The minimum requirement is a movie material file. Please prepare the other material files as appropriate, depending on your application.
In addition, please backup the movie files.
If you lose the original file and you contact us, we may be able to recover the original material data from the encoded Sofdec2 data, but picture quality degradation due to compression during encoding is inevitable.
We also recommend backing up any project files used during the creation of the orginal data, such as After Effects projects.
About the video material
Please refer to "\ref usr_cmew_data1" for detailed information about the input material. In this section, we highlight some of the points you should be particularly careful about.
About videos with alpha channel
A sample material of Alpha movie and how the instructions to create the data are available on our web site.
Please refer to the following page:
When creating alpha movies, please use an uncompressed AVI File or Sequential Numbered Still Image Files as source material.
Compressed video materials such as MP4 or MOV can not be used for Alpha movies.
Please refer to "\ref usr_cmew_adv5 " to create normal alpha movies.
Please refer to "\ref usr_cmew_adv6 " if you want to create Alpha Plus Movie which performs alpha-channel and additive synthesis at the same time.
About the video frame rate
Please prepare a video material with a frame rate corresponding to the drawing rate of the application.
It is common for games on consoles to run at 29.97 fps and for smartphone applications to run at 30 fps.
The higher the frame rate, the smoother the motion of the movie, but the amount of decoding and data will increase accordingly.
If you want to reduce the processing load and the data size, consider reducing the frame rate of the material.
Do not use movies with a frame rate higher than the drawing rate of the application.
If you play a movie whose frame rate exceeds the rendering speed, it will cause unnecessary decoding and the synchronization between audio and video will drift.
For example, when the drawing rate of the application is 29.97 fps, and a 30 fps movie is played back, the audio and the video will gradually drift apart due to that slight difference of rate.
Basically, you should ensure that "application rendering rate >= movie frame rate".
Attention
The Sofdec2 encoding tool does not support frame rate conversion (upsampling / downsampling).
For example, it is not possible to discard frames to go from 60 fps to 30 fps when encoding movies.
When changing the frame rate of a movie, please do the conversion on the material side with After Effects, VirtualDub, etc.
About the resolution
The Sofdec2 encoder supports resizing during encoding.
For example, you can take a 1920 x 1080 video material and resize it and encode it to any resolution such as 1280 x 720.
However, please note that when the encoding is performed with the H.264 codec, the resolution must be a multiple of 16.
When encoding movies for multiple platforms, please prepare a high-resolution movie material and resize it to the resolution suitable for the supported platforms and encode it. (However, please note that there is an upper limit on the input material resolution)
Attention
If you use a material with a very large resolution such as 4K, encoding errors may occur in some cases.
Please refer to the following page for more information: "\ref usr_sofdec2_tool_tips_001".
About video material to be played in loop
When creating a movie for looping playback, please ensure that durations of the video and audio materials match as much as possible (ideally up to the millisecond)
If the duration of the video and the sound materials are even slightly different, there is a possibility that the deviation will accumulate gradually each time the data loops.
Please check with a free analysis tool such as MediaInfo for the duration of the video material.
About encoding compressed material (MP4 / MOV)
The Sofdec2 encoding tool supports the MP4 and QuickTime formats as input material.
When using compressed data for the original material, please be aware that there are some restrictions as described in "\ref usr_cmew_data1" page.
Although the amount of data is higher, it is usually recommended to use an uncompressed AVI or a sequence of still images as source materials.
About interlaced material
Sofdec2 does not suuport interlaced material.
When data is encoded from interlaced material, it will be played like in the following picture.
Whether the material is interlaced or not can be detected with free analysis tools such as MediaInfo.
If it is an interlaced material, please re-output the material in non-interlaced format, or convert it with tools such as After Effects.
About the audio material
The audio material is encoded automatically if it is already included in the source video material (e.g. AVI file).
You can also specify another audio material file such as a WAV file / AIFF file and encode it.
If you want to include multiple audio tracks, for example for movies with multiple languages, please prepare multiple WAV files.
The bit depth of the WAV / AIFF files should be 16-bit.
The audio sampling rate of the material is used.
Please refer to "\ref usr_cmew_data2" for detailed information about the sound material.
About the subtitles material
You can add subtitles data as a separate text file.
For details on the text format, please refer to "Caption Information File".
The Sofdec2 tool does not provide a specific tool to create subtitles information.
Please use an external subtitling tool like "Subtitle Workshop".
The character code of the final subtitles depends on the character code used in the text files.
In many cases, it is assumed that multilingual subtitles will be used, so it is recommended to save the text files in UTF-8.
In this case, the application will be able to acquire UTF-8 subtitle data.
Reference: Subtitles editing in Subtitle Workshop
In Subtitle Workshop, type the subtitles according to the video material.
When outputting the data, you can select the subtitle information for Sofdec2 by selecting "Custom Format" and typing as follows:
Since the character code of the output file can not be UTF - 8 in Subtitle Workshop, please convert the character code appropriately after output.
Cue point information file (event information file)
In Sofdec2, it is also possible to embed timing information in order to notify the application of certain events.
The timing information is input as text file similar to the subtitle information file.
For details, refer to "\ref usr_cmew_data4 ".
