More rmvb to dvd issues, why must this be so hard?

[silverwolf0]

Well after a long period of not using WinAVI due to the inferiority of its DVD creation, I have opted to try it again with the release of the new 7.7 version. However, this time I am not converting it to DVD but making it into an MPEG2 and sticking it into TMPGEnc DVD Author, which i actually have some trust in for creating the final DVD files. However, no matter what quality setting I set WinAVI to, when I drag the resulting MPEG2 files into DVD Author, I will always get this error:

"The video bitrate 4294967 kbps is too high for a standard DVD."

For a standard DVD the maximum video bitrate is 9.8 Mbps (9800 kbps)

Well I know its definitely not that high and based on the file sizes, within DVD spec. Is there any way to fix this or can this error be safely ignored? Is WinAVI labeling the bitrate wrong or doing something in the header that I can hopefully manually fix?

[guns1inger]

WinAVI is still a piece'o'crap. Use DVD Patcher to put a realistic bitrate into the mpeg file and try authoring again. You may still find TDA spits the dummy because WinAVI's output is usually supect, and there could be other things wrong with it. But one problem at a time.

[silverwolf0]

I agree. However, WinAVI is the only converter that converts a file in 10 minutes. The next closest thing is Xilisoft RM Converter which takes 30 minutes for me. The RM Converter can't do mpeg2 worth crap so I can only do vcd quality mpeg1.

I just tried the patcher and the error persists, except with a slightly different number for the overblown bitrate. All I changed (or didn't mess with) was the 3.5 Mbit/sec bitrate setting, which it detect supposedly when open the patched file again, but TDA doesn't like it still.

Edit: I've tried with xilisoft rm converter. I get the same problem with an mpeg2 except that the bitrate overshot is lower than that from WinAVI. I do not have an actual standalone DVD player to test any of these DVDs on so that is a problem and I know that creating a DVD that doesn't screw up is a very finicky business. I am converting Chinese series for my mom and sending them home; I don't have a dvd player in my dorm so that's why it is mandatory that be be perfect once burned and not require any further testing.

[guns1inger]

You can't guarantee that anyway.

Did you patch the entire file, or just the first header ? If you didn't patch the entire file, give it a try.

[mats.hogberg]

I think TDA will allow you to continue even if it complains about the too high bitrate - at least my version does. Like you, I knew the actual bitrate wasn't too high (counting backwards from file size), and went ahead and authored it anyway. Worked flawlessly.

/Mats

[silverwolf0]

Yes I know I can ignore the warning, but the purpose is to make a completely compliant DVD so that is why I am wondering whether it is safe or not to ignore the warning and just go on with the burn and still get a compliant DVD that will work on old DVD players too. I have tried patching the entire file already. Nothing different. I think the numbers for the bitrate changed slightly when the error popped up but otherwise, no. DVD patcher initially reports the bitrate as some other wacky number when I load it in, then after I patch it, the bitrate goes to 3.5 Mbit. However, even if it shows up like that in patcher, it doesn't in TDA.

[laspis59]

No matter what,you'll have no fun with WinAVI.To avoid problems then use an encoder like CCE which is very fast and gives high quality encodes.Then you can author with TMPGEnc DVD Author and not get annoying problems all the time.You could convert the rmvb video file to AVI with SUPER first using huffyuv which is extremely fast and then CCE will accept it.

Stay away from WinAVI,they make more and more money for their software from people with lesser knowledge regarding DVD production and it seems as though a bunch of monkeys have coded it.

From what I've read ConvertXtoDVD is way better.

[mats.hogberg]

Patching the file doesn't make it any more or less compliant than before. Possibly it'll fool some apps into accepting the file as compliant, but nothing more.

/Mats

[sgmailer]

No matter what,you'll have no fun with WinAVI.To avoid problems then use an encoder like CCE which is very fast and gives high quality encodes.Then you can author with TMPGEnc DVD Author and not get annoying problems all the time.You could convert the rmvb video file to AVI with SUPER first using huffyuv which is extremely fast and then CCE will accept it.

Stay away from WinAVI,they make more and more money for their software from people with lesser knowledge regarding DVD production and it seems as though a bunch of monkeys have coded it.

From what I've read ConvertXtoDVD is way better.

Can anybody explain what CCE is used for? I know that we need to use SUPER to convert the rmvb files to avi files. But, after that, what are we to do with CCE or do we just go straight to authoring the DVD using TMPGenc DVD Author?

Thanks in advance for any replies.

[guns1inger]

CCE is an mpeg encoder. It can be used to convert the avi files to DVD compliant mpeg files. TDA cannot do this.

[sgmailer]

CCE is an mpeg encoder. It can be used to convert the avi files to DVD compliant mpeg files. TDA cannot do this.

Ahh, ok, thanks.

One more question, I'm trying to fit about 10 episodes (around 40 mins each) onto one DVD. Their original source is rmvb and I was wondering if there's a way to calculate what bitrate (or whatever that determines the amount of video on one DVD) I should encode in?

[mats.hogberg]

https://www.videohelp.com/calc.htm
400 min on a DVD5 is way too much.
If you accept VCD quality, fine, but if you want some kind of quality, don't try to squeeze more than 2 hours (3 episodes in your case) on a DVD5.

/Mats

[silverwolf0]

You can actually squeeze 10 episodes of mpeg2 video on a dvd. I have done it before, it just takes longer, and what the poor quality of some rmvbs out there that are rips from vcds, keeping them just vcd quality should do. That is 1150kbps for video and probably 128kbps for audio to be on the safe side as sometimes slightly longer video files will require cutting later on to save space.

I am running in circles trying to convert these bastard rmvb files. Right now I am using avisynth and tmpgenc to convert them into 352x480 mpeg2 with 48k audio. The big problem is, not all rmvb files are created equal. I will convert one episode perfectly fine and other's will go awol.

Video #1: rmvb -> MPEG2 comes out with no audio. I try to play the MPEG2 together with a wav file extracted from the original rmvb source and it is out of synch. Why is that? Shouldn't the extracted audio play in synch with the video since it hasn't been re-encoded or anything? The MPEG2 video I played along with it has been converted from 25fps to 29.97fps, but I don't think it should matter because the other video that worked perfectly fine was a 23.98->29.97 conversion. Both audios in both videos were 44.1k converted to 48k. One is good, the other is completely out of synch.


Err okay I think I narrowed the problem all the way to that of the rmvb file being utter sh*t. There's one more possibility. These audio synch problems seem to happen more on dual language rmvb files. Dual language as in having one language on the left channel and one language on the right channel. When I convert them, they always come out of synch. Could this be a problem or is this irrelevant?

[redwudz]

It's likely the combination of the dual audio channel and VBR audio and video that makes up a very poor combination to convert to much of anything.

RMVB is a proprietary format and Real doesn't really want you to convert them, and they especially don't want anyone else to make programs that can do it. I've used SUPER and the older EO Video with mixed results. It depends on how bad you want to do it and how badly they were originally encoded. It's generally not worth my effort anymore.

[silverwolf0]

Do you have any tips or tricks that can help me fix these skewed up audios? I am not familiar with how to fix it, considering the length of the audio is the same as the video, but it is still out of synch and skewed. Hopefully any suggestions, pretty please????

Oh, and I have used EO Video before. I don't see it any different than just extracting the wav with virtualdub as they both come out screwed up.

[mgh]

In avisynth you need to use convertfps=true in directshowsource
i.e.for pal
directshowsource("video",fps=25,convertfps=true)
the statistics page in real player will give you fps at which it is encoded. Use that for fps.
Alternately use Real7ime Converter after installing helix codecs as mentioned there. Leave audio uncompressed and use either a lossless codec for video or xvid/divx at quantizer 2. Convert the avi to mpeg2.

[silverwolf0]

I have a question about the fps in the avisynth script. Am I suppose to set it to the fps of the actual video or of the fps of the video I would encode it into? I have been using fps=29.97 for various rmvb files that are originally 23.98fps and 25.00fps and can usually get some of the files to synch correctly on its own . So how does this work? Does it convert only the video into 29.97fps from its original fps and send it into virtualdub? Will this cause desynching in and of its own?

I have also tried using the directshowsource() without any fps conversion parameters. They desynching is the same with or without the parameters. Now I am confused.

Someone please help me fix these issues.


PS: Many of the files I have are also corrupt in several places. They run fine in MPC and encode properly (supposedly, probably with jerkiness here and there) but if I feed them into rmeditor and try to make a copy, I get errors. I can't find a fast or competent non-commandline based program to cut out the bad sections so I usually just go through the grueling task of using rmeditor to find where each damaged chunk is by setting the ending or starting times until an error pop ups, cut out the good pieces, and join them later once I have converted the individual files. Such a pain...

[mgh]

dtdrive can do some fixing of rm files
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=64554
convertfps=true is the critical part in the avisynth script