curtw

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

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

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.

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curtw

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.

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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).

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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?

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curtw

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.