DishRip Authoring - Resolution/Aspect Ratio Problem

[Equus]

Hi Folks,

I've been using Dishrip, a Windows utility which pulls the MPEG-2/.mp2 recordings off of the Dishplayer (like Tivo for DishNetwork), so they can be burned to DVD (once you've put the DishPlayer hard drive into the Windows PC). This is a GREAT program because you get Dish Network quality at space of about 1GB/hour. I then transfer those files over to my eMac for authoring and burning. My problem is that Dish broadcasts in a 544 x 480 resolution for TV Shows and 600 x 480 for movies. This looks fine when playing the individual or muxed files, but when authoring (in Sizzle or FFmpegX, I'm forced to choose from Standard resolutions of 720 x 480 or 352 x 480 to author the disc image. This conflict in resolutions is (I think) what's causing me to get a TV picture that is stretched over 2/3rds of the screen only, leaving a black band and then the first 1/3 of the image again. When playing the disc in the computer it compensates and I get a normal picture, but my set-top DVD player can't compensate and I'm stick with that weird image. I can center it and fool around with the zooms but I always have distortion and a missing part of the image.

It would be silly and a waste of time for me to have to re-encode a file that's already in MPEG-2 just to get the right resolution. Do you have any ideas about how to do non-standard resolutions in authoring?

I'im going to cross-post this over in the FFmpegX forum as well. Any advice would be appreciated!

Regards,

Eq

[ZeroSix]

you can change the header of the MPEG file to make a standard 720x480. This usually helps on most DVD players.

[ZeroSix]

since your file is coming from a PC, try using this program. Its more straightforward than using a HexEditor.

http://mitglied.lycos.de/dvdpatcher/

[g4jedi]

Does DVDPatcher work well in Virtual PC? Or is it too slow?

[VidGuy]

Don't think DVDPatcher is going to help - All it does for you is patch the MPEG header to allow authoring programs to accept it - you have to change it back one the VOB is created, or you'll get a mess.....

If you can already author a dvd with one of these files - i suspect you're toast if it doesn't play, and have to reencode.

A lot of people do this with SVCD (480x480), and it works on some players, not on others.......

[ZeroSix]

DVD Patcher works very fast in a VPC environment. I can patch a 5 GB MPEG2 file [entire file] in less than a minute.

Everytime i change the MPEG headers for the resolution, each one of my DVD players will play it as it would if that were its actual resolution. Meaning, if i change a file with a resolution of 180x180 [crap internet file] to 352x240, it will fit the screen as it would if its absolute resolution were 352x240. If i leave it at 180x180, four out of five DVD polayers wont play it, and the one that does plays it in a small square in the screen.,

Hope this helps

[Equus]

Zero-six, thanks for you advice about DVDPatcher. It LOOKED like a really good thing, but alas, no go. If I just change the header's resolution to 720 x 480 nothing much happens (except I can't open the file in Sizzle to build the image anymore), and if I have it "change entire file", I just get an mpeg-2 file with the same image (2/3's) and then just a vertical color band on the last 1/3 of the screen.

I'm so close! The quality is great, the size is perfect, why can't Dish broadcast in a standard format!

Any other ideas?

Oh--and to answer g4jedi's question, DVDPatcher ran just fine in VPC 6.0 running Windows 2k.

Eq

[g4jedi]

Yeah, I tried it in VPC and it worked fine. Bringing the file into CaptyDVD works too, however, CaptyDVD still tries to re-encode the video. So it looks like I still have to re-encode the video myself with ffmpegX.

[Equus]

Well, I'm at a loss. Zero-Six, how are you getting this to work?

Here's what I've done to try to fix this resolution problem. I've taken the mpeg-2 file and edited the header in DVDPatcher from 544 x 480 to the standard 720 x 480. Sizzle wouldn't even accept the file to author it like that. So I changed it in DVDPatcher to 720 x 480 and checked "edit entire file". This time, when it finished, Sizzle did accept the file and authored a disk image, which when played in VLC and Apple DVD Player, gave me the image on 2/3rds of the screen, and a solid green vertical stripe on the last 1/3rd of the screen. No go.

So I opened the resulting .vob file in DVDPatcher and changed it back to 544 x 480 and Apple DVD Player refused to even play the video, just audio only.

So I scrapped it and started over, using Sizzle to author with the original 544 x 480 MPEG-2 file as it came off the Dishplayer. The resultig .vob file I then opened in DVDPatcher and changed to 720 x 480 so Sizzle would author it. Again the green stripe and squashed image. After Sizzle authoried it I went in and changed it back to 544 x 480. I was sure this would work, but it didn't. Still the squashed image, although the green line was gone.

If you could give me a step-by-step of what you're using and how you're making it work, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks,

Eq

[ZeroSix]

This could also be a problem with the original rip of the video. We have had problematic MPEG files that we have never gotten to work no matter how hard we try. These usually came from using a hardware encoder though, which i assume the DiSH setup is.

My guess is that they intentionally have the resolution like that so you cannot do what you are trying to do. Makes perfect sense. Like recording a DVD quality movie on HBO and then making a DVD out of it. I seriously doubt they would want it to be a simple task.

Can your DVD player play/read MP3s? Reason I ask is that most DVD players that can play MP3s will play .MPG files burned onto a CD, just as DATA. No DVD format. No SVCD or VCD format. Just an ISO. You can get all kinds of different resolution MPEGs to play this way. If you want to, you can send me a 10MB or less video clip of the mpegs you are working with and I can do my best to talk dirty to them and get something working.

Just be sure to send me files with a valid header.

Another option would be to re-encode the video in FFMPEGX, but there is actually a fast way to do it.

Select the ffmpeg fast MPEG1 preset. Change the resolution to 720x480. Change the bitrate to the same as your source. Enable high quality, two-pass. Do not encode the audio... just use "PASS THROUGH"

Then tell it to author as DVD. This should be very very fast with minimal quality loss. Give it a try with a test clip to see what you get.

There are so many other ways you can get this working, but it really sounds like you would have to re-encode.

hope this helps.

[Equus]

Zero:

Thanks so much for your informative reply. Yes, my DVD player does play .mp3's burned to a CD, but I can't burn these files to a CD because they are approximately 1GB per hour and I mainly want to do movies...unless there was a way to split the .mpg file into two parts without having to re-encode. I think I could probably do that in ffmpegx.

But I would like to be able to keep the menus and chapters which Sizzle offers (not extensive like iDVD or DVDSP but still functional), if possible.

I would actually like to send you a clip from the Dishplayer. I use DishRip (a PC program) and it extracts them into an .mpg video file and .mp2 audio file. I don't know about valid headers, but since DVDPatcher can patch them I assume they are valid. Can you tell me a good utility that would allow me to clip one of these .mpgs into a 10MB file to send to you?

I will be out of town for a week but am definitely keeping your posts bookmarked to try to figure out a way around this.

Someone else suggested that Apex DVD players can compensate for a strange resolution and give a normal picture, much like Apple DVD Player does. Any ideas there?

Will be checking my email frequently, looking forward to your response.

Thanks,

Eq

[ZeroSix]

there are several DVD players out there that will compensate for the odd resolution, but the resolution your streams are coming in at seem to fall in a profile that I have never seen before. Again, I would like to reference to my earlier reply that this was probably done intentionally to steer people from doing what you are trying to do.

You tried using DVD patcher... I would like you to try using the Hex Editor method found on Ross's page. This might work out better. Demux your MPEG file, and open the m2v file with the Hexeditor and change ONLY the values to yield a resolution of 720x480.

http://homepage.mac.com/rnc

Then, remux your audio and video and open the file in Quicktime.

Has the resolution changed? Can you tell any difference?

You are welcome to drop any sample files in my public folder on my iDisk. My .Mac username is "zerosix". I would be more than happy to play around with it some to see if I can find out a better way to do this.

Just be sure to send me a file that has been clipped from the beginning of your MPEG stream so that the headers would more likely be intact.

[Equus]

Zero-Six,

I just got back into town and I'm trying to work on what you said. I changed the header in HexEditor (and I'm not totally sure I did it right but I followed the instructions) but that makes it so Sizzle just crashes when I try to author, (Quicktime Pro also crashes when trying to open the remuxed file) and doing the "Fast MPEG-1" option in FFmpegX seems to take as long as re-encoding normally, and it wouldn't play when it was done (probably did something wrong).

What utility can I use to crop a few minutes off the beginning of the Dish file so I can send it to you to see if you can succesfully get the resolution changed without re-encoding? And how do I get to your public folder on .mac?

Thanks for all your help. (This is a repaste from a PM I sent you, cuz I'm not sure I did THAT right!).

--Eq

[ZeroSix]

You can use mpgtx to cut off a few minutes of video. Go to: http://www.biermann.org and get it from there. To drop it in my iDisk, use the iDisk utility from Apple's site. http://www.mac.com/1/idiskutility_download.html

Just let me know when you have dropped the file into my public folder.

Again, my guess is that they have it set up on the Dish System to curb what it is you are trying to do, but regardless, there MUST be a way to get around this without re-encoding.

Let me know.

-Ø

[Equus]

ZeroSix-

Thanks again for your help. I used mpegtx and trimmed off 5MB from the beginning of the m2v file and dropped it into your .mac disk. For some reason it saves the chunk as an .mpg, but at any rate, it's video-only. The headers show as 544 x 480 so they're still intact. Quicktime as usual plays it fine, but any authoring gives me the whacked out aspect.

Any help you can give me is greatly appreciated.

Eq

[ZeroSix]

re send it but send me a program stream, meaning, one with audio and video.

[Equus]

OK, done.

Since the DishRip software extracts the files in separate video and audio streams, I had to mux them, then split it into a small chunk. When splitting the muxed file, mpegtx said "can't find any valid headers, continuing anyway", which it didn't do when I was working with the video-only file. However, the info in DVDPatcher shows the completed 6MB file I'm sending you as a 544 x 480 resolution with 15000 compression in 4:3 ratio so I assume the headers are intact.

Thanks!

--Eq

[ZeroSix]

i have been tinkering around with the file you sent to me and I have a very probable solution, although it might not be the one you are looking for.

I simply dropped your .mpg file you sent me onto Toast 6 in DVD mode and it was accepted and I was able to make a UDF volume out of it. In case you were hesitating to buy Toast 6, this should be reason enough. I strongly recommend going this route because it is simple, it creates menues, and you can drop your mpeg files onto it as they are, unchanged. I tested the resulting VIDEO_TS folder on three of my set tops and they all play it fine.

If you would like me to find another way, just let me know.

[Equus]

Hi:

Will Toast Titanium 5.2 do it? I have that. If not, I can try upgrading.

Thanks for your assistance!

Eq

[ZeroSix]

Toast 5.2 will NOT. This is a new feature in Toast 6.

I am still working on it though... i might have a better solution for you that doest require Toast 6

[ZeroSix]

from what i have gathered from your mpeg fle is that it is corrupt. Not your fault though. I think it is intentionally corrupt for reasons stated earlier in this thread. I have tried everything i know how to do without re-encoding the file and it seems like it just will NOT work. I used every Mac OS program, every UNIX program, and a few Windows progrms to simply patch up the headers and i am getting the same results.

You can re-encode them to a .avi file and then export to mpeg2, but this would extremely time consuming and would sacrifice quality.

Get Toast 6. It takes your MPEGs and will convert them to DVD format. Worked very well with the sample you sent to me.

hope this helped.

[Equus]

Zero Six:

Thanks for your effort. It's possible that with all the fiddling around with the file I corrupted it myself.

I'm going to go back to the dishplayer hard drive file which is still on my roommate's PC, and pull it back over, mux it and cut a clip off and send it to you again, if you don't mind. Then I'll be sure that it's the actually form it's in off of the DishPlayer and if that's not workable, then at least I'll know for sure it's not something I did.

In the meantime I'm playing around with your idea with Toast 6 and I'll see if it'll work.

Everyone who uses DishRip software must be facing the same thing, but I can't get a lot of assistance off that forum. One person did recommend an Apex 1200 DVD player, which is only $50, but supposedly plays every resolution and compensates for weird resolutions, much like the computer can.

More later, and again thanks for your help!

Eq

[Equus]

Zero Six

A new fragment is in your idisk to check out. Nothing has been done to it except muxed and snipped. Would you mind trying to tweak it again? Then I'll know if it's something I did, or, as you suspect, something inherent in the file.

Thanks again!

Eq

[ZeroSix]

tried it with the new file and i'm getting the same results.

Sorry bro.. Toast 6 is your only hope if you want to keep it simple. It can be done other ways, but it involves re-encoding and blah blah blah. NOT recommended.

Get Toast 6 and you wont be disappointed.

[Equus]

Zero-Six

Can you have a look at this graphic below of my mpegtx window and make sure I selected the correct settings? Just not sure about those "keep headers", "force overwrite" etc settings so I left them as default.



Thanks!

Eq

[Equus]

Zero-Six:

I took my files over to a friend who has Toast 6 on his 1ghz iMac. Some very weird stuff with Toast 6. You said when you dropped the muxed .mpeg2 file into Toast 6 it authored the DVD without re-encoding. However, when I did it with the same file I sent you, it spent about 3 minutes doing what that status bar called "encoding", which is about the right amount of encoding time for 30 seconds of video. It then burned the DVD. You're right, the resolution and picture were perfect, but if I have to re-encode anyway, no point in buying Toast 6. Here were the settings I used:



Also, when I went to burn the whole muxed file, which is 903MB, it said "I/O error, (error -36)". I figured perhaps with re-encoding it was a size issue, but I split it at 900MB and 3MB, and it accepted and authored with the 900MB chunk. Very odd.

I also thought maybe the "encoding" it was doing, was because I'd selected "Create DVD Menu" and it was encoding the menu. So I turned that off, and went to burn the 900MB muxed mpeg file, and it still went to encoding.

Any thoughts?

Eq