Looking for a friend

[Arsenic]

Essentially I notice how alot of 'true newbie' questions get blasted out of the water and somebody posts up a few links from a search of the forums to try to help them. Well after reading through alot of the forums answers, I am still stumped on some issues. I have been using DVD2SVCD for about 3 weeks now and I love the ability to make quality SVCDs for my collection. But as time goes on I do have some rather 'stupid' questions to ask an informed member. If anyone would take the time to instant message or email me that you would help (without being sarcastic), I'd love the support.

[ux-3]

Sincere reply:
Hit the search button, select the basic forum and type the key words of your question.
Read the results. You will find that most stuff has been asked before, because there are many many people using this product.

To get blasted out of the water requires a certain "hit me" approch. If one assumes that others will do the work, and one can just come in for the harvest, then the reaction can be less than favorable. As the word friend indicates, it should be a mutual affair of giving and taking...

greetings
ux-3

[Arsenic]

I'll post up my 2 biggest 'downfall' questions then and see how it goes...

The age old question of the 'multi - episode' disc and trying to split it into something which DVDSVCD can handle. I've read posts from GreenDazi and others and read the links below but well, haven't gotten any closer then when I started.

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=28454
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=30131
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=22503
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=31931

If I understand it right, each episode will essentially be ripped then encoded and need to go on different discs. That is no problem. However whenever I try to encode something other then the largest (longest) episode, it still burns the longest one. Yes I select the shorter time in the pull down menu then just hit 'encode' but no dice, any thoughts why?


My second question is a real annoying one. I have changed the bitrate settings a few times to allow for a disc which was marginally over the 125 minute max on the default but the settings never made it across in the actual encode. If there something else then just changing the time necessary? Meaning this, I had a 130 minute movie (take The Last Castle) for example, and instead of just having 5 minutes on disc 3 I tried to make 1 and 2 longer by changing the bitrate. When it all finished I still got left with 3 cue/bin files to burn and a 5 minute ending to the movie on disc 3. Any thoughts why?

Yes, simple questions. And yes for like 2 weeks I've searched for answers but to say that I just posted with no effort is a flat out lie. Alot of this is new (greek) to me almost. I could tell you all about the game of Everquest or how to make a t-shirt currectly with ring spun combed yarn but that doesn't really apply to these forums. So I am sorry I cannot share information at this juncture with anyone, only questions really.

Again, thanks in advance.

[hoozdapimp]

for your second question, on the bitrate tab why don't you just change the time limits for a 2cd 800mb movie to 130 instead of the default values....

i.e. movies between x and y minutes will use 2 800mb cd's..seems pretty simple

[GreenDrazi]

Thanks for doing a good search first - that's all we are really asking here.

Sounds unusual. Would you care to mention what the disc is?
Are you using "Internal routines" in the DVDrip tab?
Be sure that the last thing that you do is under the "Conversion" tab is to select the shorter or other title(s) before you select "GO." Sometimes, DVD2SVCD blanks out and loses the chapter and time information and defaults back to the longest title if you make changes under some of the other tabs (very strange, I know).

If this continues to fail, try to use a stand alone ripper like SmartRipper first before using DVD2SVCD and playback the vob files before encoding to see if you got the title you intended.
You could also do a "rip only" in DVD2SVCD and check the VOB files before encoding.

As for the second part of your question, what encoder are you using?
Be sure to leave the minium bitrate low and UNCHECK the min. avg. box - however, some vbr encodes can still spill over.

[Arsenic]

Well after some trial and error I finally got what appears it takes to at least do some of the episode driven dvds. Odd question tho, I did episode 1 and 2 of the Sopranos season 1, and although the original is full screen, the SVCDs are widescreen. Any logic behind this because HBO didn't make the first session widescreen till later on. And I wasn't aware you could choose that in a menu on the original.


As for the encoder / bitrate problem. I am using CCE and yes I tried changing the values for the minute lengths for the 80 minute CD-Rs, but I failed to still make 2 discs, it broke it into 3. Is there anything other then changing the number alone I need to correct? I plan to try a few more encodes tomorrow, just pisses me off to have it run for 6 hrs then to find out it still didn't do it right....

Again, thanks for the help, I hope to one day be able to actually answer somebody elses questions.

[chainsaw135]

Post your log files, and if you dont have those post your settings in the bitrate tab and also under the encoder tab. That way we can better help you.

[Jason28]

@Arsenic
This is what you need to do if you are going to rip the Sopranos. I am doing season 2 and 3 right now.
1) Press the little cd/dvd button so that D2S will load the main ifo file.
2) Go to the ripping tab and select vstrip as the ripper. Dont use internal routines.
3) Put all of you regular settings that you want to use in D2S.
4) Go back to the conversion tab and go to the movie length dropdown. When you click on it, it will display the episodes that are on that disk (also it displays then in the order that they appear on the DVD. ie if you are doing disk 1 and it had episodes 1-4 on the DVD then it will list episode 1 fisrt and episode 2 second and so on.) select the episode that you would like to convert.
5) Make sure that you have 16:9 aspect ratio selected when you do these episodes as thats how they are made (this is on the conversion tab BTW)
6) Also I would suggest that you use smartdeinterlace when you rip Sopranos, it makes a big difference when converting.
7) press go

If you have any questions or problems then post them here. I will help you the best that I can.

[Arsenic]

Jason:
I just completed doing Disc 1 of Season one episodes 1-4.
I had no problems doing them with internal routines and not using deinterlacing. What would deinterlacing do for me since you said it helps the speed of it converting?

I have been doing episodes in 3 hours, does that sound right?

I just used the normal ripper (not vstrip), with routines on, click the pulldown menu, clicked the first time slot, and did that.
Then I clicked the second one and unchecked all the first one.
Then the third and unchecked 1 and 2.
Ect.

Seemed to work ok, I watched all 4 tonight =)
Hopefully the rest go as well.

So any input either way is good.
Still no response on the widescreen creation tho, dunno why or how I managed to make a normal video go widescreen with the borders.

[Jason28]

If you use Smartdeinterlace it will improve the quality of the encode, it does NOT make it go faster, it will go slower.

The amount of time that an enocde can take depends on your settings and your how fast your comp is. There is now way for me to tell if tha time is right.

I did not realize that you can use the internal routines to rip the Sopranos. I guess that you learn something new everyday. Thanks for the help. :)

All of the Sopranos DVDs are widescreen thats how HBO makes them. When you convert them you get widescreen. I dont know if they are on HBO like that or not but thats how the make the DVDs.