2 movies (dvds) on 1 dvd-r disc using dvd2dvdr, how?

[joesloppy]

I looked for an hour, please point me to the right place. How can I put 2 dvd movies on one dvd-r, I halfed the disc size (2240). Ran dvd2dvdr with Dont convert audio and Dont make images, now, I have two movies, lots of files, how do I get a dvd out of these. I dont care about menus and such, maybe chapters would be nice. But mainly, I want to put in the dvd and click which movie and watch.

I have the scenarist program but have no idea how to get two movies from dvd2dvdr in there, I know it does it automatically with one movie.

Thanks for any help!!!

[jsoto]

Hi joesloppy

Just for clarify: DVD2DVDr is other tool (by chatwalker), not the one you are using and asking for help.

Well, I can not help you with Scenarist (I do not have this program) but IfoEdit096 is able to do it using DVD2SVCD (DVD2DVD if you want)generated files, with no menus.

Also, in miniDVD/DVD forum TMPGENc_DVD_Author is the recommended SW to do simple DVD authoring with menus, but, sorry, I never tried.

Although you are using D2S, may be this is not the right forum to ask for help in DVD authoring.

jsoto

[Holomatrix]

not sure about DVD2DVDr but I just use DVDshrink to shrink each movie to 2.2GIG then use TMPEG DVD author to do my custom movie selection screen. Done the whole DVD in about 3 hours. Works great :)

[Nick]

I second the recommendation for TMPGEnc DVD Author. You get a 30 day fully functional free trial and it is so easy to use it's untrue. However it does not support multiple audio streams or selectable subs.
http://www.pegasys-inc.com/e_download.html

The files you need are your Pulldown_Encoded_video......mpv, or if this does not exist (ie pulldown wasn't run: PAL source) Encoded_video......mpv. Note - these will end .m2v if you encoded with TMPGEnc. When you add these files in TMPGDA using the Add file button in Source Setup it will tell you they have no audio but will give you a browse button to find the audio file. Use Encoded_Audio_1.* or if this doesn't exist, Extracted_Audio_1.* From the same dialogue box you get a chance to add chapters to each file (hit Chapter cut edit button at top). I am not sure how the chapter info is stored in a DVD conversion, somewhere in your movie folders you may have I text file containing chapter info I don't know, maybe someone else can help on this.

Then use "Add new track" (left hand side) then "add file" again for your second movie. You can give the tracks titles in the box down the left using the Settings buttons. This is how thwy will appear on the menu.

The menu all but creates itself but you can easily customise a little, although AFAIK you are stuck with the preset background pics.
Create an output folder and play it in WinDVD(etc) to check lipsync before you burn, then off you go. It even has a burning engine built in.


Alternatively there is a way in the FAQ's of joining the two sets of vob's from your rip together and reconverting as one movie. You could then set the chapter points in the CD image section to the end of your first movie. That way you'd have no chapters in the movies themselves but would be able to select which one to watch easily with no menu.

The advantages of this way are that you can have 2 audio's, selectable subs and could leave DVD2DVD to author the images automatically in Scenarist.

[joesloppy]

Thanks you guys, ya, I am using dvd2svcd, didn't mean to confuse it with another program. So I got TMPGenc DVD Author, wow, that was easy, just used the pulldown mpv and extracted audio files and made two titles and just created 12 chapters whoever and now I begun OUTPUT and am waiting load via WinDVD to see how it works out. I will let you know if it plays in my DVD player.

Two more questions if I may, One, my project was a little to big, opps, so I set the END FRAME at the credits of both movies and CUT out the rest bringing the size down just enough. Will that hurt my movie at all? (playability) After all the encoding I can just wack some off like the credits? Nice.

And I used cce so encode the movies, 3 passes, it took a long time, is tempenc encoder any faster or more stable, cce froze twice on me, I had to restart the process. Is there any quality difference?

Thanks again!

[Nick]

CCE is the fastest. TMPG is slower and similar (possibly slightly worse) quality.

You can use the DSRoba plugin to get good results from 1 pass VBR in CCE, saving a lot of time but I haven't personally had much luck with it as it crashes my machine! I don't know why and have never bothered to look into it. However it is reported to work well and as I let my PC do the work while I'm asleep, speed just isn't that important to me. I was only tring it as an experiment.

Anyway, TMPG is slower but more stable. Use Prime95 torture test for 12 hours or so and Memtest86 to a finish (forum searches should get you a link) to check your system. Machines which work well under normal conditions can fold under the strain of video encoding! These to softwares will "certify" your machine "encoding-fit". If you get no errors with these you should have no problem with CCE.

Also do a right click on your desktop and click Properties. In the screen saver tab you will find some Power management settings. Set them all to "never". I found this made CCE far more stable.

[joesloppy]

It played great in my 2 dvd players, both APEX. Although in one the menu bottons were not animated, as they were in the other player, hmmmm...? Since I am putting two movies on one dvd, should I adjust the bitrate info at all besides halfing the dvd-r size? Just wondering if I can get better quality by changing those default values. Other than that, THANKS dvd2svcd, you have done it again. Great program.

[Nick]

The only possible one is if you're getting 2 decent length movies on one DVDR, that's about 2.4 GB each = 3 CDR's worth per movie. Hence the bitrate is actually closer to SVCD than DVD.

In the light of that, lowering your minimum bitrate to say, 500 would spare bits in low motion scenes for where they were most needed.

Other than that, leave as is. Even then I am unconvinced if there will be a visible difference.

[DDogg]

This brings up the factor of compressibility. At first glance it would seem to divide the available space by how many movies would be the correct way to do it. However, it is not correct because different sources have different compression requirements.

This is why CCE OPV is so helpful. The quality of a given source is not dictated by the bitrate. Yes, I know some will think that is heresy :) The final quality of an encode is determined by the "amount of Q" that can be "held" within a given bitrate.

So, for the oft used example of The Matrix, because it is extremely compressible, a Q of 32 can be held somewhere in the neighborhood of 700 k in bitrate. An extremely difficult source like SPR or "Holes" may require twice that in bitrate to "hold" a Q of 32.

So, if you have two sources that have highly different compression needs you would have to allocate much more of the available space to one over the other in order to achieve the same level of quality in each. To put that another way, to encode two sources at a fixed quality of Q=32 onto one disk requires the measurement of the compression characteristics of both before you actually do the encode. This allows you to allocate the correct amount of target space for each source so as to have equal quality in both.

Luckily tylo's OPV plugin, or the basic selectrangeevery(X,X) statement makes this a fairly easy task. If anybody is interested I would be happy to provide more details on the method.

Although long winded, some may find additional information in this thread. (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=59850&highlight=roba)

[Nick]

This raises some very good points DDogg.

In all honesty I have, by and large used the "divide target disc size by number of files" method for episode DVD's. I have found as a rule of thumb that the different episodes in one series, by and large, have similar compressibility requirements. I liked this method as it gave one file per episode which were easy to author to your target disc(s) with menus.

TMPGDA is a lovely program for doing this to DVD-R. In the light of this can I perhaps propose a "hybrid" method?

1. Rip the 2 discs to separate folders
2. Rename the vob files in folder 2 and move to folder 1 (a la Q41 in the Q+A)
3. Encode to 1 DVDR-size MPEG file with Tylo's DSRoBa plugin.
4. In TMPGDA use the output files as seen earlier in this thread ** TWICE - ie create two tracks in TMPGDA and add the same output files for both tracks. Then use the Chapter Cut Edit button to set the end point of track 1 to the end of movie 1, then set the start point of track 2 to the start of movie 2.

Hey presto, self-authored discs with two movies and a menu, with quality-optimised disc usage.

** can you use bbMPEG output file in TMPGDA? since the latter will mux for you I've always stopped bbMPEG and used the separate mp3 nd ac3 streams for authoring. This is because when I had problems with bbMPEG output and TMPGDA I read somewhere that bbMPEG can't actually create a DVD-compliant muxed stream. Can anyone confirm if this is correct? Or is it down to the bundled version of bbMPEG being corrupt as suggested by DDogg re. VCDXBuild failures?

[joesloppy]

Sounds great, rip two movies then encode, one question, do the two movies have to be the exact same type, as far as FILM or PROGRESSIVE? Not to sure about those, FRAME RATE? And what about the sound, Can I rip that seperatly, should I? One one movie I want 0x80, and another 0x81, should I just check both? Thanks, you are a great help! I downloaded the plugin and will be trying your stated method.

[Nick]

Yeah, this will only work with 2 movies with same framerate, interlace format and soundtrack type.

Didn't think about that. Very good point.

Otherwise you are stuck with 2 separate encodes as per your original method. However, read the thread DDogg links to. It gives you tips on how to decide what amount of disc space to allocate to each movie.

This is the only foolproof way of doing things which doesn not rely on certain parameters being identical in both movies. Perhaps the method I proposed above is worth ignoring.

[DDogg]

What you suggested is completely correct for episodic source where the sources are reasonably close to each other. The stuff I was talking about is where you have very different sources, aspect ratios, lengths, and other general differing compression characteristics.

Try this interesting exercise:

After D2s starts up CCE, kill d2s and then CCE. Edit the AviSynth_Script_file.avs and add "SelectRangeEvery(750, 15)" to the bottom of the script. This will give you a 2% sample to work with.

Now manually start CCE and drag AviSynth_Script_file.avs into it (or you can load the CCE_Project_file.ecl). Set for one pass VBR, Q 32, 200 min, 2584 max (for 160 audio). Change the name to something like Q32_test.mpv and press encode now. This should only take a few minutes to do. Note the size of Q32_test.mpv. Multiply the size X 50 and that should be reasonably close to the final size the Quality Q32 encode.mpv will be. Play around with changing the Q value or adding undot() before the resizing line and/or maybe something gentle like TemporalSoften(3,5,5,10,2) or fluxsmooth(5,5). Run the sample again and note the drop in size.

Using this method on both sources should allow you to be able to find a common Q, which will give you comparable quality for two sources that will fill your available space. One source may take up 60% of your available space and one may take 40%, but they will be of a comparable quality. This is much easier to do for a DVD since you have so much space to work with. So what if you are a few percent off, in the scheme of things it makes little difference.