AVStoDVD Support Thread

[hi.heaux]

VLC does play ISO files directly.

Okay.

. . . ISO is just a container. If it does not play then the content within this container is broken, not the ISO container.

Agreed. That's why I go to such exhaustive lengths to preview my Film/TV ISO backups in more than one viewer.

For burning DVD-Video ISO files I would recommend using IMGBurn instead of UltraIso. IMGBurn does some smart things before burning like aligning the BUP files or put the layer break to an appropriate location.

If the day ever comes when I need a burner with advanced forensic features I'll remember that (I also have Power ISO, Power Archiver and WinRAR if either matter).

AVStoDVD is certainly no replacement for VobBlanker.

Oh ANY tool is an improvement over VobBlanker! (jk)

First of all you should find out if your player cannot play PAL DVDs because of the region code, or because it generally rejects the PAL format.

I had to re-read your post because you have parsed the sentence so carefully, and I thank you. I only know that when I drop the PAL title into my R1 player it just spins. This title happens to be Paul Scofield's King Lear and my attempt was using the original disc, not a backup.

The majority of players sold in the US choke on the PAL format, but the real cheap ones mostly accept it. To test this you can remove the region code from one of your PAL DVDs by transcoding it in "Full DVD" mode with DVDShrink. This will keep it in PAL, but removes the region code. If your player accepts this DVD then you have got no reason to do a standards conversion at all.

Please see my screenshot, below

AND In the event anyone needs technical data on my Home Theatre setup, visit the Album I just made:
hi.heaux's Home Theatre Setup

[manolito]

Alright, the hardware region code setting in your DVD player/burner...

I never ever got such a message because AnyDVD is always running in the background on my computer. But if you own DVDFab you should be able to rip a PAL DVD with RC protection onto your HDD while removing the encryption and also the region code. But I really am not familiar with DVDFab...

I have uploaded a small PAL Region-Free test DVD ISO here (created with AVStoDVD):
https://we.tl/x95g1Gtvwb

Burn the ISO and feed the disk to your HW DVD player. If it plays it then you do not need to convert your PAL DVDs to NTSC. If it rejects it then you have no choice, you need to do a standards conversion with your PAL DVDs. You will certainly have more questions if you start doing this, just ask...


Cheers
manolito

[dannyboy48888]

Recently I authored a DVD with avs2DVD. I forgot to add subtitles so I demuxed the dvd with the parse DVD tool and tried to remux it with the subtitles. When trying to do so muxman keeps giving buffer underrun errors. I would normally believe I made a bad stream but made the disc with the SAME version of avs2dvd last month. Tried doing a fresh install etc. the streams mux fine in GUI for dvdauthor and it detects no underrun issues. Attached it my log files.

[dannyboy48888]

Forgot to include the GUI for dvd author log for comparison made with all the source files I originally did in AVS2DVD without issue

[_MrC_]

Recently I authored a DVD with avs2DVD. I forgot to add subtitles so I demuxed the dvd with the parse DVD tool and tried to remux it with the subtitles. When trying to do so muxman keeps giving buffer underrun errors. I would normally believe I made a bad stream but made the disc with the SAME version of avs2dvd last month. Tried doing a fresh install etc. the streams mux fine in GUI for dvdauthor and it detects no underrun issues. Attached it my log files.

Thanks dannyboy for the report. Could you please try to author the DVD (m2v+ac3+sup) using directly Muxman, without passing thru AVStoDVD? Does Muxman throw out the same error message (I believe so, but I would double check).



Bye

[dannyboy48888]

Glad to! Attached is the screenshot and error log for the same source for muxman and AVS2DVD. I left the subs off and got the same result. Muxman did indeed mux the files with errors, but the result was extremely jerky while GUI for dvdauthor was smooth. So yes AVS2DVD did right but not creating the DVD as finding out about jerkyness later would be annoying to say the least. Demuxed from the original disc I made in AVS2DVD before that works, just to verify I had a solid flow.
[Attachment 45587 - Click to enlarge]

[manolito]

My 2 cents:

First I thought that I better back off because subs are not my turf. But it turns out that subs are not the problem, it's more about authoring problematic streams using MuxMan vs. mplex/DVDAuthor. And I do know a few things about DVD authoring...

My first and most important question:
The older DVD you made in AVStoDVd which had no subs did work for you. Are you absolutely sure that you not only used AVStoDVD for the conversion, but that you also authored this DVD with AVStoDVD (which would use MuxMan)? I am not so sure. To me it looks like this older DVD without subs was authored using a different software (like GUI for DVDAuthor) which uses the mplex/DVDAutor combo instead of MuxMan.

Facts:
It is well known that MuxMan is extremely picky when examining the source streams. In many cases MuxMan will refuse to finish the authoring process when mplex/DVDAuthor has no problems with the same source streams.

Your video source stream is problematic to say the least. It has a VCD frame size, and it is very short. If it was encoded with AVStoDVD with default settings then FFmpeg was used in CBR mode, and the target bitrate was set to a very high value which could never be met with a VCD frame size. FFmpeg is not very good converting clips with these settings, no wonder that MuxMan choked on it. Next time you do similar conversions you should restrict the bitrate for VCD to something around 3000 kbps, or/and force full DVD target frame size (720x480), or/and force HCenc as the encoder.

You say that with the same source AVStoDVD worked a little while ago, but after demuxing the working DVD and feeding the demuxed streams to AVStoDVD again you get these MuxMan errors. IMO this is absolutely impossible. The streams you get after demuxing a DVD are absolutely identical to the streams which were used for authoring the original DVD. If MuxMan had no problem muxing these streams a little while ago then it is impossible that it is now refusing to author these identical streams a little while later. Which again brings up my suspicion that the older DVD without subs was not authored with MuxMan.


Cheers
manolito

[dannyboy48888]

To try to answer your questions: I make these Episode and movies dvd's for my portable dvd player when i travel so I have less discs, 240p externally video wise with HCenc and proper pulldown, and the subs I do in SUP format with subtitle creator from my SRT files I OCR from the disc (that way they fill the screen properly) then imported them into avs2dvd. I forgot to add the subs to 1 episode so I demuxed everything, added the sub, and re-imported the dvd back into AVS2DVD. I know the 16:9 on 240p isn't technically right, but I've done ALOT of these this way so far and had no issues in my use case before. I just tried a sanity check with another DVD I just made. Demuxed it, re-imported it, and it worked. I never used gui for dvdauthor before until now to have something to test my video against. I guess I'll just write this one off as a freak occurrence. I have the store bought discs, just didn't want to re-encode is all if all I had to do was add a subtitle. EDIT: here's a bitrate view, it's in the guidance you gave so yeah freak occurance. Thanks for the feedback everyone
[Attachment 45591 - Click to enlarge]

[_MrC_]

AVStoDVD 2.8.8 Alpha 180508 is available to download.

Change log:

- Some bugs fixed
- Added 'Audio Peak Level Check' feature in 'Title Edit'/'Audio' section
- Added support to OGG chapters txt format (timestamps) in 'Title Edit'/'Chapters'/'Import Chapters' routine
- Improved 'Title Edit'/'Chapters'/'Export Chapters' routine
- Improved source chapters detection routine (now it works again for IFO/DVD files)
- MKVToolNix updated to release 23.0.0
- MediaInfo updated to release 18.03

For testing and debgugging purpose.



Bye

[Seeker47]

Hi _MrC_,

I particularly like it where -- in the very good dev. of this fine program -- you have detected certain possible problems that may come up, and have automated fixes for them, in use of the program. If / Then contingency type stuff. (?) Can't recall or specify exact examples at the moment, but I think I have encountered this a few times in the past few versions. Functionality that was not present before.

[_MrC_]

@Seeker47

thanks for the positive feedback



Bye

[MooMooMooMoo]

Hi, I just installed 2.8.7 over the top of 2.8.6 on Windows XP SP3.

When creating the DVD menu, I now get an error, "Error 35602 Key Is Not Unique In Collection".

I looked in the folder, all of the templates are still there.

I then uninstalled 2.87 & reinstalled 2.86

The menu now works, but AVI synth runs sluggish ( & when closing down the preview window the program crashes) & "Open Previous title" no longer works.

[davexnet]

Hi, I just installed 2.8.7 over the top of 2.8.6 on Windows XP SP3.

When creating the DVD menu, I now get an error, "Error 35602 Key Is Not Unique In Collection".

I looked in the folder, all of the templates are still there.

I then uninstalled 2.87 & reinstalled 2.86

The menu now works, but AVI synth runs sluggish ( & when closing down the preview window the program crashes) & "Open Previous title" no longer works.

This has come up before and one person resolved it by uninstalling and reinstalling using the installer version.
I don't know if that's available for the new alpha. In my case I was able to get the no-install version working by
updating my version of the 7zip program and using that to extract the AVStoDVD archive file. I know it sounds weird, but it worked for me.

You could always uninstall and reinstall Avisynth 2.60 while your at it.

[manolito]

This mostly happens if a newer version of AVStoDVD adds or alters registry entries under HKCU/Software/AVStoDVD. MrC has always recommended to uninstall previous versions before installing a newer version for exactly this reason.

Having said this, there are some things you can try before uninstalling the problematic version. Under "Options" there is an entry "Reset to Defaults". This may already be all you need to do. A little bit more drastic would be to delete the whole registry key for AVStoDVD under HKCU/Software. In both cases you need to redo all your settings for the software.

Otherwise I agree with davexnet, I have always used the no-install version of AVStoDVD without any issues. Gives me more control...


Cheers
manolito


//EDIT//
If you are still getting a sluggish preview then it could be an interaction between AviSynth and LAVFilters registry entries. This only affects some systems, no idea why. The attached batch file restores the original reg entries which AviSynth creates upon installation. Download the file and doubleclick it...

[flips61]

Hi, I just installed 2.8.7 over the top of 2.8.6 on Windows XP SP3.

When creating the DVD menu, I now get an error, "Error 35602 Key Is Not Unique In Collection".

I looked in the folder, all of the templates are still there.

I then uninstalled 2.87 & reinstalled 2.86

The menu now works, but AVI synth runs sluggish ( & when closing down the preview window the program crashes) & "Open Previous title" no longer works.

This has come up before and one person resolved it by uninstalling and reinstalling using the installer version.
I don't know if that's available for the new alpha. In my case I was able to get the no-install version working by
updating my version of the 7zip program and using that to extract the AVStoDVD archive file. I know it sounds weird, but it worked for me.

You could always uninstall and reinstall Avisynth 2.60 while your at it.

I was the person with the same problem. On _MrC_'s advice, I uninstalled the program and deleted all registry keys, then reinstalled. This solved the problem.

[Seeker47]

I just had what I would have to term a failure on a job, using v. 2.8.7 with an x265 or HEVC source, HC 2-pass VBR. In the final output, everything seemed O.K., up until approx. the 2H:18m. point on a 3 hour movie, which is where the AVS result ends. I have no idea what happened to the remainder of the movie, which seems to have just dropped into a black hole. I will try to attach the AVS job logfile, in case that provides any clues.

[_MrC_]

@Seeker47

from the log file everything seems OK, the final video time is coherent with the source title. I can only notice that you have installed both ffdshow and LAV Filters, having both is redundant.



Bye

[Seeker47]

@Seeker47

from the log file everything seems OK, the final video time is coherent with the source title. I can only notice that you have installed both ffdshow and LAV Filters, having both is redundant.



Bye

But is that something that could cause an issue like this ?
I think that subject came up before, and I speculated as to whether some other app(s) might still want access to ffdshow ?
No way to pull it from AVS, only ?
Otherwise I would consider ditching it -- if I knew the right way to go about doing that.

[davexnet]

@Seeker47

from the log file everything seems OK, the final video time is coherent with the source title. I can only notice that you have installed both ffdshow and LAV Filters, having both is redundant.



Bye

But is that something that could cause an issue like this ?
I think that subject came up before, and I speculated as to whether some other app(s) might still want access to ffdshow ?
No way to pull it from AVS, only ?
Otherwise I would consider ditching it -- if I knew the right way to go about doing that.

These system filters are given a priority in the system and the one with the highest priority gets used.
You can open any file media in graphstudio to see what's used by that particular file type, audio and video.
Perhaps A2D's tool will let you set which one is being used I have not checked.

What is the problem you are referring to? It's not clear from the log nor your description.

[manolito]

These system filters are given a priority in the system and the one with the highest priority gets used.

Starting with Windows 7 this is no longer true. There is a new Registry key where the preferred DS filters are listed, and the preferred filter will be used no matter how its priority (merit) is set. But Seeker47 did use the A2D preferred filter setting tool (or the DS filter tweaker by CLSID) already to set all his preferred DS filters to LAV. So I believe that ffdshow does not get in the way here. But of course it is always a good idea to check the DS filter graph to see which DS filters will actually get used.

Another possible issue could be that when using ffdshow you normally also have the Haali splitter installed. When both Haali and LAV Splitter are installed, Haali has the nasty habit to jump to the front of the line so it will have the priority over LAV even if LAV Splitter was installed last. Uninstalling Haali might be worth a try.

Another potentially problematic thing is using file names with an ampersand character ( & ) in them. This is legal, but a lot of command line tools interpret this character as a command concatenation and try to execute the part of the string behind the ampersand. Try to rename the input file and see what happens...


Good luck
manolito

[davexnet]

These system filters are given a priority in the system and the one with the highest priority gets used.

Starting with Windows 7 this is no longer true. There is a new Registry key where the preferred DS filters are listed, and the preferred filter will be used no matter how its priority (merit) is set. But Seeker47 did use the A2D preferred filter setting tool (or the DS filter tweaker by CLSID) already to set all his preferred DS filters to LAV. So I believe that ffdshow does not get in the way here. But of course it is always a good idea to check the DS filter graph to see which DS filters will actually get used.

Another possible issue could be that when using ffdshow you normally also have the Haali splitter installed. When both Haali and LAV Splitter are installed, Haali has the nasty habit to jump to the front of the line so it will have the priority over LAV even if LAV Splitter was installed last. Uninstalling Haali might be worth a try.

Another potentially problematic thing is using file names with an ampersand character ( & ) in them. This is legal, but a lot of command line tools interpret this character as a command concatenation and try to execute the part of the string behind the ampersand. Try to rename the input file and see what happens...


Good luck
manolito

I didn't mention the word merit, you did. I would argue that raising the merit in in XP or setting it it to preferred in later OS is similar in it's results,
ie. that one gets used. But if you really want to split hairs...

[manolito]

I have no intention to split hairs. I just want users of Win7 or later to know that raising the filter merit with one of the available tools will have no effect whatsoever. In Win7 or later the only way to force the use of a certain DS filter is to edit the preferred filter reg key.

Actually there is another method. Users can just delete this "Preferred DS Filters" reg key, after doing this Win7 or later will behave like XP. But this requires that the user first takes over the ownership of this reg key, and not everyone knows how to do this.


Cheers
manolito

[manolito]

Here is a slightly updated version of my plugin package for AVStoDVD. Download from here:
https://files.videohelp.com/u/172211/Manolito_s%20A2D%20Plugins.7z

Changes:
1. Added a new audio mode to the Wavi_Mod plugin. Now there is a new Dynamic Range Compression (DRC) mode using SoX. The parameters were taken from MkvToMp4 by oreons, I like the results very much. Optional EBU R128 postprocessing is available.

2. Added the file "Toggle_Plugins.bat". By executing this batch file both my FFmpeg based plugins (FF_VBR and Wavi_Mod) can be disabled or reenabled completely with one mouse click.

3. Updated documentation


Cheers
manolito


//EDIT//
Hardened the Wavi_Mod script against file names containing an exclamation mark. Please redownload...

[kodec]

The app broke down on me for the first time, the log attached, what went wrong?

[_MrC_]

Hi kodec,

the project fails at the DVD Menu creation stage:

<10.7.2018. 4:37:20>
END DVD MENU BUILDING OPERATIONS
Created File (Menu Page 1): D:\DVD_MenuPage1.m2v (0 Byte)
<>

I would suggest you to check the DVD Menu output in DVD Menu Editor > Menu > Select Mode > Full Preview (Encode -> Play). Do you get any error? Post here the messages.

A couple of general suggestions:

1. You have installed both ffdshow and LAV Filters: they are redundant. I suggest to keep LAV Filters and uninstall ffdshow
2. Select LAV Filters as preferred directshow filter in Codecs > Preferred Directshow Codecs Setup



Bye

[kodec]

Hi kodec,

the project fails at the DVD Menu creation stage:

<10.7.2018. 4:37:20>
END DVD MENU BUILDING OPERATIONS
Created File (Menu Page 1): D:\DVD_MenuPage1.m2v (0 Byte)
<>

I would suggest you to check the DVD Menu output in DVD Menu Editor > Menu > Select Mode > Full Preview (Encode -> Play). Do you get any error? Post here the messages.

A couple of general suggestions:

1. You have installed both ffdshow and LAV Filters: they are redundant. I suggest to keep LAV Filters and uninstall ffdshow
2. Select LAV Filters as preferred directshow filter in Codecs > Preferred Directshow Codecs Setup



Bye

I have sensed even before I saw this that it had sth to do with the menu, so I have repeated the action but left out all the fancy menu tweakings from the original try, and it worked. I remeber I have chosen motion pictures etc all the heavy options, sth I have never chosen before and sth of it made it crash. There were no messages while I was picking the options, seemingly it all worked fine it just crashed in the end as per in log. Will try same complicated menu options next time and report it back if it happens again. Thanks for the other tips!

[xKupo]

Hi, I just tried to reencode a video file but it failed. I just wanted to crop the black borders because the video is 4:3 and I want it to be 16:9.
However it tells me "Warning! Title 1 output Video duration (00:00:00) is shorter than expected duration (00:06:12)."
After finishing the DVD folder is empty. Any ideas why?

[manolito]

Hi xKupo,

according to your log HCenc does not encode your source at all. The single most important thing which sticks out in the log file is that you are still using the Microsoft DirectShow Filters which is a recipe for disaster. You need to use the Preferred DirectShow Codecs Tool in AVStoDVD to change all your DS source filters to LAV instead.

Things you should try:
1. Change the DS source filters to LAV
2. Alternatively force FFmpegSource as your video source filters (under Preferences/AviSynth)
3. Try to use FFmpeg instead of HCenc as your encoder.

Also it would be useful if you posted your HCenc.log file here


Cheers
manolito

[xKupo]

1. worked fine, thanks a lot

[steptoe]

Now that AVISynth+ is fairly mature and a lot more stable, especially for multithreading useage and now has a proper installer that adds the required c++ runtimes, is there any possibility to add it as an option for those that want to install it with AVStoDVD or add support for it in the 'non-install' release

Just tried a quick encode today as I use AviSynth+ instead of AViSynth and have done for some considerable time since I found out about the avisynth+ fork of avisynth. The difference between enabling and disabling multithreading can be quite a lot, especially if using plugins that take advantage of AviSynth+ and have been rewritten to fully support it


I did an encode of "The Blues Brothers Extended" with a quick plugin to remove background noise (LR_RemoveDust_YV12) and also using LSFMOD() to sharpen and brighten the source (can be a killer plugin for speed of encodes) using bother plugins together and almost tripled my encode speed. Without any filters encode speed is easily tripled and can be over 100fps without any sign of struggling

Using AviSynth+ is literally a case of installing it, and adding the "prefetch" option as the very last line in the avisynth editor of AVStoDVD to activate multithreading

This prefetchs a set number of frames so the filters are not waiting for frames to be passed onto them, rather they are in a cache while the next frames are cached. I do also have a script that auto-loads all my filters and script functions and makes them avisynth+ multithreaded friendly if they support true multithreading to squeeze that bit more speed


The last line of my avisynth scripts is :

prefetch(6)

The number of frames makes a huge difference depending on your systems hardware. Prefetch(2) most systems should handle easily, I can use prefetch(6) for 6 frames cached, but prefetch(8) gives encode fails everytime regardless of using FFMPEG (latest 32-bit static nightly build or default installed version) or HCENC 0.28

prefetch(2) increases encode speed slightly, prefetch(4) doubled it and prefetch(6) almost tripled it. Not bad for changing nothing else

I'm using an AMD FX-8350 but do have 16GB memory to help. On my old Intel i7 encodes were never slow, but that CPU ran very hoteven with a water cooler, though that was overclocked to 4.5ghz so I was pushing its limits somewhat. The AMD isn't overclocked at all as my motherboard doesn't have great voltage regulation for overclocking, otherwise it would be. The AMD does run very cool though on a stock air cooler even when running at 95%-98& CPU load

Thanks