Clean Install??

[macevanscb]

I am having major problems with AC3 encoding and DVD authoring.
The errors I see in the terminal window make me feel that I have not done a clean installation of v0.0.9o.
I want to upgrade now to v0.0.9p.
Could someone please point me to a thread that explains how to totally remove all neccessary old files in order to do a clean install of v0.0.9p.

[major]

Remove the /Library/Applications Support/ffmpegX folder and all files will be removed. However, this should never be necessary.

[macevanscb]

Major ... I started using ffmpegX back in version 0.0.9k ... could there be any old files laying around that would interfere with newer versions???

[major]

No, current versions only use files in /Library/Application Support/ffmpegX. Perhaps you could post the errors you've encountered (or email me to major4@mac.com if you want to send a long output).

[macevanscb]

OK ... first forget about the AC3 problems ... I finally noticed that I saved my preset with MP3 instead of AC3. When I tried to set to 5:1 [while not noticing that the MP3 encoder was selected], I kept getting the following error:

Error while opening codec for stream #0.1 - maybe incorrect parameters such as bit_rate, rate, width or height

.... which now makes sense. Anyway I resaved my preset file with AC3 selected and now have no problems encoding. I was encoding stereo, but now the AC3 5:1 soundtracks are working.

On to DVD authoring: everytime I try to author an MPG file [which is completely clean according to the terminal log] I get the following:

WARN: System header found, but PCI/DSI information is not where expected
(make sure your system header is 18 bytes!)
WARN: Skipping sector, waiting for first VOBU...
WARN: Skipping sector, waiting for first VOBU...
[...]
STAT: VOBU 0 at 0MB, 1 PGCS, 0:00:00

The "WARN: Skipping sector" group above first repeats about a zillion times [enough to push the MPG logging out of the window history], then the three autodetect warns, and then finally a bus error. If I run the VOB > MPG without authoring, it always appears to complete error-free:

/Applications/DVD\ Programs/ffmpegX.app//Contents/Dougs-G5:~ de$ /Applications/Dte | shgrams/ffmpegX.app//Contents/Resources/pbpas
Encoding started on Mon Sep 27 16:06:39 CDT 2004
ffmpeg version 0.4.9-pre1, build 4718, Copyright (c) 2000-2004 Fabrice Bellard
built on Jul 30 2004 13:06:41, gcc: 3.3 20030304 (Apple Computer, Inc. build 1495)

Seems that stream 0 comes from film source: 29.97->24.00
Input #0, mpeg, from '/Volumes/Video0/Clips/VIDEO_TS/Clips_22-31.VOB':
Duration: 00:43:52.2, bitrate: 6241 kb/s
Stream #0.0: Video: mpeg2video, 720x480, 29.97 fps
Stream #0.1: Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, 5:1, 384 kb/s
Stream #0.2: Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, 5:1, 384 kb/s
Output #0, vob, to '/Volumes/Video1/Clips/Clips2.mpg':
Stream #0.0: Video: mpeg2video (hq), 720x688, 29.97 fps, q=2-15, 4000 kb/s
Stream #0.1: Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, 5:1, 384 kb/s
Stream mapping:
Stream #0.0 -> #0.0
Stream #0.2 -> #0.1
Press [q] to stop encoding
[mpeg2video @ 0x2ea1f8]rc buffer underflow
frame=78890 q=2.0 Lsize= 1007904kB time=2632.2 bitrate=3136.8kbits/s
video:706190kB audio:71975kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead 29.523187%
bench: utime=1975.950s
Encoding completed on Mon Sep 27 16:30:46 CDT 2004

Any ideas on why DVD authoring is failing?????

[major]

ffmpeg engine (when using it without 'Decode with Quicktime') has muxing issues as it does not (currently) insert the NAV packets required for DVD authoring. A quick fix is to demux the .mpg file and remux it with "Mux as.. DVD".

[macevanscb]

OK .... I did a demux .... and the results were a little surprising.

The original MPG file was 1143MB.

After the demux, I ended up with 15 pairs of MPV and MP2 files, where the first pair was 1003MB/1MB along with 14 small pairs with the MPV files ranging from 1.4KB to 0MB and the MP2 files ranging from 1MB to 28KB.

None of this matches the original clips in the original VOB.

????????????

[macevanscb]

Futher .... all the resulting M2V and MP2 files are unrecognizable by the Mux utility.

??????????????

[major]

Maybe I didn't exactly understand what you're doing. I was thinking your MPG file was encoded with ffmpeg engine. What I notice now is that you had a VOB file, not a MPG file. Where such file comes from, and what you want to do with it?

[macevanscb]

Actually you are correct .... the MPG was processed via the ffmpeg engine from a VOB file.

I'm trying to dupe a set of home movie DVDs onto one DVD.
The original homemade DVDs play OK in my Panasonic DVD players.
I don't know what they were written with ... probably on a Windows machine.
They were ripped via Mac the Ripper to produce a set of four VOB files totalling around 8GB.
I'm trying to resample them to fit onto one DVD.
The VOBs all play clean end to end in MPlayer.
The clips are all anamorphic 16:9 and I'm using the ffmpeg engine to correctly crop and reletterbox the original video.
The VOBs all encode without error using the ffmpeg engine and the resulting MPG files play clean end to end in MPlayer.
Each VOB is around 2GB and, with the ffmpeg encoder set to 4000 kbs, they still encode down to around 1GB, with video quality equal to the original DVDs.

I also just tried encoding video and audio separately .... the AC3 audio file comes out fine, but the Mux utility again cannot recognise the MPG video file even though that MPG file also plays cleanly, but silently, in MPlayer.

Is there any other way to validate the MPG files to check for problems??

Can you think of any settings to make a video only MPG come out correct?

I could send you my preset file, but there's nothing special in it ... just the regular DVD preset with the ffmpeg engine selected. I found out later that all my settings for crop and letterbox aren't saved in the preset.

[major]

So your enterprise is to join a series of VOB files and create a single and smaller VOB file?

[macevanscb]

Yup .... and author it so I can edit chapters in Sparkle and write it with Toast.

I was going to just Join the MPG files if I can get authoring to work. But I can merge the VOBs with HexEdit and see what happens.

[macevanscb]

So much for hexedit .... need 8MB ram to make an 8mb file.

Any suggestions on merging the VOBs?

[major]

An unclean method to join files is the Unix "cat" command. It leaves header unchanged so issues may arise, but it can eventually work. The command to use in Terminal.app is the following (replace movie.vob to full path to your actual files, or drag and drop the files on the window to get their path).

cat movie1.vob movie2.vob movie3.vob > movie.vob

[macevanscb]

Major ... this is a clear case of Murphy's Fourth Law: If, in any problem, you are doing an immense amount of work to solve it, the answer is usually simple.

Well it was here. I did use 'cat' to put the VOBs together and then used the DVD>DVD4 tool and *poof* ... a fully authored VIDEO_TS folder complete with all my clips in it ... and it actually plays clean in Apple DVD Player.

I am amazed.