Introduction

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• this is NOT a tutorial but a collection of favourite settings (flags / options) used when encoding (compressing) a video file.
• to find out more about the use of a piece of software and its options check man pages or respective web-sites:
www.heroinewarrior.com - Cinelerra's official page
cvs.cinelerra.org - Cinelerra community
www.transcoding.org - transcode
www.linux-tutorial.info - mpeg2enc

Rendering average quality mpeg2 files with Cinelerra

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• use approximately 2100Kbps video bitrate if film_26min.mpg has to fit on a cdr, possibly less if planning a mini-DVD (i.e. a dvd structure burnt onto a cdr for playback in a standalone dvd player)
• file format: yuv4mpeg stream
• use pipe:

yuvcorrect -T INTERLACED_BOTTOM_FIRST | \
y4munsharp -L 2.0,0.3,0 | \
yuvmedianfilter -r 6 -R 4 -T 0 -t 0 | \
mpeg2enc -v 0 -4 1 -2 1 -N 1.5 -g 15 -G 18 -r 32 -D 10 \
-b 1500 -H -E 8 -R 2 -f 8 -o %

• on contrast-less footage you may need instead:

y4munsharp -L 5.0,0.5,0

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Rendering high quality mpeg2 files with Cinelerra

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• file format: yuv4mpeg stream
• use pipe:

yuvcorrect -T INTERLACED_BOTTOM_FIRST | \
y4munsharp -L 2.0,0.3,0 | \
yuvmedianfilter -r 6 -R 4 -T 0 -t 0 | \
mpeg2enc -v 0 -4 1 -2 1 -N 1 -g 15 -G 22 -r 32 -D 10 \
-b 9200 -H -E 4 -R 2 -f 8 -o %

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Favourite mpeg2enc settings in a nutshell

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• from average to optimum quality where [#/#] means range

-g 6 -G 18 -N 1.5 -E 8 -D 9 -b 1500
-g [9/12] -G [18/20] -N 1.5 -E 8 -b 7500 
-g 15 -G [21/23] -N 1 -E 4 -b 9200

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Multiplex video & audio together - mplex

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• files rendered by Cinelerra:

film.m2v film.mpa

• using mplex

mplex -f 8 -V -h -o film.mpg film.m2v film.mpa

• check terminal output for the following

(...)
INFO: [mplex] MUX STATUS: no under-runs detected.
(...)

• run mplayer from a terminal & check mpg2 compliance

mplayer film.mpg

(...)
MPEG-PS file format detected.
VIDEO:  MPEG2  720x576  (aspect 2)  25.000 fps  9200.0 kbps (1150.0 kbyte/s)
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [mp3lib] MPEG layer-2, layer-3
AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 256.0 kbit/16.67% (ratio: 32000->192000)
Selected audio codec: [mp3] afm: mp3lib (mp3lib MPEG layer-2, layer-3)
(...)

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