DVD->MPEG2/WAV/Subtitle->New MPEG2 w/subtitle

Hi All,

I am about 80% finished with the procedure to create quality (read: lossless) MPEG music videos from a DVD rip WITH SUBTITLES. It seems that there is no one program out there that will do this as a one-click option. I tried quite few.

So far this is about a 5-step process, I have completed steps 1-4 so far:

1. Rip entire DVD to Hard Drive with DVD FAB Decrypter

2. De-multiplex: Create elementary MPEG2/audio streams from VOBs, I think I used ReJig, I've tried quite a few, but I got my 3 WAV audio steams (there are 3 audio tracks I want), a m2v video stream, and a (unusable) subtitle file.

3. Due to the fact the every subtitle tool fails in trying to get a a valid subtitle file out of the VOBs, I used Subrip to read subtitles from VOBs using OCR character recognition to create a valid .srt file.

4. Used Subtitle Processor to check subtitle placement and timing.

5. Re-Mux or ReEncode the subtitle info with the de-muxed video/audio streams for a finished playable MPEG2 with best quality. (Note: only 1 audio track will be used per MPEG, I'll have 3 of the same video/subtitle, but different audio on each.)

I've tried using VirtualdubMod with the TV text filter. I works great, but I'm not happy with the recoded AVI output (I used DivX encoder - I know, it's lossy). I can't seem to find a good way to re-encode in a decent lossless format without ballooning the file size.

Can anybody give me a good way to Re-encode or Re-Mux the subtitles into a new MPEG or other lossless format file? I want this to be a standalone MPEG that can be played through a piece of presentation software. i will NOT be burning this back to a DVD.

TIA!
-Garth

If you use high enough bitrate for divx or xvid you should be able to get similiar result as the mpg. Reencoding to mpg is also lossy.

But you can frameserve from virtualdubmod to a mpeg encoder like mainconcept mpeg encoder, www.videohelp.com/virtualdubframeserve

You can't "remux" subs into a mpg file. You must then make a dvd or use some other "container" with subtitle support.


And I think that the old dvd2svcd or/and dvdx can convert dvd to dvd with perm subs...you can then convert the outputted dvd to a mpg with vob2mpg.

Thanks for the reply Baldrick. I have read many of your fine guides, thanks for all your work!

Anyways, I had a notion that frameserving to an mpeg encoder would be the way to go.

I tried dvdx, but it, like many others, refuses to encode the subtitles in these vobs. I have been told that other people have had the same issue. I'm not sure what the issue is.

I will continue trying. Maybe a guide will come of this.


garth

guns1inger - I guess that somehow I thought that re-encoding MPEG from MPEG would not result in a significant loss of quality. I know that my first try with DiVX did not live up to my expectation.

So, I guess my real question is, what is the best re-encoding method to go from DVD-MPEG2 to another format (or MPEG) that offers the best quality (to display video on a projection screen)? The file must be a standalone file, playable through media player.

So far Baldrick has offered high-bitrate DiVX as a possible solution...


garth

Thanks guns1inger, I will give that a try. My clips are only 6 minutes long (music videos) so I won't get to the 40-50 Gig size. But still, I don't want to eat up space when I could have quality just as good as the original source by using a better tool and the proper settings.

I am enjoying and finding some good info related to this on this thread:
What is the "best" freeware MPEG-2 DVD Spec encoder? by FulciLives

-garth

Success!

Using the guide How to frameserve (dvd2avi / VirtualDub / Avisynth / VFAPI) I successfully did a framserve of my m2v with VirtualDub (with the SubText filter to get my subtitles) to Cinema Craft Encoder. I then added my wav audio track and encoded a very good quality MPEG. Bitrate was set to CBR 6000. MPEG filesize ended up at 300Meg for a 6.5 minute video.

Note: I did used DGindex instead of DVD2AVI (the old DGIndex) to create the d2v file so that I could use VFAPIEnc to create an AVI stub for VirtualDub to frameserve.

I'm thinking of creating a guide for this. I would like to get this to also work by using avisynth to frameserve to HC encoder, but I haven't yet found a subtext filter that reads srt files. Then this project will be working using all freeware apps.

Thanks for the help all!!!! 8)