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  1. Member
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    I have the following problem(s)

    I have to convert VHS tapes to DVD for a friend and I use EyeTV for that.

    Whether I use DVDSP or iDVD does not really matter but I tried both because both gave me problems.

    When using iDVD it requires a .dv file. When I export a clip from EyeTV (mpeg-2 source) to .dv it produces a file with regular jerks (approx. once every minute the picture freezes and the sound stops for about a second or two then resumes) so I decided to use DVDSP instead as it saves the redundant step of converting to DV and then back to mpeg-2.
    Now the problem is within DVDSP4 itself. I keep getting the message muxer rate too high.
    Several webforums tell me that it means the video source has a bitrate which is too high but I do not find the bitrate to be higher than a DVD-player could handle. (6 Mbits max, 4 average) and the EyeTV application only gives me 2 choices 120 minutes or 90 minutes. Several clips DO get encoded successfully with the 90 minutes setting so I wonder why it insists for that one. I want to keep that clip at the same quality. The total DVD size is 3,7 GB so well within range of a DVD-R.

  2. Explorer Case's Avatar
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    Perhaps, if you haven't already done so, you could try demuxing the source file into its elementary streams first, and let DVDSP mux it at a DVD compliant rate? I'm not a DVDSP user, but I recall that one should add elementary streams to the DVDSP assets.

    Or else perhaps this topic could be moved from the ffmpegX forum to the Mac forum?

  3. Member
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    When EyeTV exports the stream it is already demuxed.
    However your suggestions brings up a new idea. Could I downconvert the existing M2V & M2A files to a lower bitrate? If so, what software does this?

  4. Explorer Case's Avatar
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    My bad. I thought you would do an "Export for Toast", which would give you a muxed .mpg file, afaik.

    The M2A file is a bit of a surprise to me. I would expect M1A or AC3. Do you have details for that (bitrate, no. of channels, sampling rate, sampling size)? M1A is a subset of M2A, so it could well be within the realm of MPEG-1 audio, making it a non-issue.

    If you have DVDSP, then you also have Compressor, which could reencode to whatever bitrate you specify.
    And ffmpegX could very well reencode to DVD specification, too.

  5. Member
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    Oops I dunno where I got that M2V/M2A from. I did not have the files in front of my eyes when I typed that but the 2 files are actually MPV/MPA.
    The MPA file seems to be mpeg-1 with a 388,38 kbps rate.
    The MPv is 6049 kbps

  6. Explorer Case's Avatar
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    MPEG-2 video on DVD is limited to 9.8 Mbps (so 6049 kbps is good, if there are no high bitrate peaks). MPEG-1 audio is limited to 384 kbps. All streams combined should be less than 10.08 Mbps at all times. (Getting close to the limit may not work with DVD±R(W) media though, as they are harder to read than 'silvers'.)

    Perhaps you only need to lower the audio bitrate? Try 224 kbps for MPEG-1 audio or go with AC3, which may be up to 448 kbps.

  7. Member
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    If your audio bitrate truly is above 384kb/s, definitely consider reducing it to 224. For MPEG1, layer 2 audio, the perceived quality saturates above about 224kb/s (which is why that value was chosen for VCD audio, btw). There's no value in going above 384, and as Case notes, there is a potential problem.

    If you're lucky, this is your only problem. Re-encoding the audio at a different rate is a fast operation in many tools (e.g., ffmpegx, audacity), so you don't have to spend a lot of time running this experiment. Just resample the audio, mux the new audio with your existing video, then author and test. With luck, this will solve your problem.

  8. Member
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    Originally Posted by Case
    Perhaps you only need to lower the audio bitrate? Try 224 kbps for MPEG-1 audio or go with AC3, which may be up to 448 kbps.
    So lowering he bitrate will (probably) solve my prob.
    Originally Posted by tomlee59
    If you're lucky, this is your only problem. Re-encoding the audio at a different rate is a fast operation in many tools (e.g., ffmpegx, audacity), so you don't have to spend a lot of time running this experiment. Just resample the audio, mux the new audio with your existing video, then author and test. With luck, this will solve your problem.
    But FFmpgX didn't seem to be able to read MPA files.
    Much less re-create an MPA file with AC3 rather than Mpeg-1.
    Any idea?

  9. Explorer Case's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by fredericvo
    But FFmpgX didn't seem to be able to read MPA files.
    Much less re-create an MPA file with AC3 rather than Mpeg-1.
    Perhaps this is due to the suffix alone? Try renaming your .mpa file to .m1a or .mp2.

  10. Member
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    Good idea. I'll try that and tell you if it works.

  11. Member
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    OK it seem the file rename works indeed but what is the use of a .AC3 file? Can I just rename that to mpa?

    OK I'll to stick to mp2, convert to a lower bitrate, rename it to mpa. That should work fine.
    Let's see if DVDSP4 can take it now.
    Will keep you informed later. Thanks for the help.

  12. Explorer Case's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by fredericvo
    what is the use of a .AC3 file?
    AC3 on Wikipedia.




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