bob as an interpolator - which means you inevitably get quite a few bob artefacts. However, that setting is giving you a great benefit in terms of filesize: bob is basically a kind of blur (unlike Yadif, NNEDI2 etc.), so you're temp gauss blurring an already blurred interpolate - which means a more blurred result - which means a smaller filesize. The only obvious improvement in filesize without slowing things down is to blur even more. You could lower the Sharpness setting (you're currently using the default 1.16 for your settings: 110 and SLMode=2). For the biggest effect you could even set SMode=0, i.e. no resharpening at all.

However, your other plugin calls (FFT3DGPU and LSF) suggest that you don't want a blurry result, so I don't know if blurring in TGMC more would be useful for you.

I do some post-processing that can reduce filesize (edge cleaning and dehaloing). Although it may have only a small effect given the level of blurring in your script, and it will slow it down.

 

[shadeofgray]

QuickTGMC is a script to completely replace TempGaussMC_beta2. It provides virtually all the same features, but adds some speed tweaks and a very convenient presets system that allows the user to select a ripping speed to suit their source/hardware. It produces equivalent rips faster than TempGaussMC. It has high-speed modes and tunings ideal for Blu-ray rips. It's fully commented, unlike TempGaussMC, allowing you to better understand the parameters and the workings of the TGMC algorithm

I think it would well suit MeguIV making it faster and more flexible. Providing some extra instructions on how to change Preset (or One-Click profiles) would allow good quality rips in decent time for almost everyone.

[...]

I did a quick test with meguIV. The result is excellent and the speed increase is more than noticeable. As you said, even Ultra Fast (it truly is ultra fast) looks really good. And with your ''preset system'' it's self-explanatory and easy to use.

Great job, thanks!

 

[isityours]

Hi. Me again.

There was a period when everything was working well. No mencoder problems as previously reported. I was able to transcode successfully with Rollyco's default settings and Vitreous' fast encode settings.

Life was good.

Just recently, on one transcode, the FPS processed number started dropping slowly, and the time remaining started to increase (instead of decreasing). What was strange was the CPU usage had dropped to approx 25% across all four CPUs instead of being pegged.......

.....The transcode would start normally. And soon all CPUS would be at near 100% usage. But a few hours later, the usage would all drop to about 25% and the remaining time to completion would steadily grow.

Has anyone else seen this before?

Thanks.

i saw this post the day after i had had exactly the same problem and decided that i would roll back recent updates i had done the day before. after some testing i found that .NET framework SP1 had messed up meguIV. im not sure whether uninstalling would help if you are having problems but recovery worked for me.

EDIT: sorry, i forgot the important stuff. (i wont bother posting again to answer)

i think it is this update. im using win 7 ult x64.

im not saying it was definitely the cause but now it is not installed, my first rip since rolling back worked perfectly.

 

[Rollyco]

Which SP1 is that, exactly, and what operating system?

 

[Vitreous]

I've updated my QuickTGMC script to version 2.1

Focus in this version has been the high quality settings, with nearly every last feature of the original TGMC now fully supported. Particular attention has been paid to the "Very Slow" and "Placebo" presets which are lovely now. I've added a new noise bypass feature, that allows you to keep the grain from the source - TGMC is implicitly a denoiser, which means that grain is inevitably lost, and the output can look artificial and 'photoshopped' especially on the high quality modes. NoiseBypass helps in this case, and also when you want to deliberately keep grain (like the sample rip I made for this video [junior idol material] - I wanted to keep a little more of the very light grain in the soft focus section)

None of this has affected the speed, which is still faster than original TGMC. If you're a regular and competent meguIV/meGUI user, I would advise you to consider switching to this script (and updating your masktools version - instructions for this are also in the QuickTGMC post) - you will get a significant speed boost.

 

[anandneemish]

Vitreous,
In the interest of speed I am experimenting with QuickTGMC 2.1. However, meguIV choked and I'm not sure why.

To play back what I did:

- I copied the text from your script into Notepad and named and saved the document as QuickTGMC.avsi.
- Following your instructions, file>open:c:\meguiv\ blah blah, and then copied and pasted this file into the plugin dir
- Closed and restarted meguIV.
- Did same for TDeint.dll. Closed and restarted meguIV.
- Also copied yadif.dll into my system32 dir.

Now I deviated from your directions and copied mt_masktools-25-x64.dll into my plugin dir because I have 64b version of Win7.

- Closed and restarted meguIV.

At this point, I checked and the added dlls are in the plugins dir.

- I then clicked on one-click to get the config windows. On the advanced config, I replaced all of Rollyco's config with one line:
QuickTGMC( Preset="Fast", Sharpness=0.4 )

-Then I pressed New and named this config QuickTGMC 2.1

I proceed to do an encode. Very quickly, I get a Windows error message that MeGUI.exe has stopped working.

Could you point out what I may have done wrong.

Thanks

 

[Rollyco]

You can't load a 64-bit plugin into 32-bit AviSynth. Use the 32-bit masktools DLL.

 

[Vitreous]

What Rollyco said, plus...

- I then clicked on one-click to get the config windows. On the advanced config, I replaced all of Rollyco's config with one line:
QuickTGMC( Preset="Fast", Sharpness=0.4 )

You should only replace the single line TempGaussMC_beta2(...) in the avisynth profile. You want to keep the remainder of the script.

Edit: ...and if you get crashes on "Very Fast" and above but not the slower modes, try adding "SafeMode=true" to the QuickTGMC line

 

[Rollyco]

This post is primarily for isityours, who keeps running into problems and releasing stuff without chapters.

How To Extract and Add Chapters to a Chapterless .MKV or .MP4

1. Download and install ChapterGrabber.
2. Run ChapterGrabber, select File > Open Disc, and select the parent DVD folder (containing VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS).
3. On the Select Stream window that pops up, select the titleset you wish to extract chapters from.
4. Select Edit > Current FPS > 30.000
5. Select Edit > Convert Chapter Times by FPS > To 29.970
6. Select File > Save As to save your chapter text file.

Now, you have to remultiplex your .MP4 or .MKV or .AVI with the chapter .txt file into a new .MKV.

1. Drag your chapter-less .MP4 or .MKV or .AVI into the Input files field of MKVMerge.
2. Switch to the Global tab, and in the Chapter file field, browse to your chapter .txt file.
3. Click the Start muxing button to create your new .MKV.

I was unable to find a working solution for outputting an MP4 with chapters. YAMB ignored my chapter file (your mileage may vary). MP4Creator's interface is time-consuming and in any case only accepts ".chap" files.

 

[anandneemish]

Thanks guys.

 

[Vitreous]

I was unable to find a working solution for outputting an MP4 with chapters. YAMB ignored my chapter file (your mileage may vary). MP4Creator's interface is time-consuming and in any case only accepts ".chap" files.

meGUI's MP4 muxer works fine with chapters (Tools>>Muxer>>MP4 Muxer). I tested it with ChapterGrabber output (just used a .txt file) and MeguIV - no problems. It uses mp4box, which is pretty solid. The MKV muxer in there is fine for adding chapters too, as it uses mkvmerge.

Edit: Rollyco: So is that 30fps >> 29.97fps tweak a problem with the DVD authoring? And is that what you had to mod in MeguIV?

Thanks guys.

So did you have success with QuickTGMC?

 

[Rollyco]

So is that 30fps >> 29.97fps tweak a problem with the DVD authoring? And is that what you had to mod in MeguIV?

It's related to the drop-frame DVD timecodes; without correcting, you get progressive timestamp drift. That's one of the things I tweaked in meguIV, yes.

Nice catch with the MeGUI MP4 muxer, I forgot that was available. It turns out YAMB also works fine, but the MP4 splitter I was using (MPC-HC internal) doesn't support chapters in MP4

 

[anandneemish]

So did you have success with QuickTGMC?

Unfortunately not yet. Still going through the paces and referring back to your install directions. Thanks for updating that, by the way.

Really looking forward to faster rips. I really like the quality that comes out of megui, and I love how Rollyco has bundled everything to almost the simplicity of AutoGK. But slowness (even with your faster settings) is still a minor irritant for me. (Don't get me wrong, I do fully appreciate that a heck of a lot of computation is going on to get the quality into the small file sizes).

BTW, an observation on my earlier problem with system stability/mencoder problems. I have found that if I have a transcode in progress, and I use Windows Explorer to move a big file (for some stupid reason, this simple task uses a large memory footprint), there is a high chance that mencoder will crash. Running two P2P programs seems to have no effect on mencoder even though those two programs are very disk intensive.

I guess when all four cores are banging away at memory, mencoder does NOT like to context switch to do something stoopid like moving files.