DVDLab Pre-release available for download

[trillium]

Tada!
I've been tinkering with this all day! Looks VERY promising!

Enjoy
http://www.mmbforums.com/cgi-bin/forums/ikonboard.cgi?s=70caf98200a2615951706ef89b2c43...t=ST;f=28;t=26

[Bob W]

Hmm all I get is "This page cannot be found" from the link in that forum.

[MJPollard]

I, too, have been tinkering with it, and it does indeed show a lot of promise. Unfortunately, any DVD I create with it locks up my stand-alone DVD player. (I insert the disc, close the door, and it goes into an infinite "reading" loop; it doesn't want to "lock on" to the disc. It won't eject, and it takes forever to power down. To eject the disc, I have to power the unit back on, then immediately hit the "open/close" button before it gets a chance to see there's a disc inside.)

[trillium]

Ooof! Hmm and I just downloaded it earlier today (sorry!)... If I get a new link I will post it.

MJ, I've burnt two discs so far using it to compile and Nero to burn and neither have had issues in my standalone. I do know there is a forum thread over on the site for issues with the pre-release. I also know they are hard at work to correct all these issues!

Looking forward to the final release

[Bob W]

The link is working now and I got the file. Is this a free program or is it a 30 day thing?

Also I see it won't take VOB files yet which is a nice feature to have as we all know.

Oh I see now it's a 30 day trial so how much will this cost?

[trillium]

I think its $79 ... which is negligable considering the price of some of the other authoring programs that are out there. Like I said I've been fiddling with it and the potential is most DEFINATELY there to fill the gap that Spruce left behind when they were bought by Apple.

[ChrissyBoy]

Just done a quick test concentrating on SVCD support. I imported 2 pure svcd mpgs (program streams). The first thing it did was demux them. then DVDLab told me about the incompatililites of the file type and offered to reencode the audio to 48KHz. I said ok! Eventually i had 480*480 mpeg video streams and 48Kz mpeg audio streams, ready to author! I then authored a quick menu with connections, changed the project settings to SVCD. Then i compiled... Everything worked fine. VERY encouraging. I will test it more later....

CB

& here is the guide for such a project...

[MJPollard]

MJ, I've burnt two discs so far using it to compile and Nero to burn and neither have had issues in my standalone. I do know there is a forum thread over on the site for issues with the pre-release. I also know they are hard at work to correct all these issues!

Oh, I'm sure it's working for the majority of people. After all, it's the nature of DVD burning that nothing works perfectly for everybody. Otherwise, we'd have nothing to talk about.

I'm going to do a few more tests before throwing in the towel and reporting this as a genuine problem. It may be that DVDLab simply didn't like the MPEG files I generated; re-rendering them with different TMPGEnc settings might do the trick. (Or, it just might be the case that my DVD player doesn't like DVDLab-generated discs. I've been looking for an excuse to upgrade the beast, anyway. )

[rickiez]

Has anyone run into this?

I tried to put a SVCD in and after it demuxed and and it prompted me to encode the audio to 48khz it errored and couldn't open the audio file. "....Cause. can't access the file" "....if such a file exists make sure it's not in use"

[trillium]

Best thing I can recommend is any anomolies you run into you post onto the mmbforums over at Mediachance. Oscar is working very hard to iron out all the bugs for the final release and has been keeping the ones who downloaded the pre-release very up to date about the progress of the software.

Remember this is a pre-release (a much awaited one in my opinion) and the more feedback that the author of the program receives the less problems the final first release version of the program will have.

-trilli

[KOF33]

Not even close...

I tried making a home theater test compilation.

Spruce did it just fine but i had to trick it by using dummy files.
Spruce stunk becuase ac3 importing was horrendous and no audio in menus...

This seemed to be working just fine on the interface but the final product wasnt even close.

Chapters were non existent (as opposed to just awful on spruceup).
The audio was stuck on 2 channel instead of dolby digital.
The music was sped up everyhting soudned like the chipmunks.

Pre release yes but many bugs from my experience. Still no good authoring programs that can handle ac3. Period.

[Bob W]

"Pre release yes but many bugs from my experience. Still no good authoring programs that can handle ac3. Period."


I think NeoDVD Plus does AC3 audio.

[ChrissyBoy]

KOF33: plenty of packages do...

[rickiez]

Has anyone else had issues using AC3 audio with it? Is there a maximum bitrate for it? I tried to use a bitrate of 640kbps that was created with BeSweet and during compiling it said something about not being able to packetize the audio and completed with no audio at all.

[trillium]

rickiez, just caught up with your posts over on the DVDLab string on the Mediachance forums. So I ran a little test (posted results there as well).

I have a 1 min commerical from the Sci-Fi channel I have been using to test. I have been able to successfully compile using 224 and 384 bitrates with BeSweet but NOT 256.
I had mentioned something about bitrated before but had never tested the theory.... I think you were onto something. I'll just keep going up in bitrate and seeing what works and doesn't work...from there I am sure it will just offer more pieces to the puzzle for Oscar to work the ac3 bugs out....

Thanks for mentioning the bitrate thing ....

[rickiez]

Cool, good job. Unfortunately I'm at work and can't help out with the tests till I get home later. Let me know what you get up to. My test was at 640kbps which didn't work.

[trillium]

Followup:
Mediachance forums contains an AC3 Success post that I wrote up after running various tests with m2v files and ac3 files (a 1 min test clip I've been working with).

Goodluck all

[JamesB69]

Maestro does AC3

Not even close...

I tried making a home theater test compilation.

Spruce did it just fine but i had to trick it by using dummy files.
Spruce stunk becuase ac3 importing was horrendous and no audio in menus...

This seemed to be working just fine on the interface but the final product wasnt even close.

Chapters were non existent (as opposed to just awful on spruceup).
The audio was stuck on 2 channel instead of dolby digital.
The music was sped up everyhting soudned like the chipmunks.

Pre release yes but many bugs from my experience. Still no good authoring programs that can handle ac3. Period.

[KOF33]

Considering the price , next to no availability and cumbersome interface and learning curve maestro is hardly a solution.


Many "claim" to be able to handle AC3 but I and many others with the same goal in mind have found very few that handle them with any consistency. "Media detection errors" are far too common and ac3 fix does nothing to fix this.

Mutiple menus , music in the menus , 5.1 track handling (i have yet to see a DTS capable program) . Thats all i need yet every program seems to throw up on one portion or another.

[rickiez]

Well, I re-encoded the AC3 audio at 224kbps and it worked fine in powerdvd, BUT...when I play it in my standalone dvd player which plays SVCDs and DVDrs instead loading the menu directly it goes to "stop". If I hit play it plays the movie fine. If i hit "menu" on the remote it goes to the menu but the audio track I put over the menu skips and pops but. The oddest part is that everything plays fine in PowerDVD. When you guys are putting an SVCD on DVD in DVDlab are you setting the project setting for "full D1 at 720 x 480", or 480 x 480?

[rickiez]

You guys think it could be because I burned it DVDrw instead of DVDr to test it? DVDrws take a little longer to be recongnized in my player but i'd assume that since it plays at all it shouldn't make a difference. any thoughts?

[ChrissyBoy]

When you guys are putting an SVCD on DVD in DVDlab are you setting the project setting for "full D1 at 720 x 480", or 480 x 480?

this setting refers to the menus only. i leave it at full d1 - even when the movies are 480 x 480

[a1anp]

DVDlab sounds great but unfortunately doesn't seem to be compatible with my system. The documentation says it's Windows 98/NT/2000/XP compatible (but doesn't mention ME). It installed OK on my ME system, but gives up with an error message when I try to run it. Does anyone know for sure that it doesn't work with ME - might just be my system I suppose.

So I'll just have to struggle along with IfoEdit...

[rickiez]

Works fine on my XP system, but I have the same problem you are having on my 98 SE system.

[MythSpell]

Looking on the feature chart, it shows support for DVD-R, -RW, and +RW but not +R. Is that really true??? It seems very strange that they talk about how much capability this is supposed to have and then not support something as basic as that.

[dvdnew]

DVDlab sounds great but unfortunately doesn't seem to be compatible with my system. The documentation says it's Windows 98/NT/2000/XP compatible (but doesn't mention ME). It installed OK on my ME system, but gives up with an error message when I try to run it. Does anyone know for sure that it doesn't work with ME - might just be my system I suppose.

So I'll just have to struggle along with IfoEdit...

Go to mmbforums and in bugs section and in other topic there is a exe only download just for people with 98, 98SE and ME to make it work.

[boss]

Go to mmbforums and in bugs section and in other topic there is a exe only download just for people with 98, 98SE and ME to make it work.

can't find the patch can someone post a link to it?

[boss]

i found it! here's a link to the new exe:
http://www.mediachance.com/files/DVDlab5.exe
but a guy says he used it and still can't get the program to work!
hope it works for me!

[a1anp]

DVDnew - thanks for the tip... I downloaded the version 5 .exe file but still had problems. There seems to be quite a few people with exactly the same problem - see this thread on the mmbforums for details (and hopefully a fix soon!)

If my attempt at creating a link doesn't work, you'll find the thread in the dvdlab section of mmbforums

[boss]

the new exe did'nt work for me. still got an error!