DAR won´t change.

[hello_hello]

Hi hello_hello,

I got good news, my friend!

Problem solved! The DVD was faulty. I got a new NTSC DVD to test, and with this one
everything works fine now in MeGUI. The Preview window updates with every DAR
change I try (obviously, just for testing purposes), and every DAR I set, stays; I´ve
just done 3 encoding tests and all of them have come out perfectly, no more stretched
aspect ratios, either with its 4:3 NTSC DAR, or a 4:3 PAL DAR, and without having to
check "Clever anamorphic encoding" anymore.

Probably the DVD was being mistaken as 16:9 instead of 4:3, but whatever the reason, I'm glad things are working now. However I'm still thinking we're not using the term "DAR" to mean the same thing. It sounds like you're resizing to square pixels as MeGUI doesn't set an aspect ratio with anamorphic encoding disabled. Anyway....

Regarding my question on File Indexer´s use of DGIndex, I just wanted to know if
you knew if it could be set up, through scripting, etc., to have the sorting and
removing options that DGIndex has by its own, because there are some DVDs
that have various titlesets, and you may need to mix them differently because
some are not in the correct order (I don´t know about you, but I´ve come across
some titles that weren´t in the correct order), or removing some unwanted VOBs.
With One-Click you can only sort them by duration and name, and there´s no
removing. It´s OK if it is not possible, I´ll open DGIndex externally if I ever need
it again.

If the ripped files aren't prepared correctly for encoding it can cause problems, although I'm not 100% sure what you're trying to achieve with DGIndex. Ideally you'd have a set of vob files which are just the movie, or a set of vob files per episode etc. If not it's better to re-author the DVD or ripped files first.
I use DVDShrink for that myself. If you open the DVD (or ripped files) with it and use it's re-author mode you can drag the movie or episode titles from the right pane to the left, then use the backup function to resave the DVD. That'll give you a set of vob files per movie/episode and you can just open the first vob file in the set with MeGUI for encoding. No need to join vob files with DGIndex etc. If you use DVDShrink, just set the target output size to something large in DVDShrink's preferences so it won't try to re-encode anything.
Personally, I rip and re-author DVDs in one step by opening the disc with DVDShrink directly and using the re-author function before "backing up" the disc to my hard drive for encoding. For discs with newer copy protections I run AnyDVD in the background.

[vidqual]

Hi,

Probably the DVD was being mistaken as 16:9 instead of 4:3, but whatever the reason, I'm glad things are working now. However I'm still thinking we're not using the term "DAR" to mean the same thing. It sounds like you're resizing to square pixels as MeGUI doesn't set an aspect ratio with anamorphic encoding disabled. Anyway....

I din´t resize at all, I just let the Resize option unchecked, and then I set what was
supposed to be its original DAR, 4:3 NTSC in Input DAR (it was already set by
MeGUI), and once the avs file saved, in the second Preview window, I made sure
this same DAR was set too, BUT here came the problem: the picture looked
stretched, and the encoded file also came out stretched. So, I tried every single
DAR available from MeGUI´s GUI. ALL of them looked stretched in the Preview
window, plus the encoded video came out stretched too. Obviously I tried all
available DARs just for testing purposes. The only way that the aspect ratio came
out fine, was when checking "Clever anamorphic encoding" BUT with a 4:3 PAL DAR;
with the other DARs set, it also came out stretched. I did many many tests, even
through x264´s CLI, and only a 4:3 PAL DAR came out fine. All of this with that
same "re-mastered" "NTSC" DVD. When I tried a new NTSC DVD, all worked
perfectly, its 4:3 NTSC appeared fine in the Preview window, and the encoded
video too. 2 days ago I did some tests with a PAL DVD, and this one was read
perfectly; its 4:3 PAL DAR displays fine too. End of story! Hehe...

If the ripped files aren't prepared correctly for encoding it can cause problems, although I'm not 100% sure what you're trying to achieve with DGIndex. Ideally you'd have a set of vob files which are just the movie, or a set of vob files per episode etc. If not it's better to re-author the DVD or ripped files first.
I use DVDShrink for that myself. If you open the DVD (or ripped files) with it and use it's re-author mode you can drag the movie or episode titles from the right pane to the left, then use the backup function to resave the DVD. That'll give you a set of vob files per movie/episode and you can just open the first vob file in the set with MeGUI for encoding. No need to join vob files with DGIndex etc. If you use DVDShrink, just set the target output size to something large in DVDShrink's preferences so it won't try to re-encode anything.
Personally, I rip and re-author DVDs in one step by opening the disc with DVDShrink directly and using the re-author function before "backing up" the disc to my hard drive for encoding. For discs with newer copy protections I run AnyDVD in the background.

Thanks for the tip. The DVDs with various titlesets, mixed order and unwanted VOBs I was
referring to, are not from regular movies, but, for example, guitar courses an alike. These
kind of DVDs may have like 20 or so very small titlesets, with some unwanted VOBs which
are intros, outros, etc. For this kind of DVDs I prefer to select the VOBs manually and take
note of the correct order I want, eliminating the unwanted ones. For this manual method of
sorting, DGIndex is more adequate. It´s always worked perfectly for me and I saved a lot of
time cutting or deleting unwanted sections of video. This is why I miss DGIndex interface in
MeGUI.

Thanks once again, mate!

Cheers.

[hello_hello]

When I tried a new NTSC DVD, all worked
perfectly, its 4:3 NTSC appeared fine in the Preview window, and the encoded
video too. 2 days ago I did some tests with a PAL DVD, and this one was read
perfectly; its 4:3 PAL DAR displays fine too. End of story! Hehe...

Where I'm still a little lost regarding what you're saying (forgetting the original "problem" DVD for now) is if you open a DVD, whether it be 4:3, 16:9, NTSC or PAL, and you encode it without enabling resizing or without enabling anamorphic encoding, there's no way it can display correctly using MeGUI's preview and no way the encoded video can display using the correct aspect ratio on playback (unless you force the player to use the correct aspect ratio).
A 4:3 NTSC DVD is 720x480, which is not 4:3. For PAL it's 720x576 which is also not 4:3. The only way to encode them correctly is to either enable anamorphic encoding (if the playback device supports anamorphic video in MKV/MP4 files) which will get the player to resize the video to the correct 4:3 aspect ratio on playback, or to enable resizing and resize the DVD to square pixel dimensions before encoding.

Opening an anamorphic 4:3 DVD encode using MPC-HC should have it display the video properties as something like 720x576 (4:3) or 720x480 (4:3). If it only shows 720x576 or 720x480 then the video isn't being displayed using the correct aspect ratio. Alternatively if you enabled resizing when encoding, MPC-HC will show 4:3 dimensions such as 720x540 or 640x480 etc in which case the video will display correctly.

When the second preview window opens after saving the script for encoding with MeGUI, what aspect ratio is shown below video? Unless it's close to 1.33333 (whether you resize or use anamorphic encoding) then the video isn't being encoded correctly.

Thanks for the tip. The DVDs with various titlesets, mixed order and unwanted VOBs I was
referring to, are not from regular movies, but, for example, guitar courses an alike. These
kind of DVDs may have like 20 or so very small titlesets, with some unwanted VOBs which
are intros, outros, etc. For this kind of DVDs I prefer to select the VOBs manually and take
note of the correct order I want, eliminating the unwanted ones. For this manual method of
sorting, DGIndex is more adequate. It´s always worked perfectly for me and I saved a lot of
time cutting or deleting unwanted sections of video. This is why I miss DGIndex interface in
MeGUI.

I've not worked with many DVDs like that but the principle for using DVDShrink to prepare the video would still be the same. I doubt it'd be any slower as DVDShrink lets you preview each titleset before you include it when re-authoring, and the backup function saves each titleset as a single vob file (or set of vob files) so you don't have to think about which vob files to use or the order they should be in when opening them for indexing/encoding. DVDShrink also has the ability to edit titlesets using a preview if need be, letting you keep just the video you want to encode. I use that a lot to remove the studio logos from the beginning of movies before saving the re-authored version for encoding.

As long as you have a method which works for you...... although manually joining vob files in order to encode them as a single file can sometimes cause audio sync problems if the video and audio streams in the vob files aren't exactly the same duration or they use different delays for the audio streams. If you find you have any sync problems try re-authoring the DVD first.

[vidqual]

Hi,

When the second preview window opens after saving the script for encoding with MeGUI, what aspect ratio is shown below video? Unless it's close to 1.33333 (whether you resize or use anamorphic encoding) then the video isn't being encoded correctly.

I don´t remember what exact ratio the old problematic DVD showed, but the new NTSC DVD
shows 3:2 (1.500). Then, here what I do is checking the Preview DAR and change it to 4:3
NTSC or PAL. The picture updates to this ratio perfectly (something that didn´t happen with
the old DVD), and the encoded video comes out fine with that DAR.

As long as you have a method which works for you...... although manually joining vob files in order to encode them as a single file can sometimes cause audio sync problems if the video and audio streams in the vob files aren't exactly the same duration or they use different delays for the audio streams. If you find you have any sync problems try re-authoring the DVD first.

Yes, thank you, but I never had any audio out-of-sync problems with this type of DVD; otherwise
I wouldn´t ever use this method. If you´re interested, I could tell you privately what kind of DVD
has that many small titlesets.

Cheers.