# of cd`s not right

[orbit-r]

hi
since i`ve used the 1.0.4 i always get 3 cd`s instead of 2
on third disc is only 1mb so i simpley don``t burn it
but i don`t understand why???
now its the same in the 1.0.3 version too

if anybody get an idea it would be very nice
cause i`ve done many backups without these
probs. and ì want do it again:)

thanxs
orbit-r:o

[mevbo]

Are you using downsample 48>44.1
If you use none, add 5 min. to your dvd time in bitrate calculator for 2 cd's. This should correct the problem, It did for me.:D

[dvd2svcd]

Ofcourse Mevbo, I hadn't considered that (I always downsample). I will try and take that into account for my Bitrate calc.

[orbit-r]

thanxs guys
going to try....






:D

[orbit-r]

hi
i`ve tried what mevbo told but still get 3 cd`s

but now the third only had 16kb on it
maybe i`ve to add more than 5 minutes..
it was a 110 minute film maybe the plus space for undownsamplet sound
is more than +5mb??

mhhh in the past never got the prob (there i didn`t perform downsampling too) maybe its a bug of the 1.0.4 but like i said now its in the 1.0.3 also


:( THANXS
orbit-r

[Kedirekin]

I don't understand. Why would downsampling or not have any affect?

The mp2 bitrate is the same, so the mp2 stream will be the same size regardless if it is 48KHz or 44.1KHz.

The only way I know to 'trick' dvd2svcd into doing a smaller encode when it gets slightly larger than the desired number of CDs is to manually override the calculated CCE average bitrate (by adjusting max average on the bitrate tab).

Alternatively, you can re-encode the audio to the next lower bitrate, then do crash recovery starting with mux. I usually do audio at 224, so dropping to 192 stills gives me adequate quality, and it's a lot quicker.

Or, (I've never tried this) you could remux/resplit in BBMPG with a larger movie offset (to cut off more of the studio logo at the beginning of the movie). The you could do crash recovery from the step just after mux. Maybe crash recovery will even let you change the movie offset in dvd2svcd, so you wouldn't even have to mux manually.

[dvd2svcd]

Orbit-r: Which have you selected as the CD-Image program: vcdimager, vcdxbuild, i-author or none?

[orbit-r]

hi
i always use the vcdx build the create the images..
tonight I´m going to retry the same movie with downsampling

by the way i`ve checked the min avg. tab and set it to 0
cause in a version released in the past(don`t know the version number) there was the prob too i`ve been readin in the Q&As
but don`t think it has something to do with it....?or ?

:confused: thanxs
orbit-r

[markrb]

I have done tests on whether downsampling does make a difference on file size and according to my test video of about 20 minutes there was no difference at all. Not even a byte.

Mark

[orbit-r]

yes markrb now i`ve done the movie again(with downsampling)
and its just the same (3 cd`s with only 1 mb on the last..)


so far
hope dvd2svcd will fix it in a future release

thanxs orbit-r

[mevbo]

48kbps=48000 bits per second
44.1kbps= 44100 bits per second
While the difference is only 3900 bits per second, it should make a difference of 21.06mb per 90 min movie. If bitrate is set to max for length of the movie, this would cause excess. "On average" 5+ minutes over the movie run lenght is enough of a buffer to stay within 1.6gb (800x2). When I really push this, I sometimes get a very small 3rd disc also. If you can't have this, try 10+min over movie lenght.
;)

[Kedirekin]

I don't think that is right. You might get 21.06 MB more in your extracted wav file, but when it is compressed into the mp2 at a set bitrate, it'll end up the same size regardless of the sample rate of the audio.

Therefore, the size difference in the final mpg between 48 KHz and 44.1 KHz should be very close zero.

[markrb]

I know it's a pain.
What is your Min bitrate set too?
What is the Max set too?

If you altered the Min from the default 300 try lowering that by 100 points. If it's at default I would leave it where it is.

Try lowering the Max Avg by 100 points and if you still have issues lower the Max by 100 points as well.

It sounds to me like the bitrate is off just the slightest bit. Maybe it's the type of movie that requires allot of high bitrate sections. I have never really had this problem, but I always play with the bitrates myself. I tend to be more concerned with wanting a high bitrate encode rather then number of disks. 3 disk movies are the norm for me.

Mark

[orbit-r]

hi mark
max was set to 2500 (not the default in this version)
and min to 300(default)
i`m going to try what you post then let you know the results
(it can take 3 days or so...and won`t be the same movie but as i
told, got these probs. ever, last time)


before i did the encodin with the above settings i did one with max.at8000kb\s max avg.at8000kb\s and the same happenend(third disc 1mb)

thanxs
orbit-r

[mrbass]

ok I agree with Kedirekin and markb on this issue
48Khz -44Khz saves relatively speaking 0KB space on an SVCD
basically I did Pearl Harbor DVD disc 1 and the difference was only 2KB so it's saves NO space and is just a time waster.

[48Khz-44Khz downsampling]
Extracted_audio_stream_1.ac3 422,853KB
DownmixedAudioSt1-48KHz.wav 1,449,781KB

Wav downsampling. Quality: Ultra high
Audio delay: 0 ms
Downsampling 48000 -> 44100 and adjusting audio delay.
Wav Conversion Finished
FinalAudioSt1.wav 1,331,996KB

Extracted_audio_stream_1.mp2 181,225KB
Size: 176 MB (185,573,878 bytes)

WITHOUT the 48Khz-->44Khz conversion
Extracted_audio_stream_1.ac3 422,853KB

No delay and no WAV Downsampling.

FinalAudioSt1.wav 1,449,781KB
(difference from .wav above 1,449,781KB - 1,331,996KB = 117,785KB)
note the 117MB difference but when toolame encodes it to .mp2 it's only 2KB difference

Extracted_audio_stream_1.mp2 181,223KB
Size: 176 MB (185,572,225 bytes)
(difference from above 181,225KB - 181,223KB = 2KB)

[stevih]

If you look at the post of mrbass you see that there is no difference between the two extracted mp2 audio files - and there should be no difference.

The order of audio conversion is the following:

1. Extracting the original ac3
2. Downmixing and converting to wav
3. Optional downsampling to 44kHz (still wav)
The size of this wav files is in proportion to the sampling frequency (48kHz/1,449,781KB - 44kHz/1,331,996KB)
4. Encoding wav to the final mp2 audio stream.

The bitrate of the final audio stream is the bitrate you specify in DVD2SVCD and it is used by tooLame for encoding wav to mp2.
That means if you have different wav-files with different sizes because of different sampling frequencies it doesn´t matter. The reason is that you have at every time a piece of audio for instance with a length of 2000 seconds and an encoding bitrate of 192kB/s with and that brings you at every time to a mp2 file with the same size - independently of the sampling frequency.

[Kedirekin]

Agreed.

And I reiterate - IMHO, here is the best and quickest way to 'force' a DVD2SVCD encode to one fewer CDs when it creates a very small extra CD (this really should work, and will probably take less than an hour).
- open dvd2svcd log
- find toolame command line
- edit it to use the next lower bitrate (224->192 | 192->160 | 160->128)
- copy the edited line
- open a command prompt window
- paste the edited line into the command prompt window
- hit enter and let toolame finish
- open up dvd2svcd
- start crash recovery at the muxing/spliting step

If you currently encode audio at 128, get in the habit of using 160 to leave yourself a little leeway. You'll probably never notice the loss of 32 kbps in your video bitrate. I typically use 224 for audio (96 kpbs higher than 128), and I get near perfect video.

[moviemandvd]

so what is the fix then....to add minutes to the "between x and y" column?

[Kedirekin]

No. I don't think so.

If you have a 94 minute movie, it doesn't matter if your 2 CD range is 80-100, or 90-110, DVD2SVCD will use the size of 2 CDs and the 94 minute length of the movie to calculate the average bitrate to use. So the range doesn't matter.

And if you reduce the size of the CDs, DVD2SVCD will just use that new size when it calculates the bitrate. True, the total encode will end up smaller, but when DVD2SVCD splits the movie, it'll use the smaller CD size, so you'll probably still end up with a 3rd tiny image. So here too, the size of the CD images doesn't matter.

Bottom line, no matter what you put on the bitrate tab, if DVD2SVCD miscalulates the average bitrate slightly, you'll end up with a tiny piece of the movie on an extra CD.

The only way to 'fix' it before encoding is to override the DVD2SVCD calculation by entering a max average slightly lower than what DVD2SVCD would calculate by default. I don't do that because, frankly, it would be a pain in the butt, especially considering that I rarely get the extra CD.

I think it's better to 'fix' it after the fact. One way is to reduce the total size of the encode by reducing the audio bitrate. That way, when you do crash recovery, the split will probably fit on 2 CDs.

Another way (that's builds on the reduced CD size idea above) is to start crash recovery, and increase the CD size (assuming the size when you started was less than your max overburn size - I keep my CD sizes set at 730 and 790 specifically to give myself that little bit of breathing room). I don't know if crash recovery lets you do this, but I know it's a valid idea because I've manually done the same thing using BBMpg back before crash recovery was a feature of DVD2SVCD.

[moviemandvd]

ok thanks for your help! will this problem be fixed in the new release? It never happend to me in the older version.

[Kedirekin]

I have no idea if it will be fixed. It don't even think I'd really call this a bug. DVD2SVCD cuts it very fine when calculating the average bitrate. In an effort to always fill (or nearly fill) the last CD of the set, he leaves very little tolerance in his calculation, thus even small variations in muxing can result in an extra CD. [And personally, I do believe it's muxing step that makes the total encode too large - I believe the user data added by BBMpg sometimes ends up being larger than DVD2SVCD expects, for reasons that I can't identify]

For my part, my CD images usually come out to within 1 or 2 MB of each other. This is very close to a perfect calculation. I rarely get an extra CD. In fact, I only remember two in all the dozens that I've done (of course, there could have been more that I simply don't remember). One of them had just a second or two of credits in the last image, so I just discarded it. The other I was able to force to the number of CDs I wanted by re-muxing in BBMpg with a larger CD size and completing the authoring step manually (this was before crash recovery). It's really not that hard to work around a problem like this.

One possible solution I can think of would be to have DVD2SVCD always split the total encode evenly across all images. That way you could set your CD size to 795, and if the total encode/mux got a little big, you might end up with 3 CDs that are 797, or something like that. That would allow users like you and me to add in that little bit of tolerance if we wanted. Of course, it'd probably be hard to implement this, and the setting would have to be optional so the people encoding to maximum CD size could make sure their images are exactly the size they specify.

And of course, this is all just whistling in the wind. I'm not going to ask DVD2SVCD to add features. I'm perfectly happy with what we've got, and I'm perfectly willing to work around the occasional mishap like an extra CD.