How to edit/author an AVI to DVD format w/o Pinnacle Studio?

[Ronaldus]

I used the Bitrate Calculator here and I re-encoded with the exact settings it listed. Since the final files ended up about 100 MB less than I had intended, I now know I should be using 1 MB = 1000 rather than 1024 in the Bitrate Calculator.

After a 9 hour 51 minute encoding at the highest quality settings for 75 minutes, the results were better this time. When I tried playback on a 27" TV I thought "transparent vertical gauze" I described earlier was gone, but on my larger TV I could still see it. It's not terrible, but it's unfortunate there's a slightly annoying artifact. I'm going to try some test fragments of captured animation to see if I see the same problem.

I tried playing my AVIs with PowerDVD and while it's better than Windows Media Player, the interlacing effects still make the video look so awful it's impossible to judge edge sharpness or lines of AVIs on my PC monitor. Unless someone has a different suggestion, it seems the only step where an accurate quality determination can be made is at the very end on a standalone DVD player.

I have some more questions (I think I'm getting nearer to the end of them):

#1. I still saw the video freezing problem on a Toshiba SD-3950 and 2 very old Pioneers players on the final DVD-R written with TMPGenc DVD Author. On various Panasonics, a newer Pioneer, and of course on Power DVD and Win DVD, there are no playback problems (I only own 2 standalone players myself, but I have easy access to several others). I couldn't find any threads mentioning this freezing problem with a forum search, but maybe I missed them because it's hard to know what words to use such as "freeze" and "TMPGEnc". I still believe that TMPGEnc encoder or DVD Author is generating output which is not quite compliant (given that the Toshiba is a new model), so I'm surprised there aren't others posting about the same issue. To me this is the most critical issue I need to solve, and any help would be appreciated.

#2. After authoring the M2V and AC3 files to DVD and burning, is it always possible to recover the original M2V and AC3 files (byte for byte the same) from the VOB files? I believe the answer is yes because the authoring program does not re-encode, but I'd like to make sure. In other words, if I throw away my M2V and AC3 files and someday decide I want to re-author or make different menus, which tool(s) would I use to pull out the original M2V and AC3 files from the VOBs so I could do that?

#3. Given that 192 Kbps AC3 worked so well for the 16-bit 48 KHz stereo I captured through my camcorder, is it safe to use this setting on all audio I may ever capture (whether it be home movies or other stuff) or could there ever be times when 192 Kbps AC3 won't be good enough (just as 128 Kbps MP3s are usually but not always good enough)?

#4. Specific to TMPGEnc DVD Author, is there any way to change the color of the menu (highlight) selector? I don't like the bright yellowish highlight it uses when navigating on menus.

#5. Are there any good guides/tutorials on editing AVIs with Virtual Dub? I looked at the guides listed under Virtual Dub on the tools page and only a few mentioned Virtual Dub specifically. Those that did which I followed did not have the type of information I was looking for. Given that people mentioned Virtual Dub as an alternative to Pinnacle Studio 8 for AVI editing, I tried it briefly and thought it was the most confusing and difficult tool I've tried yet. I couldn't figure out how to do anything in it (except save to WAV). The built-in help wasn't very good (in my opinion). It took me quite some time to figure out I had to leave the mouse over each button for several seconds to get a tool tip. Most other programs bring up a tool tip much faster.

#6. How can the Bit Rate Viewer 1.4 tool give an accurate graph in only 1 second? There is no way it can be scanning the VOB files that fast, so does anyone know what it's basing its information on (an IFO file I assume) and how accurate it is? I set my bit rate ranges from 4000 to 9375 and saw the bit rate graph hit 10 Mbps in a few places. However, 9375 + 192 is under 9.6 Mbps so this seems impossible. Basically, I'm wondering how accurate/useful Bit Rate Viewer really is and if bit rate sampling information is really stored in IFO files?

Thanks so much, everyone! I never thought I'd get this far, but thanks to all the help I'm making good progress. If those of you left reading this long thread don't know the answers to some of the above questions, then I may post the questions as new threads hoping more people will read them, especially question #1. I won't feel confident discarding my original AVIs until I'm sure it's not the encoding step causing certain players to freeze on playback, and my hard drives are really full so I need to dump the AVIs soon.

[daamon]

Hi Ronaldus,

If those of you left reading this long thread don't...

Yep, still here... I'm learning loads too from those replying to your questions.

Q1: "Freezing": Some might say that it's the media you're using, As the picutre / audio is OK on some machines, but not others. Others might point to the high bitrate ("high" being > 8,000). See this thread, and particularly the info given in FulciLives posts.

I don't know that they're the answers, but it's something to look into. I'd start with the bitrate if it were me. But that's just the way I am...

Q2: "Recovering M2V and AC3": I'd guess it's possible coz, like you say, there's nor re-encoding, but don't know how to do it.

Q3: "Audio Bitrate": I'd say it depends on the quality of the source. If you're always capturing uncompressed audio, then I'd say "yes". If your footage is ouput as AVI with various mp3's @ 128, then going to 192 isn't going to improve it.

Q4: "Yellow Highlight": You're not the only one. See here. I've also seen the same thing asked in other posts with no real resolution.

Q5: "VirtualDub": Sorry, can't help on that one.

Q6: "BitRate Viewer": Sorry, can't help on that one either.

Thanks so much, everyone! I never thought I'd get this far...

Pleasure. Well done, and good luck.

[Ronaldus]

Thanks, Daamon. I'm sure with some trial and error I can figure out the cause of the player freezing problems. I was just hoping to avoid that as it'll probably take me another week before I know the cause.

It seems the logical first step is to take my AVI and have TMPGEnc encode the audio to MP2 and author that with my M2V file. However, if the MP2 is much bigger than 192 Kbps AC3 then it will no longer fit since I tried to use a high bitrate to fill the disc.

I'm running a 99 minute AVI and after 12 hours it's still busy encoding. It looks like it will take 13.5 hours using the highest quality setting. I chose 9600 as my highest bitrate, so I hope I don't have to redo the whole thing if the freezing problem is a bitrate issue rather than AC3. I guess I'll use 8000 as my max from now on. It appears my AMD XP 2000+ (actually a 1.6 GHz I think) with Win2K and 512 MB PC2100 RAM has a 13.5:1 encoding time ratio for the highest quality.

That seems extremely slow, and numerous threads have mentioned TMPGEnc is one of the best but slowest encoders. Daamon, I thought you had mentioned how long your encoding takes, but I could not locate it in this long thread. I'd like to find someone else with similar hardware and Win2K using TMPGEnc Plus at the highest quality setting to make sure a 13.5:1 ratio is normal. I don't want to shut down any of my other tasks unless I know mine is far slower than it should be.

On your comment about Q3 - the audio bitrate, were you saying 192 Kbps may not be enough sometimes? The sources I've been testing so far are stuff from TV or video tapes, so it's uncompressed audio which is sometimes fairly dynamic but it's not digital quality of course.

By the way, have you ever tried the "Animation" rather than "Default" setting in TMPGEnc's Quantization Matrix (going by memory... I think that's what it's called) to see if it makes a difference on animation?

I posted a new thread about the demuxing issue, and I added to a couple existing threads about AC3 and such, plus the one about TDA's yellow menu highlight. (It doesn't sound like there's any way to change it.)

[daamon]

Hi Ronaldus,

I chose 9600 as my highest bitrate, so I hope I don't have to redo the whole thing if the freezing problem is a bitrate issue

Identify where the freezing occurs, and use VirtualDub (I think, or Pinnacle) to extract a part of the AVI with the bit that freezes in it (in the middle). Then encode this small section at both 8,000 and 9,600 to test the results. Of course, if the freezing is in random places that's not so easy.

Alternatively, you could identify where the freezing occurs and use a tool (Bit Rate Viewer I think) to see what the bitrates are at that point - you might spot a common link...

...has a 13.5:1 encoding time ratio for the highest quality. That seems extremely slow...Daamon, I thought you had mentioned how long your encoding takes...

Hover over the "Computer Details" icon for my PC setup... My PC takes 8 hours to encode 36 mins at max = 9,300 avg = 6,000 and min = 2,000 on the "Highest Quality" setting.

On your comment about Q3 - the audio bitrate, were you saying 192 Kbps may not be enough sometimes?

As a rough guide (totally made up by myself, based on what I can work out) I would use AC3 or MP2:
High quality audio - like ripped from a commercial DVD: 256kbps
High quality audio - on a DV cam with good mic / sounds clear: up to 256kbps (no less than 192)
Good quality audio - on a DV cam, but echoey room / windy outside: 192kbps
Good quality audio - e.g. mp3's @ 128 used as tracks to home photos: 128 kbps
And so on...

By the way, have you ever tried the "Animation" rather than "Default" setting

No. Not needed it...

Hope that helps. Good luck with your other posts...

[Ronaldus]

Just as a followup, I finally confirmed that the lock-up issues I had on older players was in fact due to Ffmpeg GUI's AC3 stream. The same M2V encoded with a MP2 from the same WAV file plays perfectly on the players that had problems. From what I've read BeSweet has the same problem, so the 2 choices are: pay $30 for TMPGEnc's AC3 plug-in or use its built-in MP2 audio encoding.

Maybe I was imagining, but I thought AC3 sounded a little better than MP2 on the same material as I did an A-B comparison.

The #1 problem I'm having is still that "transparent vertical gauze" I see on everything I've encoded through TMPGEnc (at the highest quality) so far. The same material which I ran through Pinnacle Studio 8 does not show the gauze effect, but its encoding quality is much lower. I'd rather have the sharper edges and the gauze effect than fuzzier gauze-free video with dancing solid-color backgrounds. I'm also going to throw away Bit Rate Viewer because I'm convinced its output is bogus. It told me the stuff I encoded at CBR around 5000 bps in Pinnacle was averaging 2000 bps. It said that after reading the drive in under 1 second? My Pioneer DVD player's on-screen bit rate stayed in the 4000-5000 bps range. On the most recent DVD I made with TMPGEnc it stayed around 5000 bps most of the time even though I used 5960 as the average bit rate in TMPGEnc. Bit Rate Viewer shows an average bit rate just under 6000 with several spikes over 8000 and a few down to 4000, but again I don't trust that tool.

An alternate way to describe the vertical gauze effect I see is to imagine one of those sack cloths or an empty canvas onto which you might weave a rug. Those are all one color but they have a grid-like fabric pattern to them. Imagine projecting a movie onto that. Now I only see the vertical lines of that pattern, but that is what my video looks like. As the camera moves these very light vertical shadows stay in place making you think you're viewing through a slight gauze or projecting onto a canvas. I'd guess it's an encoding artifact, but my TMPGEnc settings are the same as yours (and others) who do not complain about this problem.

Also, I read http://www.bealecorner.com/trv900/DVD/authoring.html which suggested turning on the output as basic YCbCr instead of CCIR option you have off. It said without that, the color scale may caused a washed-out look because the full range is not used, but I couldn't tell any difference either way.

It looks like I will have to live with the vertical gauze issue (which I can't see if I view from a distance over 10 feet away) because nobody knows a solution to this problem only I have seen. I will also use MP2 at 224 or 256 Kbps in hopes that will make it sound as good as 192 Kbps AC-3 did. Maybe I'll spend the extra $30 on the AC-3 plug-in someday, but I'm not ready to do that yet. Why can't any of the freeware utilities output a compliant AC-3 stream?