DVD Studio Pro 4.2.1 - what am I doing wrong?

[jabbo5150]

OK, it's been a while since I used this program, but what I was doing was making a DVD where I added the chapters in DVDSP as it was one long chapter before.

Here is what I did:

I ripped to a single VOB in Mac the Ripper
Demuxed to .M2V and .aiff in MPEG Streamclip (The original audio actually was PCM)
Imported into DVDSP
Set up menus to go with the new tracks I created on the timeline
Worked fine in Simulation Mode

When I went to burn, I did build and format like I always do and it said I had set my bit rate too high.

Why is it trying to reencode? Why would I need to set a bitrate? I never had to do that in DVDSP 2. It's already been encoded into MPEG 2. I just want to make a DVD of it.

Normally, if I capture video myself, I do it in Final Cut pro where it adds the chapters on its own. Aside from adding the chapters in DVDSP, I do it exactly the same way and when I go to build and format, it builds and formats with no issue.

How do I fix this?

[jabbo5150]

No matter what I do, it says video bit rate too high in DVDSP. Here is what MPEG Streamclip had to say about the resulting files

Type: MPEG elementary stream

Duration: 0:55:44
Data Size: 3.10 GB
Bit Rate: 7.95 Mbps

Video Tracks:
224 MPEG-2, 720 × 480, 4:3, 29.97 fps, 8.00 Mbps, lower field first

Audio Tracks:
160 PCM stereo, 48 kHz, 1.54 Mbps

Stream Files:
New Title 1 (Ch1 - Ch1).m2v (2.33 GB)
New Title 1 (Ch1 - Ch1).aiff

[jabbo5150]

Well, I got it to work. I had to take the PCM audio and convert it to AC3 to get it to burn and then it worked just fine. Does DVDSP not like PCM?

How was it able to get on the DVD as PCM in the first place if DVDSP can't do it as PCM?

[terryj]

DVD Studio Pro likes AIFF and AC3 audio.

If I had to guess as to what happened, Your bitrate was too high
FOR THE TARGET DISC SIZE, not necesarily that your bitrate was too high.

Think about it, if you ripped originally from MTR and just demuxed in
MpegStreamclip, then you probably were going from a DVD-9 ( up to
8GB in size) disc, and your DVD Studio Project was set for a DVD-5
(up to 4.37 GB in size).

A quick look at the original disc by inserting it into MTR and looking at
the total output of the ripped Title would confirm.

How to have gotten around this would have been to set DVDStudio Pro
to a DVD-9 project, brought in your assets, set your chapters,
and then mux the assets ( what DVDStudio Pro has to do,
as assets don't always have to be re-encoded, but have to be muxed)
to a target of DVD-9. You might have ended up with say around
a 5.1GB disc, certainly more than 4.37GB, but then there would have
not been any re-encoding of audio.

Once the DVD-9 folder is created, you could then safely use
DVD2ONEX to shrink it to fit to a DVD-5, and then burn that
output to disc using Toast.

[jabbo5150]

Actually, it came from a DVD-5. Total size of the .M2V and the .AIFF after demuxing was 3.2GB, so I don't know why it didn't fit. Played fine in preview

I saw online somewhere where someone with an older version of DVDSP had this issue and had to go in and manually chnge the encoding settings on the asset. Doesn't seem like you can do that on 4.2.1.

I know stuff has to be muxed. I just didn't want a reencode, which is what I thought DVDSP was doing.

[terryj]

I saw online somewhere where someone with an older version of DVDSP had this issue and had to go in and manually chnge the encoding settings on the asset. Doesn't seem like you can do that on 4.2.1.

try 42-46pps of the DVDStudio Pro Manual..... Looking back at your post,
we've been discussing SIZE OF THE ASSETS, (3.2gb)
but not the ACTUAL BITRATE USED TO ENCODE to MPEG-2.

Forget about the original disc's encoding and let's just concentrate on what DVDSP is trying to do:

Your video, as listed in the original posting is already at a bitrate of 7.95MBPS ( VERY HIGH!)
Your audio is uncompressed AIFF .
If you take our favorite "Bit Rate Calc"
and input these variables you'll get the following:



As you can see for both your assets muxed, it should target about 9.6MBPS.
Your current assets are at 9.154 ( 8.0 + 1.54), so in theory they should fit to disc.
DVD Studio Pro's standard max threshold it allows is 9.2MBPS for DVD-5 discs.
So on just assets alone, you are NEAR DVDSP's max threshold.

So what could be causing you to hit over the 0.046MBPS....
My guess would be your MENUS...A High Res still picture,
video or audio playing on the menu, or if you are doing
MAIN MENU +CHAPTER MENU, the combination of the two
is what is throwing out your authoring.
( It's also probably why your original disc was NO FRILLS,
they sacrificed multiple menus and chapters for HIGHER QUALITY PLAYBACK)

THe DVDSP manual even talks about this...that you should after figuring up
your bitrate, subtract 1.5MBPS for Menus ( Main, Chapter, First Play, etc)
from the target of your video to insure it meets the 9.2 max set by DVDSP.

Now PCM is one way to address it as you found out. Another is
you could have dropped the audio to 128 using Audacity or
Amadeus II. Another way would have been to have DVDSP re-encode
the video asset to slightly less than 8.0, say 7.0.
So that's the mystery!

[jabbo5150]

That makes sense. I did add a menu and a sub menu, though they were pretty basic. This also would explain why it fit just fine when I converted it to .ac3. Thanks for the help

[terryj]

u r welcome!