ffmpegX 0.0.2 (DVD to DivX, DivX or DVD to VCD/XVCD)

[major]

http://homepage.mac.com/major4

Just released ffmpegX v.0.0.2 :

- Various GUI fixes
- New defaults for advanced settings tab (and new quantizer defaults)
- Added combo boxes for audio bitrate, audio sampling rate, video framerate
- Leaving size fields blank will default them to 640x352. Leaving audio bitrate and audio sampling rate blank will default them to 128 kbps and 44100 Hz.
- Added Audio settings > Track to select the source audio track
- Set MPEG-1 format to ISO packet size output for VCD and XVCD use
- Video bitrate calculator correctly handles case of video encoding only (ie when "Encode audio" is not checked)
- New 'Post-processing' tab allows for additional processing to be done on encoded output. Current available option is converting a DivX or VOB file into Mpeg1 and then post-processing the Mpeg1 file into a VCD or XVCD image (compatible with Toast Video CD mode and with cdrdao)
- French and Italian GUI translations
- New icon (thanks Justin)

[tgpo]

WOW! This program is looking better and better. Quick question. If I load a .vbo into the program and I tell it to spit out a Toast ready mpeg. Does it spllit the file so it'll fit on a 80/cdr or does it encode the entire movie so it'll fit on a 80/cdr and you can't burn it as a VCD in Toast?

[major]

I'm planning to add an auto-split function in next release. In fact I already added to 0.0.2 but I got some GOP problems. I'm working on that.

[AntnyMD]

Am I having audio sync issues when encoding to MPEG-1 from a vob file because it outputs variable bitrate MPEG-1 video? It makes great looking MPEG-1 video, by the way.

[squeed]

How do you know which VOB is the right VOB to use ?

[major]

To reduce sync problems you should set audio sampling rate to 48000 hz if your source is a VOB. Most DVD players should accept such XVCDs.

[SCB]

When I try to open an input file I get an Applescript error that says: NSReveiverEvaluationScriptError: 3 (1). What's the deal?

[major]

SCB, run software update and download & install the AppleScript update. You can also find the update here http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=15315&db=mac

[tgpo]

Just a note I've never had the program create a movie in which the audio was in sync with the video with no doctoring. I've tried different frame rates, tried to change the audio to 48 and it still never is in sync first try. I always have to Mutate it. Not really a question or anything, just a comment. Love the program though!

[Tolly]

yea same with me tgpo. but i was wondering, major maybe u can help, if i have a NTSC (29.97) dvd, generally what should i encode it to? actually the terminal line identifies it as "stream 0 comes from film source: 29.97->24.47", no idea what that means. but if i want a synced divx movie what should i encode it to? i already tried encoding to 23.976 w/ 48000 audio and that didnt produce a synced movie. any ideas on what fps to encode to or what other settings to change?

[major]

ffmpeg core is still not perfect and audio sync need improvements.

current experience shows that the best results are obtained by encoding with a video framerate and an audio sampling rate matching those of the source material.

to check the actual video framerate and audio sampling rate of the source material you can use OSEx (click the Vid and Aud buttons), or MpegInfo.

this should lead most of the time to 25 fps and 48000 hz for PAL material, and 23.976 (or 29.97) fps and 48000 hz for NTSC material.

if the source is not a VOB but MPG1 or DivX, other values can be expected.

[SCB]

Tried to make a Toast VCD with ffmpegX and got this error:

VCDGear v1.6e build 082401 coded by Dracore (dracore@home.com)

MPEG file source --> /Volumes/Video/whatever.mpg
BIN image destination --> /Volumes/Video/whatever.bin
Conversion method --> mpg2bin


ERROR: /Volumes/Video/whatever.mpg could not be opened or accessed.


What am I doing wrong?

[major]

SCB, copy and paste the whole terminal window output (including the encoding part) and email me and I will check out.

[SCB]

Everything's working great now thanks to major. One more question: how do I make sure that the audio will be in sync when I encode from a VOB to VCD? From what I can tell, there's no way to sync the audio after I convert to VCD.

[AntnyMD]

When we are referring to "vob" as the source of the encode in ffmpegX, are we defining this as a ripped .vob, say from DVDExtractor, or a decrypted .vob, say from DVDBackup? I thought I remember reading somewhere that ripping to a new .vob from DVDExtractor and/or YADE can produce unpredictable results (i.e., sync issues) when used in other programs.

[incognito]

This is really good news Major.

Is there a Linux port?

[major]

I thought I remember reading somewhere that ripping to a new .vob from DVDExtractor and/or YADE can produce unpredictable results (i.e., sync issues) when used in other programs.

Use OSEx 0.0101a5 and set it to Fmt=PS and Seg=Title. It works great.

[SCB]

Ripped ID4 as stated in the previous post and this is what I get when trying to convert to VCD:

/Applications/ffmpegX.app//Contents/Resources/ffmpeg -i /Volumes/Video/IDfour/idfour.VOB -y -f mpeg -vcodec mpeg1video -map 0.0:0.0 -b 595.214406926407 -s 352x240 -r 29.97 -g 240 -me epzs -qmin 1 -qmax 9 -benchmark -vcd -acodec mp2 -ab 128 -ar 44100 -ac 2 -map 0.1:0.1 /Volumes/Video/IDfour/idfour.mpg; /Applications/ffmpegX.app//Contents/Resources/vcdgear -mpg2bin -toast /Volumes/Video/IDfour/idfour.mpg /Volumes/Video/IDfour/idfour.mpg.bin
[localhost:~] jacobs% /Applications/ffmpegX.app//Contents/Resources/ffmpeg -i /Volumes/Video/IDfour/idfour.VOB -y -f mpeg -vcodec mpeg1video -map 0.0:0.0 -b 595.214406926407 -s 352x240 -r 29.97 -g 240 -me epzs -qmin 1 -qmax 9 -benchmark -vcd -acodec mp2 -ab 128 -ar 44100 -ac 2 -map 0.1:0.1 /Volumes/Video/IDfour/idfour.mpg; /Applications/ffmpegX.app//Contents/Resources/vcdgear -mpg2bin -toast /Volumes/Video/IDfour/idfour.mpg /Volumes/Video/IDfour/idfour.mpg.bin
No accelerated IMDCT transform found
No accelerated IMDCT transform found
No accelerated IMDCT transform found
No accelerated IMDCT transform found
No accelerated IMDCT transform found

Seems that stream 0 comes from film source: 29.97->23.98
Input #0, mpeg, from '/Volumes/Video/IDfour/idfour.VOB':
Stream #0.0: Video: mpegvideo, 720x480, 29.97 fps, q=0-0, 9800 kb/s
Stream #0.1: Video: , q=0-0
Stream #0.2: Video: , q=0-0
Stream #0.3: Video: , q=0-0
Stream #0.4: Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, 5:1, 448 kb/s
Stream #0.5: Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, stereo, 192 kb/s
Stream #0.6: Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, stereo, 192 kb/s
Stream #0.7: Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, stereo, 96 kb/s
Stream #0.8: Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, stereo, 96 kb/s
Output #0, mpeg, to '/Volumes/Video/IDfour/idfour.mpg':
Stream #0.0: Video: mpeg1video, 352x240, 29.97 fps, q=1-9, 595 kb/s
Stream #0.1: Audio: mp2, 44100 Hz, stereo, 128 kb/s
Stream mapping:
Stream #0.0 -> #0.0
Stream #0.1 -> #0.1
Unsupported codec for input stream #0.1

VCDGear v1.6e build 082401 coded by Dracore (dracore@home.com)

MPEG file source --> /Volumes/Video/IDfour/idfour.mpg
BIN image destination --> /Volumes/Video/IDfour/idfour.mpg.bin
Conversion method --> mpg2bin


What did I do wrong this time? Thanks again for all the help.

[Krevinek]

Hmm, there is one thing wrong with this prog: It doesn't recognize my clips taken from 'Validated' DivX movies.

To try to ease the process for XVCD generation, I clipped out the opening and ending for the episodes (gotta love fansubs), and then created stand-alone QT files. ffmpeg doesn't recognize the 'DIV3' content code in QT files, since the official DivX 5 codec just came out, has the NICE validator, but the validator changes the QT code for DivX 3-based content to DIV3...
I presume you are using a clean build of version 0.4.6 of ffmpeg, yes? If not... release the source please

(I am referring to ffmpeg, the command-line tool, not the GUI BTW...)

[major]

Stream #0.4: Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, 5:1, 448 kb/s
What did I do wrong this time? Thanks again for all the help.

Select Audio > Track > 4 in order to use the right audio track (this should fix the error). Set audio sampling rate to 48000 Hz to prevent sound off sync. Also, it seems you want to stuff everything in a single CD.. lowering audio bitrate to 96 and recalculating video bitrate should help getting better image quality. Finally, select "high quality" & set GOP=18 for MPEG1 encoding.

[major]

I presume you are using a clean build of version 0.4.6 of ffmpeg, yes?

Yes. It supports what the core engine is able to support. Quicktime is not pretty much recognized nor as "validating". Consider using proper .avi DiVX only & preferring DivX Doctor II & 3ivx D4 to handle them in Quicktime.

[incredible]

Hey major!!!!
What a job!! Great!

I rendered yesterday a 126 Min movie in PAL 16:9 and I was wondering if something was wrong I made cause .... this is really faster than for example M-Pack or Cleaner5!

But ... maybe you could explain a litte bit the options in the "advanced" section .... ?

There are encoding options and mpeg options whats all about these checkboxes & fields, ... could you explain each?!!?

Thanx a lot from Germany!

[Krevinek]

Yeah, last night I got ffmpeg 0.4.6 compiled on my machine, and am having issues reading QT5/6 files it seems. It is now recognizing the codec as being valid, but is complaining about I frames being too long. (I know the content is DivX 3, and am telling ffmpeg that DIV3 is DivX 3)

[major]

Hey major!!!! What a job!! Great!

incredible.. thanks, but I just made a GUI for MacOSX. The fantastic-speed encoding engine is from really smart UNIX guys.

But ... maybe you could explain a litte bit the options in the "advanced" section .... ?

I will include a manual in 0.0.3. Some options are self-explanatory, the quantizers indicate a range of how much quality you're ready to trade in exchange of a constant bitrate when it comes to high motion scenes. Lossless will use VBR to exactly keep the same quality as the source. Also having both quantizers the same value will switch to VBR (lower values lead to higher quality).

[SCB]

Dammit! I ripped with OSex with FMT set to PS and Seg to title. In ffmpegX the settings were: VBR 1150 kb/s, video size 352 x 240, framerate: source, audio: MP2 96kb/s sampling 48000hz, high quality selected and GOP set to 18, and post process to create toast VCD file. AND THE AUDIO STILL DOESN'T SYNC! I give up.

[major]

framerate: source, sampling 48000hz

Don't use framerate=source, use framerate=29.97 or 23.976 depending on the source.

You could also try to encode separately audio and video. As your source audio is 48000 hz, check the duration of the encoded audio. That is the right duration of the movie. Now check how much the video is different and you should be able to calculate the right framerate to compensate.

[Krevinek]

Okay, I found another solution to my particular problem... just use mpegtx to cut it after I encode it... hoping that my timing is just right.

[SCB]

You could also try to encode separately audio and video. As your source audio is 48000 hz, check the duration of the encoded audio. That is the right duration of the movie. Now check how much the video is different and you should be able to calculate the right framerate to compensate.

How would I know how much to adjust the framerate on the video based on the time of the encoded audio? Are you saying to adjust the framerate to make the video the same length as the audio? How can I do this? Also, how would I mux the audio and video back together - missing mpeg tools?

Thanks again for helping out a newbie.

[incredible]

How would I know how much to adjust the framerate on the video based on the time of the encoded audio? Are you saying to adjust the framerate to make the video the same length as the audio? How can I do this? Also, how would I mux the audio and video back together - missing mpeg tools?

Thanks again for helping out a newbie.

Hi!

This is an excellent GUI but maybe in the next version it should contain a field to set the delay of audio or video like in missing mpeg tools. I got one movie where I had to set the video delay to 300 milisec in MMT and then it sync.
Very often there is a sync problem when you don't type in the same framerate in video and the same khz in audio settings as the original when enconding.

[major]

How would I know how much to adjust the framerate on the video based on the time of the encoded audio? Are you saying to adjust the framerate to make the video the same length as the audio? How can I do this?

If the audio is correctly encoded and it is ie 92 min in duration, but the video encoded @ 23,96 fps is 96 minutes, then 23,96 / 92 x 96 = 25 fps you should have used instead.

Also, how would I mux the audio and video back together - missing mpeg tools?

If encoding separately leads you to different length audio & video you must re-encode (this time including audio & video) by using the correct framerate & audio sampling rate. However, it seems that some specific VOBs will still have problems to get in sync. ffmpeg engine is still not perfect.