cool new package DVD2DVDR ... !

[mrbass]

my experience with 1.4.8 is that subtitles are created (not empty like in 1.4.7) but now I get a compile error with Scenarist. Bummer!

I experience the same a compile error in scenarist..thus a no go.

Was that pulldownmod verified to NOT work for sure or is it still debateable or am I just tossing a dead horse into the wind and IFOEDIT is useless with NTSC titles?

[rob w]

ifoedit is a no-go for NTSC. Will look pretty much ok and play sound in sync but with only 80% of the frames. The subtitle error was posted on Chatwalker's board and he has replied. I assume he will work on this problem for a future release.

[mosh]

New version 1.4.9 out

Ver 1.4.9 [26.04.2003]
- now using EclCCE 1.4a
- support for Cinema Craft Encoder SP 2.67.00.10 Trial
- error while setting audio to present is fixed (only appears if language is 'Not specified')
- error while setting subtitle to present is fixed (only appears if language is 'Not specified')
- hungarian, greek and czech support for IfoEdit added

[mrbass]

here's a mirror of 1.4.9 [4.47MB]
http://www.mrbass.org/dvd2dvdr/DVD2DVDR_149.exe

Did this fix the scenarist compile error with subtitles. Anyone test that out yet?

[rob w]

just tested an NTSC film under 1.4.9 in Scenarist mode with subtitles and got the same compile error. Without subtitles all went well.

[mrbass]

SON OF A ...alright I'll calm down...there's always next release. I'm still wasting my time away trying somehow to get IFOEDIT to work with NTSC. That'll be my lifelong goal.

I need subtitles...if I didn't then I'd just use DVD2SVCD for DVD to DVDR.

I use Scenarist NT...should we be using 2.6 or 2.7 instead perhaps?

[icemanatvcd]

Where would I find guide for this app?

Thanks.

[ArrogantBastard]

Hey everyone... Remember me...

I have some interesting results to post. Today I started playing with the MPEGDecoder.dll again. As we all know that version of the decoder has an audio sync problem and that was why Chatwalker was nice enough to provide the option to choose the decoder.

Well when I was testing it last I had noticed that the DVD was not being recognized at progressive when the check marks came up in the Encoder tab. Occassionally they come up as progressive but a lot of times the DVD has an opening scene that is interlaced.

A lot of the higher end DVD's do not have this issue and are recognized by DVD2DVD-R and BitaRate Viewer as progressive. So I was curious and ran Braveheart through using the MPEGDECODER.DLL because this DVD is recognized as progressive.

End result... Perfect Sync audio and CCE encoding speed of 1.96 up from 1.44. So I am thinking that any DVD that that has the top box in the MPEG Encode tab labeled Progressive Frames checked when you choose your PGC might work fine using MPEGDecoder.dll. This is a huge speed increase and although it might not work for all of them... It might give us all a little boost for some of them

Thanks for listening
AB

[defense]

@AB, glad to hear from you. I gotta give you credit, your grueling experimentation seems to yield positive results. It did with the "mpeg" decoders and it may very well now. Another thing I noticed with DVD2DVDR and those other versions is that progressive frames weren't being tagged properly, and as a result, half of the movies I had which would flicker back and forth between Interlaced and Progressive in DVD2AVI such as "BRAVEHEART" would come out with either the upper or lower border flickering when I watched the movie. Incidentally, only HALF of the movies which showed a rapid flicker of BOTH Progressive/Interaced in DVD2AVI had this issue. I still can't figure out WHY only HALF of the movies have this issue.

Braveheart is NOT one of them, interestingly. Braveheart, Gladiator, Oceans 11, are just a few which DON'T have ANY noticeable border flickering. But movies such as Dick Tracy and Spiderman did have the issue. The only thing I knew is that half of my movies that would show interlace/progressive throughout the entire movie in DVD2AVI had the issue. I still can't figure out WHY only half. But there has to be SOME difference between the movies.

One thing I realized was that when I took the end project and ran it through pulldown with "progressive' frames set to true...the issue was OBSOLETE. I could watch all of those problem movies with no issue at all. But then I thought I saw it all..that was until I got "SIGNS" AND NOTICED THAT THE ORIGINAL had the upper border flickering like crazy. I checked this through DVD2AVI and the "NTSC" version of SIGNS is "NOT" progressive...but rather, flickers between Progressive and Interlaced in DVD2AVI, just like the other problem movies.

I had to rip the movie to my HD...reencode a little bit and run the .m2v file through pulldown with "progressive" frames set to true...so the original commercial NTSC version of SIGNS has this flickering...but my BACKUP doesn't! LMAO...crazy, huh? I wonder if being that "Braveheart" is one of the movies which doesn't have this issue...although I never ran "progressive" frames on it.....has anything to do with why the other movies do and don't have the issue too.


Let me know what you think.

[mrbass]

Where would I find guide for this app?

Thanks.

I saw one here the other day
http://www.mrbass.org/dvd2dvdr

[p_NUT]

@mrbass
Great guide!! That is exactly what I have been hoping someone would post, screenshots and all.
Gonna play this weekend.
Thanks all,
p-NUT

[rob w]

@AB
Thanks for the update on your study of frame serving with mpegdecoder. Over at Nic's site ( http://nic.dnsalias.com/ ) there have been a number of updates to the program since Chatwalker first incorporated it into DVD2DVD-r on January 30, 2003. The most recent version has a file date of February 16, 2003.

Here are some of the improvements:

Changelog as of 2.0 alpha

2.03 alpha
Automatic Transport stream support
added use of manual counting of frames and directshow guessing

2.02 alpha
Fixed the frame counting bug

2.01 alpha
Fixed a problem when using Force Film, check documentation for updates

The newest version 2.03a is available for download and is a single file MPEGDECODER.DLL . It would be intestesting to replace the version Chatwalker is using with this update to see if it corrects the sync issue. From the sound of the improvements (Force Film problem, frame counting bug) it could be that the "old" problems of audio sync are fixed.

[clairehoward]

Hi Im having a problem with the new version it is giving me a size of 4.35 gig, insted of 4.31. I have tried it 3 times and the last time it was set to secure. The film is pal Dancing with Wolves & is just over 3hours long.

[ArrogantBastard]

@clairehoward

I have never had that problem with a video that I had to reencode, but did have it once with a with a video that DVD2DVD-R reported should fit on a disc without encoding.

I think this is a glitch in estimating how much the subtitles and audio take up. You should be able to lower the average bitrate and maximum bitrate down a point or two and have it fit on.

Anyone else ever run across this?

@defense and @robw...
I had checked the new version of MPEGDecoder.dll at Nic's address in March but that didn't fix the problem. I posted the problem on Doom9 back then but never heard anything. If you guys get a spare second see if you can confirm my results.

@defense... Thanks for the update on the flicker with progressive scans. I wonder if it had anything to do with how it was recognized? Hmmm... Just curious... The newer versions seem to have fixed the problem for now.

AB

[rob w]

The link below gives some good insight into why some videos flicker while others do not. Setting DVD2DVD-r to force film is usually the right move but some videos are poorly telcined in the first place so they are very hard to reencode. They can be mixtures of interlaced and progressive frames. The general recommendation is to try using the following approaches in the order given. Going from Force Film to IVTC can cause a big hit in quality so don't do it unless necessary. (DVD2SVCD can do IVTC or Deinterlace for you, if needed).

Force Film > IVTC > DeInterlace

take a look at this article for many more details:
http://www.doom9.org/ivtc-tut.htm

[defense]

@robw, good lookin' out man! This is what I have been bustin' my brain on for a good month or so now. Being that I finally discovered that the "reencoded" movie, once run with "progressive frames" set to true in pulldown.exe allows the movie to play smoothly. So out of the 30 movies I had with the combination of Progressive/Interlaced frames, about half of them (15) played perfectly, while the other half needed to be changed to all progressive frames in pulldown.exe.


I almost shit when I saw the ORIGINAL version "NTSC" of "SIGNS" had this flickering issue. NOT to my surprise, the film was a mixture of Progressive and Interlaced. I ran pulldown with progressive frames set to true on that film and VOILA! My backup plays flawlessly while my original flickers...LMAO....what do you think about that?

Update: Interesting link and of course what I wanted was close to the very bottom. The article specified "jerky" playback with hybrid DVD's and I guess "jerky" would be a correct term. Being that pulldown seems to solve the problem when progressive frames are checked...I don't see any reason to reencode any differently, as quality can suffer miserably. What do you think?


:P

[wayned16]

just like to say nice work guys keep it up... Also a shout out to MrBass for creating a brillant guide...with my URL at the bottom hehe

thanks

[mrbass]

Actually credit goes to wayned16 or razorman (one in the same) for teaching me how to use scenarist with dvd2dvd-r as I hadn't a clue. He posted the method in his forum and I just took some screenshots that's all...hehe.

[wayned16]

yep it was me, Im RandomZ in my forum as well as wayned16 on here.

[rdalcanto]

Does 1.4.9 have an authoring selection for DVDMaestro or just Scenarist?
For Maestro, is anyone checking any of the "flags" or just film and 2:3 pulldown.

Thanks,
Rick

[ArrogantBastard]

@All...

Just a followup... The MPEGDecoder.dll does not and I repeat NOT sync for all films that show as progressive. Oh well... Back to the drawing board... But it does for some... Not sure why.

@Rob W...
Very cool link.

AB

[KungFuCow]

Just when you thought this thread was dead, here it comes again.

What version is everyone currently using? I haven't had 1 successful backup with 1.4.9 and need to roll back to an earlier version. 1.4.9 will not run Pulldown, it gives me a "File not found " error when it gets called and yes, it is there. Even skipping Pulldown and trying to author in Scenarist gives me a "This title has placeholders" error.

Thanks!

[JWhit]

I am still using version 1.4.5. I have never had any problems with it, other than you can not do subtitles. Hopefully the next version will correct that.

It does look like things have died down on DVD2DVDR. According to Chat's forum, he is very busy. Might be a while before the next release.

[Timoleon]

Just when you thought this thread was dead, here it comes again.

What version is everyone currently using? I haven't had 1 successful backup with 1.4.9 and need to roll back to an earlier version. 1.4.9 will not run Pulldown, it gives me a "File not found " error when it gets called and yes, it is there. Even skipping Pulldown and trying to author in Scenarist gives me a "This title has placeholders" error.

Thanks!

Just finished the original "Terminator" with 1.4.9, using DVDLab to mux and burn. Took about 8 hours, but it came out flawlessly Would have taken less time if I had used DVD Decrypter to rip rather than have DVD2DVDR do it, but I was a little short on disk space...

[darklowasia]

Hi! I installed DVD2DVDR 1.34 on my system, it works fine.
But, after I installed DVD2DVDR 1.49, the encoder tab is grey out. It seems like this new 1.49 didn't detect CCE 2.50. Then, I installed CCE 2.67 on my system..oh man, the encoder tab is still grey out .

Please help .... thanks .

PS. I did try to install DVD2DVDR from 1.37 to 1.48....same problem.....encoder tab is grey out

[mosh]

@darlowasia

go into the settings and tick expert features and it will allow you to browse to where cce is installed

[octavias]

The pulldown function in DVD2DVDR has problems with any kind of spacing in directory names, it produces a fill not found error as KungFuCow found.

My problem is that DVD2DVDR wants to give a generic name for my DVD titles thus producing a space in the folder name i.e. New Volume_24.05.2003_22.34. The space between New and Volume is blowing the process when it gets to the pulldown. I am using DVDDecrypter in file mode to ripe the DVD. Apparently DVD2DVDR can't pull a title name from a file mode rip for some reason.

I have attempted to use Infoedit to try and locate an entry for title, but have had no success, most likely due to my inexperience with IFOs.

I could go with an ISO rip, but I get the feeling I'm just missing something real simple to correct the problem with a file rip. Any help is greatly appreciated.

[mrbass]

I could go with an ISO rip, but I get the feeling I'm just missing something real simple to correct the problem with a file rip. Any help is greatly appreciated.

well that's all I do nowadays...rip to .iso...every program works from iso virtually mounted by daemon-tools. DVD2SVCD just added it the lastest update (before it could only read from files or directly from the dvd itself. With dvd2dvd-r I was initially letting it rip directly but if I had to do the encode over..it was a pain to re-rip it again.

So by all means do an .iso rip if you have an NTFS partition to do so.

[octavias]

Took your advice and gave up on using file rips, MB. ISOs are working perfect. Thanks for the excellent guides.

[ddlooping]

Hello all.

Considering the lenght of this thread you all must be experts on DVD2DVD-R now.
So here are a few simple questions for you:
To backup PAL, R2 DVDs, I have read that it is faster to use MPEGDecoder.dll as opposed to MPEG2DEC2.dll.
(DVD2DVD-R v1.4.7)
If this is so, what amount of time is saved on an average movie? A few minutes or a considerable % of the overal encoding time?
Does the quality suffer from this increase in speed?
And finally, is it always safe to use MPEGDecoder.dll with R2s, or are there exceptions?

Thanks in advance,
ddlooping

P.S: are there any PAL, R2 DVDs that require the use of "Upper field first" or is it solely a NTSC feature?