KDVD Help

[dbanga]

I am tring to convert avi to kdvd, but i have no idea how to do it.

I tried the templates from kvcd.net website used with tmpeng enc but the output filesize goes over 2gb and is a m2v file type.

I assume i am doing something wrong some where, because from what ive heard u can upto 6hrs on a standard dvd, withthis coversion, i just want to check it out.

Please help me.

Thank You

[guns1inger]

KDVD is basically a set of templates for out of spec encoding. The quality is poor, and the compatibility with standalone players is low.

If you are serious about getting mode on a disc, get a Divx certified player and encode to avi using Divx/Xvid.

Or use more discs. They are cheap.

[TBoneit]

Or encode as VCD with 48Khz audio, 352 by 288 as that is a legal DVD resolution. you should get well over 6 hours that way. It won't look good but it won't look real bad but it will play in any DVD player. KDVD well......

[jman98]

I am tring to convert avi to kdvd, but i have no idea how to do it.

That is actually a good thing, if you haven't figured that out from the other responses.

I tried the templates from kvcd.net website used with tmpeng enc but the output filesize goes over 2gb and is a m2v file type.

m2v just means it's probably a video-only MPEG-2 stream.

I assume i am doing something wrong some where, because from what ive heard u can upto 6hrs on a standard dvd, withthis coversion, i just want to check it out.

Please help me.

Thank You

The various K* formats (KVCD, KSVCD, KDVD) do things that aren't really valid for those formats to squeeze extra playing time, such as very very long GOP sizes and rather extreme VBR encoding with crazy low minimum bit rate values. The people who love these formats seriously overrate them. I made a KVCD once and while I have to admit it looked better than I thought it would, I wasn't impressed enough to do it again. It's not THAT good. If you MUST put 6 hours on a DVD, I strongly agree with TBoneit's suggestion. Just record to MPEG-1 video with 352x288 resolution and 48 KHz audio. Keep the video bit rate below 1700 Kbps (use CBR encoding though) and you should be OK. Warning - although MPEG-1 video with the resolution and bit rate I gave you is valid for DVD, many authoring applications will refuse to make DVDs out of it. Scenarist will and DVDLab will. Most others won't. The KDVD spec does some things that aren't really valid for DVD and if you create such a disc, a standalone DVD player may refuse to play it because it's not really valid. TMPGenc encodes MPEG-1 video really well and is a good choice for this kind of thing. I've gotten about 4 hours worth of video on a single layer DVD going this route with MPEG-1 from low resolution sources and it's OK. I found it to be watchable.

[AlanHK]

I assume i am doing something wrong some where, because from what ive heard u can upto 6hrs on a standard dvd, withthis coversion, i just want to check it out.

No need to use weird K- tricks.

Just encode as MPEG2 using HCenc, set a low rate (I guess 1500 bps) and you'll fit 6 hours in decent, if not sharp, definition. Better than VCD.

You can use smaller frame sizes if you like, which may give better results for the same rate. Also you can save 100 or 200 MB by using a lower audio bitrate, 128 k AC3 is fine; 96 is okay, though not at all hifi.

Watch the overhead from authoring, I use GuiforDVDAuthor, and a plain text menu is just a couple of MB, add a background image and that bumps it up a few more, but still very small.

[EddyH]

Hmmm, for all those slating the K- stuff ... (last time I was on here getting tips, people couldn't get enough of it! )

Besides all the super-long GOPs, low minimum bitrates, etc, it's also based around a non standard "notch" (whatever that means..) quantisation matrix... whereas this does take it out of spec, it seems to be a reasonably normal thing to try tweaking this, given that both TMPGEnc and HC come with several matrices to choose from even without the addition of KVCD/KDVD custom ones.

Having used it, yes, the quality does start to suck when you push things altogether too far, but I found it a useful (if inexplicable / automagic) helping hand to get those crucial "few more minutes" on a VBR VCD without it becoming a complete bag of spanners.
Six hours on a SL DVD I think is maybe a little unrealistic if you're going for high quality, full screen anamorphic with surround sound, but you might be able to manage it for letterboxed 4:3 in stereo, with it looking about the same as the (still rather much smaller) DivX you've converted it from... this is only extrapolating from having made successful VCD conversions to such resolution (say 352x192 inside of 352x288) with the final file being 800mb (inc 160, 192k audio) from a 700mb (~128k audio, 640x352) DivX of about 90 - 100 minutes length...

No, wait, I think my maths might be a bit rotten there
(thinks)
100 mins / 800mb * 4480mb = 560 minutes at that resolution and video/sound quality (say ~7 hours including menus)

Which assuming relatively constant compression per-pixel for video (with slight increase in compression rate allowed at higher res because of less hard edges and less obvious macroblocks), black borders being effectively null data load, and ~192k audio (~84mb/hr) works out as something considerably lower for higher and more realistic resolutions.
4480 - (7*84) = 3892mb for vid = 556mb / hr for 352x192 (288)
or ~1100/hr for 352x384 (576), still letterboxed
~2000/hr for 704x384 (576) (~2100 with audio) - already it's looking more like 2 hours per disc as claimed by DVD standards...
~3000/hr inc audio for 720x576 FS (though this does work out as about 6800kbit, which is silly - i've done fullscreen, broadcast captured stuff at about 4500kbit average in HC and it's looked fine) = about an hour and a half.

Though of course that would be for MPG1... the unknown quantity is how much more efficient MPG2 is... it must be a fair whack (and not to mention - what rez/etc were the K-guys claiming this 6 hour figure was for?). But perhaps all the routines are properly optimised now, and all the slack in MPG1 that was taken up by KVCD matrix is no longer there or the benefit is built in.

I don't know any more. I thought I did when I started writing this post. Now my brain has melted.

[Midzuki]

:: dbanga wrote:
> I assume i am doing something wrong some where, because
> from what ive heard u can upto 6hrs on a standard dvd with this coversion,
> i just want to check it out.

6 hours of video on a 4.3 GB disk? The truth is, NOT ALWAYS that is possible.
Some video sources are more compressible than others. There are 2-hour-long films that can be "KDVDed" onto a 700 MB CD-R without difficulty, whereas there are 90-minute-long movies that must be spanned across 2 CDs in order to remain "watchable". If one is satisfied with video quality between SD-broadcast level and laserdisc image, then a 480x480 resolution will give acceptable results(*IF* their standalone player is recent enough to play nearly anything that is put inside its disk tray, of course).

> I tried the templates from kvcd.net website used with tmpeng enc
> but the output filesize goes over 2gb and is a m2v file type.

A .m2v file as output means you chose to produce only the video elementary stream.
DVD authoring requires both the video and the audio ESs. TMPGEnc outputs audio as .mp2 or .wav only; if you want AC3(aka Dolby Digital) audio, you will need to convert the resulting .wav file to .ac3 with (for example) the freeware aften.exe.

As a final note, I advise you not to rely entirely on the kvcd quantization matrix to achieve the desired compression level. Using an open-GOP structure with 5 P-frames and 4 B-frames per P-frame might be helpful. You'd better also use AviSynth to do some bilinear resizing and spatial-temporal filtering as well. Hope this helps.

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