Using VOBs from Ulead DMF in TDA-authored folders...

[Brent212]

I have TMPGEnc DVD Author 1.5.20.62 and Ulead DVD Movie Factory 2.10.2152.0000 SE (which came with my hauppauge pvr-250).

I'm using the pvr-250 to capture my vhs tapes so I can convert them to dvd's. Because the pvr-250 captures have GOP errors detected by Womble mpeg2vcr, I use mpeg2vcr to trim the edges of the captured files, and then fix the errors. So the final mpg that I give to my authoring program passes thru womble GOP scanner successfully.

I usually author my dvds with TMPGEnc DVD Author because I like the chapter editing interface and the menu creation seems much more flexible for what I want. However, I find that every so often I will get a dvd that starts with the audio and video in synch, but at a certain point in the movie goes out of synch. Sometimes there are more than one of these spots that cause it to go out of synch and each one makes the audio further out of synch with the video. Luckily I usually test out the authored VIDEO_TS folder with the PowerDVD player and sometime I'll burn it onto a RW before going for the -R. In all cases the mpg file going into TMPGEnc plays fine in media player without synch problems, and passes womble's GOP error scan. In all cases the VOB's, when renamed to .mpg, don't play fine in media player... they go out of synch just like when they are played in PowerDVD or on a dvd player.

I have found that these problem mpgs that TMPGEnc DVD Author cannot successfully use can be used in Ulead without any problems. The only downside to this is that I have to use Ulead menus, which I hate. I thought I had found a solution, though, by authoring with TMPGEnc, with all the chapters and menus I want, and also authoring with Ulead, without any chapters. I then take the appropriate main-movie VOBS from the Ulead-created VIDEO_TS folder and overwrite the same VOBS in the TMPGEnc-created VIDEO_TS folder. I can play this folder with PowerDVD successfully! So I burned it and tried the DVD in my roommate's dvd player (a panasonic). It wouldn't play past the first chapter! If I tried to skip ahead to another chapter it'd just go back to the main menu. If I let it play through, at the point where the 2nd chapter begins it'd go back to the main menu. Argh! But then I tried playing it on my dvd player (a pioneer), and it plays fine! Sweet!

So I guess my question is - how likely is it that this disc will play normally on a random dvd player? Is what I did not up to the standard? I didn't know whether or not the chapter info was actually stored in the movie VOBs... I thought maybe it was just stored in the other files (.IFO). Has anyone got any experience doing this or something similar? Also... I'm not sure if I'm smoking crack or what, but I swear the video from the Ulead-authored VOBs is lower quality than the video in the TMPGEnc-authored VOBs... I'll have to make a more thorough comparison...

Thanks for any help,
Brent

[Brent212]

no one has anything to say about this? Damn, I thought this was pretty interesting topic... maybe it was too long. I thought I described everything pretty clearly, though. Same thing happened over at doom9... the whole weekend went by without a response.

Can anyone at least tell me if .VOB files contain chapter information?

[seb]

The chapter information is in the IFO files as you thought, which is why you can't simply swop the TDA and Ulead VOBs and expect it all to work properly.

If you want to keep on using Ulead to deal with the sync problem, it might be better to import the Ulead VOBs into TDA using the "Add DVD-Video" option and browsing to the VIDEO_TS folder that Ulead produces. Then you could create menu and add chapter info etc in TDA.

This does seem like a complex fix though, and may well introduce a deterioration in quality (from what you say it sounds like Ulead is re-encoding your MPEG files). If it was me, I'd be looking to sort this sync issue out much earlier on in the whole process. I don't have experience with the PVR-250 so can't really make any specific suggestions other than to ask whether you're using the latest Womble or have tried VideoRedo. It might well be worth asking about this in the Capture section of the forum and see what other PVR-250 users do to get their MPEGs to be DVD compliant and sort out audio ssues?

[Brent212]

Oh... I thought that since the chapter info was in the .IFO files, this WOULD allow me to swap just the VOBs and have it work, since the VOBs are nearly identical, except the Ulead ones don't have the sync errors. I thought that if the .IFO files just have say, a listing of time stamps for the chapters, it'd work, since the times should be nearly identical (give or take a second) in the two sets of VOBs. But maybe there's more info in the .IFO, so when it switches to a certain chapter it expects something in particular that is found at that chapter point in one VOB, but not in another.

Either way, I like your idea of just importing the Ulead VOBs into TDA. That might work perfectly. I should have thought of that before trying to simply switch files.

I don't think Ulead is actually re-encoding the video, as it only takes like 10-15 minutes to author, and on my computer (Athlon 1 GHz) that should take a lot longer. Plus, TMPGEnc DVD Author actually takes about 5 minutes longer than Ulead during the authoring stage, and I have the "Do not re-encode non-compliant audio" (or something similar) checked in Ulead.

I've spent a lot of time trying to sort out the synch issues before hand, and I thought I had it completely fixed, since I read that if you get an .mpg that can scan through Womble's GOP Fixer without any errors being detected, the authoring program shouldn't cause any synch errors. I tried VideoRedo on several videos during the trial period, and it always worked, but during that same amount of time I was also trying Womble Mpeg2Vcr, and it always worked also, and since it had more features (I liked the GOP Fixer and multiplexing tools), I bought it. I don't really want to spend more to buy VideoRedo also, although I wouldn't be surprised if it would fix the problem always. Womble fixes any errors usually, but every once inawhile I'll get an out of synch dvd.

Thanks for the help,
Brent