DVD playing time shows incorrect in PowerDVD

[MisterE]

Greetings, all. I bought a Pioneer A04 drive a few weeks ago and have been playing around with DVD ripping. I'm more-or-less following the Doom9 guides, and I've got a fair amount of experience ripping from DVD to VCD.

I'm having trouble with playback times when I have to transcode the video when ripping from DVD to DVD-R (when the movie is too big to fit on one DVD-R). For example, I just ripped my copy of "The Aventures of Baron Munchausen" and stripped out unneeded audio and subtitle tracks. The movie is about 2:06:07 long. I used DVD2AVI (forced FILM) and the AVISynth method, and reencoded the video with CCE at a CBR of 4000Kb. Ran the resulting video through PULLDOWN. I haven't had good results using IfoEdit to mux a video stream into a VOB set, so I used IfoEdit to author (I supplied video, ac3 audio, subtitles, chapters). My resulting VOB set plays like it should. Subtitles work, audio is in sync, video looks good. I'm pretty sure that the video will play for 2:06:07 if I let it play all the way through. My problem is that PowerDVD only shows 1:40:56 as total playing time and my chapter marks aren't in the correct positions (and I only have 22 chapters instead of the original 28 chapters).

I think that I partially understand the problem.The video for the original stream reports 227031 frames, and the video for the transcoded stream reports 181693 frames. 181693 / 23.976 (FILM fps) / 60 (seconds per minute) = 126.3 minutes (2 hours 6 minutes 18 seconds, or approximately the correct length of the film). 181693 / 29.97 (NTSC fps) / 60 (seconds per minute) = 101.04 minutes (1 hour 41 minutes 2 seconds, or approximately the (incorrect) reported length of the movie). It looks like the movie is playing back at 23.976 fps, but PowerDVD is reporting back numbers as if it is playing back at 29.97 fps. My chapters don't line up correctly because they are based on a video stream that is 227031 frames in length.

Any ideas on what I've done wrong? I'm about to do the transcode process again, and I'm not going to force FILM in DVD2AVI, and I guess that I will not run my output through PULLDOWN.

Any replies would be appreciated.

E.

[MisterE]

Just an update: I haven't got this to work, yet.

E.

[Revilo]

I have the exact same problem. I think the problem arises from authoring in IFOedit. After researching this problem a bit, I found info that says IFOedit authoring does not handle pulldown properly. Therefore, what I think is happening is that your original source is probably 30 fps (as mine is in this example) and when you force film, it changes to 24 fps. Usually, pulldown will correct this, however IFOedit doesn't seem to accept the pulldown. Your result is a movie that plays to fast, 30/24 too fast. If you try playing it back at .8 speed, you will see it is perfect. I am not sure exactly how to correct this problem yet, but I did just try something that seemed to work. In dvd2avi I turned force film off. The encoded file is now the proper length, although I do have interlacing issues now (no idea why really..) so next I am going to try de-interlacing and see if it fixes it. Please, if anyone has some knowledge of what is going on here, please enlighten us. Info: My source is Gladiator, NTSC, and ifo file says its at 30 fps.

Revilo

[Revilo]

I did a little bit more research on this.. Using dvd2avi to check my source, it is indeed 24fps film. I believe this means pulldown is used on the dvd to make it play back at the proper 30fps. IFOedit appears to be ignoring the pulldown, even when I use pulldown on the encoded file. There is either a problem with how i'm using pulldown or with IFOedit. Since I have authored the same files in spruceup with no problem, my guess is IFOedit is the problem. I guess we will have to wait for Derrow to fix this. Shame since IFOedit is the only authoring tool i currently have that will author DTS


One thing that we could try is this:
To fix the chapters on the newly authored file, take the original chapter points and multiply them all by .8 to get the correct position. After the file is authored, we could try changing the frames in the chapters and total to 1.25 of the newly authored ifo(this would make them all match the original ifo). I really don't think this will work, but its worth a shot. I did try to change the total frames in an IFOedit authored file by 1.25 and it correctly changed the total play length. However, when I did a get vts sectors, it changed it back. I'm thinking this might be due to the chapter/cell information and positions, then again it could be due to info in the .vob files. If it is because of the .vob files, then there is nothing we can do until it is fixed. Does anyone know if the .vob files determine the play length and speed of the film, or can the ifo file determine this?
Revilo

[tonyp12]

Ifoedit have a bug with NTSC FILM DVDs due to Telecine.

http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=124896&highlight=

IfoUpdate 0.57 can write a chapter file for the DVD authoring function in IfoEdit and unlike the VobEdit created file this one will actually match the chapter structure of the disc. Then there's an option to pre-correcting chapter offsets using the DVD authoring option in IfoEdit, the Correct VTS Sectors option has been adjusted to handle discs without VTS_XX_0.VOB files and last but not least the application got its own logo.

http://www.doom9.org/Soft21/Vobtools/IFOUpdate-v057.zip

[Revilo]

Tony,

Are you suggesting IFOupdate as a solution to this problem? If so, could you elaborate on the steps involved in fixing the IFOedit authored dvd (with wrong chapter and playtime).

Revilo

[tonyp12]

Yes, untill Derrow fix this bug.

Use IFoUpdate instead of Ifoedit to create the celltime list.
It is in the File Menu

You need to rename it to celltimes.txt

[Revilo]

Thanks Tony I'll give that a try and see if it works.

[Revilo]

Tony,

I used the newly created celltimes.txt file for my chapters, and they came out perfect. However, my movie total time is still .8 what it should be. The entire movie is there, it just plays too quickly. Is there a way to fix this with ifoupdate also??

[tonyp12]

You can edit (IFOEdit) the Playback Time (BCD), it is in the VTS_PGCITI



So copy that number from the original Rip (ctrl+c)
and double click on the new shorter number and paste (ctrl+v)
and click save.

I have never tested it as I'm OK that PowerDVD
displays wrong movie lenght.

But I will test one now and see.....................

Update:

PowerDVD still report wrong time,
so maybe every single Cell_x need to be adjusted????

[Revilo]

You might be right about adjusting each cell, however I don't think this is going to fix the problem. When I adjust the total playtime, then hit get vts sectors, it changes it right back. The problem is with the telecine, and I'm not sure exactly how that works, whether it is the ifo file or vob file that has the telecine information. My guess is that it is in the vob files, in which case changing the ifo file will do us no good when we do a get vts sectors. I think this is an authoring bug that will have to be fixed. I emailed derrow and he said he is too busy to work on this problem right now(and legally may not want to or be able to). I am going to try and author the dvd in spruceup and then demux it. Then author again with ifoedit. I am skeptical that this will do me any good, but its worth a shot. Another option is to talk to jdobbs who wrote ifoupdate, which will fix the chapter problems, however it doesn't fix the total playtime problem. Maybe he will have some insight on how to fix this.

Revilo