creating AVI file using DVDx 2.2....why does it stop short??

[gogeta4832]

Greetings all,

I'm quite new to this forum and to playing with dvd's in general.
I've read through most of these posts and I did not see a possible answer to my question so here goes.

I'm using DVDx 2.2 to take the .vob file that I ripped from my dvd's to encode them as .avi files. My problem is stemming from a couple of 2+ hour movies, they stop encoding after appx. 1 1/2 hours

example:

end of days.vob --> end of days.avi
total frames = 175893
frames encoded = 167800
audio = lame mp3 @ 160kb/s
video = DivX 5.0.5 @ 520kb/s
size = 695mb (if fully encoded)

does anyone know why it just doesn't want to encode the full movie??

I've learned a great deal from reading the posts and threads so far,
but nothing that I saw related to this.

any help would be greatly appreciated.:)

Gogeta4832

[Hiro2k]

Have you tried any of the other programs for creating AVI's? There's Gknot and Jonny's Divx Enc.

[gogeta4832]

haven't tried the other programs yet.
so far, I've been having great success with DVDx, just this one movie is giving me problems.

I will try with Gknot and see what happens.

[oddyseus]

what is your compression methode?

[gogeta4832]

didn't I state the compression method I was using in my main post?

DivX 5.0.5

that's right isn't it?

[jggimi]

Does it stop at the same frame (167800) each time you run it, or does it differ each time?

If it stops at different positions, then it's probably a hardware problem, such as instability due to excessive heat (unless DVDx is stopping because you are running out of disk space). Video encoding produces more heat than other, typical workstation applications.

If it stops at the same frame # each time, it could be a wide variety of things, the most likely to me would be some sort of unrecoverable error in the VOBs on your hard drive. Open the VOB(s) with a software DVD player, and move to the scene that includes frame 167800. Does it play cleanly?

I don't use DVDx, so I can't help you if there's something procedural causing you grief. Does DVDx produce a log file? If so, you might copy and paste it into a reply here, in case someone with DVDx experience sees something that will help.

[gogeta4832]

well tried another movie "The Core"
it's 2 hours and 15 minutes long.....and it did the same thing.

DVDx doesn't produce a log that I can see in the folder,
and it does stop in the same area of frames, give or take 100.
tried playing it with my NVDVD and it played great, and played with Windows Media player fine as well.

However I did notice something rather odd.
On the text info that smart ripper creates when it makes the .vob file, it says that the total frames of the movie is appx 195,000 for the "Core" and 178,000 for "End of Days"

DVDx says when I click the "whole" button to encode, the total frames is different than that.

could it be some sort of IFO problem?

tried DVD2AVI with the same results.
tried Gknot, but got a little too confused *lol*, need to read up on it more before I try again.

[jggimi]

...and it does stop in the same area of frames, give or take 100...If it doesn't stop on the same frame # each time you run the same job, then the problem is likely one of two things: Some sort of procedural error, such as a full disk drive.

Without using encoding suites that produce logs, such as Gknot, I doubt we'll be able to give you much help if your problem is caused by a procedural error.

A problem with your PC's hardware that appears under the stress of video encoding.

I recommend stress testing your PC with a stress tester such as Prime95 (http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm). In addition, you may want to install a motherboard monitoring tool that can track temperatures for you, such as PC World's Motherboard Monitor (http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,7309,00.asp). I would use this both when stress testing as well as when encoding.

[gogeta4832]

I thought that it was something to do with stressing my system too much, but it will encode other movies fine.
I ran prime95, memtest, and sandra burn-in wizard for 36 hours straight and had no problems whatsoever.

here's a quick rundown of my system specs:

AMD Athlon XP1700+ @ 2.15ghz (195fsbx11)
SLK800A w/80mm sunon tornado fan
ASUS A7N8X deluxe motherboard rev1.04
256mb PC3200 Buffalo Tech (winbond CH-5)
GeForce3 64mb
LG 52x24x52 CD-RW
Toshiba 16X DVD (model SD-1502)
Maxtor 40.0 gb hard drive ATA133 2mb buffer

right now I sit with 29gb free space and this system is rock solid. temps are 27C idle and 36C full load at 20C room temp. (motherboard monitor 5)

I'm going to try a few other movies and see what happens and post here the results.

[jggimi]

Glad to know you've already tested your hardware.

Thinking about this some more, you mentioned you had the same sort of trouble when using DVD2AVI. Which release were you using?

What were your various video settings, including Field Operation?

What happened when you moved the slider to frame 167800 and beyond?

Can you preview through the scene? Use the [ and ] buttons to select the scene, if possible, then F5 to preview.

If you open the individual VOB -- rather than the entire VOB set -- does anything change when you preview or move the slider through that scene?Your software DVD player worked fine, and if you can see the scene just fine, without encoding, using DVD2AVI's preview function, then I would guess you're getting some sort of encoder failure.

I just wish you'd gotten some sort of error message.

[gogeta4832]

well I just noticed something a little odd with DVDx 2.2
I ripped LOTR and have it on my hard drive.

-opened DVDx and went to load .vob file
-after it had finished loading, it said the movie was only 2 hours, 22 minutes long.
-closed the program, reopened it and loaded the .ifo instead, then it came up correct at 2 hours 58 minutes

I'm wondering if that is where the problem is?

Haven't tried encoding yet, have other stuff to do.
Just thought I've give a heads up, see if anyone thinks that might be the problem I'm running into

[manono]

Are you on FAT32, by chance? And are you ripping the movies as one large vob file? And do they max out at 4 GB? If so, try and split the vob files at 1 GB. If not, then ignore me.

[gogeta4832]

running XPSP1
and ripping it to one .vob file

[manono]

Hi-

You didn't answer the questions, but you may not have understood them, either. So try this. Using SmartRipper? Go into Movie Settings and set File Splitting for "Every Vob-File". You must have it set for "Max-FileSize" at the moment. Then decrypt the movie again. If I'm right, you'll get the whole movie this time. If I'm wrong, you won't. :)

[dragongodz]

you got it in one manono. :)

this is a restriction of lseek (used to seek to a position in a file) which uses a long int for its result. meaning you run out of digits around the 4.2gb mark. remember that c/c++ has been around a lot longer than windows xp and use of such large files was not intended.

instead split by vob and use the ifo and you should be ok.

[manono]

Hi-

Thanks for the clarification, dragongodz. So I gave the right answer, but for the wrong reason? Musta got lucky. :)

[gogeta4832]

update -

manono : sorry about not understanding earlier. I'm running NTFS for my XP. My files don't max out at 4gb due to me telling smart ripper the size of one file I want. I've got it set to 8gb at the moment :)

I've now ripped LOTR to one .vob file (7.1gb), used the .ifo file to get the info for converting to .avi.....and it worked great. audio/video was off by a fraction, but nothing serious.

I also ripped The Matrix to one .vob file (6.3gb I think) and was able to get it in .avi format and fit on one 700mb CD. The quality was actually very good IMO.

I had to rip The Core into each .vob file (total 8.4 gb), use the .ifo file to convert it. Turned out really good, and fits on 2 700mb CD's.

just thought I'd post and let everyone who's read or posted on this thread that I'm making progress :D*lol*