AVStoDVD Support Thread

[JohnnyBob]

Can you post a 10 - 15 second clip of this avi?

EDIT - have you tried right clicking on the title/Edit source title info/video display aspect ratio
and set it to 1.333 ?

PS on my PC setting it to 1.333 Vs. 1.33 yielded two completely separate results in the avisyinth script.
When I entered 1.33, it gave me this:
Video = Video.Spline64Resize(720,480,0,56,0,-56)

However, entering 1.333 gave the expected result:
Video = Video.Spline64Resize(720,480)

Possible bug?

I'm new to this thread and fairly new to AVStoDVD. I started another thread "DVDFab Creator" which turned into a newbie discussion of AVStoDVD. If you want to reference it:
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/358789-DVDFab-Creator
The purpose of this post is to confirm that 1.333 seems to be a magic aspect ratio. I had an old b&w movie .avi with 720:480 (1.5) aspect ratio. Using the default settings in AVStoDVD produced a conversion that was too skinny, as if 1.5 had been squished down to 1.3. Checking the default source video aspect ratio showed it was 1.300. Changing to 1.333 brought the video into correct aspect ratio. I've run other conversions of old b&w .avi's without that problem. I'm still too newbie to say if it's a bug or something I should have recognized and fixed before running the conversion. I wasn't doing previews (yet)!?

[davexnet]

1.333 is 4/3 the old "square TV" aspect ratio. All bets are off on any downloaded movie. The person who prepared it
may have got it right, but you should probably check it before you encode it.

It's not a bug, except the very specific thing I mentioned in my earlier post. That is, you enter an aspect ratio into
AVStoDVD, for example 1.78 instead of 1.780, the a/r with 2 decimal places is not handled correctly in the program.
I don't know if MrC (the programs author) has looked at this or not

[JohnnyBob]

It's peculiar that the default video aspect ratio in AVStoDVD was set to 1.300 but gave a DVD conversion result resembling 1.5, just eyeballing it. It's like the video was squished horizontally with people/images looking taller and skinnier than normal. Whereas changing it to 1.333 gave a true 4:3 conversion, again just eyeballing it and comparing with how the .avi appears in VLC player. At least it looks OK in the preview. The conversion is still running...takes a long time.

[davexnet]

AVStoDVD uses Mediainfo to get the aspect ratio info and it uses that. If you still have the source,
and don't mind sharing a clip, you can post a sample to the forum and I'll take a look

Of course 720/480 *is* 1.5. That's the source ratio. However, the display ratio is separate. If it came from DVD,
it is either 1.333 or 1.778 (16/9).

[JohnnyBob]

Sorry I don't know how to make a video clip. Newbie here...

[Seeker47]

Sorry I don't know how to make a video clip. Newbie here...

If you have it on a DVD, or as VOB etc. files within the DVD structure stored on your hard drive, the easiest way is to load it into DVDShrink. (Supposedly outdated software, though still useful to the point of being essential, IMO.) Either Open Disc or Open Files, according to which you have. Then, go into Re-Author mode, mark Start and End points for the clip you want, and let Shrink save this. The result will be like a mini-movie, again in the DVD files structure. You can put this into a Zip or Rar archive, for Upload | Download via one of the free fileshare services, like Sendspace, or Mediafire. It doesn't get much easier than that.

[Seeker47]

1.333 is 4/3 the old "square TV" aspect ratio. All bets are off on any downloaded movie. The person who prepared it
may have got it right, but you should probably check it before you encode it.

Excuse me for jumping in here, but your mention of AR reminds me of an at least marginally related question. I've seen TCMHD broadcasts of a number of films recently -- vintage French or Italian titles -- where a good half of the subtitles were cut off below the bottom of the screen. (This was on my 42" flat panel, but I'm thinking it would not have been much different on a 65".) This must either be some error on the part of TCM, or perhaps the dreaded overscan issue. I don't know if all the subs content is actually still there in a DVR recording of same. Assuming that it is, and I could get this material onto my computer, can AVS or any other program then do anything to restore the full subs height ?

[JohnnyBob]

Yeah, I know how to do that, but thought the main question was the structure of the original .avi. I found a reference to using VLC media player (which will play .avi's) for making video clips but haven't had time to do more than one quick try which didn't work. I'll have to put this on the back burner for awhile til I can find more time...

[JohnnyBob]

AVStoDVD incompatible with DVD Shrink
================================
As noted in the other thread mentioned above (DVDFab Creator), AVStoDVD has damaged my DVD Shrink installation again. I had both running at the same time when it happened. I had gone for quite a few conversions without a problem, then this happened again...

Really weird!

Now when I open DVD Shrink, ffdshow video and audio also open. Then when I close DVD Shrink, they also close. DVD Shrink is generally functional although the video replay screen is messed up. Green is substituted for white, and there's a broad green horizontal bar at the bottom. I tried to take a snapshot of that screen to post here but it wouldn't work. A wild guess is that the ffdshow codecs overwrote or damaged whatever codecs DVD Shrink normally uses. But why, and is there a fix?

Based on past experience, in order to recover I will have to do a system restore to a point before this happened then uninstall/reinstall DVD Shrink. (Windows XP SP3)

[Note: System Restore fixed it. I didn't have to uninstall/reinstall DVD Shrink.]

[Seeker47]

AVStoDVD incompatible with DVD Shrink
==============================================
As noted in the other thread mentioned above (DVDFab Creator), AVStoDVD has damaged my DVD Shrink installation again. I had both running at the same time when it happened. I had gone for quite a few conversions without a problem, then this happened again...

Really weird! . . . .

Don't know what to tell you. I have several computers here -- desktops, laptops, some XP, some either 32-bit or 64-bit Win-7 -- most of them loaded up with a basket of such programs, always including these two, and I've just never seen this.

[JohnnyBob]

Have you ever run them simultaneously? I do, a lot. IIRC, the damage happened during the later stages of long .avi conversions when the ffdshow audio decoder and muxman were doing their thing. I doubt that HCenc was the culprit because I ran DVD Shrink several times while it was working without problems.

Kerry56 gave me a good suggestion for a possible fix in the auxiliary thread at
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/358789-DVDFab-Creator?p=2269628#post2269628

It seems that ffdshow is incompatible with a lot of popular software such as PowerDVD, Outlook, etc, but there's a way to exclude them.

[_MrC_]

It's not a bug, except the very specific thing I mentioned in my earlier post. That is, you enter an aspect ratio into
AVStoDVD, for example 1.78 instead of 1.780, the a/r with 2 decimal places is not handled correctly in the program.
I don't know if MrC (the programs author) has looked at this or not

Actually there is a bug in the AviSynth script generation routine, section frame resizing, when source DAR is below 1.333 and the 'Adjust Frame Strategy' is set to 'Crop Top/Bottom' ('Preferences'/'AviSynth').

Moreover if you have ',' as decimal separator instead of '.' you may have some issues when entering values in 'Title'/'Edit Source Title Info'.

Both of course to be fixed in the upcoming 2.7.2 release.



Bye

[_MrC_]

@JohnnyBob

Thanks for reporting the potential interferences when 2 or more progs are calling ffdshow. But, please, edit your post with red title, because it is a bit drastic and can be misleading. Mainly if someone will read it in the future or reach it thru Google searching. You know, on the web a wrong word can do disasters...



Bye

[Seeker47]

Have you ever run them simultaneously? I do, a lot. IIRC, the damage happened during the later stages of long .avi conversions when the ffdshow audio decoder and muxman were doing their thing. I doubt that HCenc was the culprit because I ran DVD Shrink several times while it was working without problems.

Now that you mention it, No. I've been an incorrigible multi-tasker ever since the 80386 processor days, when we had to do it with DesqView riding on top of Win 3.1 (or maybe it was Win-98 -- this is lost in the mists of time, at this point . . . ), and with that hardware / software architecture, regular crashes of the whole dang mess were a sure thing. Fortunately, the platforms we use today are vastly more capable and robust.

I would be likely to have a lot more going on at once on the 64-bit Win-7 with 8Gb. of RAM box, but even there I try not to have too many video-related things going on at the same time. I will almost always have FireFox going, maybe Open Office too, plus various other things, but if AVS or DVD-RB or a video editor are doing something, I would not add another of these or Shrink to the simultaneous mix. Play something with VLC at the same time ? -- Yes. But not two iterations of other video processing. Possibly ripping something or burning something in the background, infrequently. I did this instinctively, out of concern for over-burdening any use of the same resources, and because you can only push cpu cycles and I/O so far, even with multiple cores. No matter how muscular your computer rig happens to be, the bandwidth or throughput or whatever you want to call it is not infinite. And keeping the pedal to the metal has to flirt with it all overheating. That was my reasoning, anyway. And I still manage to have a lot going on at the same time, most of the time.

[If someone knows for sure about the tech issues of piling on the simultaneously functioning programs, I'd be interested to hear about it. Any of you comp arch-conservatives out there ? Nelson . . . ?]

[davexnet]

Hi MrC,
I have a scenario for you. I captured a small clip through my PC tuner card. The signal is digital,
clip is SD, fps 29.97, resolution 720x480. At first glance it appears DVD compliant so A2D does not re-encode it.

However, at the authoring stage, Muxman rejects it because the number of GOPs:
" Multiplex operation failed, GOP contains more than 36 pictures at 1575596 of (null)"

The only way I could create a DVD was to run DGindex myself, outside of the program, and then feed the D2V to A2d.

It seems in some situations A2D itself prompts you that DGindex is advised, and creates it for you,
but not his time.

I can provide the source file if you'd like it, it's 26MB.

regards,
Dave

[_MrC_]

@Dave

very interesting, yes, if you can send me the mpeg2 clip, that would be great.

Current DVD-Compliant routine checks some attribs, but very nicely not as many as Muxman does.

Public Property Get DVDCompliant() As DVD_Video_Compl

    Dim TentativeVideoStandard As Byte    ' 0->None 1->PAL 2->NTSC
    
    If InStr(1, VideoCompression, "MPEG-2 Video") <> 0 Then
        If VideoDAR = "1.333" Or VideoDAR = "1.778" Then
            Select Case Val(VideoFPS)
            Case 24
                If LCase(VideoScanOrder) = "2:2:2:2:2:2:2:2:2:2:2:3 pulldown" Then TentativeVideoStandard = 1
            Case 25
                TentativeVideoStandard = 1
            Case 23.976
                If LCase(VideoScanOrder) = "2:3 pulldown" Then TentativeVideoStandard = 2
            Case 29.97
                TentativeVideoStandard = 2
            End Select
            If TentativeVideoStandard = 1 Then
                If Val(VideoHeight) = 576 Then
                    If Val(VideoWidth) = 720 Or Val(VideoWidth) = 704 Then
                        DVDCompliant = PAL_Full_D1
                    ElseIf Val(VideoWidth) = 352 Then
                        DVDCompliant = PAL_Half_D1
                    End If
                ElseIf Val(VideoHeight) = 288 Then
                    If Val(VideoWidth) = 352 Then
                        DVDCompliant = PAL_VCD
                    End If
                End If
            ElseIf TentativeVideoStandard = 2 Then
                If Val(VideoHeight) = 480 Then
                    If Val(VideoWidth) = 720 Or Val(VideoWidth) = 704 Then
                        DVDCompliant = NTSC_Full_D1
                    ElseIf Val(VideoWidth) = 352 Then
                        DVDCompliant = NTSC_Half_D1
                    End If
                ElseIf Val(VideoHeight) = 240 Then
                    If Val(VideoWidth) = 352 Then
                        DVDCompliant = NTSC_VCD
                    End If
                End If
            End If
            If Val(VideoAvgBitRate) / 1000 > 9500 Then
                DVDCompliant = Not_Video_Compl
            End If
        End If
    End If
    
End Property

Bye

[davexnet]

Yes, I can see from the programming, you're checking frame rate, bitrate, aspect ratio and resolution.
Perhaps the GOP organization is something you don't have access to via Mediainfo.
Here's the clip.

[_MrC_]

@Dave

there is another property not following DVD standard, very nicely correlated to the very long GOP: max bitrate. I can surely check it in case of VBR mpeg2.

VIDEO TRACK INFO
PathName: C:\20130926084908.mpg
Time: 2:14 minutes
Compression: MPEG-2 Video
BitRate Mode: VBR
Avg BitRate: 1392 kbps
Min BitRate:
Max BitRate: 14975 kbps
Resolution: 720x480
Display AspectRatio: 1,333
Pixel AspectRatio: 0,889
Frame AspectRatio: 1,5
FrameRate Mode: CFR
FrameRate: 29,97 fps
Frame Count: 4044
Scan Type: Interlaced
Field Order: BFF

GOP wise, MediaInfo gives this info:

Format settings, GOP: Variable

I have to check if variable GOP structure is DVD compliant or not.



Bye

[davexnet]

Sounds good. Where is the MAX bitrate from ? The mpeg header? Using the bitrate viewer, it gives this info.
Gspot can give GOP info. Can you use that?

[_MrC_]

Yes, from the header, that is the portion of the file explored by MediaInfo.

About using Gspot, do you know if it supports command line and can redirect the output to a txt file?



Bye

[Heathsideboy]

This is a little off topic but it does concern AVStoDVD in the process.

A recent set of MP4 clips I downloaded to the computer have now been converted to MPEG using AVStoDVD. I also edited some VOB files using VideoReDo and converted them to MPEG also. From this point onward, the next stage was to author and then burn them to DVD. Most of the advice I had been given when at this point was to use something like DVD Styler. I assume by doing this, the clips would not be re-encoded. My question is; would they also not be re-encoded if I used Windows DVD Maker instead of DVD Styler to make the menu?

The other question involves VideoReDo. I know this is probably not the right forum to ask this question but I just wanted to know, all the separate converted MPEG clips, is there a way to join them altogether in one stream using VideoReDo in the editing process? And if you can, how? I notice that there is a tab on the VideoReDo interface that says, "Joiner." Does it involve using this tab to perform the function I ask?

Thanks

HB

[davexnet]

Yes, from the header, that is the portion of the file explored by MediaInfo.

About using Gspot, do you know if it supports command line and can redirect the output to a txt file?



Bye

It has an "export mode" which you can initiate from the command line, but the results seem somewhat limited.
Here's a sample output I did on a test file:

Perhaps ffprobe - it looks quite complicated.
http://ffmpeg.org/ffprobe.html

[_MrC_]

It has an "export mode" which you can initiate from the command line, but the results seem somewhat limited.

Thanks for looking at this issue

Yes, I agree about the limited infos. No mention about max bitrate or GOP structure.



Bye

[mazinz]

Sorry if this was mentioned but being 56 pages of info, is there any issue that was listed already with version 2.7.1 and the menu editor section?

I am running win Xp 32 bit. If I click on the menu editor (the run editor button) it will either do one of two things:

1. it will show the bar(box) like it is about to load the editor but stop halfway and not proceed
2. if the menu editor does load it it will not allow you to exit the screen once done, it just sits there

for either option I have to use the task manager to shut the program and start again

previous versions I have used did not have this issue, it was introduced on my system with 2.7.1

[_MrC_]

@mazinz

it seems that your system is no more able to produce the image thumbs for the Menu Editor. Does the error occur with every input title?

Anyway I would suggest to:

- uninstall AVStoDVD (using its uninstaller, click yes when prompted to delete the registry key)
- uninstall AviSynth
- uninstall ffdshow (or any other codecs suite)
- re-install AVStoDVD 2.7.1 using the installer package

Let me know



Bye

[mazinz]

@mazinz

it seems that your system is no more able to produce the image thumbs for the Menu Editor. Does the error occur with every input title?

Anyway I would suggest to:

- uninstall AVStoDVD (using its uninstaller, click yes when prompted to delete the registry key)
- uninstall AviSynth
- uninstall ffdshow (or any other codecs suite)
- re-install AVStoDVD 2.7.1 using the installer package

Let me know



Bye

let me try the simple method first since I use avisynth/ffd with some other programs and have a few extra plugins installed with them. So I will fully uninstall Avs2DVD and if it does not offer the choice I will manually then go through and delete its entry in my registry. This way it will do an install from scratch. If i still have the issue, then will move forward with your more fuller method and try it again

[mazinz]

ok just giving an update that doing an uninstall of the program and registry entry, deleting the AVS2DVd folder and then re-install so far seems to have fixed the menu problem I was having- cheers

[JohnnyBob]

another aspect ratio problem
=====================
I have a PAL DVD9 movie that plays fine on my computer but I need to convert to NTSC format for my standalone DVD player/TV. First I ripped it to hard drive then edited to remove the menus, unwanted audio languages and subtitles, so I would have a simple set of files to convert. I ended up with 3 titles, each with their own set of VTS files.

I then opened each of the .IFO's (for each VTS) with AVStoDVD and it indexed them. Checking the screen aspect ratio said Title1 was 2.370 while Title2 and Title3 were both 1.333. I then let it run the conversion which took 11+ hours. One of the last processes was DGPulldown (iirc), then muxman. It finally announced that the project had completed successfully.

Unfortunately there's a problem. The resulting aspect ratio of Title1 is approximately 3.0, just by eyeballing it and then measuring with a ruler on my monitor screen. It's squished vertically. People/objects appear too fat. It should be 2.37.

As a relative newcomer to this software, my only naive idea is some kind error introduced by confusion between the 3 titles which have different formats and aspect ratios:
Title1 PAL 2.370
Title2 NTSC 1.333
Title3 PAL 1.333

Only Title1 is important, the main movie. If I run this conversion again, I'll probably omit Title2 and Title3 which are optional. I inserted Title2 myself while Title3 is the movie's trailer.

Any ideas/suggestions/magic/tricks...?

Thanks.

[_MrC_]

@JohnnyBob

attach here the project log file.



Bye

[bajra79]

I'm trying to make a Custom Template. I downloaded some of the other templates to use as a guide.
Is it possible to set a custom Height and top position for the title in the template? If so, what am i doing wrong?
Here's what i have in the .ini file.

[Title]
TitleFontName: Arial Black
TitleFontRed: 0
TitleFontGreen: 0
TitleFontBlue: 0
TitleFontSize: 24
TitleFontBold: 0
TitleFontItalic: 0
TitleFontOutline: 0
TitleFontUnderline: 0
TitleFontOutline: 1
TitleAlignment: 2
TitleTopPosition: 40
TitleHeight: 40