Several seconds of black added after x264 conversion with Staxrip

[Frostshock]

I have never had this happen before.

The video being converted was Pirates of the Caribbean 3. 1 and 2 I have converted to x264 without any problems.

3, however, had a major problem. I set Staxrip to HQ-Slower and let it do its thing, but when I came back there were several added seconds of nothing but blackness at the start of the video, causing the sound to be completely off. The sound started at what appears to be the correct time. I am playing it back in Media Player Classic, but I do not believe playback is the problem, as my other x264 conversions play fine.

Is there any reason this has happened? I want to convert the movie, but I do not want to waste another 4 hours to have the same error. The DVD was ripped with Ripit4Me, and was compressed fine to a single layer DVD by Nero Recode, so I doubt there is any protection problems.

If I'm forgetting something important, just ask me for it and I'll see if I have it. Thanks in advance.

Edit: Just a typo

[setarip_old]

Hi!

You have to first isolate at which stage of your conversion the delay initially occurs.

Play your hard drive rip, using a software DVD player.

Then play your compressed hard drive rip, again, using a software DVD player...

[Frostshock]

I'm not too sure what you mean. If I understand what you want correctly, then:

The rip starts playing sound and picture at about 2 seconds.

The same thing happens with the single layer DVD compressed version.

The x264 version plays sound starting at the correct time, but the first non-black image appears at about 9 seconds, meaning that about 7 seconds are added at the start.

If that is not what you wanted, could you please describe what you meant in more detail?

[toytown]

The DVD was ripped with Ripit4Me, and was compressed fine to a single layer DVD by Nero Recode, so I doubt there is any protection problems.

If your going to encode the video using x264 then you shouldnt be using Nero Recode to shrink it to single layer first, this is an extra step which isnt needed and results in a quality loss, for absolutely no reason.

As for the initial problem, ive had it a few times in the past as well, using different rippers. Ive found that i can correct it, by using Nero to simply rip the main movie only from the DVD/Ripped location and store it to the harddrive for ripping, without any transcoding or recompression. Im not sure what it fixes, but its worked every single time.

At one point i had a lot of my originals ripped for my HTPC and i found it easier to simply put everything through nero first, rather than using staxrip and finding 1/3rd of my rips useless and countless hours wasted. If i knew more about what was going wrong then i could probably find an easy fix or be able to tell you why its happening, but i cant :(.

Try it at least, it worked for me.

[setarip_old]

@Frostshock

By the process of elimination that I suggested and you just followed, you've now determined that both your initial rip and your compression are not involved in your proble. It appears that the problem arose during your conversion-to-x264 process...

[Frostshock]

If your going to encode the video using x264 then you shouldnt be using Nero Recode to shrink it to single layer first, this is an extra step which isnt needed and results in a quality loss, for absolutely no reason.

As for the initial problem, ive had it a few times in the past as well, using different rippers. Ive found that i can correct it, by using Nero to simply rip the main movie only from the DVD/Ripped location and store it to the harddrive for ripping, without any transcoding or recompression. Im not sure what it fixes, but its worked every single time.

At one point i had a lot of my originals ripped for my HTPC and i found it easier to simply put everything through nero first, rather than using staxrip and finding 1/3rd of my rips useless and countless hours wasted. If i knew more about what was going wrong then i could probably find an easy fix or be able to tell you why its happening, but i cant :(.

Try it at least, it worked for me.

I'll try this then, thanks.

Oh, and I should clarify. The shrinking to single layer was for making a DVD copy, as I'm too cheap to buy dual layer discs. When converting to x264 I used the uncompressed copy. I was just stressing the point that I doubt copy protection was an issue, since Nero won't work with anything still protected.

[toytown]

Just so i dont waste any of your time, definetely check using the max speed profile in x264 using a small section of the movie, first before doing an encode

To get the main movie in nero i did the following
Nero Record->Recode Main Movie to DVD->Untick "Fit to target"

[Frostshock]

Just so i dont waste any of your time, definetely check using the max speed profile in x264 using a small section of the movie, first before doing an encode

To get the main movie in nero i did the following
Nero Record->Recode Main Movie to DVD->Untick "Fit to target"

Well, I didn't get a chance to read this before converting, but the conversion was a success! So thanks. :D

I had Nero Recode do main movie only, with size set to DVD-9 (and Fit to Target selected) and Advanced Analysis and Slow Recording enabled. Since the movie was less than the size of DVD-9 (5 something GB for the output of movie only, so it doesn't seem that Nero did any compressing), I don't think there were any adverse effects, as everything seems to look fine.

[stax76]

Was the blackness already visible in the preview? Which ripper was used in which mode?