AVStoDVD Support Thread

[JuMe]

I recently ran into this bug again:

If AVStoDVD needs to use the backup-routine for audio encoding, FFmpeg (Safe Mode) doesn’t always work. If I’m encoding 23,976 fps source to PAL DVD using PAL SpeedUp, the audio will be out of sync, because Safe Mode does not speedup the audio. I think that FFmpeg (AviSynth) should be the default backup-routine, if PAL SpeedUp or NTSC SlowDown is selected. The other option would be to utilize FFmpeg-filter called “atempo”, which can change the duration of the audio.

This second one is a very minor bug, but I’ll report it anyway:
Some rare videos have 5.0 audio, and in these cases, AVStoDVD always downmixes it to stereo. However, 5.0-channel audio is completely valid for DVD, so there is no need to downmix it.

I know this has been suggested earlier, but I’m just curious: Any plans on adding the EBU R128 loudness normalization to audio-features? It would be very useful for projects that have video clips from various sources.

Many thanks for this great piece of software. There are similar free tools available, but this one easily beats them all. There’s no comparison.

JuMe

[_MrC_]

@kodec and paisdeoctubre

thanks for the kind words. There's still a lot of work to reach half of the perfection...

kodec, could you elaborate better your request? What TextSub options are you referring to? A screenshot or a ste-by-step description can help a lot.

paisdeoctubre, that's unfortunately a SubtitleCreator behaviour, that I do not have in full control. Anyway you can play a bit with 'Preferences'/'Authoring' DVD Subs Font options: you may find a better configuration for your needs.

Other hints in Help/FAQ/Subtitles



Bye

[_MrC_]

If AVStoDVD needs to use the backup-routine for audio encoding, FFmpeg (Safe Mode) doesn’t always work. If I’m encoding 23,976 fps source to PAL DVD using PAL SpeedUp, the audio will be out of sync, because Safe Mode does not speedup the audio. I think that FFmpeg (AviSynth) should be the default backup-routine, if PAL SpeedUp or NTSC SlowDown is selected. The other option would be to utilize FFmpeg-filter called “atempo”, which can change the duration of the audio.

Thanks for the report on the backup FFmpeg audio issue. I will give a look into that ASAP.

Some rare videos have 5.0 audio, and in these cases, AVStoDVD always downmixes it to stereo. However, 5.0-channel audio is completely valid for DVD, so there is no need to downmix it.

Do you have a sample of 5.0 audio track (AC3? DTS?) to send it for testing? avstodvd@gmail.com

I know this has been suggested earlier, but I’m just curious: Any plans on adding the EBU R128 loudness normalization to audio-features? It would be very useful for projects that have video clips from various sources.

It could be very easy, as far as the EBU R128 routine would be already implemented as AviSynth filter. Are you aware of that? As alternative you can give a try to manolito's Wavi_mod.bat normalization plugin.



Bye

[paisdeoctubre]

I think that being able to change the height of the subtitle (as you can do with the widht) might solve it. Thanks for the answer anyway MrC, you are the man.

[JuMe]

I think I have a concert-video, which has 5.0 AC3 –audio. I’ll try to find it and post a small sample for you.

If I understood correctly, Wavi_mod –plugin is a peak-based normalizer with dynamic compression. It actually sounds very useful, because sometimes videos have very wide dynamic range, and I find myself constantly adjusting the volume up and down.
I guess that the ideal normalizer would combine the functionality of Wavi_mod and EBU R128: Wavi_mod would take care of the big loudness differences inside INDIVIDUAL files, and EBU R128 would even out the average loudness differences BETWEEN files.

JuMe

[DJ_ValBec]

I play with short videos: all of them with diff. audio volume. ( from very loud to low volume)

The way i do it: on the fly
Take all the videos file ( I do 18 to 20 at once ) into AudioCoder [ Sound > Normalize Volume "Check" | Leave Gain on 0.0db | Change output channel to 5.1, etc] & it create a new audio file right next to each video file.
Then I load [ one at the time the "18-20" ] video files into AVStoDVD and replace the old audio file (Demux), for the new one (mux), etc...

Correct me if I'm doing it wrong, I'm new on this.

I love Audio-Coder & VidCoder as much as AVStoDVD.
- http://www.fosshub.com/AudioCoder.html

[doctorm]

Minor question here. Im sure it is my fault but i cant solve it: subtitle font size is reduced when the sentence is long and divides in two lines. It seems to try to occupy the same amount of space by reducing the size. How can I mantain the same letter size?

Thanks a lot. Great great program by the way.

The best answer is to reduce the default size for all the subtitles under Preferences/Authoring-Burning/DVD Subs Font.

If you want to check ahead before encoding, load your subtitles into SubtitleCreator. Under Profiles/apply profile, choose the correct default AVStoDVD profile. Then tweak the font and size under Format/Change Font.

You can then see what has a problem by right clicking one of the subtitle lines and selecting "Only Show Subtitles With Errors". Anything that is too long and will be shrunk will be highlighted in blue.

[manolito]

If I understood correctly, Wavi_mod –plugin is a peak-based normalizer with dynamic compression.

Hi JuMe, and welcome to the forum.

Your description of the plugin is only correct if you use DynamicAudioNormalizer from it. Basically the plugin is just a tool to move the audio normalizing step away from AviSynth and use a different tool instead. Currently implemented tools are SoX and DynamicAudioNormalizer. But it should not be too hard to add other tools to the plugin.

DynamicAudioNormalizer is still a Peak Normalizer and not a Loudness Normalizer. EBU R128 is a Loudness Normalizer (as is ReplayGain).

To better understand the inner workings of DynamicAudioNormalizer you should read the included documentation. I have used it for several weeks now on a number of diverse film and concert show sources, and I like the results very much. Definitely worth checking it out.

EBU R128 is a very new concept in audio leveling, it introduces new measuring units (like LU = Loudness Units), and it requires new hardware and software for audio production houses. The only free tool I have found is R128Gain ( http://r128gain.sourceforge.net/ ) . It supports ffmpeg and SoX, so it should be possible to integrate it into the Wavi_Mod plugin.

So far I did not have the time to try out R128Gain, it looks like it is GUI based for making settings. Wavi_Mod has no provisions to integrate a GUI, it needs a purely CLI based tool. Needs more R&D...


Cheers
manolito

[paisdeoctubre]

vvv

[paisdeoctubre]

The best answer is to reduce the default size for all the subtitles under Preferences/Authoring-Burning/DVD Subs Font.

If you want to check ahead before encoding, load your subtitles into SubtitleCreator. Under Profiles/apply profile, choose the correct default AVStoDVD profile. Then tweak the font and size under Format/Change Font.

You can then see what has a problem by right clicking one of the subtitle lines and selecting "Only Show Subtitles With Errors". Anything that is too long and will be shrunk will be highlighted in blue.

Thanks I will try reducing the default size of the font. As long as I dont need big subtitles...

[manolito]

So far I did not have the time to try out R128Gain, it looks like it is GUI based for making settings. Wavi_Mod has no provisions to integrate a GUI, it needs a purely CLI based tool. Needs more R&D...

OK, I did a little bit of research, and this is what I came up with so far...

R128Gain also offers a pure CLI version. It uses ffmpeg for determining the loudness values and SoX to normalize to R128. Here is a command line I found:

r128gain.exe --in-place --command="sox %TRACK% %BN%_normalized.wav gain %TGDB%" input.wav

And ffmpeg itself has an EBU R128 analyzing option, it can be executed like this:

ffmpeg -nostats -i [input.wav] -filter_complex ebur128 -f null -

This will write the analysis results to STDOUT, it then needs a second pass to correct the level with the -volume parameter.


All this could be added to my Wavi_Mod plugin, but frankly I am not too interested to implement it. A while ago I experimented a bit with ReplayGain (which is pretty similar to EBU R128), and I did not like it. The resulting audio files were way quieter than the source files, giving away a lot of headroom, and all the commercial CDs or DVDs I own had much louder audio.

BTW if you just want ReplayGain for AVStoDVD, there is a tool called WaveGain which does this in one step, and it is very easy to integrate it into my Wavi_Mod plugin. Any user who has a basic understanding of batch files can modify the plugin, it's just that I am not interested...


Cheers
manolito

[kodec]

kodec, could you elaborate better your request? What TextSub options are you referring to? A screenshot or a ste-by-step description can help a lot.

Sure, gladly, here goes for everyone; as said, I have tried all the other plugins and to my liking this is the AVStoDVD of subtitling: simple, effective, enough detailed, fast and flawless in what it aims to be, similar options that I'd like to see in AVStoDVD more than anything, if at least partially possible:

1. After installing VobSub 2.23 there is a textsub.vdf plugin in the VobSub directory, which you can copy into the VDub plugin directory and there it looks something like this:





2. First line of flawless TextSub options during selecting subtitles look like this (the resolution settings in the window underneath are irrelevant now of course):





3. Then there is the second line of options activated by "Styles" button, the most important for me being the flawless, brilliant, fantastic opaque box:





4. The resulting .avi would look like this:





5. Which is almost identical to the public TV in my country, probably easiest subs on the eyes (the following last pic); I'd say that for my liking pic 4 I have created are even better, because they are not streched.





Cheers, Mister C.

[JuMe]

@DJ_ValBec

I didn’t know about AudioCoder. Looks very interesting. I think I’ll download and test it.

@manolito

Thank you for the information about Wavi_mod. I will definitely check it out.

@paisdeoctubre
@MrC

The mystery of shrinking subtitles is caused by the wrong line-number in the AVStoDVD –subtitle profile. If you look at the folder

C:\Program Files (x86)\ AVStoDVD\SubtitleCreator\Data

… you can find two xml-files: “Profiles” and “Profiles.a2d”
Open them with notepad, you can see four profiles:
AVStoDVD PAL 4:3
AVStoDVD PAL 16:9
AVStoDVD NTSC 4:3
AVStoDVD NTSC 16:9

Each has the following value:
Formatting Lines="2"

However, it should be:
Formatting Lines="3"

I used notepad to change the numbers, and the problem was solved. I’m not sure if it’s necessary to apply same changes to both xml-files, but I did it anyways.

JuMe

[_MrC_]

@kodec

thanks for the detailed explanation, I will surely consider it.

@JuMe

what about adding the Formatting Lines as an option in 'Preferences'/'Authoring'/'Subtitles Position' section? Take note that Profile.xml file is dynamically created at runtime by AVStoDVD according to the user Preferences, while Profile.a2d.xml is just a backup.



Bye

[JuMe]

what about adding the Formatting Lines as an option in 'Preferences'/'Authoring'/'Subtitles Position' section? Take note that Profile.xml file is dynamically created at runtime by AVStoDVD according to the user Preferences, while Profile.a2d.xml is just a backup.

That’s a good idea! The default number should probably be 3, because that way subtitles behave like most people expect.
Thanks for the extra information.

JuMe

[manolito]

EBU R128 Loudness Normalization

After reading a lot of articles about this standard and doing feasability tests if it could be integrated into my Wavi_Mod plugin, I still have some reservations:

This standard has been developped for broadcasting, not for Audio CDs, DVDs or BluRays. Traditionally broadcasting audio has been peak limited to -9 dBFS which is much lower than what you see on commercial CDs or DVDs (-2dB to -3 dB). When applying the new EBU R128 standard the broadcasting levels will be about 3 dB lower compared to the old -9 dB standard.

Does it make sense to adopt this standard to DVDs? I do understand the need for uniform loudness perception across different media, but is EBU R128 the solution?

Before I go ahead and add this method to my Wavi_Mod plugin, I'd like to hear some opinions...



Cheers
manolito

[JuMe]

I have used R128Gain for making my own compilation-CDs. Not because I want my CDs to meet European broadcasting standard, but because I want to get rid of the annoying loudness differences between songs. I totally agree that the EBU-standard reference level (-23 LUFS) is way too low, and that’s why I always adjust it higher, usually to -11 LUFS. I don’t want to end up blowing my speakers out, if I first listen to my own burns and then carelessly switch to a commercial CD.

Does it make sense to adopt this standard to DVDs?

Personally I’m not interested in the “standard-part” of the EBU-normalization. I don’t really care, whether my DVD has broadcasting-standard loudness or not, so I wouldn’t use EBU-normalizer with projects which have only one video file.
However, a good RMS-based normalizer would be useful for projects which have various video-files from various sources. EBU-normalization uses much better loudness-algorithm than ReplayGain, and therefore produces more uniform results. R128Gain does good job with compilation-CDs, and I'd love to use similar tool with compilation-DVDs too.

JuMe

[manolito]

Hi JuMe,

I see your point, and I will integrate EBU R128 into my Wavi_Mod plugin. Just give me a couple of days...

Also have a look here: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1700890#post1700890



Cheers
manolito

[JuMe]

That sounds excellent manolito, thank you very much! I'm quite sure I'll be using your plugin a lot in the future...

By the way, when I said I usually normalize to -11 LUFS, I meant I use it for audio-CDs. DVD-soundtracks have much wider dynamic range than rock-CDs, so normalizing them to -11 LUFS would definitely require heavy limiting.
I think I’ll rip audio tracks from a couple commercial DVDs and measure their integrated loudness using R128Gain. That should give me a rough idea, what would be suitable reference level for DVDs. EBU-standard -23 LUFS may be far away from the loudness of the commercial audio-CDs, but I guess it can actually be quite close to typical loudness of movie-DVDs.

JuMe

[doctorm]

It seems odd to support a standard that no one else seems to be using for movies. Just my $.02

[manolito]

Just to keep you up to date on my progress...

The EBU R128 implementation does work already. I use R128Gain, but the built-in "command=" feature does not do it for me. I reverted to the old-fashioned way of redirecting the analyze output to a file, use batch commands to extract the correction LU value and call SoX independently of R128Gain.

The LUFS reference level is user definable, I also implemented support for the --fast switch (gives me mostly identical results at a much higher speed). For me a reference level of -14 LUFS seems to be the sweet spot for DVD content.

For the SoX command I use the "vol" effect with a limitergain value of 0.025. Works quite well...

Still on my ToDo list is to also implement the EBU normalization as an optional post-processing effect for DynamicAudioNormalizer. And of course update the documentation.


Cheers
manolito

[doctorm]

Weirdness: Attempted to use A2D today, noticed it was encoding way to fast. I tested the avisynth script and found:

LoadPlugin: unable to load "ffms2.dll"
(.\AVStoDVD\A2DSource.avsi, line 11)
(D:\Temp\Movie.avs, line 1)

I've changed no codecs, settings, installs or anything since this last worked.

Any suggestions?

Edit: More details.

Reinstalled Haali, reinstalled Avisynth (2.5.8). Tested FFMS2 manually and it works fine. ffms2.dll IS in the same directory as A2DSource.avsi.

Can't figure what could possibly be left not working.

System - Win7 x64, Athlon FX-8320, 8gb Ram

[_MrC_]

@doctorm

ffms2.dll should be in .\AVStoDVD\Lib folder, as well as A2DSource.avsi. Please check.

BTW I suggest you to take advantage of that issue to unistall 2.7.5 release and move to latest AVStoDVD 2.8.0 Alpha (if you haven't done it yet).



Bye

[doctorm]

Does the installer versus non-installer make much difference?

[manolito]

Wavi_Mod plugin - New version with added EBU R128 Loudness Normalization

Get it here:
//Edit: Link removed, new version available

Changes:
1. Added R128GAIN by Peter Belkner to enable EBU R128 Loudness Normalization
2. Removed dithering from all SoX processing operations

Note:
When using EBU R128 with a high reference level (like -14 LUFS) you might run into clipping. To remedy this I added a peak limiter to SoX (limitergain = 0.025). This might lead to a resulting file which has a lower LUFS level than specified.


Happy testing...

Cheers
manolito

[JuMe]

Excellent work, manolito!

I’ve done some testing, and the plugin seems to be working perfectly. Thanks to good instructions it was easy to install and configure even for a not-so-technical person like me. And as a bonus, it’s very easy to enable/disable, because it only works with Wavi+Aften audio conversion method. If normalization is not needed, I can just switch to another conversion method instead of editing the mod-file.

Great addition to AVStoDVD!

JuMe

[steptoe]

I have a lot of very small titles for an episode DVD (52 episodes of 5 minutes each) and having set the 1st title up how I want, tried copying the settings into the other 51 episodes so I don't have to do it all manually via the Title Edit, but keep getting the same error message and AVStoDVD then quits

I managed to do it once so I know it works but have no ideas why its not doing it now as I'm not doing anything too drastic


The error I keep getting is :

RunTime Error 5 :

Invalid procedure call or argument


I choose the title I want to copy the settings from, click the X in the top corner to set thyem, and instantly the error pops up. Click OK and AVstoDVD quits

Any suggestions whats happening so I can finish off the project I'm working on


I've just tried the exact same procedure for 26 episodes then 13 episodes, thinking it might be due to the number of episodes per DVD overloading AVStoDVD but get exactly the same error and same result each time ..... AVStoDVD quits

Thanks

[_MrC_]

@doctorm

the installer version takes care of missing software and to create/erase the Win registry key that AVStoDVD uses to store the Preferences.

@manolito

good job, as usual... Please advise when you feel confident to upload the latest plugin release to SourceForge repository.

@steptoe

you may have found a bug. What release are you using? 2.7.5 or 2.8.0 Alpha? To replicate the issue, please upload here a couple of your small titles.



Bye

[DJ_ValBec]

Just a Gral. Question.

I just to upload many short episodes into AVStoDVD just like @steptoe keep working on it.
But since I make the DVD and also the CD version: I wanted to have the same amount of DVD-Episodes/CD-Tracks on "both".
...I found out, that I can load around 74mins. of video into a DVD5 (X- Titles) and end-up with the same amount of Tracks into a CD.


My question start here:
We all know that AVStoDVD can load a lot of video files in, but the final result end-up with more compression and lost of quality, if we use a DVD5 as a media source. And probably with a DVD9 we can have a better results, etc.

Since I go the another way around: The appositive of Compressing --> "Expanding" with few video files load into DVD5 to fill-up the 4,457MB's of it, after AVStoDVD do his "Magic"

- Is "Expanding" a Video File have the same effects as compression ?
- Or expanding: The few video files, just occupy the whole DVD space with out losing or gaining anything ?
....just like when we use a diff. lossless audio codec ( WAVe, FLAC, etc.), we probably ending, "almost" with the same results.

Thx. in advance.

[steptoe]

If you're converting from one video source to DVD then you will get a quality drop as it has to re-encode it to DVD specs, so if your using a MKV source that isn't DVd specs (720x576 or 720x480) it will reduce in quality as it has to then been re-encoded

But, if your simply copying the video then you shouldn't get any quality drop. There is an option under the video settinsg that will simply copy any video that already meets the DVD specs without altering it in any way

But, if you use any video filters via the AviSynth script editor you will then get a quality drop a sit has to re-encode to enable the filters to do their work on the source


If that made any sense ......