AVI to DVD with ffmpeg fail when including subtitle

[athxu]

Converting AVI to DVD works great with ffmpeg, except with subtitles. It has failed every single time, no matter what options I change. It works with mencoder, but it is a lot slower and quality doesn't seem to be as good.

I would get a good .mpv file, a good .wav file, but the .ac3 file is 0 bytes. I've tried to change the sound output to stereo to match with the original avi file, but same problem.

I've attached the error message.

Encoding started on Mon Mar 21 16:53:32 PST 2005
Input #0, avi, from '/Users/mhsu/Downloads/LA.Mala.Educacion.avi':
Duration: 01:41:02.0, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 963 kb/s
Stream #0.0: Video: mpeg4, 608x256, 25.00 fps
Stream #0.1: Audio: mp3, 48000 Hz, stereo, 131 kb/s
Output #0, rawvideo, to '/Users/mhsu/Downloads/LA.Mala.Educacion.avi.ff.mpv':
Stream #0.0: Video: mpeg2video (hq), 720x848, 25.00 fps, q=2-20, 4000 kb/s
Stream mapping:
Stream #0.0 -> #0.0
[mpeg2video @ 0x381324]rc buffer underflow
[mpeg2video @ 0x381324]rc buffer underflow
[mpeg2video @ 0x381324]rc buffer underflow
[mpeg2video @ 0x381324]rc buffer underflow
[mpeg2video @ 0x381324]rc buffer underflow
[mpeg2video @ 0x381324]rc buffer underflow
[mpeg2video @ 0x381324]rc buffer underflow
[mpeg2video @ 0x381324]rc buffer underflow
video:2959967kB audio:0kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead 0.000000%
bench: utime=7771.510s
Input #0, wav, from '/Users/mhsu/Downloads/LA.Mala.Educacion.avi.ff.wav':
Duration: 00:00:00.0, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 1537 kb/s
Stream #0.0: Audio: pcm_s16le, 48000 Hz, stereo, 1536 kb/s
Output #0, ac3, to '/Users/mhsu/Downloads/LA.Mala.Educacion.avi.ff.ac3':
Stream #0.0: Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, 5:1, 448 kb/s
Stream mapping:
Stream #0.0 -> #0.0
video:0kB audio:0kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead nan%
**ERROR: [mplex] Unable to read from /Users/mhsu/Downloads/LA.Mala.Educacion.avi.ff.ac3.

[major]

Try to set AC3 options to stereo instead of 5:1 (input being stereo), or use mp2 audio. Any improvement?

[athxu]

It failed in that case too. In fact, that movie has problems even when I don't include the subtitles. But other movies work. I haven't been able to narrow down the problem.

One thing I did notice was that the aspect ratio didn't look right, even after I added the necessary black bars. Normally they all look fine, when I use straight mpeg2. Am I not supposed to add the black bars or something?

[athxu]

Just to clarify: this problem is not restricted to that one movie.