# Introduction

https://git.concertos.live/Encode_Guide/mdbook-guide

This guide is meant to be both a starting point for newcomers interested in producing high quality encodes as well as a reference for experienced encoders. As such, after most functions are introduced and their uses explained, an in-depth explanation can be found. These are meant as simple add-ons for the curious and should in no way be necessary reading to apply the function.

# Terminology

For this to work, basic terms and knowledge about video is required. These explanations will be heavily simplified, as there should be dozens of web pages with explanations on these subjects on sites like Wikipedia, the AviSynth wiki etc.

## Video

Consumer video products are usually stored in YCbCr, a term which is commonly used interchangeably with YUV. In this guide, we will mostly be using the term YUV, as VapourSynth formats are written as YUV.

YUV formatted content has information split into three planes: Y, referred to as luma, which represents the brightness, and U and V, which each represent a chroma plane. These chroma planes represent offsets between colors, whereby the middle value of the plane is the neutral point.

This chroma information is usually subsampled, meaning it is stored in a lower frame size than the luma plane. Almost all consumer video will be in 4:2:0, meaning chroma planes are half of the luma plane's size. The Wikipedia page on chroma subsampling should hopefully suffice to explain how this works. As we usually want to stay in 4:2:0 format, we are restricted in our frame dimensions, as the luma plane's size has to be divisible by 2. This means we cannot do uneven cropping or resizing to uneven resolutions. However, when necesssary, we can work in each plane individually, although this will be explained in the filtering part.

Additionally, our information has to be stored with a specific precision. Usually, we deal with 8-bit per-plane precision. However, for UHD Blu-rays, 10-bit per-plane precision is the standard. This means possible values for each plane range from 0 to $$2^8 - 1 = 255$$. In the bit depths chapter, we will introduce working in higher bit depth precision for increased accuracy during filtering.

## VapourSynth

For loading our clips, removing unwanted black borders, resizing, and combatting unwanted artifacts in our sources, we will employ the VapourSynth framework via Python. While using Python might sound intimidating, those with no prior experience need not worry, as we will only be doing extremely basic things.

There are countless resources to setting up VapourSynth, e.g. the Irrational Encoding Wizardry's guide and the VapourSynth documentation. As such, this guide will not be covering installation and setup.

To start with writing scripts, it is important to know that every clip/filter must be given a variable name:

clip_a = source(a)
clip_b = source(b)

filter_a = filter(clip_a)
filter_b = filter(clip_b)

filter_x_on_a = filter_x(clip_a)
filter_y_on_a = filter_y(clip_b)


Additionally, many functions are in script collections or similar. These must be loaded manually and are then found under the given alias:

import vapoursynth as vs
core = vs.core
import awsmfunc as awf
import kagefunc as kgf
from vsutil import *

bbmod = awf.bbmod(...)
deband = core.f3kdb.Deband(...)

change_depth = depth(...)


So as to avoid conflicting function names, it is usually not recommended to do from x import *.

While many filters are in such collections, there are also filters that are available as plugins. These plugins can be called via core.namespace.plugin or alternatively clip.namespace.plugin. This means the following two are equivalent:

via_core = core.std.Crop(clip, ...)
via_clip = clip.std.Crop(...)


This is not possible for functions under scripts, meaning the following is NOT possible:

not_possible = clip.awf.bbmod(...)


In this guide, we will name the source clip to be worked with src and set variable names to reflect what their operation does.