Encoding .DV problems with ffmpeg (e.g. MPEG4 -> DV or VOB -> DV)

[AlphaMonk]

I've looked through the forums and haven't been able to find my rather odd problem. What's confusing me is that last week, I was able to copy the TS folder of a DVD onto my HD and then use FFMpeg to re-encode that video into a .DV file, which I could then load into iMovie to edit.

Now I've mysteriously lost the ability to do this and I can't figure out why.

When I click "encode" it will just immediately "ding"-complete and produce an empty file.

My steps are as follows: I select the original .VOB file, go to the video tab and change the video parameter to 4:3 (as I did before to get the non-squished look in the output file), click "encode" and DING, here's the error message (this happens regardless of whether I mess with the aspect ratio):

Encoding started on Mon Feb 22 01:45:04 PST 2010
Input #0, mpeg, from '/Users/AD/Movies/OT/Feb 2010 VOBs from DVD/t1.vob':
Duration: 00:58:39.9, start: 0.211411, bitrate: 2506 kb/s
Stream #0.0: Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, stereo, 256 kb/s
Stream #0.1: Video: mpeg2video, 720x480, 29.97 fps
Codec type mismatch for mapping #0.0 -> #0.0

I looked through the forums and noticed that other people had similar issues. They all seemed to be resolved by selecting the "invert mapping" check-box on the audio tab. What this does is explained thoroughly in many posts. I would recommend making a sticky out of that particular lesson. Anyway, so I check that box and click "encode" and it almost resolves the issue.

Now it's encoding, however, the output file has a strange green bar at the bottom of it with some weird colored lines below it (see attached picture). Otherwise it looks good though and sounds fine. Now the error code reads:

Encoding started on Mon Feb 22 01:46:50 PST 2010
Input #0, mpeg, from '/Users/AD/Movies/OT/Feb 2010 VOBs from DVD/t1.vob':
Duration: 00:58:39.9, start: 0.211411, bitrate: 2506 kb/s
Stream #0.0: Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, stereo, 256 kb/s
Stream #0.1: Video: mpeg2video, 720x480, 29.97 fps
Output #0, dv, to '/Users/AD/Movies/OT/Feb 2010 VOBs from DVD/zztest.t2.vob.ff.dv':
Stream #0.0: Video: dvvideo, 720x544, 29.97 fps, q=2-15, 25000 kb/s
Stream #0.1: Audio: pcm_s16le, 48000 Hz, stereo, 1536 kb/s
Stream mapping:
Stream #0.1 -> #0.0
Stream #0.0 -> #0.1
[dvvideo @ 0x381324]Can't process DV frame #4. Insufficient audio data or severe sync problem.
[dvvideo @ 0x381324]Can't process DV frame #8. Insufficient audio data or severe sync problem.
[dvvideo @ 0x381324]Can't process DV frame #12. Insufficient audio data or severe sync problem.
[dvvideo @ 0x381324]Can't process DV frame #16. Insufficient audio data or severe sync problem.

etc. Then eventually:

[dvvideo @ 0x381324]Can't process DV frame #246. Insufficient audio data or severe sync problem.
bench: utime=18.051s

And on and on and on like that. Many more lines of the same error. And when I click cancel:

[dvvideo @ 0x381324]Can't process DV frame #246. Insufficient audio data or severe sync problem.
[dvvideo @ 0x381324]Can't process DV frame #246. Insufficient audio data or severe sync problem.
[dvvideo @ 0x381324]Can't process DV frame #246. Insufficient audio data or severe sync problem.
[dvvideo @ 0x381324]Can't process DV frame #246. Insufficient audio data or severe sync problem.
[dvvideo @ 0x381324]Can't process DV frame #246. Insufficient audio data or severe sync problem.
[dvvideo @ 0x381324]Can't process DV frame #246. Insufficient audio data or severe sync problem.
video:44859kB audio:1848kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead -25.935144%
Received signal 2: terminating.

Unable to resolve the green bar, I tried to open the VOB file up and just re-encode it with whatever the default settings were in FFmpeg. They are ...

To: AVI DivX
Video: mencoder mpeg4, 640x352, 1516 kbps, 29.97 fps, no crop.
Audio: mp3, 48000 Hz, 128 kbps

Using these settings, or even when I change the aspect ratio to 4:3, the file encodes perfectly. Or at least it seemed to. When I checked the "info messages" which looked a little weird, but the end result is a fully functioning, good looking AVI that plays fine. For posterity, here's the "info" messages from that encode (VOB -> MPEG4 [.AVI] Mencoder) :

Encoding started on Mon Feb 22 01:17:42 PST 2010
FIXME:Hardenabling SSE and SSE2 without detection
MEncoder dev-CVS-060307-04:23-4.0.1 (C) 2000-2006 MPlayer Team
Mac OSX static build for ffmpegX
CPU: Intel Pentium III Katmai/Pentium III Xeon Tanner (Family: 6, Stepping: 10)
CPUflags: Type: 6 MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 1 SSE2: 1
Compiled for x86 CPU with extensions: MMX MMX2 SSE SSE2
Using SSE optimized IMDCT transform
Using MMX optimized resampler
The selected video_out device is incompatible with this codec.
Try adding the scale filter, e.g. -vf spp,scale instead of -vf spp.
success: format: 0 data: 0x0 - 0x41beb000
MPEG-PS file format detected.
VIDEO: MPEG2 720x480 (aspect 2) 29.970 fps 4200.0 kbps (525.0 kbyte/s)
[V] filefmt:2 fourcc:0x10000002 size:720x480 fps:29.97 ftime:=0.0334
================================================== ========================
Opening audio decoder: [liba52] AC3 decoding with liba52
AC3: 2.0 (stereo) 48000 Hz 256.0 kbit/s
AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 256.0 kbit/16.67% (ratio: 32000->192000)
Selected audio codec: [a52] afm: liba52 (AC3-liba52)
================================================== ========================
Opening video filter: [expand osd=1]
Expand: -1 x -1, -1 ; -1, osd: 1, aspect: 0.000000, round: 1
Opening video filter: [scale w=640 h=480]
================================================== ========================
Opening video decoder: [mpegpes] MPEG 1/2 Video passthrough
VDec: vo config request - 720 x 480 (preferred colorspace: Mpeg PES)
VDecoder init failed
Opening video decoder: [libmpeg2] MPEG 1/2 Video decoder libmpeg2-v0.4.0b
Selected video codec: [mpeg12] vfm: libmpeg2 (MPEG-1 or 2 (libmpeg2))
================================================== ========================
Forcing output fourcc to 58564944 [DIVX]
MP3 audio selected
VDec: vo config request - 720 x 480 (preferred colorspace: Planar YV12)
VDec: using Planar YV12 as output csp (no 0)
Movie-Aspect is 1.33:1 - prescaling to correct movie aspect.
1 duplicate frame(s)!
SwScaler: FAST_BILINEAR scaler, from Planar YV12 to Planar YV12 using MMX2
videocodec: libavcodec (640x480 fourcc=58564944 [DIVX])
Writing header...
ODML: Aspect information not (yet?) available or unspecified, not writing vprp header.
Writing header...
ODML: Aspect information not (yet?) available or unspecified, not writing vprp header.
Skipping frame!
Skipping frame!
Skipping frame!
1 duplicate frame(s)!

The "skipping frame" and "duplicate frame" as well as "VDecoder init failed " don't sound good, but like I said, the final file looks and sounds fine.

This made me think that I could get around the problem by encoding the original VOB file to AVI DivX Mpeg4 and then re-encode THAT into .DV. It's a little time consuming and the quality might take a tiny bit of a hit, but for my amateur purposes, that would be fine and seemed like a good solution.

However, when I tried to do just that (AVI, mpeg4, yuv420p, 640x480 -> .DV (ffmpeg)) I get this error message:

Encoding started on Mon Feb 22 01:31:05 PST 2010
Input #0, avi, from '/Users/AD/Movies/OT/Feb 2010 VOBs from DVD/0003.attempt.t1.vob.ff.avi':
Duration: 00:58:40.4, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 1656 kb/s
Stream #0.0: Video: mpeg4, 640x480, 29.97 fps
Stream #0.1: Audio: mp3, 48000 Hz, stereo, 128 kb/s
Output #0, dv, to '/Users/AD/Movies/OT/Feb 2010 VOBs from DVD/0004.TEST.t1.vob.ff.avi.ff.dv':
Stream #0.0: Video: dvvideo, 640x480, 29.97 fps, q=2-15, 1516 kb/s
Stream #0.1: Audio: mp3, 48000 Hz, stereo, 128 kb/s
Stream mapping:
Stream #0.0 -> #0.0
Stream #0.1 -> #0.1
bench: utime=0.029s
Can't initialize DV format!
Make sure that you supply exactly two streams:
video: 25fps or 29.97fps, audio: 2ch/48Khz/PCM
Could not write header for output file #0 (incorrect codec parameters ?)
Encoding completed on Mon Feb 22 01:31:05 PST 2010

To be safe, I went back in and checked "invert mapping" and tried to convert the .AVI to .DV with everything else the same. I got this error:

Encoding started on Mon Feb 22 01:32:07 PST 2010
Input #0, avi, from '/Users/AD/Movies/OT/Feb 2010 VOBs from DVD/0003.attempt.t1.vob.ff.avi':
00:58:40.4, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 1656 kb/s
Stream #0.0: Video: mpeg4, 640x480, 29.97 fps
Stream #0.1: Audio: mp3, 48000 Hz, stereo, 128 kb/s
Codec type mismatch for mapping #0.1 -> #0.0

And now, one very long message later, I am at a complete loss at how to make a .DV file that doesn't have a weird green bar at the bottom of the frame. I feel like I'm very close, but I am not really able to make sense of the error messages.

Your input is very greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance. Sorry for the long post and the lengthy error codes.

[AlphaMonk]

Problem solved. I don't know why it took me so long to figure this out.

For anyone else that runs into this issue with the green bar and other errors.

Step 1: Check that the "invert mapping" is checked on the audio tab.

The default video size, when set to 16:9 was 720x480. When I adjusted the aspect ratio to 4:3, which changed the video size to 720 x 544. Therein was the problem.

Step 2: After changing the aspect ratio to 4:3, I manually changed the video size back to 720:480 everything worked again.

I'm a bit of a novice, so not sure if this is useful or just me tripping over my shoelaces and documenting the fall. At any rate, I hope this is useful to someone out there.