Problems encountered using MPEG2 Works and Sizzle together

[Riot Nrrrd]

(Paging SERBIAN ... please pick up the blue courtesy telephone ... )

Here's what I'm trying to do, for the first time ever.

I have a 700 Mbyte AVI file, obviously was a DVD rip, the quality is quite good.

I want to convert it to something I can watch on my TV/DVD player.

I figured, OK, it's already compressed down in quality from DVD, so I should just convert it to SVCD - isn't that the best "transcoding" for an AVI file of that size?

At first I tried Toast 6, but it tried to make an SVCD that was larger than 650/700 Mbytes. Erm, that won't fit onto a single disc ...

Then for fun I told Toast 6 to make a DVD image instead. It said it would take 5.2 Gbytes ... erm, nope.

So, having read this Forum, I tried SERBIAN's MPEG2 Works 2.1.1.

My first attempt was "SVCDNTSC 16:9". It kindly split the movie into 2 parts, but ...

761491136 14 Oct 18:41 SVCDNTSC16_9CD2.mpg
828380504 14 Oct 18:39 SVCDNTSC16_9CD1.mpg
1378690198 14 Oct 18:37 SVCDNTSC16_9video.m2v
180660664 14 Oct 14:13 SVCDNTSC16_9audio.mp2

I don't think a 726 Mbyte and a 790 Mbyte file are going to fit on a 650 or a 700 Mbyte blank CD-R/CD-RW disc!

Why did these files get created larger than what will fit on a single disc?

Given that, I decided to try the DVD option instead.

(This, to me, was a non-sequitur: if the AVI was created from a DVD rip, you can't put back in what is no longer there. How can the programs that MPEG2 Works uses "under the hood" create an MPEG-2 file that's 3 times the size of the compressed AVI file? But I digress ... )

The results of this were:

106625024 14 Oct 23:53 DVDNTSC16_9.mpg
2121153991 14 Oct 23:53 DVDNTSC16_9video.m2v
180660664 14 Oct 19:25 DVDNTSC16_9audio.mp2

OK, this is looking better (modulo the comment above about getting a 2 Gbyte MPEG-2 file out of 700 Mbytes).

My first question is, what is this 100 Mbyte muxed .mpg file? What purpose does it serve? As far as I can tell, the only inputs needed for Sizzle (or whatever) are the .m2v and .mp2 files, right? So if the .mpg is some sort of test file (it has video & audio, and it starts at the beginning of the movie and gets abruptly cut off at the end), why is it so large? Couldn't it be a small 4 Mbyte movie instead of a 100 Mbyte?

I guess I'm not understanding why the muxed MPEG-2 .mpg track is created if you've clicked on the "DVDNTSC 16:9" button (or, indeed, any DVD* button) as opposed to one of the SVCD* buttons.

Moving on ...

Now I'm in Sizzle, and I've imported the .m2v file. I then go to add the .mp2 audio file, and Sizzle bitches:

Potential audio problem

Audio in "DVDNTSC16_9audio.mp2" is not 48 KHz. It is not a valid DVD stream. The stream will be added, but DVD players may be unable to play it. It may also cause audio sync problems.

I bring the .mp2 into iTunes and sure enough, it says that it's MPEG-1, Layer 2, stereo, 224 Kbps, and 44.100 kHz sample rate.

Shouldn't the DVDNTSC 16:9 scripts used when you click that button have specified that the .mp2 audio file be created with a 48 kHz sample rate, instead of 44.100? Or is there no control over that (i.e., perhaps it is 44.100 kHz audio in the original AVI, and to convert it to 48 kHz would require un-sampling(?) and re-sampling)?

What do I do now? I'll try saving it as a Disc Image in Sizzle and see if DVD Player can play it, but I'm worried that my home DVD player will choke on the lack-of-48 kHz audio track.

[galactica]

I don't think a 726 Mbyte and a 790 Mbyte file are going to fit on a 650 or a 700 Mbyte blank CD-R/CD-RW disc!

Why did these files get created larger than what will fit on a single disc?
.

actually they will, well only on the 700 meg one.

795 megs is max for a .mpeg file to fit into a SVCD. The thing is you are not just going to burn them directly to a cd-r like data.

instead you would have to make a .bin/.cue image out of them and then burn it using Toast 6's bin/cue or even MMB or FirestarterFX

it sounds like you did everything properly up to this point, so just make your .bin/.cue with VCDTOOLSX and your ready to go

ps, if you want to get this to be only 1 SVCD disk, the quality will be worse than the divx. (part of the good reason to have a divx enabled dvd player). As you have seen, its 2 disks mostly for SVCD.

per the audio problem, just convert the .mp2 thats at 44khz to 48khz using ffmpegx. Most dvd players should be able to handle the 44 khz rating for the audio. Use a dvd-rw for the 1st burn and you wont waste anything

[SERBIAN]

Hello...

First of all, You have a lot of wrong presumptions in Your post...But..

At first I tried Toast 6, but it tried to make an SVCD that was larger than 650/700 Mbytes. Erm, that won't fit onto a single disk

Ooo...Yes..It will..Read on..

I don't think a 726 Mbyte and a 790 Mbyte file are going to fit on a 650 or a 700 Mbyte blank CD-R/CD-RW disc!

Why did these files get created larger than what will fit on a single disc?

When You make CD-XA images for burning, with VCD Builder or some other app, (I allready implemented this option in version 3 of my app which will soon be out) it will make two 700 MB CD-XA CDs..Read in Toast 6 help how to burn CD-XA images...

(This, to me, was a non-sequitur: if the AVI was created from a DVD rip, you can't put back in what is no longer there. How can the programs that MPEG2 Works uses "under the hood" create an MPEG-2 file that's 3 times the size of the compressed AVI file? But I digress ...

Same way as Your program made from 5 or more Gb one AVI of 700Mb..That thing is called recompression...DivX AVI is MUCH more compressed then MPEG2 file...

My first question is, what is this 100 Mbyte muxed .mpg file?

It is just a 5min. preview of MPEG2 DVD for You to see and check quality of produced files before uze Sizzle...Read about that on my web page...I cancelled full muxed DVD MPEG2 in version 2.1..

Shouldn't the DVDNTSC 16:9 scripts used when you click that button have specified that the .mp2 audio file be created with a 48 kHz sample rate, instead of 44.100? Or is there no control over that (i.e., perhaps it is 44.100 kHz audio in the original AVI, and to convert it to 48 kHz would require un-sampling(?) and re-sampling)?

Since lot of people using my app to convert DivXs to DVD or SVCD, or to make the DVDs/SVCDs from their home movies there is no point to resample 44100Khz sound (which is in most DivXs and home made movies) to 48000Khz, cause You wont get anything better You alredy have...It might loose the sync during that...
And dont worry...Your player will play the movie just fine...

Ah...And one more tip: Dont use newest version of Sizzle, cause is not working very well...Try to find previous one...

[Riot Nrrrd]

ps, if you want to get this to be only 1 SVCD disk, the quality will be worse than the divx. (part of the good reason to have a divx enabled dvd player). As you have seen, its 2 disks mostly for SVCD.

per the audio problem, just convert the .mp2 thats at 44kHz to 48kHz using ffmpegx. Most dvd players should be able to handle the 44 kHz rating for the audio. Use a dvd-rw for the 1st burn and you wont waste anything

I think given that it would take 2 discs for the SVCD, and I've got lots of DVD-R discs lying around, I think I'll try the DVD-R route. (Thanks to both you and SERBIAN for the edjumakashun on the squishing of MPEG-2 files to fit onto SVCD's, btw. I had no idea there was an extra step - the bin/cue - involved.)

Thanks for the tip on the audio ... I have a new Denon DVD-2800 Mk. II DVD player, so hopefully 44.1 kHz audio wouldn't be a problem.

Now the bad - I tried Sizzle 0.5b1 and had it create a Disc Image file, but that file (when mounted) didn't get recognized as a DVD disc - and when I told DVD Player to open the VIDEO_TS file as a backup, it complained about invalid contents - even though the usual .IFO and .VOB files are present (and play fine in VLC). I wonder if I authored it wrong, or if (as SERBIAN implied later) Sizzle 0.5b1 biffed it?

Anyway, it looks like Toast 6 groks the two .m2v/.mp2 files that MPEG2 Works outputs in its "DVD-Video: My DVD" area, so I'm having Toast 6 encode and save as a Disc Image as we speak ... hopefully when it's mounted it'll be seen as a DVD-R disc image by the Finder and DVD Player will grok it - in which case, I'll be golden

[Edit/update: Toast 6 worked fine. I just have to figure out how to keep it from calling the resultant disc image "My DVD" and figure out how to lay out the initial menu/TOC screen it puts up - a blue background with the title and the DVD label and the date and the running time, along with a small preview window framed in yellow that displays the first frame(?) of the video content in the small window.]

[galactica]

personally, have not gotten new sizzle to work properly myself, see if you can get your hands on the older one, it works fine.

[SERBIAN]

Agreed with Galactica..

[Riot Nrrrd]

personally, have not gotten new sizzle to work properly myself, see if you can get your hands on the older one, it works fine.

Which "older one" do you recommend? (I'm assuming that since you guys recommend against 0.5b1, then you must mean 0.4.something)

It's sorta academic, since I can probably use Toast 6 (or maybe iDVD), but I'm still interested ...

(And I'm using Panther 7B85, so there's that issue with Sizzle as well)

[galactica]

Honestly its v.1b that ive been using. i dont remember anything in between v.1 and v.5