Playback issues and the like

[mghtbgiant]

i have been getting quite fed up with burning discs, and watching them on my standalone only to see them skip, lock, freeze, whatnot..

what im curious about is what is the cause? ive seen plenty of threads. but everyone seems to have their own take. i guess i cant expect to get a definitive answer because everyones setup is different.

i use ritek 1x dvd-r (i think g03, silver on top, purple on bottom) with my pioneer a05 burner. my standalone player is a sony dvp-ns300. i was a long time user a nero but shyed away from it due to reading some bad things about it.. i have (as of today) installed the newest version.. will this help? i have been using a program called discjugler but i get playback issues with it as well. i think at one point i tried recordmax, but something was funky so i quit using it.. should i go back? also, i see some people who first create a disc image, and then burn the image to disc.. will this help?

any help is greatly appreciated.. i am about 45% through my 100 dvd-r's so ive got a little while to wait if its a media problem.. but i dont think it is.. everyone seems to be quite content with ritek..

again, thanks
~mghtbgiant

[SaSi]

It's a bit of a wild guess here, but if playback freezes (momentarily) and motion is uneven, followed by sound stopping and re-starting and everything comming back to normal after a few seconds, I guess it may be caused by buffer overruning the DVD player.

The DVD must not have more than 9.8Mbps streams (video and audio combined). MPEG encoders allow you higher bitrates for video and if you also add audio you may exceed the limit.

How do you encode the MPEG-2 files? What settings?

[mghtbgiant]

excellent.. someone who sounds like they can help..

admittedly i have been a little bit of a lazy ripper. to this point my methods have included these steps:

1.) smartripper to hd.. always the entire disc.

2.) depending on dvd, features, etc i have been using dvd2one 1.0.2 or instantcopy 7.

3.) if using instantcopy, i would then go through VOBs and remove the stuff i didnt want (warnings, p-ups).. get vts sectors and off i went.

i have tried dabbling with avisynth and some such things, but got completely distraught after discovering the wealth of knowledge i lacked. i was therefore daunted from going the true re-encoding path due to lack of time to research the topic fully.

i am now back on the path to wanting to learn re-encoding. this has been prompted by the age-old comparison flick, saving private ryan. i just used dvd2one and it looks like crap.. admittedly, it is usually good enough as i am no videophile snob.. but there is a point to my tolerance. and on saving private ryan, even a laid-back pseudo re-encoding layman such as myself will trek down previously untrodden (by me) trails.

anyway.. all help is appreciated.. i finally found out how to burn a dvd disc with recordnow max 4.5 and things went a little smoother.. your touching on bitrate actually brings light to the subject and it makes sense.. i have read bitrate jargon before but never paid much mind to it as it was always over my head.. and people who like to throw the term around, typically assume everyone knows what is going on..

anyway... i just used dvd2one and recordnow 4.5 to convert and burn shawshank redemption.. it is the first movie ive burnt with recordnow.. things went pretty well at first.. then not too long into the film it did its thing where it freezes for a second.. then it goes.. and usually within 30 seconds it does it again or locks completely.. funny enough.. i can usually get around it by ejecting the disc, powering off the player, and then picking up where the skip was.. and then its not there again.. but then toward the end of the movie (at the very end) it did it again.. and i ejected, powered off, turned it back on and went to the last chapter i was at... and it worked flawlessly.. so, my ignorance leaves me in the dark as to what might be the cause, but it sounds to be like bitrate might be partly responsible.

i have every program imaginable. i have cce and tmpeg.. dvd2dvdr.. dvdmaestro.. i believe i have all the tools for the job, but no knowledge..

do you know of a good tutorial for encoding a movie which explains the finer things in the re-encoding process (eg bitrate). i really dont know where to start and i have been reasonably satisfied with dvd2one and/or instant copy.. until saving private ryan. i know cce is the best method.. but it takes a while.. that doesnt bother me. ill start it and let it run overnight..

anyway.. ill cut my novel short.. any help would be MUCH appreciated!!

[SaSi]

I can understand your feelings and frustration. When I started this "adventure" for creating SVCDs out of my camcorder "movies" I, like you, lacked the knowledge and understanding of the jargon. Too many ways of doing the same thing and no way of knowing which way is right.

Anyhow, this was, well, back in December, just before Christmas. Give it a month or so and you will become proficient yourself.

I confess I don't understand half a word of your "jargon". Never used tools like DVD2One or Instantcopy or REMPEG, etc. For more control over the work and, perhaps, a tendency to do things in the "classic" way... And I agree with your

To the point, though:

The way I would rip a DVD (especially if the movie has action and is long), is the following (not a guide, just the steps. Feel free to ask explanations for the ones you don't understand).

1. Rip the movie (backup) onto the Hard disk (I use SmartRipper)
2 Use FlaskMpeg (v.0.60) to decode the movie and soundtrack out of the VOB files. I encode the video with DivX 5.02 (constant quality = 2) or hufyuv.
3. Use Tmpgenc or MainConcept to encode the video and audio back to MPEG-2 streams that can fit onto a DVD.
4. Use Smartripper to rip the subtitles from the movie
5. Use Scenarist (but also ULEAD DVD Workshop) to author the DVD.

The trick in quality is the encoding step. (I recommend Mainconcept - Quality is at least equal to tmpgenc and way faster. CCE is too expensive ). You need to create a video stream that just fits onto the DVD without being larger and without wasting space.

At the same time, you must observe DVD specs. These say that at any given time in the movie, the total bitrate of all streams (look in SmartRipper to see what these streams are - video, several audio tracks and subtitle tracks), must not exceed 9,800,000 bps.

The best way to do things is VBR encoding (i.e. variable bit rate encoding). You tell the encoder to encode still scenes at a low bit rate, so that space can be saved for action scenes. You define the minimum (so that it doesn't starve; a good value is 200~500), define the maximum (a good value is 7,000,000) and the average. This is the trick.

Bitrate calculators are supposed to make things easier here (and you may appreciate them, but I never managed to use one of them effectivelly) but I do it manually.

Suppose you have a 2 hours movie (120 min). Suppose audio is to be encoded at 128kbps (good for 2 hours). 128kbps x 60 x 60 x 2 /8 gives 115.200 Kb (115Mb). The calculation is bitrate per sec x sec/min x min/hour x hours of movie divided by 8 (8 bits in a byte).

So, if we need to reserve 115 Mb for the audio (and another, say, 50Mb of overhead for authoring), we remain with 4.300.000 - 150.000 = 4.150.000.000 bytes for the video.

Doing the opposite calculations, we reach a rule of thumb of 4800 kbps average bitrate for the video (of two hours).

That's the general idea. Has worked for me always (with Tmpgenc as the encoder - but with encoding times of more than 9 hours. Mainconcept will take 2 hours instead).

Feel free to ask me to elaborate to anything you don't fully understand.

Cheers.

[mghtbgiant]

alright.. i just typed a huge thing and wasnt "logged in" then when i logged in, my thing here was blank.. i think we have a bug people.. theyre called form variables.. SAVE THEM...

alright.. the jist of my last post was this.. do you have to convert from VOBs to avi to begin with period?? also, i tried DVD2AVI using DivX 5.0.2 on Saving Private Ryan and it looked like crap.. i dont think i tweaked anything.. i think it was set for one pass VBR.. anyway.. what codec do you use and what are good settings.. i know settings depend on length and type of film..

thanks again.. this help is much appreciated!