AVStoDVD Support Thread

[_MrC_]

SourceForge links are broken. I will try to fix them shortly. Meanwhile use following links:

AVStoDVD 2.3.4 Installer Package
AVStoDVD 2.3.4 NoInstall Package
AVStoDVD 2.3.4 Source Code



Bye

[_MrC_]

In the meantime, let me second some issues with the d/l from Sourceforge. I keep getting a very small .Exe file, ranging from 800kb to 1.9MB. That can't be right

SourceForge uploading section is down due to a hacking attack they received last week. Just use MediaFire links provided above.

Oh, while I'm at it: Uninstall prior version and then install a new version, or install new version over top of the previous one ? For safety's sake, I normally assume the former, unless the developer indicates otherwise, as sometimes they do.

Yes, I usually suggest to first uninstall previous release and then install new one. It is safer.

Please let me know your questions and suggestions herebelow or in a separate thread.



Bye

[Baldrick]

I tried download your avstodvd 38943498 times from sourceforge so I could update the videohelp tool section until I found the mirror.

[_MrC_]

I tried download your avstodvd 38943498 times from sourceforge so I could update the videohelp tool section until I found the mirror.

Yeah, I know.

SourceForge informed me that they have been unders a sort of attack. They will restore the uploading section only after building a more effective protection.

Thanks for the patience...



Bye

[_MrC_]

SourceForge links are up and running.

More info about the attach to SF here.

Bye

[Seeker47]

I tried download your avstodvd 38943498 times from sourceforge so I could update the videohelp tool section until I found the mirror.

It seems like they've been down for a couple weeks now ?! I tried to d/l a couple other things last night, and Sourceforge just hung . . . so I think reports of their recovery may be premature.

[Seeker47]

Please let me know your questions and suggestions herebelow or in a separate thread.



Bye

Hi _MrC_,

Thanks for the install info.

I could have sworn that I saw a separate development thread, but maybe not.

O.K., here are some issues I've run into. (These are mainly under AVS 2.3.3, and some might not even be AVS issues, per se. If it matters, I'm running XP SP-3, and still need to update the hardware listing for my profile, which is out of date.)

1) Alleged "Burn failure" (or sometimes actual burn failure, where the ImgBurn phase does not even occur). Most recently, I had at least the third case where AVS reported the burn to have failed, yet when I went to check the disc, it seems to have completed and it in fact plays. (At least it plays normally in VLC or WMP_HC -- I need to go try it in a standalone player.) In this case, AVS showed the bar graph for the burn progress frozen at about the 3/4 mark, but I did a f/fwd on the disc all the way to the end. Really weird this time, as I see in the project log something like a 9 hour gap between the 'Burn Failure" entry and the end of the log. (I had set this project to run just before going to bed.)

2) An error message refers us to the project log file for explanation of a "failure" such as the one above. So I take a look at the Log File, but (to my untrained eye) it does not seem to reveal any reason for the error. If you like, I could zip up that last project log and PM it to you.

3) On another project, I -- very oddly -- wound up with a defective Title Button (1 out of 3). That is to say, clicking on it from the Title Menu does nothing. But the other two are fine.
What might cause that ?

4) # & spatial Arrangement of Menu Items: I was looking for ways to have as many as 4 - 6 at a time, and to be able to align them or move them around to positions more to my liking, but did not see any clear or simple ways to accomplish that. (Particularly in cases where some might have longer clip titles, and it became a problem of not having adjacent ones overlap each other's space.) But I see now that you've made several more templates available, so maybe the answer is to be found there . . . ?

5) I thought I saw 2-pass checkboxes in both the Qu-Enc & HC screens, although this is not supposed to be an option ?

6) Still trying to get a better handle on the rhyme or reason behind widely differing AVS project times. Often, it will be just under an hour, other times several hours. And, on the face of it, the projects did not seem all that radically different. Problematic videos (?) Certain video formats (?)

7) What causes significant discrepancies in the reported running time for videos ? (I'm guessing that an incorrect header or some less-than-fatal file corruption might be among the answers.) I've definitely run into this with CX2D, and probably with AVS as well.

These are the things I've noticed and jotted down, so far. I expect to be installing v. 2.3.4 shortly.

[_MrC_]

1) Alleged "Burn failure" (or sometimes actual burn failure, where the ImgBurn phase does not even occur). Most recently, I had at least the third case where AVS reported the burn to have failed, yet when I went to check the disc, it seems to have completed and it in fact plays. (At least it plays normally in VLC or WMP_HC -- I need to go try it in a standalone player.) In this case, AVS showed the bar graph for the burn progress frozen at about the 3/4 mark, but I did a f/fwd on the disc all the way to the end. Really weird this time, as I see in the project log something like a 9 hour gap between the 'Burn Failure" entry and the end of the log. (I had set this project to run just before going to bed.)

2) An error message refers us to the project log file for explanation of a "failure" such as the one above. So I take a look at the Log File, but (to my untrained eye) it does not seem to reveal any reason for the error. If you like, I could zip up that last project log and PM it to you.

Until release 2.3.3, AVStoDVD waits for ImgBurn to be closed and the presence of VIDEO_TS.IFO file into the burned DVD. From release 2.3.4, AVStoDVD is parsing the ImgBurn log to understand how the burning process has completed. It should improve your issue. Let me know.

3) On another project, I -- very oddly -- wound up with a defective Title Button (1 out of 3). That is to say, clicking on it from the Title Menu does nothing. But the other two are fine.
What might cause that ?

Did you tested that menu on a software player only or on a standalone DVD player as well?

4) # & spatial Arrangement of Menu Items: I was looking for ways to have as many as 4 - 6 at a time, and to be able to align them or move them around to positions more to my liking, but did not see any clear or simple ways to accomplish that. (Particularly in cases where some might have longer clip titles, and it became a problem of not having adjacent ones overlap each other's space.) But I see now that you've made several more templates available, so maybe the answer is to be found there . . . ?

If you switch on the 'Snap to the grid' command button, you will find that moving thumbs will be much easier (if I understood correctly the issue).

5) I thought I saw 2-pass checkboxes in both the Qu-Enc & HC screens, although this is not supposed to be an option ?

What screens are you referring to? Please clarify better.

6) Still trying to get a better handle on the rhyme or reason behind widely differing AVS project times. Often, it will be just under an hour, other times several hours. And, on the face of it, the projects did not seem all that radically different. Problematic videos (?) Certain video formats (?)

Mostly it depends on input file resolution. HD mkv/mts could be very tough to be decoded and frameserved by AviSynth. Quantity of AviSynth filters have a big influence too.

7) What causes significant discrepancies in the reported running time for videos ? (I'm guessing that an incorrect header or some less-than-fatal file corruption might be among the answers.) I've definitely run into this with CX2D, and probably with AVS as well.

Are you referring to input source titles? Well, there is so many badly encoded stuff around the web...

Thanks for your comments and time! I always appreciate "critic" but constructive users.



Bye

[Calidore]

Hi, MrC. Now that I've been using AVStoDVD for a few months, I'm enjoying it quite a bit. I wish I'd switched from DVD Flick much earlier.

I do have a (hopefully) small request, if it's not a troublesome thing to implement. One feature I like very much is that AVStoDVD will automatically add borders to a widescreen movie to keep the aspect ratio correct. Flick and a couple other programs that I tried simply vertically stretched the picture to fit DVD dimensions. However, there are times when I do want the program to resize the picture rather than add the borders, but AFAIK there's no way to do this now other than manually editing each AVISynth script one by one. A simple globally-applied checkbox would be wonderful, if possible.

Best,

Calidore

[_MrC_]

@Calidore

first of all thanks to the kind words and for enjoying AVStoDVD.

May I ask you what is the purpose to resize the picture rather than do letterboxing? That means alter the display aspect ratio, thus distort the image. I can understand if the source title has a distorted DAR and you want to fix it, but that case should be managed as an exception (editing the AviSynth script).

Please understand: I do not want to skip your suggestion, just understand better if it has a more general purpose.



Bye

[Calidore]

@Calidore

first of all thanks to the kind words and for enjoying AVStoDVD.

May I ask you what is the purpose to resize the picture rather than do letterboxing? That means alter the display aspect ratio, thus distort the image. I can understand if the source title has a distorted DAR and you want to fix it, but that case should be managed as an exception (editing the AviSynth script).

Please understand: I do not want to skip your suggestion, just understand better if it has a more general purpose.



Bye

Hi, MrC.

1) PAL has a slightly different aspect ratio, which I like to correct because it looks horizontally squished to my eyes. One example would be when I had my dad bring back a DVD of Paperhouse when he went to England (one of my favorite movies, and unavailable here in the U.S.). I'm also a fan of old movie serials, which I occasionally find in PAL format MP4s or AVIs. Changing the AVISynth script for one movie obviously isn't a big deal, but when converting a 12 or 15 chapter serial, it's kind of a pain to have to go through all of them one by one.

2) I occasionally (well, okay, often) forget to set the pixel aspect ratio when backing a DVD up to AVI, resulting in a straight 720x480 video file. Doesn't really matter if I watch the AVI itself, because the media player will show it however I want, but if I burn them back to DVD for viewing on a TV, I want to resize them properly to 4:3 or 16:9.

If you're wondering why in the world I would create another DVD from the backups rather than watching the originals, I can give you three examples:

1) The Lord of the Rings deluxe edition DVDs came with a number of documentaries split into three pieces to focus on each of the three films individually. I prefer watching each one straight through without having to cycle through each of the three sets every time, so I ripped them and joined the parts together.

2) I have all three Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection sets, which contain all but two of the original cartoons. I've ripped them all and want to arrange & watch the cartoons chronologically. However, this is one time where I forgot to set the A.R., so I would have to edit a couple dozen scripts per disk (over 160 total).

3) I just got my LONG-awaited complete Bullwinkle set, and as with LOTR above, would like to rip and collect the R & B serial chapters together so I can watch them straight through. In the event I botch the A.R. again, we're talking upwards of 50 <>3 minute chapters per disk, and well over 300 total.

Editing the scripts is still faster than re-ripping, but I hope you see my point.

Still, the main issue isn't how much time it saves me on occasion, but how much time it would take you to set up. Since you had to specifically program AVStoDVD to compute and insert the letterboxing, I'm hoping that implementing a toggle to skip that step wouldn't be a big deal. If it in fact isn't worth it, I'll certainly understand and survive.

Also, while I'm thinking of it, I have one more question. While watching my homemade DVD of G-Men vs. the Black Dragon, I found I was going back to the menu after each chapter. You have a Play All option when creating the menu, but I looked and couldn't find an option to automatically play the next entry. Is that in there? If not, it would be very handy, especially for something like Tom and Jerry or Bullwinkle above, with dozens of individual episodes on disk.


Best,

Calidore

[_MrC_]

Still, the main issue isn't how much time it saves me on occasion, but how much time it would take you to set up. Since you had to specifically program AVStoDVD to compute and insert the letterboxing, I'm hoping that implementing a toggle to skip that step wouldn't be a big deal. If it in fact isn't worth it, I'll certainly understand and survive.

Ok, I will put it in the ToDo list. Something like a 'Stretch image to fit window' option in 'Preferences'/'AviSynth'.

Also, while I'm thinking of it, I have one more question. While watching my homemade DVD of G-Men vs. the Black Dragon, I found I was going back to the menu after each chapter. You have a Play All option when creating the menu, but I looked and couldn't find an option to automatically play the next entry. Is that in there? If not, it would be very handy, especially for something like Tom and Jerry or Bullwinkle above, with dozens of individual episodes on disk.

Nope, unfortunately (almost) all menu navigation options are hardcoded in BatchMux. BTW if you select 'Force Play-All button selection' in DVD Menu Wizard, if you click on Play-All then all titles are played sequentially.



Bye

[Calidore]

Thanks!

Best,

Calidore

[Mike99]

I put version 2.3.3 on my new PC and also updated to 2.3.3 on my old PC because I wanted to see the speed difference. The new one works fine, but now I get an error message on the old PC.

Avisynth Error!
Avisynth open failure:
Evaluate: System exception - Access Violation
(C:myfilepath\myfilename.avs, line 3)

This is an FLV video & I used the same preferences on both & selected NTSC & FFMegSource. The AviSynth script looks the same on both PCs except for the source file path. I’ve previously used FFMegSource on the old PC & it worked.

Any idea what I might be looking for in line 3?

[_MrC_]

@Mike99

is your input flv file in a read-only media?

What about using FLVSplitter and DirectShowSource?



Bye

[dylz]

Hi MrC, It usually takes me 40 minutes on 4cores (not sure if it uses all of them but is fast enough) to encode a mkv/avi or any format to a dvd 1hr30 to 2hr30 except when I did my first downsize from a 4.9gb h.264 mkv file to 4.7gb dvd it took about 2 -3hours Is this normal maybe because the bitrate was high ? The output dvd bitrate seemed average 4700 - 6000 per vob here's what mediainfo said about the mkv:

[Seeker47]

_MrC_,

What governs the program's automated selection of encoder to use for a given job ? (I don't recall ever seeing AVS default to anything other than QuEnc, 1-pass, CBR., on any material, and so wonder what -- if anything -- might make it choose one of the other two options ?)

Several times that I've tried to force it to go with HC instead, I've seen the status report "Very low Quantisizer, Bad Q estimation, Please reconsider settings." And I usually gave up, aborted the job early, and re-started with Qu-Enc selected. Even though I don't really understand that "error message" or warning. But I still have the feeling that HC is the better encoder . . . .
What bad result is going to occur if I went with HC anyway, disregarding that advice ?

[Mike99]

@Mike99

is your input flv file in a read-only media?

What about using FLVSplitter and DirectShowSource?



Bye

My input file is a FLV file on the hard drive.

I got things going on the old PC by deleting the cachefile statement in the script & then it proceeded. If you recall this is what I had to do on an older version of AVStoDVD. However the audio was very slow & low pitched.

On the new PC I only installed AVStoDVD 2.3.3. I did not yet install flvsplitter. I recall on the old PC that when I first tried AVStoDVD it worked using QuEnc without flvsplitter. I don’t recall if I used DirectShowSource or not.

So I did a basic install on the new PC & it worked correctly with FFMegSource & QuEnc & without flvsplitter. I tried this with 2 FLV videos, first one was 23.976 fps & then 24 fps. No problems. I did not have to delete the cachefile statement. Everything worked as is.

I figured there should be no problem doing the same on the old PC with the same version, but it did not work. I tried it with & without flvsplitter & it makes no difference. Again, deleting the cache file statement got things going, but the audio was very slow.

Eventually I’ll get flvsplitter, ffdshow, etc on the new PC. But for now I just wanted to do a quick comparison to see how much faster the new PC was & to make sure everything works on 64 bit Windows 7.

Any suggestions why audio is OK on the new PC but slow on the old PC?

[_MrC_]

@dylz

it mainly depends on source resolution


@Seeker47

See Help/FAQ/Video/Q3.5

HCenc warning message can be ignored as far as avg and max bitrate has a bias (>1000 kbps). If you say HCenc to use avg very close to max bitrate, it will have hard time in handling that.


@Mike99

I'm not a fortune teller... You are the one that know the differences between your PCs. Try to replicate sw configurations (OS, codecs, splitters, etc.) of the new to the old PC.



Bye

[Blueknight]

Hi,

Just wondering. Does it allow you to choose what quality you want out of the encoder? I use DVDFlick and it also had this feature before where you can choose from Normal or Best. Its a really nice programs and I've never had problems with it but sadly that program doesn't allow me to make my own menu(I can but its too complicated).
I saw a post somewhere in Pages 1-2 where someone said that its probably better than DVDFlick.

I hope that its similar but better so that I don't anymore problems from it.

[Mike99]

@Mike99

I'm not a fortune teller... You are the one that know the differences between your PCs. Try to replicate sw configurations (OS, codecs, splitters, etc.) of the new to the old PC.



Bye

I realize that you don't know what is on my PC, but I was hoping you might have a clue where to look for the audio problem. The old PC has codecs & splitters that the new one does not, therefore I'm surprised it is the one that has a problem.

[_MrC_]

@Blueknight

AVStoDVD uses by default *best* encoding profile (high quality settings) for both HCenc and QuEnc. Nowadays the CPU are so fast that *normal* or *low* profiles are no more convenient on mpeg2 encoding. There is the possibility to use some *insane* settings with FFmpeg, but frankly speaking it is quite useless (IMO).

@Mike99

well, the common sense would suggest to remove codecs & splitters from the old PC... and then start to load them again sequentially to understand which one is problematic.



Bye

[knownothing]

Hello!

I like this software. It would be a nice feature if one could put number before the titles' names in the menu editor automatically.
Is there any way to create chapter menu?

Thanks for your attention!

[_MrC_]

It would be a nice feature if one could put number before the titles' names in the menu editor automatically.

DVD Menu titles labels take the content from the TitleName you can edit in 'Edit Title'/'General'. Probably it is easier to add numbers in that position.

Is there any way to create chapter menu?

See Help/FAQ/Authoring/Q6.2



Bye

[Calidore]

Hi, MrC. I've just thought of a small suggestion.

I've set the temp folder to d:\temp and the output folder to c:\temp. However, the only files that get written to d:\temp are the very small cache, .ini, .avs, and .log files. The large demuxed .m2v and audio files are written to c:\temp, and then upon authoring, copied within the same drive and folder. If the in-process media files could be written to the designated temp folder rather than the final output folder, those of us who have more than one drive would benefit from much faster copy times and much less disk thrashing. Would this be simple to do?

Love the software, thank you.

Best,

Calidore

[davexnet]

This seems like a very good suggestion.

[_MrC_]

Good suggestion indeed.

What about revising the folder paths in 'Preferences'/'Paths' from:

- Default Output Path
- Temp Files Path

to:

- Output DVD Files Path
- Temp Working Files Path (for .avs, .ini, ...)
- Temp DVD Assets Files Path (.m2v, .ac3, ...)

Files m2v and ac3 will be stored in 'Temp DVD Assets Files Path' except when 'Elementary MPEG2 Streams' is selected as 'Ouput Setup'. In that case m2v and ac3 will be directly created in 'Output DVD Files Path'.



Bye

[Calidore]

Good suggestion indeed.

What about revising the folder paths in 'Preferences'/'Paths' from:

- Default Output Path
- Temp Files Path

to:

- Output DVD Files Path
- Temp Working Files Path (for .avs, .ini, ...)
- Temp DVD Assets Files Path (.m2v, .ac3, ...)

Files m2v and ac3 will be stored in 'Temp DVD Assets Files Path' except when 'Elementary MPEG2 Streams' is selected as 'Ouput Setup'. In that case m2v and ac3 will be directly created in 'Output DVD Files Path'.



Bye

Glad you like the idea. Revising the options as you've done above may be overcomplicating things, though. The "temp working files"--.avs, etc.--only take up a few kilobytes of space, so it makes no difference at all where they go. It's the big files that affect performance. It would probably be easier for you and just as effective to leave the options as they are and simply have the program treat the m2v and ac3 files as more temp files, which is what they are.

Thanks!

Best,

Calidore

[_MrC_]

Glad you like the idea. Revising the options as you've done above may be overcomplicating things, though. The "temp working files"--.avs, etc.--only take up a few kilobytes of space, so it makes no difference at all where they go. It's the big files that affect performance. It would probably be easier for you and just as effective to leave the options as they are and simply have the program treat the m2v and ac3 files as more temp files, which is what they are.

OK

Any other users opinion?



Bye

[dylz]

I like the settings the way they are since my c drive is my main and my d drive is hp recovery incase things get screwed. I cannot use the d drivefor regular files(read-only).