DVD -> MQV (or avi for mmplayer) without middlestep-conversions

[Egalus]

************version history****************************

4.4.04 first version of this guide
6.4.04 added needed mpeg2source dll file to downloadlist and added installation instructions for it. (thx to pusfarm for the errorreport)
6.4.04 added Resize function Information to Script in Part B)
10.4.04 added the DVD-mmplayer Avi specific Part D2)
11.4.04 added Installinstructions for vfapiconv (sorry about not
remembering to mention that one before) and added a detailed example for changing registry framerate key
4.5.04 added patchinfo if vfapi won't open .avs files (thx to sixseven)
4.5.04 added autocrop info for .AVS file (thx to sixseven again)
1.9.04 added information on IC (check the IC section of the guide) problems with frameratesteps other than 0.5 (strangely enough the ic default setting is 14.985 fps) (again thx to sixseven)

***************************************************

DVD -> MQV (or avi for mmplayer) without middlestep-conversions

I always asked myself why I needed to convert a DVD to divx (which I chose to take due to better imagequality) or mpeg1 to be able to convert it with Imageconverter to MQV. This middlestep-conversion always needs a large amount of time and space and just drops your MQV videoquality.
Finally I found a possibility (on windows systems) to get around this unwanted middlestep-conversions.

What you need is a ripped DVD or non-CSS encoded, unripped DVD.
As ripping of CSS encoded DVDs is prohibited I will not explain how to do it, as I do not know how to do it.

For all webpagelinks following I once state, that all content on those pages is written by someone else and I can not be made responsible if the owner(s) of these site(s) change their content to anything illegal or if subpages of these site(s) contain anything illegal, as I for sure never travelled to all subpages of the pages I mention here.

Other things you need:
a) Avisynth (Version 2.5.4 or higher) http://www.avisynth.org - A Frameserver for windows
b) VFapi (Version 1.0.5 recommended) http://www.doom9.org/Soft21/SupportUtils/VFAPIConv-1.05-EN.zip
c) Some Directshow AC3 decoder (I don't know where mine comes from, I guess from an installed DVD-Player-Software. If you don't have one, take the one mentioned at the bottom of this page http://www.avisynth.org/index.php?page=DirectShowSource.
d) DVD2Avi (1.77.3 recommended) http://arbor.ee.ntu.edu.tw/~jackei/dvd2avi/
e) mpeg2dec3.dll http://www.avisynth.org/warpenterprises/files/decodefix100.zip
f1) an installed version of imageconverter for MQV encoding
or
f2) Virtualdub for avi generation (for mmplayer) and the codec you want to encode to with Virtualdub (divx or xvid for example)
g) about 2GB Diskspace for temporary files.


----------------------------------------------------------------
0) Program Installation
----------------------------------------------------------------
Every Program comes with an installer (except vfapiconv-1.05-EN.zip and decodefix100.zip, which actually holds a dll we need), so most of the installation should be really easy.
vfapiconv)
-------------
Unzip the files to a directory of your choice. After unzipping tot he right location once run vifpset.bat before you run VFAPIConvEN.exe (else vfapiconv will not work correctly)

decodefix100.zip)
-----------------------
After Installation of Avisynth you need to unpack decodefix100.zip (to any folder you want). Now copy MPEG2Dec3dg.dll from decodefix100 to your avisynth plugin directory (for standard install this should be c:\program files\avisynth\plugins).

I now assume you have all the software you need and will start with the actual guide ;)

----------------------------------
A) Creating a DVD2Avi Project File
----------------------------------
1) start DVD2avi
2) use File/Open to search for the vobfile you want to convert (If it is a Vobset like VTS_01_x.Vob select one of the files an press Open).
3) If you opened a Vob of a Vobset you will directly get a list of all the VTS_xx_y.Vob files with the same xx and you have to press OK again.
4) Video/iDCT Algorithm/32-bit SSE MMX
5) Video/Fieldoperation/None
6) Video/Colorspace/Yuv 4:2:2
7) Audio/Tracknumber select the Audiotrack you want to use later on (please choose an AC3 encoded Track!)
8) Audio/Output Method/Demux (AC3,MPA,DTS)
9) for MQV choose Audio/48->44,1/anything except off
10) Press F5 to Preview Video (no sound will be playerd)
11) Write down the aspect ratio (16:9 or 4:3), the Frame Rate (for example 25 fps) the Video Type (Pal or NTSC) and the Frametype (for example Progressive)
If you have 'Video Type-NTSC or FILM or FILM 95%-99%' and the Frame Type Is Progressive Go to Video>Field Operations>Force Film

If you have 'Video Type-FILM' the'Frame Type-Interlaced
move the slider bar, if there isn't any lines
Go to Video>Field Operations>Force Film
12) Press Escape
13) Write down the film resolution (it's contained in the windowname of the DVD2avi Window) like 720x576
14) File/Save Project choose a Destionation and Filename (you need <1GB of free diskspace)
15) wait some minutes ;)

I assume you choose TEST as the filename.
Now you got two new files:
TEST.d2v
and something like "TEST AC3 T01 3_2ch 448kbps DELAY -280ms.ac3"
Remember the DELAY for later!


---------------------------------
B1) Creating a Avisynth Scriptfile using autocrop (only needed if you don't use B2)
---------------------------------
0) you once have to install the autocrop plugin from here: http://www.videofringe.com/autocrop/
1) Open your favorite Editor (for example Notepad)
2) Put the following lines (between the ####################) in the new Editorfile:

############################################################
# TEST.d2v is the prior created dvd2avi Projectfile
video = Mpeg2Source("test.d2v")
#
# "test AC3 T01 3_2ch 448Kbps DELAY -280ms.ac3" is to be changed to the filename
# of your ac3 file!
# The Amplify(8) boosts sound volume of the output for louder soundoutput on
# your clie
audio = DirectShowSource("test AC3 T01 3_2ch 448Kbps DELAY -280ms.ac3").Amplify(8)
#
# This muxes (on the fly) the video and the audio
AudioDub(video,audio)
#
# Enter the DELAY value contained in your ac3-files Filename here!
DelayAudio(-0.280)
#
# At this point you can crop the Black borders (or unwanted movieparts) from the
# movie.
autocrop(mode=0)
#
#Bicubicresize(X,Y)
#############################################################

3) Save the file as test.avs but leave it in notepad (to faster change the crop values later)
4) open windows mediaplayer and open the test.avs file with it - surprise, wmp treats the text-file as a normal avi file ;)
5) in wmp open the preferences page and check the size of your now cropped video
6) now we want to resize the video and keep the original aspect ratio, for this we need a little math.
XCROP = X-Resolution of your outocropped video
YCROP = Y-Resolution of your outocropped video
X = Final X-Resolution you want your video on the clie should have (for MQV this is 320!)
Y = Final Y-Resolution we need to calc

Y = X / XCROP * YCROP
Now please round your calced Y to an even number. (for example if you got Y=181.02857 round it to Y=182.
Now change the line
#Bicupicresize(X,Y)
at the end of your AVS file removing the # at the start and replacing X and Y with the numbers we just calculated.
7) save the avs and open it again with wmp to check that it still works but now got smaller, if it works you are done with Step B), please jump to C) directly.


---------------------------------
B2) Creating a Avisynth Scriptfile using manual crop (only needed if you don't use B1)
---------------------------------
1) Open your favorite Editor (for example Notepad)
2) Put the following lines (between the ####################) in the new Editorfile:

############################################################
# TEST.d2v is the prior created dvd2avi Projectfile
video = Mpeg2Source("test.d2v")
#
# "test AC3 T01 3_2ch 448Kbps DELAY -280ms.ac3" is to be changed to the filename
# of your ac3 file!
# The Amplify(8) boosts sound volume of the output for louder soundoutput on
# your clie
audio = DirectShowSource("test AC3 T01 3_2ch 448Kbps DELAY -280ms.ac3").Amplify(8)
#
# This muxes (on the fly) the video and the audio
AudioDub(video,audio)
#
# Enter the DELAY value contained in your ac3-files Filename here!
DelayAudio(-0.280)
#
# At this point you can crop the Black borders (or unwanted movieparts) from the
# movie. As there is no previewwindow this is the stupid work task of this guide # ;(
# Use only numbers devideable by 4!
# crop(left, top, right, bottom) where right and bottom values are - (cause you
# go back into the imagesource)
# experiment with the values
crop(12,88,-8,-92)
# if you also want to resize the movie to something near 320x240
# pixels (that's what is the highest output resolution
# imageconverter supports), you can change the cropping line to
# something like
#
# crop(12,88,-8,-92).Bicubicresize(X,Y)
#
# with X being 320 most times and Y something <=240
# X and Y must be even numbers!
# If you want to keep the aspect ratio of your source film you need
# to do a bit of math to know the right value for Y. Most
# times you will end up around Y=190
# Formula needed to calc is, with DVD-Res = XDVD x YDVD and
# crop (X1,Y1,-X2,-Y2) and X=320 for the resize you get
# Y= (YDVD - Y1 - Y2) / (XDVD - X1 - X2) * X
# And again, round Y to an even number.
#############################################################

3) Save the file as test.avs but leave it in notepad (to faster change the crop values later)
4) open windows mediaplayer and open the test.avs file with it - surprise, wmp treats the text-file as a normal avi file ;)
5) If your cropping wasn't right, change the value, save the file again and repeat point 4) and 5) until you are satisfied
6) as your cropping now should be ok you can close your texteditor and are finished with part B)

----------------------------------------------------------
C) create a fake avi file (only needed for MQV conversion)
----------------------------------------------------------
As Imageconverter does not treat the .avs file as a video (like wmp does) we need VFAPI to create a fake .avi file for us.
1) start VFAPIConvEN
2) press "Add File" and select your test.avs (if vfapi does not accept .avs files please install this patch (http://www.christian-behrens.de/video/download/tmpgenc-readavs.zip))
3) in the popupwindow select the filename for the created avi. As imageconverter stores this avi-filename lateron as your videoname of the mqv I suggest you now name it like you want to name your video ;) I will stick to TEST.AVI for this guide.
4) Press OK in the popupwindow
5) Press convert (this is quite fast and will need <1GB of space)
6) When Convert has finished it's job press QUIT

-----------------------------------------------------
D1) use Imageconverter to convert the TEST.AVI to MQV
-----------------------------------------------------
1) Start Imageconverter
2) Add your Test.avi to the list
3) This is quite Important!
If you use Imageconverter 1.0, use the tool provided in this forum to change IC settings for framerate to half of the framerate your original video (you wrote it down earlier) has.
--
If you use IC 1.1 the Imageconvertertool of the forum does not work. Start regedit and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Sony Corporation/Image Converter and change the framerate for NO_FRAMERATE (or the compressionmethod you want to use) to
sourceframerate*500 (in dezimal mode).
If for example your sourceframerate is 29.970 fps and you want to use the "normal" setting in IC1.1 start regedit and go to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Sony Corporation/Image Converter", doubleclick on NO_FRAMERATE, in the popup window select DECIMAL and enter your calced value. In our example 14985.
If you want to use another quality profile than NORMAL in IC change the XX_FRAMERATE Value for the quality setting you want to use (LOW = LO_FRAMERATE, NORMAL = NO_FRAMERATE, HIGH= HI_FRAMERATE and HIGH-PLUS = SH_FRAMERATE).
4) Convert it like any other avi (except this time it will convert easily with audio as avisynth hands uncompressed video and uncompressed audio to imageconverter) with the compressionmethod you changed the framerate in step 3.
5) You are done, you got the best possible output MQV from your source DVD
6) TROUBLESHOOTING for audio out of sync:
Somehow it seems that imageconverter does not always handle framerates in other steps than 0.5fps right and audio gets out of sync (strangely enough the default setting for IC is 14.985 fps).
I got reports from some users about "out of sync audio - getting more and more out of sync the longer the video runs". ATM all reported problems were related to 23.976 fps NTSC source videos for which you normally should use 11988 fps setting for IC.
If your sourcevideo is NTSC with 23.976 fps please report in this thread if your audio goes out of sync with the 11988 setting and if it does please try 12000 setting instead and if that works, please post this too.
29.870 fps NTSC atm seems to work perfectly with the default setting of 14985 fps for IC.

------------------------------------------------------------------
D2) use Virtualdub to convert TEST.AVS to an mmplayer readable AVI
------------------------------------------------------------------
1) don't create the fake avi with vfapi, you just need the avs.
2) start virtualdub and open your TEST.AVS file.
3) in the video menu choose Full processing
4) in video/compression choose your compression algorithm (divx or xvid, xvid recommended) and before you press ok here press configure. Set the bitrate to something small - like you did before when converting video for mmplayer use. I suggest somewhere between 100 and 200 kbit and set the encode to 1-pass encoding only. Now press OKs until you are back to virtualdub main screen without popups.
5) you need a framerate of 15fps maximum, so if you don't have input material with a framerate <=15 and you didn't already use ChangeFPS in your TEST.AVS file you need to change the framerate with virtualdub. For this open Video/Framrate and for best results choose "Process every other frame (decimate by 2). This will reduce your actual framerate (also shown in this window) to half the value it had.
6) If you did not use crop and bicubicresize (and for mmplayer playable avis you need a much smaller resolution than 320x240, as mmplayer is not fast enough for this reslution. My overclocked (now running at 354 MHz) NX70 as max can handle something around 240x160 with low bitrate) in your avs you need to change the resolution in virtualdub.
!!! QUALITY WARNING: Do never ever resize inside the AVS and inside Virtual Dub, only resize once. And Always Crop (if you want to) before you resize! You may crop in the AVS and resize in Virtualdub or Crop and resize in AVS and NOT Crop and resize in Virtualdub or NOT crop and resize in AVS and crop AND resize in Virtualdub, that's the only good combinations!!!
And now, if you need to crop or resize in Virtualdub: Choose Video/Filters.
6a) For cropping press "Add..." and add "null transform" and press OK to close the "Add Filter" named 2nd popupwindow. Now you can press the now black "Cropping..." button and start cropping your video - this should be selfexplaining. After cropping go back to the Filters Popup window.
6b) For Resizing (you should do that after you cropped!) Press the Add... Button and choose the "resize" in the popup list and press the OK button. In "Filter: resize" popup choose a resolution you want to use (don't go to high and blame me that your video drops frames when you playback with mmplayer ;) ) and as "Filter mode" select "Precise Bilinear". If your source is interlaced, select the Interlaced button. Press OK 2 times to close the filters popups.
7) in the audio menu choose Full processing
8) in audio/compression choose your mp3 encoder and the compressionformat and samplingrate you want to take. Press OK after you made your choices.
!!!Warning: at least for me mmplayer with mca2.xx has a big performancehit when using other samplerates than 44,1 kHz or 48kHz for the mp3 audio.!!!!
9) If you want you now can even mark a passage you want to convert (below the video you find the needed tools for that). How to do that is surely nicely explained in the VirtualDub help.
10) All choices are made, now press "File/Save as Avi", choose a nice Filename for your avi and save it. This will take some time, so go, fetch some coffe ;)

If you are new to mmplayer I suggest you try some compressions and resolutions first to find out what the limits of your pda are at playback with mmplayer before you convert a large movie. Choose a small part of a video and create some testsamples with chaning resolution and bitrates and test them with mmplayer.
For me it's xvid codec at 100-200 kbit (depending on the quality I want) and atm (cause of the mca2.xx problems with 22khz audios) it's 96kbit audio at 44,1 or 48 kHz on my 354 MHz NX70.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Final notes:
I am sure this first version of the guide is not complete and will probably contain some points that will get me tons of questions ;) and every question is welcome and everyone is invited to contribute to this guide (that when finished will be published in the guides section).

Regards,
Egalus

[pusfarm]

It might work except for:

Script error: there is no function named "Mpeg2Source"

[Egalus]

@pusfarm
Ups, like always when you have installed programs for a long time you get plugins and forget to mention them in the guide.

Changed the guide accordingly. Please download http://www.avisynth.org/warpenterprises/files/decodefix100.zip
and copy the included MPEG2Dec3dg.dll to your avisynth plugins directory.

Changed the guide accordingly.

[madmaxmedia]

Thanks a lot for posting the directions! I will try it out ASAP.

Do you think that having a middle step really decreases the final video quality that much? Perhaps in the best quality mode, but the other more compressed modes are so lossy that I doubt the final result is much different.

Thanks, Steve

[Egalus]

It absolutely depends on your middlestep conversion how much quality you will loose.

Middlesteps:
MPEG1: Depending on what bitrate you choose for your compression (I read some guides suggestin <1mb/s, that's just stupid) you will get nasty mpeg one artefacts when playing the mpeg1. And now you get 2 nasty situations for the quicktime mpeg4 codec (that's what imageconverter uses). a) it has to encode those artefacts too, cause it thinks that those artefacts are wanted and b) still has to convert all the other imagedata and this with the given bitrate, so it encodes the artefacts and cause of that has less bitrate left for the wanted imageinformation.

Divx: Here it totally depends on your divx settings. As divx itself is a good codec if you choose max bitrate and high quality settings for middlestep conversion here your losses are almost invisible, but if you choose <1000kbit/s (especially if you don't resize to 320x240 here already) you get nasty jpeg artefacts too with the same effect they have at mpeg1.

So quite sure (at least using all the guides I read here - and where I always stated that you should take highest bitrate conversion in middlestep if there is no other way) you will loose imagequality with middlestep conversions.
And if you choose high bitrates for middlestep conversion you loose time and space compared to the above version

[pusfarm]

Still get the same error.

[Egalus]

I just uninstalled my avisynth to check this and reinstalled it like explained above and I don't get the errormessage you mention. It works like a charm like before.
Are you sure you copied the mpeg2dec3dg.dll to the right directory as I only get the errormessage if the dll is not in the avisynth plugins directory.
Please again search for the destination you installed avisynth to, switch into that directory and there into plugins and check again if the file is there.

Alternatively add following line to the start of your avs file:
######
LoadPlugin("E:\Programme\Avisynth 2.5\plugins\mpeg2dec3dg.dll")
######
Where mpeg2dec3dg.dll has to be at the entered path!
If mpeg2dec3.dll is not found at this position your errormessage should change. If it is found your "unknown MPEG2Source" should vanish.

[snoW]

I followed your tutorial and I got my "test.avi" (out of a 20 min DVD video). It's size is 8,8MB.

But it doesn't contain sound when played by WMP! Is that normal?

Also, Image Converter (1.1) needs approximately hours to convert this <9MB file to the .mqv-file!!!! The source frame rate was 20fps, so I edited in regedit the value to "10000" in decimal view.

Another problem are the stripes in the movie. I think they are because of "interlaced"!?!? How can I avoid this?

When I want to go the way for mmplayer:
How can I reduce the size of the .avi-file which VirtualDub produces? A DivX file shouldn't have hundreds of MB when my other .avi has not even 9MB! ;)

[Egalus]

>I followed your tutorial and I got my "test.avi" (out of a 20 min DVD video). It's size is 8,8MB.
But it doesn't contain sound when played by WMP! Is that normal?

Do you have an ac3 file and a d2v file after using dvd2avi?
Can you play the ac3 file with wmp?
Does your DVD contain an ac3 stream? Or maybe only DTS?
If you have the ac3 but can't play it you need an ac3 codec for directshow (see requiements part c) if you don't know where to get one from).
For 20 minutes of Video 8,8mb sounds like video information only as the resulting vfapi-created avi contains only information where to get the video stream from and the uncompressed audio, so most of the vfapi-created avi size is from the uncompressed audio and the video part.

--------------

>Also, Image Converter (1.1) needs approximately hours to convert this <9MB file to the .mqv-file!!!! The source frame rate was 20fps, so I edited in regedit the value to "10000" in decimal view.

Do you have a ripped dvd on hdd or do you try to get the data directly from a dvd?
Cause like mentioned before, the avi does not contain the video information and imageconverter will take it directly from your sourcefiles you used with dvd2avi and if that is a dvd-drive maybe you have some performance problems with the dvd drive being accessed to often.
Did you use crop and bicubicresize in your .avs, or does imageconverter itself make the conversion?
And the last possibility that comes to mind is the problem of your stripes cause of your interlaced video, I guess ic has a hard time converting this ;)

--------------

>Another problem are the stripes in the movie. I think they are because of "interlaced"!?!? How can I avoid this?

Check if you made the right choice in point A) 11).
If that does not solve your problem than I can only try to give you advice cause I never came across an interlaced DVD with stripes in germany, so I can't really check this, but I can try to give advice (as soon as www.avisynth.org is up again, cause I need the manual there to find the right commands for framereatechanging and deinterlacing ;)

-------------


>When I want to go the way for mmplayer:
How can I reduce the size of the .avi-file which VirtualDub produces? A DivX file shouldn't have hundreds of MB when my other .avi has not even 9M !

I will start to write the tut-part to mmplayer soon, maybe even today.
And now I only wanted to write a short notice for you for your problem, which lead to a detail level that suited the tutorial, so now look above at the tut ;)

[snoW]

Wow, thanks for your large reply!

> Do you have an ac3 file and a d2v file after using dvd2avi?
Yes.

> Can you play the ac3 file with wmp?
Yes, WMP plays the sound.

> Does your DVD contain an ac3 stream? Or maybe only DTS?
The DVD's audio technical details: "Dolby, Surround Sound"

--------------

> Do you have a ripped dvd on hdd or do you try to get the data directly from a dvd?
I get it from HDD.

Did you use crop and bicubicresize in your .avs, or does imageconverter itself make the conversion?
The .avs contains:
video = Mpeg2Source("test.d2v")
audio = DirectShowSource("test AC3 T01 2_0ch 192Kbps DELAY -80ms.ac3").Amplify(8)
AudioDub(video,audio)
crop(12,88,-8,-92).Bicubicresize(320,240)

--------------

> Check if you made the right choice in point A) 11).
DVD2Avi said that the film itself (not the intro) is interlaced. So I chose "Forced Film"

-------------

>And now I only wanted to write a short notice for you for your problem, which lead to a detail level that suited the tutorial, so now look above at the tut ;)
Thank you for spending your time here!!!!

[Egalus]

>Wow, thanks for your large reply!

;) No problem, I started the guide and I do not do such things without answering questions that come up while others try to follow my directions.

And now let's try to find out why vfapi does not create soundoutput for you, oi, wait, there comes one option in mind and I feal really stupid not to have asked this before ;)
When adding the avs to vfapiconv you get a window, where you can choose the output filename AND you can click max. 3 options and this brings up 2 questions:
a) do you have a grayed out option "Audio output"?
b) if not a), is audio output checked? Cause if the option is there but not checked we found our solution ;)

And another question not related to vfapi:
Does the sound play if you open the .AVS directly with wmp?
If it does not, please remove the .Amplify(8) from the audio line and test again.


-----------------

Did you use crop and bicubicresize in your .avs, or does imageconverter itself make the conversion?
The .avs contains:
video = Mpeg2Source("test.d2v")
audio = DirectShowSource("test AC3 T01 2_0ch 192Kbps DELAY -80ms.ac3").Amplify(8)
AudioDub(video,audio)
crop(12,88,-8,-92).Bicubicresize(320,240)

What is the source video resolution? Cause I guess your long conversion time is related to your resize.
Explanation for my guess (a bit longer):
Bicubicresize trys to get you best imagequality (and I chose this cause I made this guide to give you and me best output quality) and this can make the resizing really timeconsuming.
And the best way to get it to consume time is to resize x by another value than you resize y.
And another downsize of different deltaX and deltaY is that you change aspect ratio (most times you make heads larger, so everybody seems to have a weight problem and needs food donations ;) - no idea what the right english word might be ;) ).
Cause of that I inserted the formula with which you can calculate your Y for your resize to stay with the same aspect ratio.
As an example, let's say your uncropped source video has a resolution of 720x576 pixels, than your calc Y with
# Y= (YDVD - Y1 - Y2) / (XDVD - X1 - X2) * X
which makes
Y = (576 - 88 - 92) / (720 - 12 - 8) * 320
= 396 / 700 * 320 = 181.03
Now you need even X and Y values for resize, so either you round to 180 or 182, you choice ;) I usually round that upwards.

Calculating the other way around, assuming your source video hat an X-Resolution of 720, with your cropping and resizing your source Y-Resolution would have been 705 pixels, so you would have had a source video which would have been almost a square (but with big black borders).

So for your speed issues either try to calc a nice Y-Res and try the Bicubicresize and check if conversion time reduces drastically or just crop and let imageconverter do the resizing and check how long this would take (with the downside of not knowing what resizing algorithm ic might use).

--------------

> Check if you made the right choice in point A) 11).
DVD2Avi said that the film itself (not the intro) is interlaced. So I chose "Forced Film"

Ok, than you need to try 2 or 3 things (I can't test them cause I do not have an interlaced DVD with your mentioned stripes).
A) Try to change fps within your .AVS file and redue it by factor 2, this normally should make avisynth to take only every 2nd frame. Instructions on ChangeFPS can be found here: http://www.avisynth.org/index.php?page=FPS
B) Read the Deinterlacing FAQ of Avisynth, it contains some possible ways to decomb and deinterlace: http://www.avisynth.org/index.php?page=DeInterlacing

Sorry that I can't personally help you here, but I am thankful to PAL standard and that almost all DVDs in germany don't have combing if they are interlaced ;)

-------------

>And now I only wanted to write a short notice for you for your problem, which lead to a detail level that suited the tutorial, so now look above at the tut
Thank you for spending your time here!!!!

Like said above, I didn't write a "once written, never come back and answer questions" guide ;)

[pusfarm]

Getting closer :) but still no video (I've always been able to get audio).&nbsp; My earlier problem may have been due to using AviSynth version 2.0.x. :eek:

The new message is:

DirectShowSource: Could not open as video or audio.
Video returned: "DirectShowSournce: the filter graph manager won't talk to me"
Audio returned: "DirectShowSournce: the filter graph manager won't talk to me"

Thanks for the continued help Egalus!

[snoW]

> When adding the avs to vfapiconv you get a window, where you can choose the output filename AND you can click max. 3 options and this brings up 2 questions:
a) do you have a grayed out option "Audio output"?
Yes, the "audio output" option is grayed out.

> And another question not related to vfapi:
Does the sound play if you open the .AVS directly with wmp?
If it does not, please remove the .Amplify(8) from the audio line and test again.
WMP plays sound when opening the .avs.

-----------------

> What is the source video resolution? Cause I guess your long conversion time is related to your resize.
The source video resolution is 720x576.

--------------

Ok, than you need to try 2 or 3 things (I can't test them cause I do not have an interlaced DVD with your mentioned stripes).
> A) Try to change fps within your .AVS file and redue it by factor 2, this normally should make avisynth to take only every 2nd frame. Instructions on ChangeFPS can be found here: http://www.avisynth.org/index.php?page=FPS
I inserted the following line into the .avs (source frame rate was 20):
ChangeFPS(10)

> B) Read the Deinterlacing FAQ of Avisynth, it contains some possible ways to decomb and deinterlace: http://www.avisynth.org/index.php?page=DeInterlacing
Ok, but I don't understand everything ;)

> Sorry that I can't personally help you here, but I am thankful to PAL standard and that almost all DVDs in germany don't have combing if they are interlaced ;)
No problem ;) I'm from Germany, too, but I have a DVD from the USA.... :/

/edit: I tried the procedure with 10 fps but the stripes are still there! Even worse: the video is blurred! So I deleted the "changeFPS" line.

BTW: How long does it take when YOU convert a movie with IC (LP mode; middle-bad quality of source file)? I need ca. 1,2 sec. for converting one second movie...

[pusfarm]

Egalus - could you clarify the registry edit for IC 1.1?&nbsp; Do we change the existing value (mine is 3a89 Hex and 14985 Decimal) or do we add a new key or string value?&nbsp; Thanks.

[snoW]

Originally posted by pusfarm
Getting closer :) but still no video (I've always been able to get audio).&nbsp; My earlier problem may have been due to using AviSynth version 2.0.x. :eek:

The new message is:

DirectShowSource: Could not open as video or audio.
Video returned: "DirectShowSournce: the filter graph manager won't talk to me"
Audio returned: "DirectShowSournce: the filter graph manager won't talk to me"

Thanks for the continued help Egalus!

I had the same problem!
It disappeared after the installation of the AC3 filter:
http://ac3filter.sourceforge.net

[Egalus]

@Pusfarm:
Like snow suggested, install an ac3 codec and try again.

At snoW:
Interesting problem, so your avs plays with sound in wmp but vfapiconv has grayed out audio option.
Call me stupid, I forgot one really important part int he documentation.
After downloading and Unzipping vfapiconv to a directory of your choice you have to run the included "vifpset.bat". If you didn't do that, please try it and try if vfapi now likes the sound option.

I will change the docu again ;)

I am getting like microsoft, everyone belongs to the betatesters ;)

[snoW]

> After downloading and Unzipping vfapiconv to a directory of your choice you have to run the included "vifpset.bat". If you didn't do that, please try it and try if vfapi now likes the sound option.
No, VFapi is still graying out the audio option! :(

> I am getting like microsoft, everyone belongs to the betatesters ;)
But this is quite fun and a kind of opensource! ;)

[Egalus]

It might be fun, but it's driving me nuts that your vfapi does not like your audio ;)
Please open the ac3 directly with wmp and check in the properties which ac3 decoder wmp uses. If it's not the sourceforge one mentioned above please install that one (as I use that too) ;)

[Egalus]

Originally posted by pusfarm
Egalus - could you clarify the registry edit for IC 1.1?&nbsp; Do we change the existing value (mine is 3a89 Hex and 14985 Decimal) or do we add a new key or string value?&nbsp; Thanks.

I added a detailed example in that section. I hope that step is clear now, if not, please ask again ;)

[sixseven]

Wow! I've been pulling my hair out trying to open the .avs file in VFAPI Reader.

I finally found a patch (http://www.christian-behrens.de/video/download/tmpgenc-readavs.zip) that will allow you to continue if you're stuck on the last step. I'm going to let IC do the rest of the work tomorrow, and I'll report back on the process...

All in all, I think this may be the best process that I've tried.

sixseven

[Unregistered]

I'm having the same sound problem as Snow. Has anyone found a solution? The AC3 codec link in the tutorial is dead, but I downloaded AC3filter v0.70b, is this the right file? If not, where can I get the right one? The symptoms are exactly the same as what Snow had.

[Unregistered]

Open the .d2v file in VFapi instead of the .avs like the tutorial says. I think this is a mistake in the tutorial.

[Unregistered]

Sorry about the posts from a time when I was young and stupid (5 minutes ago). sixseven has the right idea. If you are having the sound problems, then use the patch. Follow the readme directions except install the files to your VFapi directory instead of the TMBCenc (or whatever it's called). This will make it so you can select your avs file as a project in VFapi which solves the sound problem.

[Unregistered]

Here's a real question. Everything works great until Image Converter handles the file and splits it into 125 MB chunks. I wish it wouldn't do this, but the real problem is that the sound restarts from the beginning of the film at the beginning of each new 125 MB chunk even though the video continues. Does anyone know how to either make Image Converter output only one file or how to keep the sound synched between the multiple files? I really can't imagine what's wrong.

<> David <>

[Egalus]

Ui,
10 days of absolute silence and than 5 posts in 5 hours ;)

For the vfapi sound problem: I just don't understand why it worked for me without installing the patch mentioned above and not for you (as I installed it the same way I mentioned, but I guess this is windows and there is more than one thing that's not logic in it ;) ). I will change the guide to include the patch. thx sixseven for finding the solution.

@David:
Sounds like you are using IC 1.0?
If so I suggest you search the forums, somewhere (some time ago, so I don't know where I found it) I found a link for IC 1.1. IC 1.1 does not split the video into peaces and by this will solve your problem (but it will remove the ability for you to use the IC 1.0 feature tool from this forum as this will set incompatible values for audio if using ic 1.1).
This surely sounds like a bug from IC 1.0 and if you continue to use IC1.0 I suggest you yourself cut the video so that IC1.0 does not need to cut it (at let's say an equivalent to 120mb).

Ok, here the explanation how to cut the movie into peaces for IC1.0 to get around the sound bug (that I never found cause I use IC1.1 ;) ).
You need to do a little easy maths for this (as avisynth cuts using framenumbers, not minutes or seconds) for this you need the following values:
FPS = frames per seconds of your source video (if you change framerate in the .AVS file you need to take that changed framerate value instead of the original value!)
AR = the decimal value for the bitrate you want to encode the audio too with IC (32, 64 or 128 kbit/s)
VR = the decimal value for the bitrate you want to encode the audio to with IC (up to 384 kbit/s) - at least for NX users, UX users can go higher here
FS = the filesize in MB you want to get from IC (in my example I use 120 MB)
CF = the number of frames we can hand over to IC to get a filesize < FS

OK, now the math:
CF = FS * 1024 * 8 * FPS / (AR + VR)

Example:
FPS=25, FS=120MB, AR=128kbit/s, VR=384kbit/s
=>
CF =120 * 1024 * 8 * 25 / (128 + 384)
= 120 * 1024 * 8 * 25 / 512
= 120 * 2 * 8 * 25 = 48000

Ok, now we know that CF frames of our source video handed over to IC with our AR and VR settings will give us an MQV which is approximately FS in MB.

Now add the following line to the end of your .AVS file and replace CF with the calced number from above:
TRIM(0,CF-1)

Following the example this would be
TRIM(0,47999)
cause avisynth starts with frame 0

Save the .AVS and continue like the guide describes, this will give you the first 48000 frames in a MQV.
Now just change the
TRIM(0,47999) line to
TRIM(48000,ENDFRAME)
with ENDFRAME being "the total number of frames your sourcevideo has" - 1
if ENDFRAME <96000, else you need to split it again (which should be clear).

Ok, enough writing for today, will change the guide tomorrow ;)

[Unregistered]

Thanks for your help. I downloaded IC 1.1, and it fixed the problem of restarting the sound even though it still breaks my movie into two segments (it's over 2 hrs). However, I have a new problem. In the first segment of the movie the sound starts synchronized perfectly, and then slowly falls out of sync throughout the course of the film until by the end of the segment the sound is behind the video by almost a whole second. When it starts on the next segment once again the sound starts perfectly synchronized and then slowly goes out of sync. My avi file is perfectly synchronized throughout, so this is obviously a problem with image converter. Do you know of any way I can fix this? I am using the high setting, and I did the framrate adjustments in the registry exactly how they are stated in the tutorial.

<> David <>

[pusfarm]

I'm still not having any luck with video.&nbsp; Audio works great.&nbsp; The AC3 filter did nothing to correct it.&nbsp; I must have already had an AC3 codec because the audio has always worked.&nbsp; But no video.

[Egalus]

@David:
I had a similar problem with an MPEG1 I tried to convert with IC1.1.
1) I tried it with the IC directly, got me out of sync with almost 3 seconds audio behind the video on a 23 minute episode.
2) I played the mpeg1 in wmp and it played syncronized nicely.
3) I used avisynth and vfapi to create a fake avi file (like in this tutorial, but for mpeg1) and IC 1.1 unsyncronized it again.
4) I tried different framrate settigs in IC to try to fix it - no change.
5) changed the framerate in the .AVS - no change.
6) I converted the mpeg1 to divx avi and gave that to IC - no change.
7) I dumped IC, got angry about sony and their peace of shitty proprietary undisclosed software crap and went on with the next episode (which worked nicely again).

Sorry, but I have no idea why IC sometimes unsyncronizes sound ;(


@pusfarm: do you have directx installed? directshow is part of directx and somehow it sounds like you don't have directx cause you don't get directshow video.

[pusfarm]

Originally posted by Egalus
@pusfarm: do you have directx installed? directshow is part of directx and somehow it sounds like you don't have directx cause you don't get directshow video. I do (version 9, I think), but I'll try getting the newest and see if that helps.&nbsp; Thanks.

[sixseven]

Hi everyone,

I am convinced that the Egalus method is the absolutely best way to convert DVDs. In all honesty, I did not understand the instructions upon first reading them, so I played with EasyVCD and DVDx. I was able to produce movies for my NX80 using these programs, but I was not happy with the output. If you are a NOOB to DVD conversion, I suggest that you make this method your goal.

With that in mind, I would like to add another contribution to this process. Personally, I found that cropping was a major pain the rear. I found an AviSynth plugin that helps with this. Download "AutoCrop 1.1" from the following link:

http://www.videofringe.com/autocrop/

Basically you need to add one line to your .avs file to get a clean crop. (Be sure to check out the read-me if the crop is wrong.)


****New Command to add to .AVS file****

autocrop(mode=0)

**********************************

With this new plugin, you can omit the "crop" command from your script, but you will still want to keep the bicubicresize command. (The bicubicresize command resizes the video so that Image Converter doesn't have to do as much work when converting to your Clie, which should allow for a faster conversion.)

If you want to maintain the original aspect ratio, the math is a lot simpler using autocrop. Basically all you need to do is preview the .avs file in Windows Media Player withthe new autocrop command. Go to the file menu and select properties. There you should see the width and height of the cropped movie. Remember you will still want to convert the width to 320 and maintain the correct aspect ratio. With the information in the properties window, you can create a ratio to determine your new height:

As an example assume your cropped values are 716 x 362

X = 716 (current value)
Y = 362 (current value)

Xa = 320 (new value)
Ya = ? (new value)

X/Xa = ratio
320/716 = 0.446927374

Y * ratio = Ya

362 * 0.446927374 = 161.7877095

You will want to round this number up to 162. So the new dimensions for you movie are 320 x 162! You will need to use the bicubicresize command to insert this info into your .AVS file. Here's an example of how your .AVS file might look:


*************************
LoadPlugin("C:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\plugins\MPEG2Dec3dg.dll")

video = Mpeg2Source("my movie.d2v")

audio = DirectShowSource("my movie AC3 T01 2_0ch 192Kbps DELAY 0ms.ac3").Amplify(8)

AudioDub(video,audio)

DelayAudio(0)

Autocrop(mode=0)

Bicubicresize(320,162)

*************************

[sixseven]

Hi again,

I have a few items for discussion... :)

1. What is the loudest that you can set the Amplify command to before the sound starts to get distorted? Recently I used Amplify(8) to watch movies on an airplane, and it worked but I wanted a little more volume.

2. What is the benefit of changing the fps registry setting? (Manually or with jackho's newly released tool) Is this purely to decrease .MQV file size? If the source video is 23.9 fps, do you really want to change the fps to 12? Isn't anything under 15 choppy? Changing fps doesn't seem to change the filesize with the calculator thingy...

3. Is there an AviSynth command that will increase general brightness? I've looked on the site, but I am too much of a NOOB to make much sense out of it... Any help here would be appreciated! :)

[Egalus]

@sixseven:
Cool, thx for sharing the info on the autocrop function, I didn't know this existed, I will (soon, not atm) change the whole cropsection to this, as it makes living much easier (for the time I used virtualdub to open the avs and find the right cropping and wanted to add that to the guide, but your solution is much better).

And now to your questions:
1. Regarding avsynth homepage there is a Normalize command you could try to find the max Amplify, but interestingly it normally is around 1.5 for max amplification and I don't have an explanation why it still sounds good in the MQVs when I choose 10 (even if Normalize tells me 1.5 is the right value) as Normalize checks if it will be amplifyable without clipping and gives you the max number.
Personally I most times go with Amplify(10) as only the loudest scenes might get clipping (and I never found any hearable clipping).
With 20 I got some audible clipping and wanted my speaker to live longer, so I changed back to 10 ;)

2. Changing the fps to half the sourcerate does not in any way change the size of the output cause you tell IC to use exactly X kbit/s for video and Y kbit/s for audio, so you always (with these settings) need X+Y kbit/s for your converted video, even if you would choose 1 fps (I am not sure if IC would use this ;) ).
But a) with lower fps you have more videobitrate per frame for IC to use, so your resulting video has less block artefacts
b) Just do a little mindgame.
I) with fullfps for the output IC can take every frame and encode it
II) with half the sourcefps IC takes every second frame of the input and encodes it
III) But what does a videocompression program do with other fps values (in the example I use 25fps source and 15 fps output, so we have a ratio of 1:1.6667)? The program has two options, it takes frame 1, encodes it and next it takes frame 2.6667, ups, that does not exist so here come the choices, it can now either take frame 3, or it uses an interpolation from frame 2 and 3 to calculate frame 2.6667. OK, next is frame 4.3334, again it does not exist, so we take frame 4 or calced frame 4.3334. Next follows frame 6, great, we have that. And so on. So you have two possibilities for a one second frameset, you take frames 1,3,4,6,8,9,11,13,14,16,18,20,21,23,24,26,... Guess how choppy the motion gets if you take these frames as you always switch between advancements of 1 frame and 2 frames of the source.
The other option is like this
1, calced 2.667, caled 4.334, 6, calced 7.667, cakced 9.334, 11 ....
If you use a good algorithm this gives you smooth motion, but unsharp video cause you have to calculate 2 of 3 frames (and afterwards you even have to compress those calced frames ;).

So, no, I wouldn't change fps from 23.9 to 12, I would change it to 11.95 (and that's why I asked jackho to include a textfield where you can manually enter the number)!

3. Yes, there is a function (I never used it and I am sure it takes a little bit of time for conversion ;) ) it's called Tweak, instructions on how to use can be found here: http://www.avisynth.org/index.php?page=Tweak

[curtw]

OK, this is going to sound really ignorant, but here goes: we now have two methods for cropping the video, but what do you input if you don't want *any* cropping done? Nothing? A series of zeroes? Please help!

[Egalus]

@curtw:
just make the line that before was something like
crop(12,88,-8,-92).Bicubicresize(320,188)
to
Bicubicresize(320,188)
this will only resize, but not crop, but be sure to crop if your source has black borders, as on dvd source invisible, but high bitrate chaning blackvalues in these borders would cost you valuable bitrate in your resulting MQV.

[curtw]

Originally posted by Egalus
@curtw:
just make the line that before was something like
crop(12,88,-8,-92).Bicubicresize(320,188)
to
Bicubicresize(320,188)
this will only resize, but not crop, but be sure to crop if your source has black borders, as on dvd source invisible, but high bitrate chaning blackvalues in these borders would cost you valuable bitrate in your resulting MQV.

Thanks, Egalus! Now I've got new problems.

1. In Step "B," when I tried playing the avs file in WMP, I get the audio, but no video. I figured this wasn't too important, and kept going.

2. In step "C," VFAPIConvEN won't accept a file with a ".avs" extension. It will only accept a d2v or TMPGEnc project file (.tpr). When I input my "test.d2v" I get an output avi file with no sound (which is ovious, because it didn't have the avs file to associate/mux). Then, of course, this silent avi file drops into Image Converter just fine. Is that why I downloaded tmpegnc-readavs? I'm lost.

What the heck am I doing wrong?

Curt

[pusfarm]

Originally posted by pusfarm
I do (version 9, I think), but I'll try getting the newest and see if that helps.&nbsp; Thanks. Reinstalling version 9 helped.&nbsp; Now I can get audio and video from the .avs file.

But even after the registry edits, IC 1.1 still won't recognize the format. :confused:

[Egalus]

@curtw:
Do you get any errormessage in wmp when playing the AVS without getting video in step B?

For step C) please install this patch for vfapiconv (http://www.christian-behrens.de/video/download/tmpgenc-readavs.zip)
Haven't updated the guide to this point.

[curtw]

Egalus,

No error messages in WMP. I just get a generic musical note icon, and the player says "no album art" as though it were expecting a still instead of a movie.

For the patch (tmpegnc-readavs), are the install instructions somewhere in this thread and I just missed them? I did open that zip file before sending out my 'call for help' last night, but couldn't figure out how/where to put things.

Thanks again!!!!

Curt

[Egalus]

Read the readme.txt contained in the patch and everywhere it says tmpegencdir or something like that replace it with vfapiconvdir.

[curtw]

OK, this is starting to drive me insane.

Properly installing the TMPGEnc patch allowed VFAPIConv to open the avs file, but I must have something wrong with the .avs, because the video is not appearing! ("video" box is grayed out in VFAPIConv)

I still get audio only (and no error messages) when playing the avs in Windows Media Player. I know that I have some sort of video content out there, because when I point VFAPIConv at the .d2v file I can get a working (but silent) avi file at the end. Windows media gives an "unrecognized file" error when I try to play the d2v. Should it?

I tried to induce an error by changing the file names in the avs script, and that works. If I point to a non-existant d2v file, I get "MPEG2Source: unable to load file" and a similar error if I mess up the path to the audio.

I have to assume that since I get "recognizable" d2v and ac3 files means that DVD2AVI is working?

Here are the first few lines from the d2v file Is there something wrong here?:

DVD2AVIProjectFile
1
21 C:\MPEG\New\movie.VOB

Stream_Type=1,0,0
iDCT_Algorithm=5 (1:MMX 2:SSEMMX 3:FPU 4:REF 5:SSE2MMX)
YUVRGB_Scale=1 (0:TVScale 1:PCScale)
Luminance_Filter=0,0 (Gamma, Offset)
Picture_Size=0,0,0,0,0,0 (ClipLeft, ClipRight, ClipTop, ClipBottom)
Field_Operation=0 (0:None 1:ForcedFILM 2:SwapOrder)
Frame_Rate=29970
Location=0,0,0,18C46

7 0 0 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

Any advice would be very much appreciated!

Curt

[Egalus]

Can you please post your Avisynth version number and your .AVS file?

[curtw]

Originally posted by Egalus
Can you please post your Avisynth version number and your .AVS file?

AVISynth is the latest version at the link you posted. The installer says 2.54, but the folder it's in only says "2.5." I could uninstall and try again?

The avs file:

video = Mpeg2Source("test_none.d2v")
audio = DirectShowSource("test_none AC3 T01 2_0ch 192Kbps DELAY -196ms.ac3").Amplify(8)
AudioDub(video,audio)
DelayAudio(-0.196)
Bicubicresize(320,240)

-----
Tanks so much for your patience and help!

[Egalus]

Hm, and again we are in the funny world of computers - everything looks correct but still it's not working ;)

Did you install the MPEG2Dec3dg.dll to the right directory (I guess yes, but I just want to be sure)?
Did you run vifpset.bat in your vfapiconv dir at least once?
What's your directx version?

[curtw]

Egalus,

I will re-confim all of those things tonight. I'm not in front of the machine right now, but I'm pretty sure that I did them. running vifpset.bat multiple times won't hurt, will it?

C.

[Egalus]

No, it will not hurt :=)
Except maybe if you break your finger while clicking the mousebutton ;)

[curtw]

Originally posted by Egalus
No, it will not hurt :=)
Except maybe if you break your finger while clicking the mousebutton ;)
Sorry to be so ignorant. I'm normally a Mac user, but I'm "trapped" using Windows for this conversion stuff. If somebody could just decode what's in the ".MAI" files, I'm sure I could do the convers ins in QuickTime Pro on the Mac, because MPEG-4 output is dead simple.

[curtw]

Originally posted by Egalus
Hm, and again we are in the funny world of computers - everything looks correct but still it's not working ;)

Did you install the MPEG2Dec3dg.dll to the right directory (I guess yes, but I just want to be sure)?
Did you run vifpset.bat in your vfapiconv dir at least once?
What's your directx version?

I just double-checked MPEG2Dec3dg.dll and vifpset.bat; everything is OK.

DirectX is more of a mystery. Since I've already confessed to being a Mac person, I can really plead ignorance. There appear to be two versions on this machine. The DirectX.log file shows 4.08.01.0810.00 and 4.09.00.0902.02 in the log. A search on "DirectX" in filenames appears to show that the 4.08.01.0810.00 got installed the first time I inserted a DVD that wanted to use the "Interactual" player (whatever that is). If there's a conflict here, I'd be more than happy to uninstall one of them, if I knew which one to go after (4.08.01.0810.00 is in a "3rdPartyApp" folder).

Does that make sense?

One thing I just did that's new: I checked the .avs file's properties while it was open in WMP. WMP says it's just an audio file, so it is absolutely not even detecting that there's a video component. And somehow, even with the fact that the avs file explicitly mentions the video, there's still no error. So I edited the avs file to take out everything but the first line ("video=..."), and here's the response from WMP: "The script's return value was not a video clip."

I have now tried every video optput option available in DVD2AVI, and always get the same result (have not tried every possible combination, though). Video plays perfectly *inside* of DVD2AVI, but WMP won't take the output.

[Egalus]

@curtw:
1) the .MAI just contains a snapshot picture of the film and some length information. If you can live without the picture you can forget about the MAI. I only copy the MQVs and never ever copy any MAIs to the clie.

2) Please select Start/run and start "dxdiag" (DirectX Diagnostics program from microsoft) and check if you find any problems there.

3) which windows version are you using?

4) Which video settings in dvd2avi are set at your version (maybe we find the problem there)?

[curtw]

Originally posted by Egalus
@curtw:
1) the .MAI just contains a snapshot picture of the film and some length information. If you can live without the picture you can forget about the MAI. I only copy the MQVs and never ever copy any MAIs to the clie.

2) Please select Start/run and start "dxdiag" (DirectX Diagnostics program from microsoft) and check if you find any problems there.

3) which windows version are you using?

4) Which video settings in dvd2avi are set at your version (maybe we find the problem there)?

Egalus,

1) that's surprising, because the first one I tried wouldn't work. I'm converting one now as I type this, and will try again. Thanks!

2. No problems found (I skipped the network tests)

3. WinXP (on a laptop with shared video memory, if that could be a contributor)

4. Everything's set per your tutorial:
Video/iDCT Algorithm/32-bit SSE MMX
Video/Fieldoperation/None
Video/Colorspace/Yuv 4:2:2
Audio/Tracknumber/1
Audio/Output Method/Demux (AC3,MPA,DTS)
Audio/48->44,1/high

With these additions (all settings left at startup default):
Video/YUV->RGB/PC Scale
Video/Luminance Filter/No changes
Video/Clip & Resize/No changes
Audio/Dolby Digital Decode/Dynamic Range Control/Normal
Audio/Normalization/100%
Option/Process Priority/Normal
Option/Local Language/Default

I hope this turns up something!

Curt

Follow-up: I'm getting identical results on a Dell Dimension 2400 desktop with XP, so it's not the shared video memory.

[Egalus]

Hm, really strange.
I have to think about that one a bit cause it never happened to me before (but I am sure we will find a solution sooner or later ;) ).

As I have almost no sparetime over the weekend don't expect anything new from me until monday.

[curtw]

Originally posted by Egalus
Hm, really strange.
I have to think about that one a bit cause it never happened to me before (but I am sure we will find a solution sooner or later ;) ).

As I have almost no sparetime over the weekend don't expect anything new from me until monday.

I understand. I really appreciate you trying. Fishing around the 'net, I founs sompleace that claims that Norton Antivirus can interfere with scripts, so today I did the following:
1. Disabled Norton Antivirus
2. Re-ran vifpset.bat
3. Re-ran ReadAVS.reg

But, sadly, I still get the same script error. s it's not Norton.

[curtw]

Egalus, do you have any new suggestions/ideas for me to try? Nothing I've tried has fixed my problem. I'm pretty sure it's somewhere in the script process that it breaks down. I'm about ready to bail out on this approach, and just stick with the old VOB-->MPEG1-->MQV translation, just because it works.

Thanks!

Curt

[Egalus]

I am still thinking about a solution but did not come up with anything specific, but as I did not have much time over the last week I have to think some more minutes about it.

[jekyllrider]

Hello Egalus,

Your guide is very helpful. Unfortunately I am having the same problem as Curtw. I used dvd2avi and received two files. I write the script in notepad and try to run with WMP but no video shows up. I have audio. I then tried to use vfapi to convert the avs file but still no video. If I pick the d2v file there is video content. One thing I notice when trying to run the avs file in WMP is that it says that it is trying to find the codec, and then says error downloading codec. I did receive an error while trying to run the avs script when I had one line typed wrong, but after fixing that the file just plays audio.

Any ideas? I have read and reread this whole thread quite a few times but can't seem to figure out what I am doing wrong. Here is the avs script:
video = Mpeg2Source("test.d2v")
audio = DirectShowSource("test AC3 T01 2_0ch 224Kbps DELAY -66ms.ac3").Amplify (8)
AudioDub(video,audio)
DelayAudio(-66)
autocrop(mode=0)
Bicubicresize (320,240)

Do you see anything that is incorrect?

Anybody that might have an idea what I am doing wrong, please shed some light on the problem for this newbie!

Thanks to everyone for such a great forum, and especially to people like Egalus that fiqure out how to do this stuff!

JB

[Egalus]

@jekyllrider:

Your script looks almost right (and the one flaw I see should still give you video ;) )
Change your
DelayAudio(-66)
to
DelayAudio(-0.066)

as you only want to "delay" the audio for 66ms and not for 66 seconds ;)

Now 4 questions:
What OS are you using?
What wmp verion are you using?
Did you install all updates from the winupdate page?
Do you have directx installed?

I guess I will try and install a fresh winxp next week on a new hdd and follow my guide myself step by step on this clean new install (maybe I than find out what I am missing to see and what you are missing on your pcs).

[jekyllrider]

Thanks for spotting my error.

Now 4 questions:
What OS are you using?
I am running Windows 2000
5.00.2195
Service Pack 3


What wmp version are you using?
I am running 9.00.00.2980.


Did you install all updates from the winupdate page?
Are you asking about Windows updates or WMP updates? I have tried updating both.


Do you have directx installed?
Yes, I have DirectX 8.1.

Thanks for your efforts, this is driving me crazy. As if I wasn't crazy enough already ;-)

[Egalus]

Guess what it does to me ;)
It's driving me nuts ;)

Can you two with the problems please check the Troubleshooting Installguide for avisynth
http://www.avisynth.org/index.php?page=Troubleshooting
especially the HuffYuv Part?

[curtw]

Originally posted by Egalus
Can you two with the problems please check the Troubleshooting Installguide for avisynth
http://www.avisynth.org/index.php?page=Troubleshooting
especially the HuffYuv Part?

I'm trying, but the Huffyuv installation guide is out of date. What's the WinXP equivalent of the "Multimedia" control panel? It seems like If I can get that configured, it might help.

VirtualDub gives the same error when opening the AVISynth script that WMP did: "the script's return value was not a video clip." VirtualDub *will* play a "dummy" avi made directly from the d2v file, just like WMP will.
---

10 minutes later:

Here's something to go on! if I reduce my script to these two lines, like the AviSynth Troubleshooting Guide says, I can see video in WMP:

AviSource ("test.avi")
return last

(where test.avi is a "fake" file made from the d2v using VFAPIConvEN as in Step C of your instructions). Putting the audio file in there instead plays the audio. This must mean that the problem is with the video part of the script , not with the video data itself.

---

20 more minutes later:

I have now made a working script that dubs the audio with the "fake AVI" video. If VFAPIConvEN will let me pull the fake AVI trick twice, I'll be able to make this work! More as i explore. But I have to mow the lawn now.

[curtw]

I got a working script! Two trips through VFAPIConv gave me an AVI that Image Converter could take. I'm working with a short animated cartoon right now, so I'm going to re-run this method on a 30-minute section of live-action movie tonight, to make sure that the audio and video stay in sync (everything i've tried to convert from VCD MPEG-1's has ended up way out of whack).

---

Follow-up: Everything worked great on a 28-minute VOB. I am in business! Thanks, Egalus! If you ever get inspiration on figuring out what went wrong with my script, please let me know. But this work-around only adds about three minutes to the process.

[Egalus]

And what is the workaround you use now?

[curtw]

Originally posted by Egalus
And what is the workaround you use now?

I ran VFAPIConv on the d2v file, creating a "fake" AVI with the video content only.

Then, I used an AviSynth script that muxed and resized *this* AVI and the audio section back through VFAPIConv again , creating a second "fake" AVI to feed to Image Converter. And it works! I didn't crop or do any image adjusting, but I don't think there would be any problems.

I didn't use your last step on adjusting the framerate, because as far as I can tell, IC is doing that part correctly all by itself without any tweaking (29.97 fps-->14.985 fps). If I ever end up working with a 24 fps source, I might have to do that.

Thanks for all of your help and patience!

[Egalus]

So that's really interesting as you just "reuse" vfapiconv again and don't change anything else. With this you show that huffyuv for sure exists on your pc (on XP ms again chose to hide the videocodecs as good as possible ;) it'sin control panel / sound / hardware / videocodecs - I use a german xp and hope you can find it with my translations ;) ).

But tbh I am now totally confused why you have to do the "reuse" step to get a successful conversion.

[curtw]

Originally posted by Egalus
So that's really interesting as you just "reuse" vfapiconv again and don't change anything else. With this you show that huffyuv for sure exists on your pc (on XP ms again chose to hide the videocodecs as good as possible ;) it'sin control panel / sound / hardware / videocodecs - I use a german xp and hope you can find it with my translations ;) ).

But tbh I am now totally confused why you have to do the "reuse" step to get a successful conversion.

I'm fairly certain that it's something about the MPEG-2 codec. If I try to open the d2v file directly with WMP it won't go. If I "disguise" it as an AVI, it works perfectly.

I did find the control panel right where you said (real smart of them to put the video parameters in the Sound CP), and confirmed that everything's OK there.

[jekyllrider]

Curtw,

Could you show me what scripts you used to do this workaround? Maybe I can get it to work for me.:)

Thanks

[curtw]

Originally posted by jekyllrider
Curtw,

Could you show me what scripts you used to do this workaround? Maybe I can get it to work for me.:)

Thanks

Build just one script for step (B) (but don't run it until you've done the first step in C):

video = AviSource("test.avi")
audio = DirectShowSource("test AC3 T01 3_2ch 384Kbps DELAY -83ms.ac3").Amplify(8)
AudioDub(video,audio)
DelayAudio(-0.083)
Bicubicresize(320,240)

When you get to Step (C), just do it twice:

Iteration 1: Input is test.d2v, output is test.avi
(at this point, the avs file I built previously started "working" in WMP)
Iteration 2: Input is script_shown_above.avs, output is out_final.avi

Then, I just dropped out_final.avi onto Image Converter 1.1, and it worked perfectly.

[Egalus]

Ok, I hope all those with problems converted to this forum too as I think I found the solution ;)

After my last shitty IBM harddrive I have ever purchased has chosen to end it's life I had to reinstall (fairer to say I had to start from my last 5 month old backuppoint - mental note "do backups more often") and voila, after following my own install procedure in this thread I had the same "avs won't play in wmp" as some of you had.

Solution, install gordian knot codec pack (I have not evaluated which of those codecs does the trick, but I guess it's ffdshow or morgan stream switcher) from http://gknot.doom9.org/ and try again, for me it works (and I know I had the codec pack installed on my old installation too - but about 2-3 month before I made this guide and started using avisynth).

[madmaxmedia]

Hi Egalus,

I am trying your instructions for the first time right now. Is it possible to include subtitles in the MQV? I am trying this with a foreign language film.

Thanks,
Steve

[Egalus]

I am trying your instructions for the first time right now. Is it possible to include subtitles in the MQV? I am trying this with a foreign language film.



As movieplayer does not support subtitles you would need to "compile" them into the video stream. As this instruction is for conversions without middlestep conversion you would need to do this in the avisynth step, but I have absolutely no idea if there might be a plugin for avisynth adding such a feature.
I suggest a search at www.avisynth.org to check if anything like this exists.

Regards,
Egalus

[madmaxmedia]

Hi Egalus,

Thanks for the quick reply. I search at avisynth.org, and found the following:

http://www.avisynth.org/Section+3%3A+Filters%2C+plugins+and+colorspaces

There's a reference to a subtitle plugin called VSFilter-
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=82303&package_id=84359

Looks like that would do it, but there's no documentation and I have no idea what to do. I imagine it would only take another entry in the TEST.avs file. There's a lot of discussion here, but it's completely Greek to me-

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?threadid=41196&perpage=20&pagenumber=3

EDIT- I found this page too-
http://dvx.sourceforge.net/help/AviSynth/VSFilter.htm

I am guessing that I will need to rip the subtitles from the DVD, then use that plug-in to add them? I found this page on how to rip subtitles-

http://nickyguides.digital-digest.com/subtitles.htm

I will play around with this, if you have any help or tips it would be appreciated!

Thanks, Steve

[madmaxmedia]

I am so psyched, I actually got the subtitles to work!

First you must install VSFilter, a AVISynth plugin-
http://sourceforge.net/project/show...ackage_id=84359

Then you must rip the subtitles of your movie, using this guide (includes link to program)-
http://nickyguides.digital-digest.com/subtitles.htm

The end result is basically a text file with the extension '.srt'. Now all you need to do is add the following line to the TEST.avs file (you can add it to the end)-

##############################
TextSub("C:\Documents and Settings\TEST.srt")
##############################

where 'TEST.srt' is the name of the subtitle file. You can include the full path, or just the file name if TEST.srt file is in the same folder as TEST.avs.

When you play TEST.avs in WMP, you should find subtitles displayed. If you want to get complicated you can change the font size and color of the subtitles, but by default it looks very good (full size or resized for CLIE).

[madmaxmedia]

Okay, my first run through and everything worked up until the end. ImageConverter took the file, but only converted the first 14 minutes of the movie (over 2 hours long.)

It didn't split it into separate parts, it just stopped after the 14 minutes.

I right-clicked the avi file after adding it to ImageConverter, and selected properties. Under 'Advanced', for some reason it says the play time is only 14 minutes and 8 seconds. It also says rest time of 14 minute and 8 seconds.

When I play the 'fake' avi file it's the full length- 2 hours 18 minutes.

Any ideas? I'm so close...

[Egalus]

Please post (or pm me) your avs file, maybe it's hidden there somewhere.

[madmaxmedia]

Hi Egalus,

Here it is-

# TEST.d2v is the prior created dvd2avi Projectfile
video = Mpeg2Source("test.d2v")
#
# "test AC3 T01 3_2ch 448Kbps DELAY -280ms.ac3" is to be changed to the filename
# of your ac3 file!
# The Amplify(8) boosts sound volume of the output for louder soundoutput on
# your clie
audio = DirectShowSource("TEST AC3 T01 1_0ch 96Kbps DELAY -66ms.ac3").Amplify(8)
#
# This muxes (on the fly) the video and the audio
AudioDub(video,audio)
#
# Enter the DELAY value contained in your ac3-files Filename here!
DelayAudio(-0.066)
#
# At this point you can crop the Black borders (or unwanted movieparts) from the
# movie.
autocrop(mode=0)
#
Bicubicresize(320,212)
#
TextSub("C:\Documents and Settings\Stephen Lang\Desktop\DVD to CLIE\Projects\subtitles\8andahalf.srt")

[Egalus]

First suggestion, disable your TextSub Line as everything else should work and remake your fake avi and try again.

[madmaxmedia]

Hey Egalus,

I re-ran the DVD2Avi conversion and it fixed things. I was doing other stuff during the conversion the first time, and probably something got messed up. This time I let the conversion finish before using the computer again.

So adding the subtitle script was actually fine. You may want to add it to the directions, people who convert anime or any foreign flicks will find it useful. By default the subtitles have drop-shadows and they are very easy to read at 320 x 240.

ALSO- To those who have not tried Egalus' directions because they look difficult- THEY'RE NOT~! :) It's actually quite easy since they are complete step by step directions. Quality is actually far better than 2-step conversion- Any intermediate step introduces artifacts that get re-encoded (taking up valuable bandwidth) and will definitely reduce the quality of the final MQV file.

After your first conversion, subsequent conversions are a snap, I don't even really need the directions anymore.

Thanks for your help!
Steve

[Egalus]

Hey Egalus,

I re-ran the DVD2Avi conversion and it fixed things. I was doing other stuff during the conversion the first time, and probably something got messed up. This time I let the conversion finish before using the computer again.


Funny, I always use my PC during such conversions and it never affected the output. On the other hand we are talking about computers, who knows what all those small electrons do if we look the other way ;)

I will add a subtitles section after I tired it myself (will not happen before the next weekend ;) ).
But surely it is interesting for many purposes (for example if you want to watch movies in a foreign tongue, there are always characters that don't speek understandable ;) ).

[euro nx73 user]

hi, i have recently been reading lots of these posts about video conversion and about how to get the best results, using this program and using this program, but for me, one simple answer, is using dvddecrypter to get the file onto the computer, and then using a fantastic program called dr. divx, this is THE program to use because the people who made this software ware the people who brought us the DivX codec in the first place, the program is so simple to use, and it is perfect if you are trying to fit something onto a specific size card etc. because you can enter the output file size, and the program does all the calculations, and there a wealth of options for the video conversion specialst, you can choose to desired codec to use to compress the file aswell.
sorry if dr. divx has already come up in this thread, i must have missed it, if you are interested in using this option, i am willing to insert some links about where to get the software, and also, a brilliant site that has all the how-to guide you need about converting your dvd's into divx, it is truly brilliant, well, let me know if you are interested.
Thanx, Dan

[Egalus]

No, dr.divx did not come up in this thread cause this thread is mainly about converting dvds to MQV without any middlestep conversions (the avi part is just for folks that are interested in avisynth features).
As dr.divx cannot convert to MQV (or did they change anything lately) it can't be used for DVD -> MQV conversion without middlestep conversion.

For those using mmplayer to play movies on palmos dr.divx surely is the easier way to convert (everything can be done via gui) than "my" guide, but last time I saw dr.divx you had way less features than the combination of avisynth and virtualdub can give you.

[euro nx73 user]

sorry, i meant in the whole video conversion to fit on your palm thing.
umm, no it doesnt convert to mvq, sadly, but i don't think it works with any quicktime files, it just doesn't recognize it, like in divx player for windows.
well, i think that there are a wealth of options when you got into advance setting and then into another menu that has even more details, but i cnt be bothering with all this, because if the output is the right size, and the quality it good, i am happy, and isnt this what we are all striving for.
oh and by the way, you seem to know your stuff about all this, will my clie, hmm, guess which one, be able to handle a 480x2xx movie resolution, with about 500 kps data rate, or whatever you call it?

[Egalus]

[Quote]will my clie, hmm, guess which one, be able to handle a 480x2xx movie resolution, with about 500 kps data rate, or whatever you call it?[/qoute]

That's largely depending on the codec you want to use.
With mmplayer playing xvid I was only able to get 360x2xx to work fluid with about 300kbps (video) and 64kbps audio while overclocking the nx-73 to 354mhz. 480x... never works for.
Maybe mpeg1 works with 480x... but this codec has worse quality.
Maybe Kinoma can play 480x... cause it has the worst (but easiest to calculate) codec in use by any palm video application.

[madmaxmedia]

Hey Egalus,

Do your full-length conversions stay in perfect sync all the way through?

All my conversions start out perfectly, then slowly get out of sync. At the end of a 2-hour movie, the video is faster than the audio by a couple of seconds. Anyone else get this? I am using Imageconverter 1.1 (the one that came on the UX50 software CD.)

Thanks, Steve

[Egalus]

If you set ICs framerate (via registry) corresponding to the one your source has my movies stay in sync all the time (if they start synced, sometimes dvd2avi just does not understand that the "Trailer" with the name of the movie company not always has audio for all languages and by this one language can be "startsynced" and the others start audio 10-15 seconds to early.

What framerate does your sourcevideo have and what framerate setting do you use in IC?

[madmaxmedia]

I have been cutting framerate exactly in half- from 23.976 to 11.988, and using the registry to enter the framerate as in your instructions.

I haven't tried using the full framerate yet. I guess I can try that next, that will tell us more info on what's going on.

thanks-

[Andy A]

Hey egalus,
I'm not getting two files when i use dvd2avi, only a movie file. I am using dvd shrink to copy only the movie file from the dvd to my hard drive. Any suggestions?

Andy

*Edit. I ended up using dvd decrypter instead and got both files, but am now having trouble getting the.avs file to play through wmp. I get "ScriptError: There is no function named Mpeg2Source" followed by the location of the file. When i add the load plugin command I get, "LoadPlugin:"C:Program Files\Avisynth2\plugins\mpeg2dec3dg.dll" is not an avisynth1.0 plugin. Any ideas?

*Edit. I got it working everything except for autocrop which really doesn't bother me since I don't have many widescreen dvds to worry about. Lets see if I can get the rest of these steps going now.

*Edit. Even got autocrop working now. I don't know how i got everything to work, but IC is working on it right now. Great tutorial egalus. Thanks.

[Egalus]

Lol, I wasn't even fast enough to answer any of the questions ;)
But you posted at times where I normally don't check the forums ;)

[Andy A]

Well everything worked out just fine, the only thing i'm wondering about though my movie is about 1 hour and 45 minutes and it came out to be just under 400 MB at regular High Quality using IC 1.1 does that file size sound right? Thanks again for your great tutorial.

Andy

[madmaxmedia]

That sounds about right. For movies I use ~12 FPS and about 200 kbps which results in about 200 MB movies.

I just did a anime conversion (original DIVX 23.976 FPS), and converted to 15 FPS 220 kbps (edited the registry). The sound is in sync the whole time. I am wondering if ImageConverter is not properly handling non-whole number frame rates.) I'm going to do a regular movie conversion next and use 12 FPS.

ImageConverter actually converted 23.976 > 15 FPS just fine. But since it's anime, it's hard to judge quality. The video runs smoothly though, no skipping or uneven motion.

[Egalus]

@Andy:
Quite easy to calc the resulting video size, as the video and audiocodec use exactly the amount (constant bitrate) you tell them - I played for so long with registry values for the settings, I don't know the standard hq settings IC uses, but the formula is like this (a few bytes more or less for tolerances and filesystemoverhead excluded):

filmminutes * 60 * (videocodecbitrate + audiocodecbitrate) / 8 / 1024 = MQV-Filesize in MB

And in your case you can than calc that your
(videobitrate + audiobitrate) = 520 kbit/s
which would lead me to the guess that it in real was 384kbit video and 124kbit audio ;)

For most videos I use 236kbit/s video and 64kbit/s audio which leads to 300kbit/s total, which equals to 2.2 MB/min.

And my 2 cents to fps in this regard:
- the higher the fps, the lower the imagequality per image with the same videocodecbitrate
- the lower the fps, the higher the per image imagequality at same bitrate
- the higher the fps, the smoother the movements
- the lower the fps, the more shaky the movie looks

As the screens of the clies are nice, but slow most times it does not make any sence to take more than 15 fps and for me most movies look still nice and almost unshaky (except rapid movement scenes, which would look even more "largepixeled" with more fps at same bitrate, so I choose my compromise here). For me I came to the conclusion to always take exactly 1/2 the fps of the original movie (as I normally convert PAL movies = 25 fps).

[madmaxmedia]

Hey Egalus,

I just did a conversion of Kill Bill at 12 FPS (instead of 11.998). The quality was just as good, and the audio was in sync the whole way.

I think for some reason my ImageConverter isn't handling the non-whole number frame rates. I also remember reading about this somewhere else, but it's strange if it works fine for you. Either way no big deal, since ImageConverter seems to be doing fine for me at 12 FPS.

Regarding conversion settings-

Unless you have a giant MS (and even if you do), I second Egalus' suggestions about frame rate and bit rate. I typicall use 220 kbps video at 12 FPS, and 64 kbps stereo audio. The frame rate could be a little higher, but since the picture quality is very good I think it's a very worthwile tradeoff. The audio is very good even with headphones.

With these settings most movies come in at 200 to 250 MB depending on length. So I can fit 1 on a 256 MB stick, or 2 on a 512 MB stick.

Thanks,
Steve

[Egalus]

@madmaxmedia:
maybe IC does not handle other frameratesteps than 0.5 well, I don't have any NTSC material to test, all I have is 25 fps PAL and that works really nice at 12.5 fps all time synced. As I can't test it mysef maybe other users of the guide could contribute their findings on this matter ;=)

[Andy A]

Hey Egalus,
Just wondering if theres a way to edit stuff out in any of these programs. I've got the first four simpsons seasons on dvd, but the dvd files arent split up by show they just run continuously. So unless I can figure out how to split them up I'll have to put about five hours of simpsons episodes as one file. Thanks.

Andy

[Egalus]

Hey Egalus,
Just wondering if theres a way to edit stuff out in any of these programs. I've got the first four simpsons seasons on dvd, but the dvd files arent split up by show they just run continuously. So unless I can figure out how to split them up I'll have to put about five hours of simpsons episodes as one file. Thanks.

Andy

There is more than one way for it ;)

a)
In step A) of the instructions (dvd2avi) you can set the start and the endframe of the movie to rip (with the blueon white statusline on the bottom of the program), like with any normal videoediting program

b)
In step B1) or B2) (in the TEST.d2v file) you can insert the "Trim" command wich uses startframe and endframe you want to have as parameters and looks like
Trim(startframe,endframe)

Both ways have their cons and pros, personally I would use b).

[Andy A]

Hey again egalus,
I spent a ridiculous amount of time getting the episodes to start and stop at exact places just by guessing and iterating to get the correct start and stop frames of 13 episodes. Well season 2 is 22 episodes and i don't feel like doing that again. I see in the manual that you can call up the frame number, but I can't quite get the script to work.

"ShowFrameNumber
ShowFrameNumber(clip, bool "scroll")

ShowFrameNumber draws text on every frame indicating what number Avisynth thinks it is. This is sometimes useful when writing scripts. If you apply additional filters to the clip produced by ShowFrameNumber, they will treat the text on the frame just as they would treat an image, so the numbers may be distorted by the time you see them.

If scroll is set to true the frame number will be drawn only once on the video and scroll from top to bottom, else it will be drawn on the right side as often as it fits.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ShowSMPTE
ShowSMPTE(clip, float fps)

ShowSMPTE is similar to ShowFrameNumber but displays SMPTE time code (hours:minuts:seconds:frame). The fps argument is required and must be 24, 25, 30, or 29.97.

Take care: both filters are due to text-drawing quite slow."

I'm not sure what I should put in for the "clip" or where I should even place that line. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Andy

[Egalus]

Ok, two suggestions:

a) if I am right it should be
showframenumber(video)
or
showframenumber()

b) if you want an easier way to find the cutmarks download virtualdub and open the normal (uncut) avs file with virtualdub, now you can navigate with virtualdub to your cutting positions and virtualdub shows you the eact framenumber , just write them down and create the avs files with cutmarks with this information - much easier ;)

[Andy A]

I got it working a few minutes after I posted, you were right I used showframenumber(video). Took me about 2.5 hours to cut up 22 episodes. That was a great improvement from my 5 hours to cut up 12 episodes just by guessing times. On season 3 i tried your video dub method and so far cut up 12 episodes in about 50 minutes. Thanks for all your input.

Andy

[blood]

Hiyas, nice thread =)

Just a quick question... i scanned this thread but being a total amateur when it comes to video technicalities, theres only so much i can understand 0_0

I was wondering if this guide also caters for converting WMV and standard MPEG into MQV? Also, it may be of interest to point out that i am transferring the files onto my Docomo phone and not a sony clie handheld. i'm unsure if that has any importance.

Also, is there anywhere i can download this imageconverter software? if this is against the rules to ask, i apologise.

thanks in advance

[Egalus]

As imageconverter is just available with sony clies (and you need sonys movieplayer software (which only runs on clies)) you can simply skip this thread as imageconverter movies won't play on your device ;)

[sixseven]

Hi again,

It's been a while since I've converted any DVDs. I am still a big believer in this process...

I have seen this in a few other posts in the forum, but I haven't seen the solution yet. I am having problems with sound getting out of sync. The thing is that it the problem is intermitent and only happens on certain movies. Most recently, I tried to encode American Wedding. The sound gets out of sync really fast. I followed the instructions perfectly, and I reran DVD2AVI to see if that might help. The only thing I've noticed that might be different with this movie is that it is encoded at 23.976 fps. I did manually set the registry fps settings of IC1.1 to 11988. Has anyone successfully converted any movie at this fps setting?

Could there be a problem in the original rip? I use SmartRipper. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[blood]

As imageconverter is just available with sony clies (and you need sonys movieplayer software (which only runs on clies)) you can simply skip this thread as imageconverter movies won't play on your device ;)

actually, whereas you may be right on the availability of imageconverter just through the purchase of sony clies, i'm pretty certain imageconverter is the only program which will produce movies playable on my phone. my phone is actually a J-phone, docomo, by _sony ericsson_. this is probably one of those brand compatiblity/loyalty things, where sony software works throughout their applications. (another reason why music on my phone runs only in ATRAC3 format, available through sony net MD software)

so i'm pretty sure imageconverter can and should be used to run movies on my phone.

back to my original question, can normal mpegs/wmv videos on my pc be converted into MQV using the guide on the first page?

[Egalus]

Hi again,

It's been a while since I've converted any DVDs. I am still a big believer in this process...

I have seen this in a few other posts in the forum, but I haven't seen the solution yet. I am having problems with sound getting out of sync. The thing is that it the problem is intermitent and only happens on certain movies. Most recently, I tried to encode American Wedding. The sound gets out of sync really fast. I followed the instructions perfectly, and I reran DVD2AVI to see if that might help. The only thing I've noticed that might be different with this movie is that it is encoded at 23.976 fps. I did manually set the registry fps settings of IC1.1 to 11988. Has anyone successfully converted any movie at this fps setting?

Could there be a problem in the original rip? I use SmartRipper. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Do me and others a favour and try encoding the same movie with a setting of 12000 for the ic framerate.
It seems like imageconverter (and I have no idea why, nor the chance to test it cause I only have access to PAL movies with 25 fps) has problems with framerate numbers in other steps than 0.5fps (so for me 12.5fps always works well).
As said, I can't test it myself so you (and I mean all of you NTSC people) have to test it, if this really is the case I will change the guide for that part.

[Egalus]

back to my original question, can normal mpegs/wmv videos on my pc be converted into MQV using the guide on the first page?

I guess (but I am not sure as I didn't test it) it's possible but it requires same changes to the guide.
The dvd2avi process for sure musn't be used ;)
For changes to the AVS file check www.avisynth.org, I bet there is a way to inout mpeg1 and/or wmv instead of mpeg2.

[blood]

I guess (but I am not sure as I didn't test it) it's possible but it requires same changes to the guide.
The dvd2avi process for sure musn't be used ;)
For changes to the AVS file check www.avisynth.org, I bet there is a way to inout mpeg1 and/or wmv instead of mpeg2.


ok. i'll try and test it out in (regardless of my inexperience). i'll post any findings here in case there may be any other users who may find it of some use to them

thanks again

[sixseven]

Do me and others a favour and try encoding the same movie with a setting of 12000 for the ic framerate.
It seems like imageconverter (and I have no idea why, nor the chance to test it cause I only have access to PAL movies with 25 fps) has problems with framerate numbers in other steps than 0.5fps (so for me 12.5fps always works well).
As said, I can't test it myself so you (and I mean all of you NTSC people) have to test it, if this really is the case I will change the guide for that part.

Egalus,
Thanks for your help on this. Strangely enough an IC setting of 12000fps solved my audio out of synch problem. I'm not sure if we have completely diagnosed the cause, but this seems to be a solution. As I convert more DVDs, I will post my findings if the problem recurs...

I agree that this should be part of the guide, maybe as part of a troubleshooting section.

You 'da man!
-sixseven

[Andy A]

Hey Sixseven and Egalus,
I've been having problems with a couple of movies being out of sync too, but it's even before I use IC. When I put the .avs file together and play that they are out of sync. The audio file name claims a delay of 0, but then when i play it with a 0 in the .avs delay i get lagging audio. Anyone have any ideas on how to fix this?

Andy

[Egalus]

2 ideas:
a) if it is on from a dvd with more than one audiotrack it might be possible that "for which reason ever" the compiler of the DVD thought that at the start of the movie (for the studio logo etc) only one audiotrack is needed and with this gets dvd2avi confused for any language that is not this one exclusive "have all included" language.
to get around this use the timebar of dvd2avi and select a startingframe after those logos (that you dont really need on your clie ;) ) or for testing even minutes into the dvd to test if it works than
b) sometimes it's caused by errors in the dvd-s audiotrack (dvd2avi is really picky about that). I once had a dvd that sounded nice when watching on my dvd-player, but the extracted audiotrack (35 seconds into the movie) had bad errors in it (something must have gone wrong in dvd mastering there). try to listen to your extracted audiotrack (with mediaplayer for exampe) for a minute to find out if it has problems there.

[sixseven]

Egalus,
Thanks for your help on this. Strangely enough an IC setting of 12000fps solved my audio out of synch problem. I'm not sure if we have completely diagnosed the cause, but this seems to be a solution. As I convert more DVDs, I will post my findings if the problem recurs...

I agree that this should be part of the guide, maybe as part of a troubleshooting section.

You 'da man!
-sixseven

Well, I've converted about 10 movies originally encoded at 23.976 fps. The IC fps setting of 12000 seems to work every time. I have adapted the ronco rotisserie oven mentality with IC, set it annnnnnnnnnd forget it... I'll be watching Gothika tomorrow on an airplane. I hope it doesn't suck... :)

I've actually been able to streamline this whole process, and while it still take about as long to encode the movie as it does to watch, I've definitely gotten faster. Plus I encode while I sleep... :)

My thanks again to Egalus.

PS - This thread should be made sticky.

[sixseven]

Anyone else feel this thread shuold be made sticky?

[Egalus]

Sure ;)

But my answer was to short to be posted ;)

[Maha]

mm... as for me I resize video with Vidcrop PRO...