Blend&Paint DVD : preview and video test

Last week, my future DVD Blend & Paint ( page on the Blender e-shop ) has received a correction of English at the Blender Institute. Big thanks to Tony Mullen for taking the time to watch all the DVD and corrected my mistakes here and there. While correcting I did all the DVD menu , here are screenshots of the main menu.

So, with final and corrected files , last nights my computer did the rendering of all the finals videos of Blend&Paint. A job list made ​​of over 3:30 of tutorial HD video (not including the extra 1hour of uncommented Bonus ) had to be computed by Kdenlive . A good opportunity to involve my core i7 multi-core processors into the fest :D

When the rendering finished ( as lossless mp4 , read this post for knowing the config ) I recompressed videos. I tested 3 output file format, here are my script for batch rendering : To convert them , I used this script ( execute them inside the folder containing your *.mp4 files ) :

## Webm, 2 pass ; ffmpeg (git ) - *.webm files 
#!/bin/bash   
for mpegmovie in *.mp4 ; do  
frameoutput=${mpegmovie/.mp4/.webm}   
echo ==============================================  
echo ==== Processing $mpegmovie ====  
echo ==============================================  
ffmpeg -i $mpegmovie -threads 0 -vcodec libvpx -b 1500000 -rc_lookahead 16 -keyint_min 0 -g 360 -skip_threshold 0 -level 116 -qmin 1 -qmax 51 -minrate 0 -maxrate 9000000 -an -pass 1 -passlogfile pass1.fpf pass1.webm   
ffmpeg -i $mpegmovie -threads 0 -vcodec libvpx -b 1500000 -rc_lookahead 16 -keyint_min 0 -g 360 -skip_threshold 0 -level 116 -qmin 1 -qmax 51 -minrate 0 -maxrate 9000000 -acodec libvorbis -ab 192k -ar 44100 -ac 2 -pass 2 -passlogfile pass1.fpf "$frameoutput"  
echo -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
echo the movie clip $mpegmovie was well converted to WEBM  
echo -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
done  
echo Job list finished  

## Xvid, single pass ; mencoder - *.avi files
#!/bin/bash   
for mpegmovie in *.mp4 ; do   
frameoutput=${mpegmovie/.mp4/.avi}   
echo ==============================================   
echo ==== Processing $mpegmovie ====   
echo ==============================================   
mencoder $mpegmovie -oac mp3lame -lameopts aq=0:cbr:br=256 -ovc xvid -xvidencopts fixed_quant=2 -ofps 30 -o $frameoutput   
echo -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   
echo the movie clip $mpegmovie was well exported to $frameoutput   
echo -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   
done   
echo Job list finished  

Lossy Mp4, single pass ; ffmpg (git) - *.mp4 files

In this one I create an output 'out' folder because my source and output has the same name and extension

#!/bin/bash   
mkdir out  
for mpegmovie in *.mp4 ; do  
frameoutput=${mpegmovie/.mp4/.mp4}   
echo ==============================================  
echo ==== Processing $mpegmovie ====  
echo ==============================================  
ffmpeg -i $mpegmovie -acodec libfaac -ab 96k -vcodec libx264 -vpre slow -crf 22 -threads 0 out/$frameoutput  
echo -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
echo the movie clip $mpegmovie was well converted to WEBM  
echo -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
done  
echo Job list finished  

the choice of codec

In Chaos&Evolutions DVD I selected the OGV Vorbis/Theora video, but not this time because having really bad result with ffmpg2theora, ffmpeg and Gstreamer to try to convert to a proper OGV video ( laggy, frame missing, intro sound out of sync ...etc... ). For the final Blend&Paint DVD I finally took the Mp4 codec ( libX264 ) after my test above . Mp4 seams to be actually the easier codec for being read threw an Html menu ( thumbnails direct links to the video ) .
I tested here with Google Chrome, Firefox 4 and Internet Explorer 9 and various video player : Totem , VLC ( various version ), Windows Media Player, etc... . In most of case this codec is read 'out of the box' wihtout having to install a third-part plugin. I also tested on a slow computer, and the video reading was smooth ( even jumping on timeline ; webm and ogv had laggy problem with this even on my main computer ). The last convincing argument to use it was about the size :

original Mp4*	Webm	Xvid	Mp4
14,8Go	3.1Go	2.8Go	820Mo

(*) lossless output of Kdenlive

Now, this next days the DVD will get tested at the Blender Institute by Pablo Vasquez ( http://venomgfx.com.ar/ ) and Ton Roosendaal ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ton_Roosendaal ) at the Blender Institute.

Oh, and last news : the pre-order of 15% discount is still available today ( before April 15 )

Blend&Paint product page on the Blender e-shop