winff question(s)

[vile]

wonder if anyone can help me out...

i have an anime episode and i want to convert it to dvd using winff.. is there a way for me to add black borders since when you view the subtitles on tv the subtitles kinda went under.. i want to box it in so to allot space

also how do you add external subtites and make it permament..

thanks in advance.

[GTRBudda]

I don't have WinFF so I can't say for sure, but it may be possible by adding -pad instructions to the Additional Command Line Parameters box at the bottom. Something like "-padleft 32 -padright 32 -padtop 16 -padbottom 16". Also, you'll need to resize your video to accommodate the padding, in this case 656x448 in the Video Size box for a 720x480 4:3 ntsc dvd mpeg. FitCD is great to find the resize/padding you need. It's meant to make an Avisynth script, but just take the numbers it calculates and use them in WinFF. If all else fails, here's a script I use:

"C:\your\path\to\ffmpeg.exe" -i "c:\your\path\to\file.avi" -target ntsc-dvd -b 6500 -maxrate 8000 -aspect 4:3 -s 656x448 -padright 32 -padleft 32 -padtop 16 -padbottom 16 -acodec ac3 -ab 192 -ac 2 -mbd 2 -qmin 2 -async 1 -y "c:\your\path\to\file.mpg"

As for subtitles, I'm not sure but I don't think FFMpeg can add them in. On the other hand, during dvd authoring, it should be possible to add subs and "force" them to show when the video starts. It may depend on the authoring app your using. Hope that was helpful.

[vile]

yeah.. thanks ... i figured out the padding thing.. just need to find out about the subs... just testing this program if the output is as decent as tmpgenc's cq dvd template or better.. any comments on the quality vs. CQ?

[GTRBudda]

Sorry, no, I can't compare. I've never used Tsunami for dvd mpegs, only vcd. Nowadays I use FFMpeg pretty exclusively, and HCenc on the odd occasion. There I can say that FFMpeg seems to work at least as well as HC, if not better. It's certainly faster. Of coarse, I'm still learning the tools myself.....

[vile]

got another questiion.. how do you set the file size without cutting the output file? when i input the file size syntax it will follow the file size specified but it cut the output file... (only half the input was encoded)

[GTRBudda]

Boy, kinda' got me on that one. I've never run into that. I seem to remember reading something about one of the "-q" commands stopping an encode if there are too many errors in the process, if it's set to high or low. Can't for the life of me recall where that was or which "-q" was the culprit. Could be related, but just a guess.