Nero Recode Competitors?

[tvccs]

I am looking for any "no brainer" encoder/transcoder solutions for the following scenario:

I can use AnyDVD or DVD43 and do a one-step transcode to an avi or MP4 file suitable for playback with TCPMP on a Treo device where I end up with a 200MB movie file in one step with no giant project files or added steps.

I like the AVC Recode option, but I'm not as fond of the "standard" set of tools, and the output from that selection causes playback problems Divx 6-type avis and MP4's do not on Treo 600's.

Any other tool(s) I've found involve multi-step processes with huge ripped project files that require added steps.

Anyone else have answers for this one? Thanks for any and all input.

[berrinam]

Anyone else have answers for this one?What is your question? How can we have answers, since you haven't asked a question?

You asked about Nero Recode Competitors. MeGUI has a One Click Mode which is automated, and simple to use. See my MeGUI guide in the sticky (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=106189).

MeGUI may not completely satisfy your needs, because the standard workflow requires you to rip the DVD first, but other than that, it has a simple working methodology with the best codec around -- x264. It also offers MUCH more flexibility than Nero does.

[setarip_old]

If your question is, "Can you suggest a simple-to-use already-ripped DVD to AVI conversion/compression program, I'd suggest you try either MPEGMediator or MPEGMediator Special Edition - or, if your DVD is ripped as one large .VOB, another alternative would be VirtualDubMOD...

[berrinam]

If your question is, "Can you suggest a simple-to-use already-ripped DVD to AVI conversion/compression program, I'd suggest you try either MPEGMediator or MPEGMediator Special Edition - or, if your DVD is ripped as one large .VOB, another alternative would be VirtualDubMOD...
In conversion to DivX-compatible AVI, there are many options available, the most popular probably being AutoGK.

[stax76]

Most people around here prefer AviSynth and DGDecode either by hand or by some frondend and that involves multi step. As you say you like AVC I would say it's best to look for some x264 frondend. berrinam and I are working on such frondends, a complete list of all available frondends can be found here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=89979).

[tvccs]

I have used StaxRip, FairUse and a number of other programs...but all usually involve a multi-stage process, and most generate large project files, which would be great to avoid for those without gobs of harddrive space. The DVD43/Recode combo allows me to do what I want, at least from a process standpoint - I can load a DVD, and just click the interface to select the main movie only to be transferred, rip the main movie into a 200MB MP4/AAC file for playback on a Treo, with no huge project files, and a two-hour movie takes less than two hours. The AVC output from Recode is generally very good. X.264 is a very good AVC codec, and the TCPMP boys have done some great things with the most recent versions of the Palm player and AVC which I at least tried to encourage a few weeks ago regarding X.264, but I'm also after something that takes less horsepower and still produces decent results while shooting for a 200MB total file size for a two-hour movie. It would be nice, for example, to have a Recode-style interface that allowed me to pick Divx 6 or Xvid as the video codec and MP3 as the audio codec and still rip/transcode in one step, or select AVC codecs if I have the playback horsepower. The latest versions of TCPMP allow 30fps playback on the Treo 650 of AVC/AAC files from superfast flash cards (like a 150x), which is a great accomplishment in my book, anyway.

I'm just wondering is there's anything else out there that can do what Recode does, without the project files, reassembling VOB files, etc. Recode's choices interface when ripping a movie is simple enough, I simply click the option for Main Movie only - it finds the right VOB's for that purpose. The average user is looking for a solution that will allow him to transfer movies to a flash card with a minimum of tech fuss and an easy interface, but at the same time I'd like some flexibility in MP3 vs. AAC, mono vs. stereo, bit rates, and basic sizing options. Recode does most of that with the exception of too little flexibility in the audio side with no MP3/Avi output, and a Standard video codec that is not friendly to the Treo 600. I've read there (maybe) is or was a Pinnacle product that does/did that at one time, and I hope there are others.

My question is....is there anything else out there that will interface with DVD43 and allow a one-step simple rip/encode of a movie to a 200MB-sized Avi or MP4 file with decent quality and some flexibility in the encoding with a no-brainer interface?

I hope that's clearer...and again, I appreciate the feedback from the developers working on these projects...I have seen some very good work from many of you, and very much appreciate the efforts.

[sjchmura]

Agreed,

Recode's brilliance is ANYONE with HDTV or DVD can recode to AVC Main Profiler with Psycho enhance (one 1 core of dual core).

All the other ones seem to have issue - I need to try Staxrip as it supposedly will' Autodownload" the freeware one needs

[Morte66]

My question is....is there anything else out there that will interface with DVD43 and allow a one-step simple rip/encode of a movie to a 200MB-sized Avi or MP4 file with decent quality and some flexibility in the encoding with a no-brainer interface?

I haven't seen anything else with a "fire and forget" worklow like Nero/DVDShrink that produces xvid/h264. The apps under development at Doom9 all tend towards rip/demux/index/frameserve/encode/mux with user action at more than one stage. It seems they probably won't change in the near future -- it's too much work to get the decision information into the GUI right at the start, before those external apps have run.

The closest existing x264 workflow I've found is the One Click Encoder in MeGUI. You do a rip with DVD Decrypter configured in a certain way, tell it "there's the first VOB, I want these audio/subtitle tracks", and walk away. For something like a TV disc with four episodes it takes me about fifteen minutes to do the rips then a couple to configure the encodes before I can wander off. It's ten times as long as DVD Shrink/DVD43, but it's two or three times faster than the MeGUI workflow I started out with. [Thanks for the hint, berrinam.]

I think the fastest/cleanest way to set up standardised jobs in x264/Xvid might be to use Robot4Rip and write batch files in its "finalize" stage to do the encoding and muxing. If that works, you could select your DVD title, type a name for the ouput, and click start. Do this four times to set up four jobs in a couple of minutes, then walk away. It could auto-delete all the temp files afterwards. I don't know if this can be done -- Robot4Rip might or might not provide enough info to write the command lines -- but I mean to try it soon.

Another option might be to petition Nero to make their GUI work with external encoders and avisynth filters. ;)

[Doom9]

My ultimate goal for an encoding app would obviously be a complete recode clone.. but it's extremely hard. Look at the sheer size of the MeGUI sourcecode, and imagine all the missing components for which you can't just find code you can pretty much copy & paste. I think FilmShrink is the app that really gets closest, but even it is less integrated and independent of intermediate files.
You need IFO parsing, and based on that audio and video track selection and on-the-fly feeding of that data to the proper encoder... that's the hard part. Any volunteers?

[Sirber]

errrr no thanks :)

[Morte66]

You need IFO parsing, and based on that audio and video track selection and on-the-fly feeding of that data to the proper encoder... that's the hard part. Any volunteers?

I'm afraid I can't volunteer -- I feel really guilty about asking for this stuff -- but I think whoever does will have it cracked when they implement IFO parsing. Once you can choose which titles you want off the DVD (just telling us their length in minutes would do), and which soundtracks/subtitles are wanted for each, the fundamental functionality is there. I don't need video preview or anything.

And that's in the Robot4Rip GUI already. It does that before kicking off DVD Decrypter, and without seeing its "stream info" file. If the code or expertise that went into that could be borrowed...

[berrinam]

Well, I had a look round, and I found two tools which could be useful for that *sort* of thing. The main one is vstrip.dll, which seems to be able to parse ifo files, is open source, and is accessible by dll.

The other one is Handbrake, which was recently ported to Windows, and seems to be able to encode straight from the DVD (I haven't actually tried it, though). It is also open source, and from looking at the sourcecode, it uses libdvdread.

I suppose the question is whether we want MeGUI just to automate the ripping process, or to skip it directly (no intermediate copies of the DVD, just straight DVD->encoder).

[Doom9]

or to skip it directly (no intermediate copies of the DVD, just straight DVD->encoder).obviously that has to be the goal.. ripping vobs to your hd.. then it's just not a recode competitor.. still automated but all those intermediate files are problematic. I don't see handbrake as the solution either.. mencoder can also do a lot but they just don't stack up to all the tools available for windows that are extremely good at the small part they do (like dgindex/dgdecode, besweet, avisynth, etc.)

[berrinam]

I don't see handbrake as the solution either.. mencoder can also do a lot but they just don't stack up to all the tools available for windows that are extremely good at the small part they do (like dgindex/dgdecode, besweet, avisynth, etc.)I meant looking at the source code to see how it does it. I didn't realise it was using mencoder to do the encoding, though.

[Doom9]

uh, I have no idea if it uses mencoder.. but mencoder is another tool that can read directly from a DVD.

[berrinam]

Oops, misread your post.

[Morte66]

Speaking personally (I know some other users will want a good looking GUI with video preview, whilst I just want fast turnaround)...

Direct encoding from VOB should save space, and maybe time, and it's just plain more elegant. But "auto-delete all temporary files when the job completes" gets you to the same place in the end. As a user, I wouldn't mind how you chose to implement things under the hood. But I appreciate that you guys code for fun, and maybe you want to do it "well or not at all".

It would also be fine with me if you were to leverage those excellent external apps by putting Decrypter/DGIndex/VobSub/Avisynth/etc items into the job queue with the encode and mux.

Have an IFO parser which lets the user choose PGCs, then put a job in the queue to launch DVD Decrypter once for each PGC they choose. Your "One Click Encoder" is already doing what you need after that.

[rozemab]

One possible solution is to use Nero recode with anyDVD. Although I have not tried anyDVD with recode, it may prevent any unnecessary temp files from being generated.

Does anyone else know if these two programs play well together?

[RTFM]

I didn't try it with the latest version of AnyDVD but older ones had problems with Recode. It would just freeze. Once VOBs are on HDD though, it works fine...

[tvccs]

One possible solution is to use Nero recode with anyDVD. Although I have not tried anyDVD with recode, it may prevent any unnecessary temp files from being generated.

Does anyone else know if these two programs play well together?

I've been running them on a Fujitsu C2340 laptop without issue...they play very well together...as do DVD43 and Recode...

I've just run into some blockiness...especially in high-action scenes...when played back on a Treo 650...SO close to being right now...and the video quality is really good on a 650.

[berrinam]

I think FilmShrink is the app that really gets closest, but even it is less integrated and independent of intermediate files.
You need IFO parsing, and based on that audio and video track selection and on-the-fly feeding of that data to the proper encoder... that's the hard part. Any volunteers?
How about this (I think this is quite similar to what filmshrink does): we have two parts -- ifo-parsing and video-serving. IFO-parsing can be done (hopefully) by some library floating around (I'm thinking perhaps vstrip, which can come as a dll, but maybe someone else can give their input on this), and video-serving can be done by DGMPG. If DGMPG just indexes all the VOBs in a given VTS set, then any particular PGC can be selected by using AviSynth's trim function, given the knowledge of where they are. This required knowledge comes from the IFO parsing.

Of course, this doesn't actually avoid all intermediate files, but it saves several GBs of disk space, and avoids any need for ripping (if the source is not encrypted). Also, since FilmShrink is open-source, we can look at its source code to see how it manages it.

[mezzanine]

I was using vstrip on my outdated now AutoAC GUI, i was thinking of doing the same procedure as FilmShrink, i wish i had free time.

[JoeBG]

I was using vstrip on my outdated now AutoAC GUI, i was thinking of doing the same procedure as FilmShrink, i wish i had free time.

I remeber you film shrink project for mp4. I also hope you would find the time for it.

[Doom9]

@berrinam: well.. that's one approach that could be done. But in the end, I'd really like a VOB player that given an IFO can jump to a given title and play it (via existing DShow filters), and then when you encode there's a VOB reader that can start reading and end reading and extract all the streams on the fly.

[sjchmura]

The AVC does have the psycho enhancements which I think are GREATLY underrated. There are simply cetain scenes with contrstast, darkenss etc, where LIGHT psycho looks great and the dumping tons of bits at x264 is not as good.

I wish we had Nero as a front end for x264 with the dual core support :)

[berrinam]

@berrinam: well.. that's one approach that could be done. But in the end, I'd really like a VOB player that given an IFO can jump to a given title and play it (via existing DShow filters), and then when you encode there's a VOB reader that can start reading and end reading and extract all the streams on the fly.
I keep bumping this once in a while as I think of a new idea. I'm not exactly sure what you are saying, especially about the DShow filters, but what I imagine as the best solution is an AviSynth function called DVDSource or something similar. As parameters, this would take the input folder, VTS, PGC, and angle. I agree with your idea about extracting all the non-video streams on the fly, but even if an indexing stage beforehand was required, this would still be a huge improvement on the status quo, which requires ripping the DVD first.

As to how this could be implemented, the closest OSS solution at the moment is, as you said, FilmShrink. It does an indexing stage beforehand, and splits the created files up by angle and PGC. It then just decodes using very similar functions to DGDecode.dll and the various NicAudioSource filters (because these filters are derived from FilmShrink, IIRC). So such a filter would require a module which determines where to look in the files for the specific PGCs and angles, and then the actual decoding could be done by DGDecode.dll and NicAudioSource.dll, or small modifications thereof.

Of course, this sounds just like a Holy Grail, and I don't see myself doing it, so this is just wishful thinking.