BTTF 3ivx Project...

[greymalkin]

I am working on a project to merge all 3 of my Back to the Future movies to 1 grand divx/3ivx...whaterver file.

I have the box set and used dvd-shrink to copy them to my computer as mpeg, keeping just the main movie and the main soundtrack (DD5.1)

I then used Womble MPEG Video Editor to splice the scenes at the beginning/end of the movies so it makes one HUGE movie (approx 5 hours.) and did a stream copy. The resulting mpeg file is almost 10gb.

Now comes my dilemma. I am wanting to compress it and have heard good things about this 3ivx codec so I decided to give it a show. I loaded it and used DVDx 2.3 to attempt the compression. Here are my 2 questions.

1) The movie only has a 5.1 DD track..and when I try to compress it/convert it to mp3/stereo the audio is all jittery and off sync. What would be the best thing to do about the audio?

2) I am familiar with the DVD standard bitrates but 3ivx settings show a much lower bitrate..with 500 being the highest...what would be a good rate to set it to?

thanks for your help and let me know if you have any other questions. I am keeping it at full 720x480 resolution.

*OOPS!. it appears as though this should have been in the "Advanced Conversion" section! Although I don't consider myself "Advanced".*

[greymalkin]

well I have made SOME progress. I used TMPGENC express 3.0 to demux the mpeg2 stream and then used ac3tool to convert to a stereo .wav file. I then used tmpgenc express again to compress the video using the 3ivx codec and the audio using standard mp3 compression.

BUT For some reason when I play the video or try to convert it in tmpgenc express is always looks as if it's interlaced although It should not be..I have "told" the program that the stream is progressive but when I add it to the project it says it's interlaced...just a bizarre occurence...I wanted to keep it progressive but the program is being quite stubborn. I guess if I go ahead and try to put it back to dvd it won't be too big a deal..i'll try moving it to 352x480 and using DD2.0. Which will make for another 5 hours of processing :P

[greymalkin]

welp i'm afraid this might be a hopeless case. I may only have success by shrinking all the movies to a little under 3gb and then burning them on a dual layer disk.

I can convert the DD 5.1 file to a stereo wav file but then both AC3 compressors barf when I try to load it. Acid Pro 4.0 says it's not a valid format and the AC3 Plugin for TMPGEnc DVD Author just flashes something very quickly and does not encode. Perhaps a 3.4gb .wav file is just too much for them

I also tried just compressing the whole file, deinterlacing it and keeping it on my computer as a 3ivx file. I plugged the stereo .wav and the spliced video in but the audio is slightly out of sync . I might try some more with smaller files. Perhaps if I break it into 1gb chunks I'll get what i'm looking for....

[greymalkin]

i'm sure everyone is dying to know what happens next...so i will not hold you in suspense..

I gave it another go and used womble mpeg video editor this time. I muted the DD 5.1 track that was with the original mpeg file and appended the stereo .wav. It did a stream copy of the video and made an mp2 out of the audio. This is not really what I wanted but I wasn't having any luck any other way. It did reduce the file size from 9.7 to 9.2gb, however and it seems to be all in sync still, so that is encouraging.

Just for grins I went into tmpgenc express again and tried to see what terrible bitrates I would need to fit this monster on a 4.7gb dvd and discovered i can only use 1711kb/s even with 352x864/interlaced :P.
SO! I suppose I'll go back to the idea that seems to work..shrink each movie @ approximately 300mb and just burn it on a 9gb when they become more readily available. :P

[Poplar]

I'm not sure 3ivx is the best choice. As far as I know, the most popular choice of codec for encoding movies over the 'Net is Xvid. DivX5 is second. Hardly ever seen any movie in 3ivx. There must be a reason for it.

[midnightsun]

shrinking an mpeg-2 file to half or so its size with a good mpeg-4 codec (i.e. xvid 1.0 or divx 5.2) should yield very good quality. 1700 and odd kb/s is one hell of a bitrate for mpeg-4. Have you tried gordian knot for example?

Another thing, when you uncompressed the 5.1 ac3 did you create a 2ch or 6ch WAV? 6ch WAV's are hardly supported by any tools so you may want to check that. Personally I would use besweet to decode and downmix the 6ch ac3 to a 2ch wav, if you intend to use 2ch audio that is.

[greymalkin]

when I converted the 5.1 AC3 I changed it to a stereo wav (2 channel). I then tried to make it into a dd 2.0 file but both the tmpgenc sound player (AC3 Plugin for TDA) and Acid Pro couldn't handle the .wav file it put out. It is somewhat possible, however, that the .wav file was somehow "harmed" during the process of creation, so to be sure I am going to create it again. I believe I made a dumb mistake the first time by putting the source and destination file on the same drive...I really didn't go back and listen to all of the 5+ hours of audio . I'll probably just end up making the .wav again and then using xvid to compress the video and make an mp3 of the audio. Untill I get a 9.4gb dvd-r and rob a couple hours on my brother-in-laws computer that's the only decent product I will be able to make. It's just a fun little project i'm working on.

[live4ever]

I'd probably encode with XviD (full DVD res) and keep the 5.1 audio as is (maybe even include the commentary track as well). If you burn to a dual layer DVD-R (and omit the credits) there will be more than enough room for higher bitrates (probably will even fit on a 4.7GB DVD-R, depending on your audio choices).

Also I would probably convert each film separately and then join the avis.