ECL Tweaker

OVERVIEW

I made a small utility to modify rebuilder.ecl to activate the three preset filters in CCE

These are the presets (for CCE SP 2.66+ and CCE Basic):
- Natural Picture
- Animation
- Computer Graphics

Version History

1.6 Added CCE 2.5 support.
1.5 Added slider to modify strength of filters.
1.4 Added ability to modify filter parameters for CCE SP 2.66+.
1.3 Combined options for CCE Basic 2.69 and 2.67.
1.2 Fixed support for CCE Basic 2.69.
1.1 Added support for CCE Basic.
1.0 Initial release.

Why use filters?

The built-in CCE filters in general soften (or blur) the picture. Nobody wants to have blurry video, but when bitrate is low, compression artifacts (cubes) start appearing. Softer images compress better and many people prefer to have a softer image without compression artifacts. The 'natural picture' filter in CCE is not very strong and you may not notice it at all.

Every version of CCE I've tried including CCE Basic has the 'natural filter' preset activated by default for everything. Jdobbs went in the opposite direction and deactivated the filter for everything.

It's probably best not use any filters if you have over 3000 kbps. In that case you have enough bandwidth to reproduce the original without compression artifacts and retain sharpness. If you have 2500 to 3000, it's a tough call. Under 2500 and it's a good idea to use the filters.

My advice would be to activate the filters when you go under 2500.

You can confirm the filter is working two ways. First you should notice a speed decrease in CCE since the filters take additional CPU power. Second, you can abort an encode in CCE but leave CCE open, then open the title and click the quality button (CCE SP) or look at the 'quality setting' section (CCE Basic). You should see the appropriate filter is active.

What's next for this program?

1 - Allow filters to be applied to individual titles. This is important since right now the filter is applied to the whole project where you might want to soften only the extras.
2 - Other things...

quantum