Lord of the Rings advanced conversion problem...

[khermans]

Hi. I know it says not to ask about DivX conversion problems, but this is an ADVANCED conversion problem. I have not found anyone that has been successful figuring this one out. I am quite familiar with TMPGEnc and VirtualDUB, yet I can't seem to get this quite right. Anyway...

I got a DivX rip of Lord of the Rings on Mirc in two parts. File names: the.lord.of.the.rings.the.fellowship.of.the.ring.d vd.screener.cd1.divx-dvl.avi and the.lord.of.the.rings.the.fellowship.of.the.ring.d vd.screener.cd2.divx-dvl.avi

I want to convert them to fit onto a DVD, and if possible at the highest resolution. The problem I first ran into is joining the files with VirtualDUB. Version 1.4.9 won't append the files because the audio streams are VBR. Version 1.4.7 will combine them, but the file is really out of wack. I should note now that I just instaled the DivX 5.0 codec, but I dont think that this is a problem as I was having many of these problems before.

So I thought of a few ways to get around joining the two avi's. First I tried converting both avi's to DVD MPEG2. That worked but the audio was skewed. So I first extracted the audio streams as wav's and then made both MPEG's. That worked and the audio seemed fairly accurate (not quite perfect). Then I tried joining the two MPEG2 files I just made with TMPGEnc, and it seems to have worked, but when I try to import it into SpruceUP it hangs at 4% of the verification. But both individual files before joining can be imported fine. I know that TMPGEnc can be a buggy joiner, but I dont have $700 to buy M2 edit (or Womble) and the demo is limited to 10 second clips. So here is the big question for you experts...

HOW DO I COMBINE TWO DIVX FILES PERFECTLY WITH VBR AUDIO? or IS THERE ANY OTHER WAY TO MAKE BOTH FILES TO MPEG2 WITH PERFECTLY SYNCED AUDIO?

I want to put this movie on a DVD. I just bought a DVD burner a little while ago, and I've made a few other movies this way, but LOTR is giving me a bit of trouble. Others I've had no problem with include Zoolander, Shrek, and Monsters Inc.

Again, any help from you guys is greatly appreciated. Thanks...

Kris Hermansen

[condone]

im not sure if u tried this (u said u converted the audio but im not sure if u did it this way.) Open AVI files in VDub (VBRMP3 Version) or Nandub, save audio as WAV. Now officially this file is an MP3 File with a WAV header (obvious due to the small filesize for a WAV, normally a WAV is ~10mb/1min, and if u look at it's properties under say Winamp it'll say Audio Format: MPEG Layer III, whereas a true WAV is PCM.) Since this file is then technically an MP3 (u can rename it to an MP3 and it will be recognized as one, do this for the next step), TMPGEnc will most likely have trouble with it, especially since it's VBR, so what i have done in the past is use good old Winamp or Music Match Jukebox to just convert that MP3 to a full on WAV file (yes a giant WAV file since the movie is long, it might be just under 2gb but its necessary to have a true WAV). now just set the audio in VDub/NanDub to No Audio, and Append the 2 AVIs as one to merge them into 1 large AVI file. Now u have a giant WAV and AVI file to use in TMPGEnc for example. and from here it should work flawlessly.
Its alot of trouble, but it should work. I just got the 4CD SVCD, i think the quality on it is amazing, i personally prefer SVCD, the only downside to it is though the specs call for it to be able to do full surround sound, few DVD standalones can actually decode that, so basically your stuck with Stereo, but i could care less, video was amazing and stereo for audio was still great, plus it was DVD ready

[[jb]]

I used to really fret over problems like this and spent hours joining MPEG files together. One day it occured to me it wasn't necessary. Just put the two MPEG files into your authoring/burning software.

So if you're using, say Nero, to make an SVCD, just drag and drop both mpeg files into the layout. Right click on the first mpeg, choose properties and set the delay time to 0. They will play one right after the next.

Similar for DVDs in authoring software, just set them up to play one right after the other.

On my player I don't even get a "blip" when the mpeg file changes, but even if you did, it's worth it.

[jb]

[malducci]

Well, this is how I did the conversion of LOTR( the two avi version ).

Open virtualDub -> open the avi(dvix) file.

Goto 'Audio' and select full processing mode.

under 'Audio' goto the 'compression' and choose 44khz, 16bit, stereo.

now goto file and 'save wav' - this will take about 3 to 10 mins depending on the overall speed of the system

Do this step for the second avi(dvix) file.

Once you have both wav's, you can join them will almost any shareware wav editor out there. I used Adobe Premiere 6 in which I loaded the both wav's into the project and exported them as a single audio file.

I used virtualDub to frameserve to CCE 2.5. I also *highly* recommend using Donald G.'s "smart smoother" to help get ride of the most of the artifacts - settings are 5 and 29. I also used the contrast/brightness filter as the colors don't translate well to NTSC - i used -2% on brightness and 118% on contrast.

In CCE 2.5 I used 2pass VBR with 2400kbit average, 500min, 2550kbit max, quality set to 17, progessive checked,zigzag checked, top option checked (can't remember off the top of my head), lum set to 16-235 checked, DCT set to AUTO. It took about 24hours per AVI to encode.

I used TMPGENC to join both MPV files - used the mpeg2(Super VCD VBR) setting - this saved as a MPG file with no audio - I then demux'd the MPG back to a MPV format ( yes there is an easier way, but I don't any utils that join just MPV without audio ). I used pulldown to apply the 29.97 fps flags.
Oh, I also used toolame to encode the one large wav file to mp2(128kbit@44khz).

I then used BBmpeg to join and cut the MPV and MP2 inbto 796meg checks. I also told BBmpeg to start the cutting 27 seconds after the start of the movie and to cut off the credits. I set the delay to 2ms in the SVCD settings.

This created 4 CD's that look pretty good and sound great. It's possible to get better picture quality, but since it took me almost a week of trial by error to get this far - I decided to stay at these settings.

Good luck!

[jugernaut]

Use Nandub. Is an altered Virtual Dub, that doesn't put any problems with audio. I face the same problem with LOR academy rip (spanish) in VirtualDub, but NanDub work flawlessly....