The Official MST3K Digital Archive Project Encoding Method: by Stanfinger I.Tools: The encoding of Mystery Science Theater Episodes requires a few different tools. 1. MST Episodes on tape 2. VCR 3.Video Capture Card 4.Virtualdub, AVI_IO – Video Capture Software 5.MJPEG codec/HuffyYUV codec 6.MPEG4 codec (MS or DivX ;-)) 7.10-15 gigs per episode (before. they will drop to ~700 megs) 8. relatively fast CPU MST Episodes on tape: When I set out to encode my episodes, I had a number of episodes from season 8 (the sci-fi years) recording in the worst quality recording mode and a few in the better one. I had 4-5 per tape for the bad ones and 1 per tape for the good ones. Sadly, I got into the MST world a little too late, so I only had season 8+. A good rule of thumb is to have tapes that don't have bad audio (fuzzy, poppy, noisy, dropout) or video (coloration, dropout, bars, static) and can be considered worthwhile for a VCR viewing on a good TV. Anything that is bordering on barely watchable should only be ripped if no one else has it. Bad rips can always be replaced by better rips, so if you have a better quality source than others do, don't hesitate to rip it! VCR: Good VCR's = better signal. If you can get S-Video out on your VCR, that's wonderful. Stereo is best too. 4 head over 2 head. Buy a 2 RCA ---> stereo minplug cable from Radio Shack (part # 42-2481) and plug that from your audio outs to your sound card's line in. This way, if you have a cheap capture card with mono audio, you'll skip that and get stereo. Video Capture Card: Hauppage makes the best cards for price/performance. http://www.hauppage.com has the WinTV line of Video Capture hardware. These cards are based on the Brooktree chipset, normally bt848 or bt878. The cheap ones have mono audio, but the fix described above solves that. ATI makes a few solutions, the All in Wonder which is a TV card and video card in one and the TV Wonder. The first one is not recommended for if you wish to upgrade your video card, there goes your capture card. Pinnacle offers higher priced solutions. If you want low prices, hit Ebay, but the WinTV cards are around 50-60 dollars to begin with. Video Capture Software: Virtualdub (http://www.virtualdub.org) and AVI_IO (http://www.nct.ch/multimedia/avi_io/) are two programs that can be used to capture the episodes. Virtualdub is an unbelievable useful, albeit complex, program for video capture and linear editing. It is free. AVI_IO is 25 dollars, but is extremely versatile and can schedule recordings. VirtualDub is a must and AVI_IO is a good idea for a serious encoder. MJPEG codec/HuffyYUV codec: Uncompressed video is laaaarge so a compression codec is pretty much required. HuffyYUV is a high-quality, lossless codec that compresses to about 2.0:1. The data stream is still pretty heavy, so without a fast hard drive or possibly a RAID, the rate may be too much. MJPEG codecs can compress a little further. The PICVIDEO codec, an MJPEG codec, is free from http://www.jpg.com. Registration is required, but it is free. MPEG4 codecs: DivX and MSMPEG4 are two MPEG4 codecs. Microsoft created their version of the MPEG4 codec and DivX is the hack of Microsoft's codec. DivX has gained massive support in the pirate community, yet is unsupported and, due to the fact that it is simply a hacked derivation of Microsoft's codec, is mildly illegal. Still, it is readily available at http://divx.ctw.cc and is widely used. This guide, however, recommends the legal Microsoft codec. In a side by side comparison (, the MS codec has been proven to be better quality and is likely to be supported for a longer time down the road than a hack. Still, both are available, and both can be used. Hard drive (space and speed): A good 10-15 gigs per episode is a good idea. A good hard drive, preferably 7200 rpm or SCSI and seperate from your system drive is a good idea. Lower quality can fit on smaller spaces, but it's not recommended for a rip that may be used by hundreds of people worldwide. Fast CPU: I know a lot of people who can make decent captures on a PII-450 or so, but I'd say that's a decent low end. In an era of cheap Durons, processors can be updated. Capture can stress the processor a little, but mainly the post-production will be the trouble. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- II: The Process: Capture 1: To prepare, make sure you have a good amount of hard drive space. It is a good idea to make sure that your drive is relatively unfragmented and also to make sure it is relatively empty, as when you reach the end of a drive, the speed can drop and frames as well. Make sure your codecs are installed and everything is running smoothly. Make sure you don't have too much stuff running in the background, dropped frames can suck. 2: Fire up your capture program. Now, for this guide, I will be describing the use of Virtualdub. It's free, I have it, I don't have AVI_IO and I have a feeling people will opt for Virtualdub for it's freeness. Click File>>Capture AVI. There are a few things you should set up before you capture. Try playing the video. Chances are you will get a TV picture, but if you get the video's picture, you're golden. Type "S" or mouse to Video>>Source. If you have the signal via Composite (yellow RCA in) S-Video, or Coax, select accordingly. You should now get a picture when you play the tape. Click File>>Set Capture File and set where to save the file. 3: Under Audio>>Compression, select either PCM or Microsoft ADPCM. If you are planning on using DivX, you will probably be using the Radium MP3 codec that is included with DivX and should use Microsoft ADPCM. It is very good quality and compressed quite a bit from PCM. PCM should be used if you are planning on using LAME to create the mp3 audio and/or have no Radium MP3 codec. The "Attributes" should read 44.1 stereo. Do NOT compress directly to mp3, it is a waste of CPU overhead. Select Audio>>Volume Meter and adjust the levels. I always have a hard time getting this right, so do a few test captures. 4: Go to Video>>Format. Select YUY2, 640x480. If your CPU is underpowered, select 320x240, but this will degrade quality SEVERELY. Video>>Compression and select the Picvideo MJPEG codec from the list. Click configure and click Advanced. Incidentally, it is in this dialog box where you will register the codec as well. Selecting a quality, on the top slider, of 18 will give adequate results. You can go as high as 20 or closer by individually adjusting the Luminance and Chrominance qualities to points in between the 18, 19, and 20 points. Subsampling should be set to 1/1/1. Click OK. 5: Capture>>Settings, and select capture audio. I like to choose wait for OK to capture, as it provides me an easy way to begin my capture. Frame rate should be 29.97 fps for NTSC (North America) video. Capture>>Preferences, save the settings. Capture>>Stop Conditions will allow you to stop the video at a point. This is useful if you need to go elsewhere during the capture. Select Capture>>Hide On Capture to save on CPU usage. Line up the video and start recording via Capture>>Capture Video. 6: Watch the side of the capture window. You will get an idea of where you are in the tape, where you are in hard drive space, and how many dropped frames you've had. 1 every couple of thousand (1/6000 or so) is unnoticable, I find. Stop it when you think it's done by using the escape key. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- III: The Process: Post-Production Awright, here goes. This is gonna be a little more quick and dirty, because I am totally burned out from this writing class, so I might not go as deep into this as the other part did, but I will definitely give you a guide that can be used to give us a good episode. All right, you've got a massive file on your hard drive. These are the things you need. 1) Massive MJPEG file. 2) MSMPEG4 codecs, included in the Windows Media Tools that you can download from Microsoft. 3) Filters from http://www.virtualdub.org: Dynamic Noise Reducer, Logo (others are built in). 4) Might as well grab the DivX codecs too. 5) 8-10 hours to encode, maybe more depending on machine speed. Ok, so you have this stuff. Open Virtualdub and open your file. Chances are your file has commercials and some other garbage stuck to it. This is not a problem. Go to Video>Filters. Select the following. a) Dynamic Noise Reduction: 16 b) Deinterlace - Blend c) Smoother - 50 d) Sharpen - 10 Apply levels to get true blacks and whites. How do you do this? Add the levels filter and hit configure. Hit show preview and pick a frame that is pretty much how the movie will look, and sample the frame. You'll see a pretty little histogram at the top. Now, chances are there will be nothing to the left, then it will rise. THIS is where the little black tab on the first gradient should be positioned. Place it directly below the start of the rise. Basically, what this is doing is telling Virtualdub that no video signal is being used below that level, and that that level is where the darkest black should begin. You'll see the same for white, but the approach I take is that there's a huge spike normally. I see this spike as the whitish haze over pretty much every shitty VHS recording. I drop to just BELOW that spike, figuring that it will straighten colors out pretty well. It works for me. Dammit, forgot the logo filter. Get one of the pretty little logos for the MST-DAP, or make your own. It should be about 50x50 pixels and have MST Digital Archive Project or DAP on it. Using the logo filter, select where you want it to start (frame) the name of the bitmap file, then opacity should be about 128, the fade in and out frames, figure a few seconds to fade in and a few out, the geometry, put it wherever it's unobtrusive, and that's it. Now, make sure Full-Processing mode is selected under video and select compression. The compression should be MSMPEG4v2. If you don't see them, I'll toss some up on my ftp://santa:martians@169.226.236.104 and you can grab them. Select that codec and hit configure. Bitrate should be set to 878, keyframes to 5 seconds -- I guess -- and crispness/softness to 80. Ok out of there, and now you have a choice to make. You can strip the audio out, send it through the LAME encoder (regarded as the best quality MP3 encoder) but you will have to do a lot of extra work and will also have to encode EVERYTHING in your capture (commercials, etc.) or you can use the Radium codec included in the DivX codec. Might as well use the Radium codec, it'll be fine. I will explain the LAME way in a later post. Under audio, select compression and choose MP3. Hit show all formats and select 44.1 128 kbps mp3. That's our standard. Ok out of there. Make sure audio is set for full processing. Now, how do you deal with the commercials you ask? Simple. Under video settings, there's an option called "select range." Find the frame that you wish to start your recording. This may be frame 1000, or frame 1, or frame 60. It doesn't matter. Write that frame down and scan through to the first commercial break. Now, under select range, put the second number in the length, then the first number in start offset. It's important to do it this way so it does the subtraction for you. Hell, I'm lazy. Hit ok and go to save AVI. Tell it to defer processing, then name it a1 or 1 or part1, something like that. Repeat this step, finding where you want the encoding to begin again and where you want it to end, putting the frames in, and saving as a2-3-4-5, or 2-3-4-5, or part2-3-4-5, so that Virtualdub will be able to recognize the parts as a whole. After all of the episode is chopped up and set up as jobs, hit F4 to bring up job control. You'll see all your jobs waiting for encoding. Hit start processing and they'll start. Now, they will take a certain amount of time each, but the beauty of this encoding method is that if you want to play Counterstrike or reboot your machine, you can stop it in between parts and you won't really lose that much time. Get it? When they are done, open the first file, hit append video segment, auto append (or whatever that option is) and select the second segment. It will build it all together, just select direct stream copy for video and audio and save it. Voila, finished episode.