RM to lossless conversion (just not happening for me ...)

[Rendezvous]

Hi, everyone

I've been searching for a solution to this issue for weeks without any success - so if anyone has any insight, I would be incredibly grateful.

I'm about to author a DVD, but the video source which will serve as the main feature (and eventually, parts of the menu's) is in RMVB format. I've rather assumed that it'll require recompression into a DVD compatible format, and so I'm trying to convert it (ideally, uncompress it, I suppose) into something more raw & useable - but I'm having problems.

There are plenty of applications that I've tried which will perform some kind of conversion process - but the only ones that seem to work to any degree, incur unacceptable quality loss (usually in the form of grain).

I've yet to find ANYTHING that will simply allow me to uncompress the video, or convert it using some form of lossless compression like huffyuv.

The most interesting results I've had so far are with the following programs (and numerous others seem to glean similar results to these examples);

TMPGEnc - Opens the RMVB file effortlessly, and performs a slow but reasonable MPEG conversion. However, even with all of the settings at their highest (including bit-rate - at a ludicrous 100,000 kbits per second), noticable grain appears on the output file. I've tried to understand every aspect of the program - be it including only I frames & keeping the aspect ratio's completely unchanged - but nothing seems to prevent the loss of quality.

WinAVI - An odd one this. A discouragingly fast re-encoding process gleaned a .VOB file that was almost identical to the original source video quality aside from periodic visual corruption (for example, it would play perfectly for 7 or 8 seconds, then look like a pizza for a second or two, then play perfectly for another 10 to 12 seconds, then "Bam!" ... more pizza ...). It also resized the video from 640x352 to (what I assume is DVD standard) 720x576, if I remember correctly ...

The absence of grain in the bulk of the WinAVI output made me wonder if the resizing had something to do with it - so I tried resizing the image to the same PAL DVD standard within TMPGEnc as well, but this only increased the quantity of grain in the picture.

AVOne RM Converter - Incredibly, it allowed me to uncompress the source video - but unfortunately, it had two major flaws. First of all, the colour range was reduced so that the blacks became a shade of dark grey (In my very limited knowledge, I'm guessing this might be something to do with the 8-235 colour restriction that's sometimes applied? If this IS what happened, then there was no option to disable it).

The second problem was that the frame-rate was reduced from 25fps to 15fps - I don't quite know why it would have done this (although, again, there didn't appear to be an option to remedy the fact). Does anyone havee any insight as to why that might have happened? Or do you know that all frames would have been preserved, and that recompression into a DVD format could easily make the video 'normal' again? Naturally, the colour loss makes the program inappropriate for use in this instance, but I'm wondering if the frame-rate thing is something I needn't be concerned about if I should stumble upon it elsewhere.

On a side-note, Ultra RM Converter also claimed to transfer RMVB's to full uncompressed files - which is all well & good until you realise that it, too, chucks out some of the colour information (far from lossless).

Naturally, I expect to lose some quality when I actually author the DVD - but I want to keep this to a minimum. It seemed logical that uncompressing the (RMVB compressed) source, followed by recompressing the output using the DVD authoring software's internal codecs/algorithm's would glean the best result - as opposed to converting the RMVB to XviD AVI (or something) and then converting it again to a DVD format ... (which seemed like the wrong way to do things, for the sake of quality).

I have a good 100Gb of available space, so I hope that'll cover any uncompressed video needs (I can probably squeeze more, if necessary).

I hope the above makes some sense to someone - and I'm sure that I've forgotten to mention half a dozen crucial factors, but any assistance would be incredibly useful. I'm completely new to video editing, so I'll hope you'll forgive my ignorence in many respects - but I'm doing my best to do as much as I can on my own!

Thanks in advance.

[Rendezvous]

Oh, one more thing!

Apparently VirtualDubMod is capable of opening RM / RMVB files. I've never been able to - despite having the RealMedia codecs installed (via the K-Lite Codec pack). Is it simply a misconception that VDM can open these files, or is there something that I'm overlooking?

It might be that VDM wouldn't be able to decompress the video anyway - but I thought it was worth asking & pointing out, considering it's still one of the best video manipulators (it would seem).

UPDATE: I found the 'opening RM / RMVB video in VirtualDubMod' guide - but following it didn't seem to work for me. Perhaps I made a mistake - but I'm not sure where. AVISynth installed fine, as did the RealMedia codecs (via the K-Lite Codec Pack) - when attempting to open an RM file from within VirtualDubMod, however, I get the following error message;



This happens with both the test video that was provided during the guide (as shown in the above error message) & the movie I'm trying to convert - so I guess there must be something I'm overlooking (given that the test video works for others). If anyone has any meaningful insight into the above error, I'm all ears!

[Soopafresh]

Try DVDSanta. It's supposed to be good with RM files.

[Rendezvous]

Thanks for the suggestion

I gave DVDSanta a bash & the results were pretty interesting. Ultimately, it created good quality DVD video files - although the fact that I'll probably have to author the DVD using an external program (like DVD-Lab) the video will most likely be decompressed, then compressed AGAIN (thus losing even more quality, which I want to keep to an absolute minimum).

The resulting VOB file that DVDSanta gave me (regardless of the above) had lost some of the finer detail - but retained the colour depth that other programs had lost (and there was no noticable additional artifacts - perhaps due to the softening).

All in all, I'm glad you suggested it to me - I'm sure that the program will come in handy now that I've been introduced to it. But I don't think it's the program I'm looking for in this situation (I still really want to find a lossless conversion at this point in the editing process - SURELY it must be possible?!) ...

[Rendezvous]

Okay - problem solved!

I managed to get VirtualDubMod to open the video at last (it would appear that I had to install some of the codecs on my system in a certain order - go figure!).

Once VirtualDubMod was playing ball, I was able to save the video into a lossless (but more compatible) AVI format. Because Huffyuv wasn't working for me (crashing the video encoder, or simply not doing anything), I used the Alparysoft 2.0 beta codec - which seems to have worked a charm (dropping what would have been a 94GB uncompressed video to just over 21GB!!).

Thanks to Soopafresh for his suggestion, and everyone else who took the time to read.

[supergoku]

hey rendezvous, how do you make virtualdubmod support rm/rmvb files? can you plz tell me the steps? I really want to know. Thank YOu!

[Rendezvous]

Go here for the original guide which I followed in order to get VirtualDubMod working for me (not much point in reinventing the wheel): https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=231192

It's relatively straightforward once you get your head around it - although I would add the following (once you've done the procedure described in the guide);

Editing the original RM file within VirtualDubMod is very tricky (it simply crashes the application, in my experience - even when simply browsing the frames of the video). The best way around this is simply this - once you've successfully opened the RM file within VirtualDubMod, simply save the file as an AVI using your preferred method of conversion/compression (the Alparysoft lossless codec worked great for me - if you have the space & value the quality, it comes recommended).

On a final note, make sure you restart your computer once you've installed all the codecs - even on Windows XP, failing to do this prior to opening RM files in VirtualDubMod is likely to simply not work.

Let me know how you get on ...

[supergoku]

Thanks for your help. now I can open it with virtualdubmod. How do convert rm file to avi or mepg file?

[Rendezvous]

Well, it's relatively straightforward. You'll need to have installed an appropriate codec to which you'll be converting/compressing the video (for example the smaller Xvid, DivX or one of the lossless codecs such as huffyuv or Alparysoft).

If you've installed something like the K-Lite Codec Pack, then you'll most likely already have some of these in place and ready to use - otherwise you'll have to download them from somewhere. Huffyuv didn't work for me, so the Alparysoft codec (which you'll have to download from their site, I suspect) was the best choice for lossless. In most other instances, Xvid is a good way to go.

Withing VirtualDubMod, click on 'video' and make sure 'Full Processing Mode' is selected - then select 'compression' (also under video) to select & configure your chosen codec.

Once you've done that, click 'file' & 'save as' and the *.avi file format will already be chosen for you. Type your desired filename then click 'save' and VirtualDubMod will begin the conversion process ...

If you want to create an MPEG file, you'll need to convert the AVI using a different application. I'm not sure what the best program for your needs will be, but do a search for 'AVI to MPG' and I'm sure you'll find something of interest easily enough (but experiment with different applications to get the best results - not all are equal, by a long shot). TMPGEnc is probably a good place to start comparing, but if you look around you may well find better.

The standard TMPGEnc is a tried and tested application that many people will swear by - for preparation of DVD compatible MPG video though, I considered it to be very lacking. TMPGEnc 3.0 XPress on the other hand, produces very good results.

[supergoku]

successfully converted to avi... thanks alot! now I got another question. Can I copy AVI file directly to DVD? that can play on the regular DVD Player?

[Rendezvous]

Not usually. Some of the newer DVD players are capable of playing computer specific formats such as AVI (compressed with DivX, etc) in much the same way that many modern CD players now support MP3's. It is not however, something you should assume will work.

In order to play the video on a standard DVD player, you'll need to convert it to an MPG format (MPEG-1 or MPEG-2, depending on your preferences). These are usually named *.M1V or *.M2V, as opposed to *.MPG or *.MPEG when created specifically for DVD player compatibility.

As in my previous post, TMPGEnc will do the job for you - but TMPGEnc 3.0 Xpress will glean better results. Xpress however, is not freeware. Give TMPGEnc a go - it certainly has a fan base & it may be suitable for your needs ...

Having said this, you can probably skip the TMPGEnc conversion process entirely by using a program called DVDSanta. It produces pretty decent results - and a complete DVD-compatible video ready for you to burn. If you don't need too much control over your project, this is the simplist solution & should cause you very little grief.

Otherwise, you'll need to convert to MPEG & then author a DVD-Video disc using yet another application (such as DVD-Lab). Sonic Scenarist is another application that will author DVD's - but it's far less intuitive (it also cost tens of thousands to buy!). Scenarist is the standard by which DVD authoring programs are usually compared (as it's used for many mainstream commercial DVD's), but for price alone it's assumed that you won't be using it as a regular home user. DVD-Lab is much cheaper & far easier to use (despite the occasional bug). DVD-Lab PRO is even better (and rather more necessary if you intend to use multiple audio/subtitle streams in your video). Again, if this all seems a bit daunting, just use DVDSanta - if memory serves me correctly, it'll allow you to convert your AVI or RM/RMVB straight to DVD-Video (no hassle & surprisingly good results).

[supergoku]

Rendezvous, you are really nice person! Thanks for helping again. I got another problem. I used the VirtualDubMod to convert to AVI, but it has bad audio synch problem. I followed the instruction in https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=231192 to save the audio to wav first. but it still got audio synch problem. Do you have this problem? how do you fix it? Thanks...