Auto gordian Knot cannot find the audio from VTS*.ifo

[loninappleton]

Doom10 shows some conversion techniques for audio formats that AGK does not handle. But the file types discussed are for the newer mkv standard.

What I have is a set of VTS files for an old b/w movie. I do not know the type of audio that AGK is having the problem. Error issued is: ??? AC3 2ch.

The Doom10 how to is here and may be useful to others:

http://doom10.org/index.php?topic=325.0

I would follow up on that or another how to source but do not know how to interpret VTS sets with the Bups, ifos and other file types. That Doom10 guide focuses on AAC audio.

The source seems to be something made in the VHS era since the chapter layout looks like one of those old hand made capture from screen techniques. I was able to view some of this content with the program from Wondershare called Video Converter Ultimate full975 which is a free download to sample.

As always I'm appreciative of all help here.

[aedipuss]

is there a question in there? what are you trying to do?

[hello_hello]

I'm actually the author of the guide you linked to but I don't think it relates to the problem you're having with DVD conversion, as AutoGK should be able to handle DVD files without a problem, including the audio. You shouldn't need to extract and convert it manually.
Does AutoGK refuse to run the encode because it thinks the audio is unsupported? If it's not refusing to run it shouldn't matter if the audio is labelled with question marks. It probably just means the audio doesn't have a language specified. Normally it'd look something like: "English AC3 2ch", but either way, AutoGK should extract the AC3 audio from the DVD vob files for you and either add it to the output AVI or convert it to MP3 first (whichever you specify, or whichever AutoGK decides to do if you leave the audio setting on "Auto). If it's only 2ch AC3 there's probably not much point converting it as it won't reduce the size of the audio much.

If you have a set of files from a DVD they may look like this:

VIDEO_TS.BUP
VIDEO_TS.IFO
VTS_01_0.BUP
VTS_01_0.IFO
VTS_01_1.VOB
VTS_01_2.VOB
VTS_01_3.VOB

If it's been properly "prepared" for encoding, the movie would be split between the sequentially numbered vob files. Using the above example, you can open either "VTS_01_0.IFO" (which is preferable as AutoGK can then probably supply information about the video and audio) or you can open the first vob file in the sequence (ie "VTS_01_1.VOB").

There may be more than one set of sequentially numbered vob files, in which case the largest "set" will usually be the movie, so you can probably still open the first vob file in the largest "set", or the set's corresponding IFO file.
If the DVD structure doesn't look like the one above then you might need to prepare it properly for encoding, but that's another story.....

As an example if, you have a DVD properly prepared for encoding which contains 2 episodes of a TV show or something similar, it'd look something like this:

VIDEO_TS.BUP
VIDEO_TS.IFO
VTS_01_0.BUP
VTS_01_0.IFO
VTS_01_1.VOB
VTS_01_2.VOB
VTS_01_3.VOB
VTS_02_0.BUP
VTS_02_0.IFO
VTS_02_1.VOB
VTS_02_2.VOB
VTS_02_3.VOB

You'd open VTS_01_0.IFO and VTS_02_0.IFO in the above example, or the first vob file in each set. The "BUP" files are just backup files and can be ignored.

[loninappleton]

HH,

Thanks for answering. I know your replies are always carefully prepared and detailed. Apologies for any past slights I may have caused.

I do believe AGK is refusing to run since there is a message in red. I can record what the message says if needed. If AGK can handle this, great. As a backup I have installed the other free program known as Format Factory. It is supposed to be easy to work with and I have looked at the help file but that seems rather thin on the astep sinvolved.

This current job under discussion plays fine in both audio and video in VLC. Does that answer as to whether AGK can handle it?

[loninappleton]

HH,

Thanks for answering. I know your replies are always carefully prepared and detailed. Apologies for any past slights I may have caused.

I do believe AGK is refusing to run since there is a message in red. I can record what the message says if needed. If AGK can handle this, great. As a backup I have installed the other free program known as Format Factory. It is supposed to be easy to work with and I have looked at the help file but that seems rather thin on the steps involved.

This current job under discussion plays fine in both audio and video in VLC. Does that answer as to whether AGK can handle it?

[hello_hello]

I'm not sure I've seen AutoGK display an error message in red, but if you post the log from the output folder it should provide exact details as to what's going on.

I'm pretty sure AutoGK uses MediaInfo to obtain info about the video and audio, so it'll display it even if it's of a type it can't handle, but it'll still attempt to start the encoding job and then stop with an error when it gets to the audio if it's an unsupported type. For example:



If it's not giving you an error such as the one above you should be fine.

Because video from DVDs is generally split between multiple vob files, a program needs to know how to open end re-encode DVDs correctly. You might be able to open a folder full of ripped DVD files and convert it to a single AVI or MP4 etc with FormatFactory, but I'm not sure as I've never used it for DVD conversion and I don't have it installed at the moment.

[loninappleton]

I'm making the reply in notepad here and adding as much info as I can.

There is no red error message-- my mistake in thinking about another program.
_But_ if the .ifo is loaded, the rest of the screen greys out and I cannot proceed.

However, moving on in the VTS sequence that begins with VTS_07_0.ifo which is the first file and where

VTS_07_1.VOB
VTS_07_2.VOB
VTS_07_3.VOB

follow, if I load _07_01, followed by 02 and 03 I can add each to the job queue and the recoding process begins. 07 is one of nine data sets and appears to contain the whole movie which I will test this evening in VLC. The other data sets from a dvd are trailers and chapter headers.

From this test it seems that the .ifo prevents the transcode to .avi from beginning. If BUP files and so on which are not in the 07 data set of four files is needed, then more experimentation to find the right ones for the content will have to found. AGK indicates that it will recode to .avi as each file is added to the queue. The audio indicated is "0" AC3.

I'm going to reread what you have given so far between now and next message.

Can you say how I can get the logfile? I have not done that in AGK.

[hello_hello]

It could be the set of DVD files you have weren't authored correctly, hence the problem opening the IFO, but if the vob files are sequentially numbered as in your example above, you only need to open the first one for encoding. The rest in the sequence will automatically be included and encoded as a single AVI.

Here's how I prepare a DVD for encoding:

Open the folder containing the ripped DVD files with DVDShrink. Go into DVDShrink's preferences and change the target DVD size to "custom" and set it to 50000MB. That'll stop DVDShrink from re-encoding the video. Select the Re-author button at the top. In the right pane you'll see one or more titles. If it's a movie DVD it'll be obvious which title is the movie. Drag that title from the right pane to the left.
Switch to the compression tab and with the title in the left pane highlighted, you can choose which audio and subtitle streams you want to keep. Use DVDShrink's backup function to "backup" the re-authored DVD to a new location on your hard drive. When it's done, the re-authored DVD will consist of a single set of vob files which will be just the movie.... exactly like the first example I posted earlier. Open "VTS_01_0.IFO" with AutoGK and you're good to go.

If it's an "episodic" DVD you can drag one or more episode titles from the right pane to the left. Use the backup function to save the re-authored DVD again and you'll have a set of vob files with a corresponding IFO file for each episode. Once again you can open the corresponding IFO files with AutoGK and you'll be encoding the episodes individually.

I use AnyDVD to decrypt discs which DVDShrink can't handle by itself, but I always use DVDShrink to rip DVDs. That way you can open the disc with DVDShrink, re-author it as I've described above, and use the backup function to effectively rip the DVD and re-author it for encoding at the same time.
Just make sure you change the target DVD size in DVDShrink's preferences to something large first so DVDShrink doesn't try to "shrink" the DVD to fit on a blank disc while it's re-authoring it. With the target size set to something large, DVDShrink will just copy the video and audio.

[loninappleton]

A lot to chew on above so this will be a multi-day project for me. Viewing the content looks to be as you say a bad authoring job. There's a watermark from Am Movie channel so it was captured from a tv. There are numerous glitches in the playback and the film is a stinker. Who knew?

I'm going to go as far as I can with this following your instructions above to be able to learn the technique.

Using AGK that first time, I put all the _07 VOB's that would 'run' in the queue. You say that only _07_01 can be queued and AGK will pick up _02 and _03? I was concerned about having to assemble more than one segment in another operation since viewing the content in VLC would only play one segment at a time.

I will get out DVD Shrink and report back.

[hello_hello]

You definitely only need to open the first vob file in the sequence for encoding.

If you try re-authoring using DVDShrink, there's a setting in the window which opens when you backup the re-authored DVD labelled something like "split vob files into 1GB chunks". If you uncheck it, DVDShrink won't split the vob files, so you'll just have one large vob file which contains the movie which you can open for encoding, or you can still open the corresponding IFO file.
It doesn't matter though whether you re-author using one large vob file or whether it's split into 1GB segments, the end result will be the same. AutoGK will automatically include the rest of the sequentially numbered vob files in the encoding job. It knows to do so because the vob files are usually split that way when burned to DVD.

If in doubt, use the preview function to check the whole movie is going to be encoded and it looks okay before you start encoding.

Once you've re-authored a few DVDs it becomes fairly easy. It probably sounds more complicated than it is.

[loninappleton]

I have followed the directions and am making good progress. The history of this b/w film seems to have a following I was not aware of and so it's worth the time to get some usable media. Things seems to happen all at once when doing the procedure you have given. I have one split set marked c1 and cd2 and elsewhere one avi with the complete content of the VOB set. In looking at the log progress it appeared to ignore my selection of one 900mb output rather than the two 699mb files marked cd1 and cd2 or the single avi marked 1.3Gb. Could this have been an error in DVD Shrink setup by me or does the original determine how small the output will be? The log showed that it was doing 72% of original (quality I guess.)

I do not know how to print the log.

[hello_hello]

I've never seen AutoGK ignore the chosen file size, however you need to use the version of Xvid which comes with AutoGK or things can go wrong. If you had a different version installed, you should uninstall it and let AutoGK install the version which comes bundled with it. The wrong version can cause AutoGK to configure Xvid incorrectly and/or not display the correct quality. It could also effect the output file size.

If that's not the problem, the log file is saved in the same folder as the output AVI. You can open it with notepad and copy it's contents to paste here, or upload it as an attachment to your post.

The percentage figure (ie 72%) is actually the percentage relative to maximum quality/file size (100%) for Xvid. Around 70% to 75% is supposed to be the optimum quality/file size ratio for Xvid. AutoGK will generally try not to let the quality go above about 75%.

[loninappleton]

I'd take the 1.3Gb version as a keeper. The glitches are not there and so it might have been my low level onboard video trying to keep up.

But since I'd like a final size good enough for a black and white movie from a second source I will reinstall AGK to make sure it has the proper associated codec and redo the .avi made with DVD Shrink from above.

It's still like magic for me to watch these programs work. But I don't have hands on often enough to remember technique well.

[hello_hello]

Uninstall Xvid before you uninstall AutoGK, then when you re-install AutoGK, let it install Xvid too. That'll ensure you're using the correct version.

The splitting of the output video will always happen if you leave the output size at 1400MB. It'll keep the 1.3GB "unsplit" version too, so you can just delete the two 700MB halves. It's a left-over from the good old days when people regularly burned I encodes to 700MB CDs. If you don't want the split files, change the output size to 1399MB or 14401MB instead of 1400MB, but it doesn't matter, because it doesn't take long to create the two halves and you can just delete them.

PS Here's an AutoGK encoding "trick" if you want to achieve a certain quality (ie 75%) and don't mind if the process takes longer. Under Advanced Settings, pick your desired video width (maximum 720 if you want an AVI capable DVD player to play the encode), and the type of audio you want. If you select the option to keep the original audio it'll speed the process up quite a bit.

Select the Target Quality encoding mode and run an encode at 75%. Unless you need to use 2 pass encoding for some reason, it'll be much faster. If you want a 2 pass encode (potentially slightly higher quality) then make note of the file size when the single pass, 75% encode has finished. Use that file size for the 2 pass encode and the two pass encode should result in around 75% quality.

[loninappleton]

We're almost home with this one. I went ahead and reinstalled AGK before this item about uninstalling Xvid first. Where is that found?

[hello_hello]

If there's not a shortcut for uninstalling it in the start menu (might be in the folder of AutoGK shorcuts) it should be in Add/Remove programs, or whatever Microsoft call Add/Remove programs in newer versions of Windows.

[loninappleton]

In my mail version of the message I missed the location of the Xvid in /tools/ from the link above.
I will do the delete, redo the install and then finalize the 800mb version which AGK accepted after checking for compressibility.

Are there any custom settings in AGK for things like picture sharpness or other specialty enhancements?

[loninappleton]

Also I was looking at the /tools/ sub directory. In there is a file or feature to 'normalize'. How is that used to enhance audio in AGK?

And from above Xvid has it's own directory in the XP> Programs directory. I had to do a search and the uninstall option popped up there.

Would Xvid be tweaked with a direct install or from a codec pack such as K-lite?

In review and to avoid confusion the procedure should be:

Find Xvid uninstall and run that.
Install AGK 2.55 (I had one 2.40 version on a machine)
and then run AGK with the file made in DVDShrink from procedure given in this thread.

... plus anything else for sound and picture quality.

[hello_hello]

AutoGK always "normalizes" the audio. ie increases the volume until the peaks are at maximum. There's no setting to change that. If you keep the original audio rather than re-encoding it though, the volume will (obviously) remain unchanged.

K-Lite installs a newer/different version of Xvid. You definitely don't want that. AutoGK will probably end up using the wrong Xvid profile (I've seen it use the mobile profile instead of the Home Theatre profile with the wrong Xvid version) and the bitrate control will be all wrong. Just use the version which comes with AutoGK, or don't use AutoGK.
AutoGK does things like change the Xvid matrix and the minimum and maximum quantizers according to the compression test results, and it probably won't do it correctly unless the correct version of Xvid is installed.

Other than that, let AutoGK install Xvid and it'll work correctly. There's nothing else you need to do. If you want better quality, you probably need to use the x264 encoder instead of Xvid, which means you'll need to use another encoder GUI rather than AutoGK. To be honest, Xvid/AVI is pretty much obsolete these days. You'd probably only use it if you're using a player which doesn't play h264/MKV or h264/MP4. The x264 encoder is better at retaining fine detail than Xvid.

I use MeGUI mostly myself, but it has a bit more of a learning curve than most encoder GUIs. VidCoder seems to be a popular choice for x264 encoding as it's fairly straightforward to use. Personally though, I think learning to use MeGUI is definitely worth the effort as it's more versatile than any other encoder GUI.

[davexnet]

And from above Xvid has it's own directory in the XP> Programs directory. I had to do a search and the uninstall option popped up there.

You should always look in the Control Panel - Add/Remove programs (XP)
(Control Panel - Programs and Features Vista and Windows 7) to uninstall programs.

Not sure why you're rummaging around the program files\xvid looking for the uninstall executable.

[loninappleton]

HH,

All good advice. I subscribe to the daily exchanges on Vidcoder and have used it but only by first using MakeMKV and then letting Vidcoder fix the size of the media downward. If I am dealing with the same VOB set as discussed here, will Vidcoder pick that up and encode or is there something else to do?

I continue with .avi because I noticed that when doing one piece of video from dvd content, VC would deposit some glitches-- jaggy pixelizations of squares and when I asked about it they said that the Handbrake engine was responsible. Vidcoder is good though because I do not have to change screen size of the computer just to use it.

During our previous discussion on sound I think I even printed out the instructions for MeGui but would have to dig for it now. Perhaps I have avoided it because of the glitching problem I saw on the h264 Matroska- style encodes.


To get newer open source software I would set up a Linux distribution but I don't see a lot done with these types of activities in it. And yes you are right the programs are getting old but I'm mostly dealing with old stuff as source material.

[hello_hello]

I haven't used HandBrake/VidCoder much myself, so I can't comment there. It sounds like bad de-interlacing to me rather than an encoding issue, but that's just a guess. Did the problem look anything like the right half of this picture? If so, it's de-interlacing which was the problem.




I'm not sure if you open DVD files for encoding with Vidcoder the same way. MeGUI uses the same tool for indexing and extracting the audio as AutoGK and encodes using AVISynth as AutoGK does. You can't open IFO files with it though, you open the first vob file in the set and MeGUI automatically includes the rest. So you'd prepare a DVD for encoding with MeGUI the same way as you would for encoding with AutoGK.
Some encoder GUI's will open a folder full of ripped DVD files and let you choose which title to encode (the same titles you see when opening the ripped files with DVDShrink). If VidCoder is one of those GUI's you probably don't need to re-author the DVD in order to encode it.

[loninappleton]

I have found my MeGUI printouts of guide notes. Is there a topic or subheading in which to address MeGUI questions here in videohelp? I'll have to redo the setup since I have reverted to other progs in the past.

That de interlace was not what the combination of MakeMKV and Vidcoder produced. Much bigger square rectangles of glitches similar to the technique used to mask a person's face in an interview. Is that any help? File job was black and white from a classic silent film newly released. I wound up using something else to do avi rather than the newer Matroska. I would like to be able to get off of commercial products altogether but some have the advantage of single click gratification.

[hello_hello]

The VidCoder problem sounds like "blocking" which is generally the result of using too low a bitrate or quality setting. It looks like this:
http://www.vidiator.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/BlockingArtifact.png
I'd only ever use VidCoder's High Profile preset as it's the only one which basically uses x264's default settings, but even then, the bitrate/quality needs to be high enough. If you use the High Profile preset and a quality setting of 20, the quality should be pretty good.

Here's brief instructions for encoding a DVD using MeGUI:

Use the File/Open menu to open the first vob file in the set of vob files.
The File Indexer window opens to offer to extract the audio and index the video. Add the indexing job to the job queue and switch to the Queue tab and run it.
When it's done the Script Creator window opens with a preview. Use it to adjust the cropping and resizing. Under the Filters tab, run the analysis to determine whether the video is progressive or needs de-interlacing. Use the Save button to save the script.

Back in MeGUI's main window, the script will be loaded into the video section for encoding and the audio will be loaded into the audio section. Set up the video and audio encoders you wish to use. If in doubt, open the x264 configuration and simply load the defaults. That'll run a single pass quality based encode using a quality (CRF) value of 20 which should be quite good. For the audio, you can re-encode it, but if you want to keep the original audio there's no need to set up an audio encoder. In fact, if you're keeping the original audio (which I generally do) then use the "x" button in the audio section to clear it.

Finally you use the "AutoEncode" button down the bottom of the main window. There's several different ways to add encoding jobs to the queue but this is the simplest as it'll output a completed file for you including the audio. When the AutoEncode window opens check the box for "adding additional content" and click on the Queue button. A new window opens so you can add the original audio which was extracted when you first opened the DVD and indexed it. Add the audio and click on the "Go" button. Switch to the Queue tab and click on Start. When MeGUI is finished you'll have a completed file including the original audio. If you want to re-encode the audio, set up the audio encoder you wish to use and when you click on AutoEncode it'll already be added to the AutoEncode, encoding job.

The above is the gist of it, and once you're familiar with the process it's fairly straightforward, but as MeGUI is fairly versatile there's often several ways to achieve the same thing. For instance you can add the video and audio encoding jobs to the queue individually instead of using AutoEncode, and there's probably a bit to learn when it comes to the different ways to resize the video when using the Script Creator, but it's worth it in my opinion. Have a play around and if you have any questions, which you probably will, I'll help if I can.

PS, if you want to resize video "up" (by default MeGUI only lets you resize "down") the option to enable resizing "up" can be found by selecting the "config" button next to the AVISynth Profile dropdown box in the AVS Script Creator window (above the cropping and resizing section). I generally resize DVDs "up" but it's personal choice. For instance if a 16:9 DVD is 720x480, you might resize "down" by resizing to something like 720x404. Personally I resize "up", so I'd resize to something like 854x480. That way, instead of reducing the height in order to resize the DVD to square pixel dimensions, you're leaving the height "as-is" and increasing the width instead, and hopefully retaining more detail.

[loninappleton]

I have to get off the Vidcoder at least for some jobs because, simply put, at the Vidcoder forum I get a lot of shoulder shrugs when I run into difficulty.

If I reviewed that session we did on extracting audio in order to normalize it some time back, I think there was some avi synth work with that.

Thanks for the offer of help as this goes on. I'd think that such a tool would have a forum sub-head in here if it is the default/defacto open source tool or tool set to be able to move off of the commercial faves such as DVDFab.

I have my MeGui printout stuff and will begin a fresh install. The goal would be to get a simplified procedure where each now encode to h264 wasn't reinventing the wheel. That's why Auto GK is so good: it installs the tools it needs from batch.

[hello_hello]

I'm pretty sure MeGUI installs all the tools it needs these days, even a portable version of AVISynth, in case you don't have the full version installed.

AutoGK uses azid.exe to decode AC3, dtsdec.exe for DTS and normalize.exe for the audio (and LAME to encode it), which are all in it's tools folder. I rarely use MeGUI for audio encoding so I'm not sure how it goes about normalizing. These days it seems more logical just to keep the original audio, as file size isn't too much of an issue and unless it's DTS, you don't save a huge amount of space by re-encoding the audio anyway.

Personally I think dedicated threads for help with a particular program get too messy, with lots of people requesting help in different areas in the same thread. In some respects a new thread each time is better. There's 2 or 3 dedicated MeGUI threads over at doom9, and I post there occasionally (bug reports and feature requests etc) as that's where the MeGUI developer hangs out. Other than that, you shouldn't have too much trouble getting help here. There's a lot more activity here than there is at doom9 anyway, probably largely because doom9 is way over-moderated, which is why I don't post there much these days unless I'm posting in one of the MeGUI threads.

MeGUI has a One-Click encoder which is designed to automate a lot of the encoding process. You need to set it up to your liking (like most of MeGUI it's quite configurable) but I've never actually used it myself as I prefer to set up encodes manually. I could probably help you with it if need be though. I'd not use One-Click initially..... better to get to know the ins and outs of how MeGUI works first.... and because One-Click is fairly configurable you need to understand MeGUI to know what you're configuring to a certain extent anyway. Once you do, you could try the One-Click encoder for a more automated encoding process.

[loninappleton]

Does MeGUI require a particular version of Net Framework? I've gotten an error from the MeGUI exe and do not know how to resolve it.

[hello_hello]

As far as I know it'll run with any version of dot net crap from version 2, service pack 2 onwards.