STEP 3: Encoding the Video

This part of the whole process is the most time-consuming of all. Depending on the settings used, encoding will take several hours to complete. So let’s get on with it.

Here’s MeGUI and the profile for video encoding:

• MeGUI and the MeGUI profile for E90

Extract profile to MeGUI’s root directory and fire up the program. MeGUI uses AviSynth for video encoding, so we need to make an AviSynth script in order to use MeGUI correctly. Press Ctrl+R to open AviSynth script creator, and open your source video to it.

MeGUI has very advanced function which is able to analyse your video and determine if the video content is progressive, interlaced or hybrid. Usually AVI videos are progressive, but there are few interlaced videos around. Navigate to Filters tab and click the Analyse… button. It will take few minutes to complete. However, if you know the frame type for sure, you can choose the appropriate one from the dropdown list.

Some denoising is also good for the compression, since it improves compressibility thus yielding better visual quality. Using Minimal Noise setting is safe to use on every video, because the effect of the filter is hardly noticeable (see the comparison above).

Now, let’s move on to the trickiest part: the resizing and adding the borders. If you decided to resize straight to 800x352, this step is trivial. Click the Edit tab to see your AviSynth script. Now change the resizing line to correspond to your calculations made earlier.

Adding the borders is necessary only if you decided to keep the original AR. If your source’s AR was bigger than E90’s one, you need to add the borders on top and below the picture. Otherwise, you need to add them on the both sides of the picture.

The left picture is an example of situation when video AR is bigger than 2,27 and in the right one AR is smaller than 2,27. Note the syntax difference in the BicubicResize and AddBorders commands.

If you decided to ignore the AR, your resize line looks like this:
BicubicResize(800, 352, 0, 0.5) # Bicubic (Neutral)

Now the hard part is done and you can hit the Save button. Now MeGUI exits the script creator and goes back to the main window. Now the last task: calculating the bitrate.

Hit Ctrl+B to open the calculator.

1. Select the audio stream encoded earlier from the audio section
2. Set Codec and Container to XviD and MP4
3. Select appropriate target size. Normally ½ CD is good for videos no longer than one hour. If you have a full-length movie, you should go for 700MB. Just make sure that Average Bitrate never drops much below 700kbit/s.

When done, hit Apply and MeGUI goes back to the main window again. Now everything is set and ready. Just hit to add job to the queue. Browse to the Queue tab and the hit to finally start encoding. Now sit back and let the encoder do the work.