HIDDEN OPTIONS:


There are quite a few hidden options in AutoGK these days that can be accessed via CTRL-F9 shortcut. Some of the options only work with XviD 1.0+ versions (i.e. included with AutoGK 1.25+). Most of the options are per-input settings, i.e. you can set up different settings for different movies. However there are a few that are global, so that they affect all encodings done by AutoGK. Note that you have to put you input files into separate directories if they require different hidden options as AutoGK can only set hidden options for a particular directory, not file.

Lets go through all the options one by one:

- If you're a classic film fan, then Mono MP3 Audio is very useful. The original audio for old films was mono, but often DVDs of old films will come with a dual mono AC3, and when converted to MP3, it'll retain the two channels. By converting the audio to one channel mono you can free up lots of space (sometimes 50 MB or more) to help improve the quality of the video. Even if the AC3 is single channel, if you convert it to MP3, the default will be two channels of audio, and, again, you'll want to choose the Mono MP3 option. If you do go for Mono audio (NOT recommended when the movie was originally 2 or more channels), then AutoGK takes the bitrate from Advanced Settings and divides it by 2 to produce output mono bitrate.

- XviD's Cartoon Mode, in the words of XviD developer and compiler Koepi, "enables some mechanism in the motion estimation which drops (instead of encoding them) more macro blocks. The result is a more stable, a little less detailed image. Exactly what you need for cartoons like Futurama or the Simpsons." That is to say, it can improve the quality of American style cartoons. I don't think that I'd recommend it for the more detailed Japanese anime. (ONLY XVID)

- "Force Normal IVTC" is something you'd better understand before using. Beginners can ignore it. Sometimes (rarely) AutoGK's Analysis step flubs on diagnosing the video content (and resulting AVI may be jerky or shutters a lot), and you might get better results overriding the decision that it's a hybrid, and go for a normal IVTC instead. Same goes for "Force Deinterlace" option (which can be a second choice when dealing with hybrid material)

- end "Credits" is one the most useful of the bunch. If you can cut the size of the end credits, you can use those freed-up bits to improve the quality of the movie itself. So, you check the box and fill in the time the credits start (inside the Frame Calc. box) or fill in the frame number at which they start, and set the quality percentage. This is most useful when you have fixed or scrolling white on black end credits (in which case you also check the Greyscale mode box). One way to find the frame number at which they start is to run the Preview. Then after AutoGK has created a .d2v file, open that in Gordian Knot and scroll the picture to where the end credits start, and then type that frame number into the box. A 20% figure will allow you to read the end credits, but they will be kind of messed up, with trailing milky white stuff coming from the white-on-black scrolling credits. If that doesn't bother you, then 20% is a good percentage. If you want the size reduced, but without much quality degradation, then you might select 40 or 50%. If the credits are the kind with video (like the bloopers at the end of Jackie Chan's movies), or even the kind with some pictures as the credits roll, then you may not wish to use End Credits Compression at all. But with movies with long credits, it's not uncommon to save 40 or 50 MB by using the compression feature. That will allow considerable improvement (including a higher resolution) to the movie.To calculate starting frame of the credits fill in the time that the end credits start, choose source frame rate (for PAL DVDs its 25fps, for NTSC its 29.97fps ), hit 'Calc', and the correct frame number for the credits start will be filled in. One way to get that time is to play the DVD in your computer, and skip to the chapter where the end credits start. (ONLY XVID)

- Sometimes auto crop used with default parameters by AutoGK cannot totally remove black bars or removes too much of a movie material. In this case "Tune auto crop parameters" is very handy. Threshold defines how sensitive auto crop will be: the higher the value the more cropping will be done. To completely disable audio crop you can set threshold to 0. "Number of frames to examine" is useful parameter to change if movie is a mixture of full screen/wide screen shots, so by selecting different frames that auto crop examines you can improve cropping process. "Starting frame" can help auto crop in situation when you have a full screen logo as a part of widescreen movie, in which case autocrop might decide that the whole source is full screen. By selecting a different starting frames you force auto crop not to examine irrelevant starting movie sequence. "Force cropping" option allows you to crop additional pixels after autocrop operation (if you find that you need to always crop several more pixels you can use this option). If you disable autocrop with threshold 0 then "force cropping" option becomes fully manual crop. Remember always to check how movie looks like after you set new auto crop parameters using Preview function of AutoGK.

- "Aspect ratio" is an option to override AR setting that comes out of DGIndex (indexing tool for MPEG2 files used by AutoGK). If source is misdetected as 4:3 or 16:9 then you have a choice of manually setting correct AR.

- "Reduce FPS" option is only useful for HDTV 50/60fps sources. By default AutoGK tries to restore 24fps FILM material from 60fps sources and if that is impossible then it leaves fps at 60 (50 fps sources are always left at that fps at the moment). So user can explicitly try and set lower fps. (Note: if you have a pure progressive material you may end up with shuttering video in the end when reducing fps. Use it only if you know what you're doing)

- "Force Sharp Matrix" option ensures that AutoGK will not use soft matrix no matter what. Its most useful when doing 700Mb or less encodes when ordinarily AutoGK won't use sharp matrix at all (ONLY XVID)

- KernelDeInt filter is a filter performing deinterlacing in AutoGK. Its threshold parameter allows you to control sensitivity of the filter in detection of motion areas (as static areas are ignored by the filter). This is very advanced settings and it should be used only when you get a lot of artifacts when encoding interlaced material . Please refer to the documentation of the filter for further information.

- ITU-R BT.601 Standard is an official resizing method for DVDs in hardware, however most software DVD players (like PowerDVD or WinDVD) do no use it which results in height that is ~2.5% stretched. Different sources (even DVDs) can be mastered with or without ITU standard which means that there is no universal setting that will work in all cases. Check out the forum and its discussions on the subject. Simple user guide for this option is: if you feel like your encodes come out a little bit stretched vertically then turn this option on, otherwise leave it off.

- "Display VCF scripts" option is a debug-only option and for clarity of the logs it should be switched off most of the time.

- "Adjust Subs" option is very useful option and should be turned on most of the time if you're burning subtitles into resulting AVI. It places subs at original position found on DVD instead of squashed them vertically and moving a bit up (I'm sure everyone is familiar with these problems). The only drawback is that if original subs were in the upper part of the frame (during for instance opening credits) then they will probably be lost (and that is the reason this option is not enabled by default). Another problematic sources can be 2.35 AR sources where subs appear in the black bar below main video - in this case they will be cut off by this setting as well. In all other cases subs from lower part of the video frame should be displayed properly when using this option.

- "Color correction" option allows you to slightly change color gamut closer to what the source actually contains (gamut often is changed automatically when doing MPEG2 -> MPEG4 conversion because of the tool involved, i.e. avisynth). You may notice that sometimes your XviD/DivX encodes are looking rather dark comparing to the original input source. In those cases usage of this option will help making it a little bit lighter. Not every MPEG2 input source require this correction and this option doesn't force it but rather switches ON the check if color correction is needed and applied. If color correction is needed then the encoding process can be 10-20% slower than one without it.

- "Detect 4:3 Aspect ratio and force it" option checks if AR is between 1.25 and 1.4 and if yes then crops video appropriately to get perfect 4:3 ratio (so that you won't get black bars when watching on 4:3 TV).

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