Which encoder?

[biersauf]

hey ;)

1) which encoder are you using? there are two avaible at the moment: transcode and mencoder. i just want to want, which is the best atm, which is more powerful, which is faster?

2) do you know other/better gui's than dvd::rip?

[blixi]

to 1) I use mencoder, cause :
-really fast on commom DVDs/other material
-I've used it a lot and know at least a littlebit what I'm
doing :D

to 2) ever tried kmencoder ?

But it is better to do it on the shell. You have more options, so you have more control. For encoding advices search the mplayer-mailinglist-archiv and the site of moritz. Before a week he wrote a really nice guide on bitrate/resolution/quality decisions.

transcode I've never tried, but if anyone would tell me it is fast, makes easy a good quality or have other arguments for it. Please speak, I would give it another try then.

Greets

Steffen

[mean]

If you are used to something more graphical you might want to try this
http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/howto/Mpeg_to_Divx.html

You will need the latest beta snapshot (23-9.tgz)

This part is still young but seems to work nicely.

As far as speed is concerned, it should be about the same as transcode, but inferior to mencoder by a relatively large amount.

Plus you will need to click a lot throught GUI stuff :D

[blixi]

But avidemux is needed/should be used for merging and cutting avi's. And since you just streamcopy then, it should be fast ;). The next thing to try. I'm just downloading gstreamer + all available plugins (93 MB , a lot more than I thought :D. But festival seems to be a really big one :
3050K .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... 11%
:o )

Greets

Steffen

[biersauf]

where can i find the encoding options for xvid? there is a file for transcode, but also for mencoder??

did you tried menvcd? its just a script based on mencoder an can encode (s)vcds with mencoder.

[Suzahara]

Originally posted by blixi
But avidemux is needed/should be used for merging and cutting avi's. And since you just streamcopy then, it should be fast ;). The next thing to try. I'm just downloading gstreamer + all available plugins (93 MB , a lot more than I thought :D. But festival seems to be a really big one :
3050K .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... 11%
:o )

Greets

Steffen

What sorts of plugins are available for gstreamer? 93MB of plugins is very encouraging :D

Video encoding was the last major thing that keeps me from putting linux on my computer, mostly because of the lack (that I know of) of (good?) plugins, not because of the lack of encoding tools. I also wonder how most of these plugins compare to avisynth's plugins. If avisynth were ported to *nix, that would be a major step in making *nix a major player in the (amateur?) video world.

did you tried menvcd? its just a script based on mencoder an can encode (s)vcds with mencoder.

I'm glad there's an (s)vcd tool as well, I'm starting to get into svcds and didn't know if there was a good tool for it.

[blixi]

these are the ones i downloaded:
/home/rpms/gstreamer-0.4.2-3mdk.i586.rpm /home/rpms/gstreamer-libdvdread-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm
/home/rpms/gstreamer-a52dec-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm /home/rpms/gstreamer-mad-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm
/home/rpms/gstreamer-aalib-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm /home/rpms/gstreamer-mikmod-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm
/home/rpms/gstreamer-alsa-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm /home/rpms/gstreamer-mpeg-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm
/home/rpms/gstreamer-arts-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm /home/rpms/gstreamer-oss-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm
/home/rpms/gstreamer-artsd-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm /home/rpms/gstreamer-plugins-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm
/home/rpms/gstreamer-audio-effects-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm /home/rpms/gstreamer-plugins-devel-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm
/home/rpms/gstreamer-audiofile-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm /home/rpms/gstreamer-qcam-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm
/home/rpms/gstreamer-audio-formats-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm /home/rpms/gstreamer-raw1394-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm
/home/rpms/gstreamer-avi-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm /home/rpms/gstreamer-SDL-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm
/home/rpms/gstreamer-cdparanoia-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm /home/rpms/gstreamer-sid-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm
/home/rpms/gstreamer-colorspace-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm /home/rpms/gstreamer-udp-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm
/home/rpms/gstreamer-dv-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm /home/rpms/gstreamer-v4l-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm
/home/rpms/gstreamer-dxr3-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm /home/rpms/gstreamer-vcd-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm
/home/rpms/gstreamer-esound-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm /home/rpms/gstreamer-video-effects-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm
/home/rpms/gstreamer-flac-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm /home/rpms/gstreamer-videosink-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm
/home/rpms/gstreamer-flx-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm /home/rpms/gstreamer-visualisation-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm
/home/rpms/gstreamer-GConf-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm /home/rpms/gstreamer-vorbis-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm
/home/rpms/gstreamer-gnomevfs-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm /home/rpms/gstreamer-xvideosink-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm
/home/rpms/gstreamer-gsm-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm /home/rpms/gstreamer-yuv4mjpeg-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm
/home/rpms/gstreamer-httpsrc-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm /home/rpms/libgstgconf0.4.2-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm
/home/rpms/gstreamer-jack-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm /home/rpms/libgstplay0.4.2-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm
/home/rpms/gstreamer-jpeg-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm /home/rpms/libgstreamer0.4.2-0.4.2-3mdk.i586.rpm
/home/rpms/gstreamer-ladspa-0.4.2-7mdk.i586.rpm /home/rpms/libgstreamer0.4.2-devel-0.4.2-3mdk.i586.rpm


and this is why I will try it:
http://gstreamer.net/apps/gst-editor/

looks awfull

[blixi]

I didn't get that gst-editor to run and I reallay don't want compile all by myself. Think I'll wait a bit.

But I found a really nifty little-tool for dvd-ripping.
It is called acidrip and it is based on mplayer/mencoder. So it rips directly from dvd and is really fast. It is small, easy to get it running , definitly something that makes the work easier.

acidrip and lsdvd - http://sourceforge.net/projects/acidrip/

And a install Howto for noobs:
http://www.jabentley.com/docs/acidrip-howto.html

Greets

Steffen

[abatis]

Thanks for the links to acidrip. I am testing it out on RH8.:)

[madluther]

Using wine (http://www.winehq.org) is one possibility for an encoder solution

Linux purists may flame for this, but it works. See screenshot for an example.

[Bonzo]

I've tested CCE with Wine some months ago and it didn't work!!

Which version of Wine are you using? Which version of CCE?
I already have tested Virtual Dub and it didn't work too :(

I usually rip from DVD to SVCD and I use this chain of programs and codecs:

DVDDecrypter 3.x
DVD2AVI 1.85
Avisynth 2.07/2.5 (with many external plugins)
Virtual Dub 1.4.x
HuffYUV loseless codec
Cinema Craft Encoder 2.50 (for MPG2 video)
BeSweet 1.4 (for MP2 audio)
BBMPG (video/audio muxer)
SubRip (multiformat subtitle ripper)
WinSubMux (SVCD/CVD subtitles muxer)
VCDEasy 1.1.x (VCDImager front end)
ChapterXtractor (extract chapters entry points in DVD for recreating them in the SVCD)
Fireburner 2.7 (burns CUE/BIN images)

DVDDecrypter -> I don't know if it works under Wine but I don't mind very much because I know that there are other linux rippers and my linux distro (Mandrake 9.0) can't write onto a NTFS partition (where I store the DVD files).

DVD2AVI -> I have to test it undser Wine, but as I've seen in the picture it seem to work...

Avisynth -> Altough Avisynth is a GPL project there is no version for linux, it is entirely a Windows project :( (as far as I know). Avisynth is a vital part of my encoding process: many times I need to deinterlace, denoise and resize the DVD source for an optimal SVCD encoding. There is no program that can do that with the quality of Avisyth yet.

VirtualDub -> In my version of Wine it does not work, but I've read in this forum that it worked in earlier versions and that the Wine development team are fixing this problem. I use Vdub to create an intermediate AVI encoded in the HuffYUV loseless codec.

HuffYUV codec -> It's a Video for Windows codec; it won't work. I need a loseless codec for an intermediate AVI containing the processed film with the Avisynth filters. Doing 9 passes with CCE while deinterlaing, denoising and resizing on each pass can take DAYS in my Athlon 1333!

Cinema Craft Encoder -> It didn't work when I tested it, but I'll try again now I know it worked for someone. Anyway, It's the best MPG2 encoder available for PCs due to it multipass encoding.

BeSweet -> Not tested by me. Is there another audio encoding solution under Linux? For SVCD it's needed high quality MP2 encoding with Dolby Surround downsampling (as I have with BeSweet).

BBMPG -> I've not tested it under Wine. Does anyone if it works with Wine or if there is another Linux native alternative that can mux SVCD compliant MPGs with 2 audio tracks and have 3:2 pulldown detection?

SubRip -> Neither tested under Wine by me. Does it works under Wine? There is a good Linux subtitle ripper capable to extract to a SVCD compliant format?

WinSubMux -> Has anyone tested it with Wine? Not me. This program is to mux the subtitles in the MPG stream in the SVCD or CVD compliant standards. Any native Linux alternative?

VCDEasy -> Altough I've not tested it with Linux yet I think that it just some kind of GUI or front end for VCDImager, which have a linux version.

ChapterXtractor -> Just a simple IFO chapter extractor. May work with Wine.

Fireburner -> There is a native Linux version, but works a lot worse than the Windows version. Under Linux the burning process often (well the truth is that ALWAYS in my system) ends in a buffer underrun. With modern burners it is not a problem anymore, but I'm still asking myself why this happens under Linux and not under Windows...

Well, may be for DivX and XviD encoding there are easy straigh forward encoding solutions, but as far as I know SVCD encoding is another history...

Bonzo.

[madluther]

The version of wine was compiled from the wine-20021219.tar.gz source tarball available at winehq.org

Other package versions are as follows:

CCE 2.50 SP
avisynth 2.06
mpeg2dec ? (the version from doom9's download page)
DVD2AVI 1.76-fr

Currently this is running on a dual boot system (linux/win2k), wine is configured to use my win2k partition as its C: drive via a mount point. Presumably its reading registry entries from the existing win2k partition for avisynth to work, the real test will be to build and configure wine without a win2k partition present and using the wine registry and dll's. This is what im working on now. When/if that's completed succesfully and tested ill post whats required to set it up.

Regards Mad.

[Bonzo]

It's your Win2K in a NTFS partition? When I run programs from my Win2K I get a lot of errors due to tha fact that my Linux can't write onto a NTFS partition. Can your distro do it? Mine is Mandrake 9.0

I use another Win98SE partition (FAT32) as drive C: but most programs I use are on the Win2K partition (physically stored mostly but registered in Win2K all of them).

Bonzo.

[madluther]

My Win2k partition is NTFS and its mounted readonly, the only user that can really use it is 'root', any other user will fail. As for my distro, a better way to describe it as a custom installation rather than a distro www.linuxfromscratch.org (http://www.linuxfromscratch.org) and beyond.linuxfromscratch.org (http://beyond.linuxfromscratch.org) will explain why.

[cjv]

That's a great screenshot. Are all those programs stable? Even CCE?
Originally posted by madluther
the real test will be to build and configure wine without a win2k partition present and using the wine registry and dll's.
Unfortunately, this doesn't work with the latest versions of CCE and/or VDubMod. Latest CCE will not even install. I was able to unpack it manually and run it, but it created up a totally screwed up (but still valid) MPEG-2 file with green lines all over it??

VDubMod will eventually work, but it won't recognize and compress to XviD (vfw). Latest avisynth will not work either.

Of course it's possible to get almost anything to run on Wine (I have spent many hours/days in the past) with enough trial-and-error. But for a quick install, or for someone who does not know Linux really well, it may be a difficult road.

cjv

[blixi]

Will have a go at CCE again. I tried it with winex, but it seems winex does not provide avifilesupport (at least I didn't get it in) What is the speed of CCE is it comparable to windows ? And the next question: can it read to rawgrb-avis ?

Waiting for a success story ;)

blixi

[madluther]

Here's a quick run down of what's needed to use CCE/avisynth/mpeg2dec under wine without a windows partition present.

This setup has only been tested on wine-20021219. rpm's , deb's and source can be found at http://www.winehq.org

Two native (windows) dlls are needed, msvcrt.dll and mciavi.drv. Win98 versions are prefered but Win2k versions do work. The default wine config file (from a source code install) already has the dll overrides correctly configured for these dlls.

the entries should be as follows

[DllOverrides]
"msvcrt" = "native, builtin"
"mciavi.drv" = "native, builtin"


Installing Avisynth. (tested with avisynth 2.06)

At a shell prompt run the following.

wine AviSynth_206.exe

It should install with no problems.

copy mpeg2dec to the avisynth plugin directory.



DVD2AVI Install (tested with dvd2avi 1.76-frm)

unpack it to c:\program files\dvd2avi in the wine directory tree

paste the following to a text file. eg. dvd2avi.reg

[HKEY_USERS\root\Software\VFPlugin]
"DVD2AVI"="C:\\Program Files\\dvd2avi\\DVD2AVI.vfp"

then run wine regedit dvd2avi.reg

For an unknown reason dvd2avi doesnt create the reg entry when it is first run as it does in windows, oddly enough tmpgenc does create a reg entry in this key when it is first run.


CCE Install (tested with Ver 2.50.01.00)

run wine cspte250.exe



At this point you should be able to run dvd2avi and create .d2v files, create .avs scripts and encode them with cce.

Bugs problems etc.

The biggest problem (on my lowly rig) is there is no YUY2 color space display support, this means no video previews in the CCE source frame dialog box or the advanced settings dialog box, also, dvd2avi will only display previews when RGB color space is selected from the video options . This does not affect encoding, only previews. You can select YUV 4:2:2 color space in dvd2avi and encode successfully from the resulting .d2v file.

The encoder settings dialog box doesnt re-draw the bitrate settings correctly when a change is made to the Video Encoding mode radio buttons. A simple work around is to select the desired radio button then close and reopen the encoder settings dialog box.

Observations:

I've experienced no stabilty problems with this setup so far. CCE runs at a comparable speed to a windows install. The mpv files are valid and look fine when played. The longest encode attempted so far was a 60 minute multipass encode during which memory usage was closely monitored, I found no evidence of memory leaks.

DVD2AVI runs slower than windows when creating the .d2v file probably due to extra I/O overhead of running within the wine environment.

Enjoy, Mad.

[mean]

great explanation !

[redcane]

I've found transcode to be very useful for everything I want to do.

[madluther]

@ Bonzo

A couple of apps I have tested under wine.

pulldown.exe, works well. source code is available, so a linux version should be possible.

vstrip. (my favorite ripper) works well. source is also available, a quick test compile with gcc 3.2 errored out, will investigate building from source when time permits. (winaspi.dll and wnaspi32.dll need to be placed in the wine \windows\system directory, tested with the dll's from forceaspi 1.7)

ifoedit 0.95. works well, able to use the use the dvd author function successfully.

ac3 delay corrector. works well.

Mad.

[connyosis]

I use transcode for my dvd ripping needs.
With the dvd::rip gui it's really nice (And not too hard for a dvd newbie like me :) )

[madluther]

Tests with Avisynth 2.5 beta and mpeg2dec3.dll have proved successfull.

Install in the usual manner, wine avisynth_250.exe, unpack mpeg2dec3 v1.00.zip to the 2.5 plugin dir.

Mad.

[madluther]

To add YUY2 color space support to the preview windows in CCE, edit system.ini in the wine windows directory and add the following lines to the [drivers32] section -

[drivers32]
VIDC.YUY2=msyuv.dll
VIDC.UYVY=msyuv.dll
VIDC.YVYU=msyuv.dll

Copy msyuv.dll from a win98 or win2k system to the windows\system directory.


Mad.

[nemesi]

x madluther
Thx for your help in the past (see other thread), but I'm having a problem with Ifoedit & wine: when selecting streams to keep I'm not able to see check boxes, I think they are hidden by the country flags. Have you the same problem?

[c0p0n]

Originally posted by Bonzo
It's your Win2K in a NTFS partition? When I run programs from my Win2K I get a lot of errors due to tha fact that my Linux can't write onto a NTFS partition. Can your distro do it? Mine is Mandrake 9.0

I use another Win98SE partition (FAT32) as drive C: but most programs I use are on the Win2K partition (physically stored mostly but registered in Win2K all of them).

Bonzo.

That is because NTFS writting is on beta code on the kernel and it is dangerous to use. to write on NTFS parts you will have to recompile the kernel (use a clean one, like 2.4.20 or .19) and add support for that. I also use MDK 9 and no probs with it, I have the feature on the kernel (maybe some day I'll want to use it) but I always mount the NTFS parts as RO.
I also live in sevilla, if you need some help with this.
There is another way to use wine. You can make a installation of win98se, with all the apps needed and without anyother thing. Wine will run better (win2k and XP with wine is a bit unstable) and you can do a ISO9660 image of that partition and mount it as a loopback device. The thing is that the apps will not be able to write on that but... that is a problem?

[madluther]

@ nemesi

No, I've had no problems using ifoedit under wine, but I only use the dvd author tool, the cut 'n' paste subtitle color function, and to create the celltimes.txt file for chapters.

[nemesi]

Originally posted by madluther
@ nemesi

No, I've had no problems using ifoedit under wine, but I only use the dvd author tool, the cut 'n' paste subtitle color function, and to create the celltimes.txt file for chapters.

Thx anyway

[blixi]

Just want to thank madluther. I have begun another try and I have never thought to be that successfull.

Just a few quick tests:

TMPeg works
mpeg2-vfp-plugin for TMpeg works
CCE works
eclCCE => does not work
Avisynth works (can load avs in CCE)
vdub works
avs => tmpeg seems not to work
open direct files (any) with tmpeg does not work (Tmpeg <file>)
PvaStrumento/cPVAS.exe works of course
MainConcept MpegEncoder => installation not successfull (f*** installschield)
CCE 2.67 not successfull (Message: "Please update your Internetexplorer" *LOL)
DVD2AVI => works


Ok problems:

Can I use the mpeg2-vfp from inside Avisynth ?
I have tried:
LoadVFAPIPlugin("m2v.vfp","m2v")
How do I load the mpeg-files then ?

I have seen TMPEG has a vfp-plugin too, so can I use TMPEG from inside avisynth to fully scriptify the encoding ?

I don't care much about speed , but I want have nice results and as most automated encoding as possible. Any thoughts ?

Greets

blixi

[cweb]

Hi

I can report success with Avisynth 2.5.1 and Tmpgenc run under Linux with Wine (latest build which I compiled) as follows:

Step 1 - Using Windows on the same PC I prepared the batches using Tmpgenc to run later. Batches are avs files to be encoded from mpeg2 files (src satellite). Dvd2avi was used to create the d2v files.
Step 2 - Using Linux I ran Tmpgenc under wine to run the batch, which was encoded correctly.

Edit: I haven't tested the latest build to do step 1 under Linux yet.
It may in fact work. Check out the hints in the Winehq.com application database (the virtualdub section).