mpeg-2 transport / program / elementary streams?

[midimidi]

Our organization just recently received a DCM mpeg-2 card by a company called Vitec...it came with a quite of software (DVD-Toolbox) that IMHO ain't that great, but perhaps that's purely because of the lack of an interface. It has about 5 or 6 programs that all do one thing, rather than a nice big all-in-one solution.

Quick question for now - what's the difference, specifically between mpeg transport files (m2t) and mpeg program files (m2p) and why do some programs in this suite only open one or the other? i.e. it includes a separate converter program for each.

I'm assuming elementary streams are nothing more than the separate streams themselves. I suppose there's such a designation cause the nice thing about dvd is you can have multiple streams in one file?

Just curious if this is a specific format, or something that Vitec is using to screw around with my head.

[TBoneit]

Well I use software to retrieve DVB video from Sat Tv PVRs....

I can either choose TS (transport stream)
or separate audio & video streams.

a Transport stream usually requires more processing after you have it since little software supports it.

So I use the separate A/V streams and then I am good to go. If you can edit & convert directly a TS (I'd bet not) than you could leave it be.

FWIW I see a lot of command line programs for working with TS files. But they all have to do with getting the TS file onto the drive, ID'ing it, and getting the A/V out to be worked on.

so TS is and isn't a specific format it's a type but the same way as an AVI can be made many ways (I'm generalizing).

In short I've steered clear of working with the TS because it's more work for me than getting the A/V streams directly.

Hope this helps
Roger T

[midimidi]

Makes a bit more sense - thanks.

The files grabbed from live capture are *.m2p (labelled as mpeg-2 program files by DVD Toolbox). Using other software, I can then rip the elementary streams (*.m2v video and *.m2a audio), which I'm assuming is what I'm supposed to do, because the DVD creation software that's included requires only elementary streams.

Question - when I rip to elementary streams, there's a dialog box when finished that says "Done - delay of 15ms" or something like that...does that mean I have to somehow compensate a delay when I'm putting them back together in creating a DVD?

We have a copy of Adaptec 6 here, so I'm going to load that up tomorrow...I just find DVD Toolbox quite cumbersome and useless.

[TBoneit]

May be an audio delay, The software I use creates a text file, sample below, I cut part of it out to save space and only put the audio and video info:

AC3 Stream Information:
Sample Rate: 48 kHz
Bit Rate: 384 kbps
Coding Mode: 2
LFE: LFE Off
Automatic AC3 Adjust Offset: -0.039 seconds

Audio Stream Information:
Sample Rate: 48 kHz
Bit Rate: 192 kbps
Coding Mode: Stereo
Layer: II
Automatic Audio Adjust Offset: 0.028 seconds

Video Stream Information:
Resolution: 640x480
Aspect Ratio: 4:3
Frame Rate: 29.97 fps
Bit Rate: 15,000,000 bps

As you can see it needs a bit of processing before burning. I have been going to half D1 and it looks ok to my eyes. Also the Bit Rate isn't really true, I don't know why it shows that rate. Have you looked to see if there is a log file that might give usefull info?

I'd be tempted to burn it to a RW DVD and see if the audio offset is noticeable. If it is providing that info to you then there should be a way to compensate for it when you author and burn.

Good Luck

[midimidi]

I'd be tempted to burn it to a RW DVD and see if the audio offset is noticeable. If it is providing that info to you then there should be a way to compensate for it when you author and burn.

thx for the post - i'll just load it up in daemon tools to be sure.