AVI to DVD-R - using Passthrough with MP3 audio is failing

[Riot Nrrrd]

A colleague in Japan sent me an AVI file of a TV show that's sadly only available on PAL VHS tape. As I don't have a Universal player that can play AVIs directly I wanted to convert it to DVD-R. Tried Toast 6.0.9 but the resultant DVD-R it created was letterboxed 4:3 and looked horrible - pixelated to all Hell when the original AVI looks quite nice on my Cinema Display's screen.

The original AVI file is (according to QuickTime™ Player):

Format: 3ivx D4 4.5.1, 640 x 352, Millions
MPEG Layer-3 Audio, Stereo, 48000 Hz
Movie FPS: 25

Your basic PAL video, only with MP3 audio.

So I tried to convert it using ffmpegX 0.0.9r instead. I used the DVD mpeg2enc preset; and in the Video tab I changed Autosize to DVD 16:9, set Framerate to PAL (25), and clicked on Best for Video Bitrate. In the Options tab I set No SVCD scan/Altivec/Bicubic/Decode with Quicktime; and Profile set to DVD. Now, here's where I may have made a mistake: in the Audio tab I set Audio Codec to Passthrough and un-checked Encode audio. (In the Tools tab I enabled Author as DVD (VIDEO_TS), but it didn't get that far.) I then let 'er rip:

[8:01] powerbookg4:~ % /Applications/ffmpegX.app//Contents/Resources/pbpaste | sh
Encoding started on Sun Apr 17 08:01:54 PDT 2005
   INFO: [yuvscaler] yuvscaler (version 1.7.0) is a general scaling utility for yuv frames
   INFO: [yuvscaler] (C) 2001-2002 Xavier Biquard <xbiquard@free.fr>
   INFO: [yuvscaler] yuvscaler -h for help, or man yuvscaler
ffmpeg version 0.4.9-pre1, build 4736, Copyright (c) 2000-2004 Fabrice Bellard
  configuration:  --enable-mp3lame --enable-gpl --disable-vhook --enable-ffplay --disable-ffserver --enable-a52 --enable-xvid --enable-faac --enable-faad --enable-amr_nb --enable-amr_wb --enable-pthreads 
  built on Dec 18 2004 04:39:28, gcc: 3.3 20030304 (Apple Computer, Inc. build 1666)
Input #0, wav, from '/Volumes/Downloads/test.avi.wav':
  Duration: 00:58:58.0, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 1536 kb/s
  Stream #0.0: Audio: pcm_s16le, 48000 Hz, stereo, 1536 kb/s
Output #0, mp2, to '/Volumes/DVD:CD burning staging area/test.avi.ff.copy':
  Stream #0.0: Audio: pcm_s16le, 48000 Hz, stereo, 1536 kb/s
Stream mapping:
  Stream #0.0 -> #0.0
Press [q] to stop encoding
size=  663376kB time=3538.0 bitrate=1536.0kbits/s    
video:0kB audio:663376kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead 0.000000%
   INFO: [mplex] mplex version 2.2.2 ($Date: 2003/05/13 20:27:15 $)
   INFO: [mplex] File /Volumes/DVD:CD burning staging area/test.ff.m2v looks like an MPEG Video stream.
**ERROR: [mplex] File /Volumes/DVD:CD burning staging area/test.avi.ff.copy unrecogniseable!
**ERROR: [mplex] Unrecogniseable file(s)... exiting.

Here are the file sizes as created:

-rw-r--r--  1 riot  unknown   679297536 17 Apr 13:34 test.avi.ff.copy
-rw-r--r--  1 riot  unknown  1727424848 17 Apr 13:30 test.avi.ff.m2v

Clearly something went wrong - why did the encoding say ".avi.wav", when there was no ".wav" file present? Why was whatever-it-did created with a file name of ".copy"? (Because of my setting Audio to Passthrough?)

Neither the OS nor QuickTime™ Player recognizes this 647 MB ".ff.copy" file as anything but "data" - not MP2, not MP3, not anything.

I guess I need to try and run it from scratch again, but this time - what do I do in the Audio tab so that this comes out correctly? Set Audio Codec to MP2? MP3? Enable the Encode audio check-box, or disable it?

Any ideas?

[Case]

Use mp2 or AC3 for audio on the DVD, never mp3.

[Riot Nrrrd]

Use mp2 or AC3 for audio on the DVD, never mp3.

OK - so you're saying I should check/enable Encode audio, but just make sure that my pulldown menu choice for Audio Codec is either .MP2 or .AC3?

Using .AC3 seems silly to me, though - I mean, the audio in the AVI file is MP3, and since that's 2-channel audio that doesn't have 5.1 channels, to convert it to 5.1 AC3 audio seems ridiculous. So shouldn't I just use the .MP2 setting instead, in general? (For AVI -> DVD-R conversions, that is)

[Case]

1. Yes

2. AC3 (Dolby Digital) doesn't have to be 5.1, it can be just as easily 2.0 (i.e. regular stereo). If you want to use mp2 in general, that's fine too.

[Riot Nrrrd]

I tried again, using .MP2 for the Audio (bitrate 224, Sampling 48000 Hz, Channels Stereo, Mode CBR).

The only other change I made was I kept Open Terminal window enabled but disabled Keep elementary streams. The result:

[2:45] powerbookg4:~ % /Applications/ffmpegX.app//Contents/Resources/pbpaste | sh
Encoding started on Mon Apr 18 02:45:45 PDT 2005
   INFO: [yuvscaler] yuvscaler (version 1.7.0) is a general scaling utility for yuv frames
   INFO: [yuvscaler] (C) 2001-2002 Xavier Biquard <xbiquard@free.fr>
   INFO: [yuvscaler] yuvscaler -h for help, or man yuvscaler
error: could not create save file!

The .m2v file was created, but there's no .mp2 file.

I have no idea why I got the error: could not create save file! error message. I'm trying again, this time disabling Video (changed to Passthrough and re-enabled Keep elementary streams; disabled Author as DVD (VIDEO_TS) in Tools), and it looks like it's creating the .mp2 this time 'round:

[9:08] nightowl:~ % /Applications/ffmpegX.app//Contents/Resources/pbpaste | sh
Encoding started on Mon Apr 18 09:08:50 PDT 2005
ffmpeg version 0.4.9-pre1, build 4736, Copyright (c) 2000-2004 Fabrice Bellard
  configuration:  --enable-mp3lame --enable-gpl --disable-vhook --enable-ffplay --disable-ffserver --enable-a52 --enable-xvid --enable-faac --enable-faad --enable-amr_nb --enable-amr_wb --enable-pthreads 
  built on Dec 18 2004 04:39:28, gcc: 3.3 20030304 (Apple Computer, Inc. build 1666)
Input #0, avi, from '/Volumes/Downloads/test.avi':
  Duration: 00:58:58.0, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 1660 kb/s
  Stream #0.0: Video: mpeg4, 640x352, 25.00 fps
  Stream #0.1: Audio: mp3, 48000 Hz, stereo, 141 kb/s
Output #0, mp2, to '/Volumes/DVD:CD burning staging area/test.avi.ff.mpg.mp2':
  Stream #0.0: Audio: mp2, 48000 Hz, stereo, 224 kb/s
Stream mapping:
  Stream #0.1 -> #0.0
Press [q] to stop encoding
size=   60611kB time=2216.6 bitrate= 224.0kbits/s

So this pass went through and the mux'ed DVD works (yay!) but I sure wish I could do this all in one fell swoop without the could not create save file! error ... (I could only find one posting on VideoHelp mentioning that error, with no answer for it - ack!)

[major]

Remove all spaces and the ":" character from your disk name, and make it shorten, so as it reads eg. "burning_area", or it may be the source of various Unix issues.

[Riot Nrrrd]

Remove all spaces and the ":" character from your disk name, and make it shorten, so as it reads e.g. "burning_area", or it may be the source of various Unix issues.

Thanks major,

Can the tools handle symbolic links? i.e., since it's my PowerBook, obviously I can create a /burning_area symbolic link pointing to the longer slash/colon-cum-space-filled path, and use /burning_area/rest/of/path in the inputs to the ffmpegX windows. Will that work, or do the tools fully-resolve the paths first?

One other question - I encoded the video using the MPEG2 [.MPG] (mpeg2enc) codec setting in the Video tab, and with No SVCD scan, Altivec, Bicubic, and Decode with Quicktime set. I now have the converted DVD-R up in DVD Player and the AVI up in QuickTime™ Player at the same point, and I'm noticing the colors in the converted DVD-R are a bit duller, and sharpness-wise the video's crisper on the AVI.

Obviously transcoding from AVI to DVD-R involves lossage so it won't be as sharp as the AVI; am just wondering if there are any other options in ffmpegX that I'm not using which might mitigate these effects? (Like changing Q Matrix to something other than Standard, or not using Decode with Quicktime to decode, etc.)

[major]

That could work, though I'm not sure whether all tools will work trough symlinks. The colorspace bias is probably introduced by 'Decode with Quicktime' (a colorspace-proof version of the Quicktime decoder will be introduced in ffmpegX 1.0.0).

[Riot Nrrrd]

That could work, though I'm not sure whether all tools will work trough symlinks. The colorspace bias is probably introduced by 'Decode with Quicktime' (a colorspace-proof version of the Quicktime decoder will be introduced in ffmpegX 1.0.0).

So should I try a re-encode with that disabled? Or should I enable Decode with mplayer instead?

[major]

Both will work with PAL, though if you process NTSC video, you should experiment with both and check about video/audio sync (Quicktime decoder is best in that respect).

[Riot Nrrrd]

OK, I'll try without both and see what happens, then maybe try it with Decode with Quicktime disabled and with Decode with mplayer decoding enabled.

(Though, I must admit, seeing "you should experiment with both" gave me a chuckle - this is a 1 GHz PowerBook G4 we're talking about here, I need a dual-2.5 GHz G5 to do some proper "experimenting" that doesn't take 2 days to complete! )

[major]

You should perhaps make some tests with a small test clip.

[Riot Nrrrd]

You should perhaps make some tests with a small test clip.

Oh, duh, why didn't I think of that? D'oh!@!

[Riot Nrrrd]

major ... just thought I'd let you know, I did another run with mplayer as the encoder this time (0.0.9r, btw, not 0.0.9s; in case this is fixed in 0.0.9s, let me know), and it failed because it created the audio file with an extension of .avi. (note period at the end) and not .avi.ff.mpa. (The video portion was created with a filename ending in .avi.ff.mpv.) So the Mux-as-DVD stage failed because the mplex tool was looking for an .avi.ff.mpa audio file to match the .avi.ff.mpv video file, and it didn't exist. (Note that I didn't have this problem when using Decode with Quicktime.) Once I renamed the audio file I was able to manually go back to Tools -> Mux and re-do that step and then everything worked from there. FYI.

(I haven't had time to burn to DVD-R yet to compare it against the original AVI file for the contrast/color "dullness" and sharpness issues I experienced with my first run using Decode with Quicktime. I cranked up the Sharpness setting in Filters from the default 125 to 150, just in case.)