How to get Macintosh encoded Divx to play on the LVD-2001?

[Macfixer01]

Hi,
Has anyone successfully encoded Divx video ON A MACINTOSH, that will play on a LiteOn LVD-2001? All my attempts fail miserably at the LiteOn but work fine on the Mac and also on my Dell laptop at work. I suspect it's something that Quicktime is doing, but I don't know.

For example: I downloaded the latest Boston Legal episode, which unfortunately has the audio out of sync. The LiteOn plays the original file just fine except for the sync. I fixed the audio problem with QT Sync and the movie plays in-sync on the Macintosh now. I exported it as a self-contained movie and all the pertinent specs are identical in the two files when viewed from Quicktime's Get Movie Properties window. However when I try to play the new file on the LiteOn LVD-2001, it just shows the filename then quits back to the blue page showing the disc directory.

Any ideas? I hate to have to shuffle files over to the Dell and encode them there. Also my company monitors what I install on the Dell, and may object.

Thanks in advance,
Leo

[galactica]

which format did you export in?

if its mpeg4 you have to have mpeg4 enabled player and so on and so forth for the various types of file outputs

if you just "saved" its a .mov and I dont know of a settop player that handles those

i dont have a divx enabled dvd player so i cant tell you from personal experience but if you endode them or export into the right codex i dont see why it wouldnt work

[AntnyMD]

Settop players that play MPEG4 video do not support the format in a .mov container. Simply changing the extension to .avi or .mp4 does not solve the problem. Try using ffmpegX to solve the sync issue. However, I tried to make an avi with ffmpegX and only the videos encoded with the DivX presets worked in my settop .. Those I made with the mencoder option did NOT work.

Also in theory, MPEG4 video with MP3 audio wrapped in a .mp4 container should work, but I do not yet know how to get MP3 audio muxed with MPEG4 video without using Handbrake and a DVD.

[Macfixer01]

which format did you export in?

if its mpeg4 you have to have mpeg4 enabled player and so on and so forth for the various types of file outputs

if you just "saved" its a .mov and I dont know of a settop player that handles those

i dont have a divx enabled dvd player so i cant tell you from personal experience but if you endode them or export into the right codex i dont see why it wouldnt work

Well I believe that it exported as DivX but how can I be sure? I think when you get the movie properties in Quicktime it actually shows what codec Quicktime is using to read it, not necessarily what the format is or what created it. Both files show 3ivx D4 4.5.1 for the video track format, and the audio track shows MPEG Layer-3 Audio. What would be nice to have for the Mac is something like G-Spot on the Windows side which shows all the specs for any given movie file.

There is one difference I do notice now. If I open the original downloaded file and get movie properties, under movie annotations in the "Data" field it says DivX AVI Importer. If I open the file exported from QT Sync, in the same Data field it's blank. This apparently indicates that it's seeing the exported file as a native Quicktime file? How can I avoid this?

macfixer01
(Leo)

[Macfixer01]

Settop players that play MPEG4 video do not support the format in a .mov container. Simply changing the extension to .avi or .mp4 does not solve the problem. Try using ffmpegX to solve the sync issue. However, I tried to make an avi with ffmpegX and only the videos encoded with the DivX presets worked in my settop .. Those I made with the mencoder option did NOT work.

Also in theory, MPEG4 video with MP3 audio wrapped in a .mp4 container should work, but I do not yet know how to get MP3 audio muxed with MPEG4 video without using Handbrake and a DVD.

How would I solve the sync issue using ffmpegx? I haven't searched the docs yet, but I just looked at the various windows in ffmpegx and don't see anything obvious to resync the video and audio with. I've tried Handbrake before for DVD -> DivX, but as I recall the files it created worked fine on the Mac but didn't work on the LiteOn player. I never seem to have any problem playing the files I download but I suspect they're all created on Windows machines. I've yet to make any divx file on the Mac that works with the LiteOn player. It seems that any conversion program which makes use of Quicktime is the kiss of death to compatibility.

Thanks,
macfixer01
(Leo)

[Macfixer01]

Settop players that play MPEG4 video do not support the format in a .mov container. Simply changing the extension to .avi or .mp4 does not solve the problem. Try using ffmpegX to solve the sync issue. However, I tried to make an avi with ffmpegX and only the videos encoded with the DivX presets worked in my settop .. Those I made with the mencoder option did NOT work.

Also in theory, MPEG4 video with MP3 audio wrapped in a .mp4 container should work, but I do not yet know how to get MP3 audio muxed with MPEG4 video without using Handbrake and a DVD.

Thanks to you AntnyMD, I've had a major breakthrough. What you said seemed logical about my LiteOn DVD player having trouble with the mov container. Trying to re-sync the audio and video using ffmpegx didn't work out for me since it requires selecting the Mpeg2Enc encoder. I kept ended up with no audio track somehow, even though the audio was set to passthrough and encode audio was checked.

So instead I used QT Sync to fix the a/v sync problem first. Then I took that (mov) file and using ffmpegx I re-encoded it with both audio and video set to passthrough. The resulting file caused Quicktime to crash! A curious fact here is that ffmpegx showed the audio track of the source file as "mp2" despite Quicktime saying it was MPEG Layer-3 (MP3?). I don't quite understand that point.

So finally I again re-encoded the sync'ed mov file using ffmpegx with the video set to passthrough and the audio encoder set to MP3, and that worked. The resulting file plays both in Quicktime and also on the LiteOn DVD player. It's even about 1MB smaller. I also noticed that in Quicktime under the movie annotation it again says "DivX AVI Importer", proving it now sees this as a non-mov container.

Thanks again,
Leo

[galactica]

well thats an interesting one. Do you have DivxRay? Depending on your source it can create a "windows .avi" which is the pretty standard type of .avi. I dont have a divx enabled dvd player so i cant test its output, but man this app rocks!

I have an older version which is cranking 2 encodes at the same time from a VIDEO_TS folder in only 75 min on dual g4 1.25

if you have this app avalibale i would say try it, if not perhaps someone can chime in so you can see if its a worthy investment.

I hear the version 3 is supposed to be even better!

[Macfixer01]

well thats an interesting one. Do you have DivxRay? Depending on your source it can create a "windows .avi" which is the pretty standard type of .avi. I dont have a divx enabled dvd player so i cant test its output, but man this app rocks!

I have an older version which is cranking 2 encodes at the same time from a VIDEO_TS folder in only 75 min on dual g4 1.25

if you have this app avalibale i would say try it, if not perhaps someone can chime in so you can see if its a worthy investment.

I hear the version 3 is supposed to be even better!

Hi Galactica,
I appreciate your input and I'll check out DivxRay and see what it's capabilities are. I found out accidentally last night that I could also merge avi files using ffmpegx, so I re-joined a movie I have which someone split. I'm about to look up your tutorial again for converting it back to DVD format.

Joining the files with ffmpegx went much smoother than Jfuse which I never did get to work for joining files.

Thanks,
Leo

[babgolis]

I have very good luck encoding with forty two vx, which uses the same engines as ffmpeg. I don't have a lite-on, but I have a rj-tech & it seems to like xvid style encodes better than the standard divx .avi's. Go figure since the machine is supposed to be divx certified. You can do xvid encoding in handbrake or ffmpegx.