IfoEdit ignores RFF in NTSC footage?

[Logiqx]

Hi,

I've been successfully making good quality DVD backups of my PAL movies using the following simple process:

1) DVDDevcrypter to rip from the DVD (demuxing the M2V/AC3 and saving IfoEdit chapter points [i.e. frame numbers])
2) ReJig to shrink the M2V to a given % of it's original size (a great tool; fast and good quality results).
3) IfoEdit to author a new DVD; just selecting the ReJigged M2V, AC3 and chapter points then leaving it do do it's stuff.
4) Burn to recordable DVD

This process takes a little over an hour for a film, requires no manual intervention (other than kicking off each step) and results in great quality from what I have seen so far.

I'd like to do the same for my NTSC movies but IfoEdit does not seem to take note of the RFF flags within the MPEG stream and thus everything goes a bit pear shaped (note that ReJig does not alter the original M2V structure so RFF is still intact). IfoEdit seems to get confused as to which frame number is at what point in time, etc and times are therefore adjusted by a factor of about 0.8 (not quite though due to sections of the MPEG-2 that are sequences of type 2 frames [TFF, no RFF]).

Does anyone know if Derrow has any intention to make IfoEdit utilise the RFF flags and make NTSC authoring quick and easy (when the MPEG uses the RFF flags)? Obviously I could re-encode the M2V and therefore create a 'hard' telecine (rather than using RFF flags), or convert to PAL using IVTC but the process gets a lot more long winded and the result not necessarily as pleasing.

I could obviously change step 3 of my process and author using a proper authoring tool but I really like the simplicity of just selecting the 3 files in IfoEdit. ;)

I just wondered if Derrow has ever commented on NTSC and RFF support. Maybe I am missing an option it already has included? Maybe there is another tool that can do the job for me when I do NTSC movies?

Mike

[Vapor]

Uncanningly convenient post as I am having exactly the same problem and was popping in to post an almost identical missive :)

The problem doesn't seem to affect continuous playback on a software player but it messes up the chapter points and skipping about hardly works.

Some hardware players seem to brute force their way through it and play the DVD fine. Others (my old Pioneer 535K for example) play about 5-10 seconds and then grind to a halt (picture goes still, sound stops), selecting next chapter does the same and plays another 5-10 secs then stalls.

I'm not affluent enough or lucky enough to own a commercial DVD mastering package, probably due to my DVD habit :) The freely available tools have done a fine job so far.

I usually resort to DVDShrink to do the NTSC films due to this problem though but ReJig provides much better quality. I've been trying to backup my Aliens Legacy set for over a week now because the quality achieved by DVDShrink is very poor.

I hope Derrow feels this a big enough issue to fix quickly or some guru about the place goes "doh, just do this and it's sorted!" :)

[pieroxy]

Well, no news here, it's just that I have the same problem. I wasted a valuable amount of time encoding and re encoding all over again my main movie for nothing. Maybe the IfoEdit guides (both remux and author) could be updated to reflect that only PAL DVDs can be backed-up using this method. I'd be glad if I could help over there, please just let me know.

Of course some NTSC titles probably still can: those TV serie DVDs that are native NTSC video sould work with IfoEdit...

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, update the guides so no more people will get awfully confused trying to unsuccessfully back-up their NTSC titles.

Other than that, thanks for the great site!

[Logiqx]

There may now be a solution for this problem!

The new version of ReJig has an authoring mode (much like IfoEdit) and distinguishes between PAL/NTSC. I will give it a go with my one and only NTSC movie when I am next at home.

Anyway, even if it doesn't work quite right then I think that Nic will be keen to rectify any problem. He is doing a great job with ReJig and I'm sure he'd sort out any issues pretty quickly.

Logiqx

[Vapor]

I've been following the Rejig threads for some time. Only just got the latest version with DVD authoring mode.

I'll try tonight and post back also.

[Wiewior]

Originally posted by Logiqx
The new version of ReJig has an authoring mode (much like IfoEdit) and distinguishes between PAL/NTSC. I will give it a go with my one and only NTSC movie when I am next at home.


Rejig works!! :)
I tested on my Philips 762 and movie "Brother".

Regards
Wiewior

[Vapor]

Same here - IFOEdit minced Aliens SE Legacy version (R1,RCE) but Rejig was spot on :)

[2COOL]

@Vapor

Are you saying that ReJig finally solved the elusive NTSC reauthoring from IfoEdit? Derrow should look into what the fix was and come up with a new version.

[Vapor]

Actually no I'm afraid, I plugged my old Pioneer 535K back in and the chaptering is still wrong. I've recently got a new DVD player which seems to brute force through the knackered chaptering which initially lead me to believe Rejig had fixed it.

In fact Rejig's chaptering seems worse, even playback on PC software player is affected (Zoom Player Pro + Elecard decoders). The film starts at an odd point (20 or so minutes in) and the timeline reads wrong (26 minutes odd total). I've deleted the files now so can't check atm.

I don't really understand what's happening so I'm re-ripping Alien 3 and authoring the DVD with IFOEdit, Rejig, BBMpeg & TMPGDVD so I can compare the results.

Would it help if I posted the created IFO's for each method so you tec bods can compare? If this is forbidden I'm quite happy to make them available for private download or email directly to anyone wanting them.

[2COOL]

@Vapor

Are you authoring because you added new subtitles? If not, why don't you remux the m2v into your original VOBs? Here's a guide (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=66964) you can try. I also do NTSC.

[Wiewior]

Hmm... I don't see any problems with chaptering -everything is ok (I used IfoEdit to get timecodes). Chapters are in the same places like in the original DVD. The movie length also didn't change. Playback doesn't freeze after 5-6 seconds on my Philips. Subtitles are added without problems.

Wiewior

[2COOL]

@Wiewior

I have to ask...are you doing NTSC or PAL DVDs?

[Vapor]

@2COOL > "Are you authoring because you added new subtitles?"

Nope, I'm only backing up the main movie and primary english audio track, no subs at all. I generally watch the special features only once but watch the film several times.

--

@Wiewior "I used IfoEdit to get timecodes"

I tried to do that and managed to save a CellTimes.txt by opening the IFO for the the main movie (VTS_08_0 in thi case) and selecting VTS_PGCITI + VTS_PGC_1. I compared this to the one ChapterXtractor/DVDDecrypter creates, they contain different values. The IFOEdit one has 45 entries compared to 30 for the CE one. 30 is correct per the original dvd. I therefore assumed I was doing something wrong or IFOEdit was, probably the former though.

--

All I'm really looking for is the fastest way possible to create a main movie + main english audio backup while retaining the original chaptering. Subtitles, menus and extras are all discarded. Saying this I usually rechapter every 5 minutes for most backups, unless the movie is particularly well chaptered. It's these DVD's in NTSC (with pulldown) that are the only problem. A combination of rejig-ifo/bbmpeg/tmpgdvd seem to be the quickest way to cover this scenario.

It's the authoring part that introduces the problem, both Rejig and IFOEdit muck up the chaptering somehow and in different ways (which I'm testing atm). I extract the chapters using ChapterXtractor in IFOEdit format but have tested with DVDDecrypter also, the chapter info is the same. I've also tested ripping the dvd with "Set Drop Frame Flag" and without in the latest Rejig, both output m2v streams and the audio file are identical. I'm therefore assuming the chaptering has nothing to do with the streams themselves but is done in the IFO's which are built during authoring, correct me if I'm wrong though.

Maybe if I outline what I do currently you could spot any mistakes or make alternative suggestions. Speed is very important to me but I'm not willing to accept the quality DVDShrink produces. I do re-encode some movies with TMPGEnc. Still, the quality is only marginally better than Rejig in some cases and I'm not flush enough to buy CCE :( My IO is pretty fast (seperate scsi raid 4 arrays for source and destination < one of the reasons for above) so I've tried to minimise the number of times the whole dvd is demuxed/muxed/remade.

1) ChapterXtractor
2) Rejig IFOMode, 2 pass.
3a) If not pulldown material > author with IFOEdit.
3b) If pulldown material > mux with bbmpeg > author with TMPGDVD

Notes: In some cases you can master with TMPGDVD without muxing with bbmpeg. In most cases though, TMPGDVD will show innaccurate timeline info and be unable to chapter properly because of this. Muxing with bbmpeg seems to fix this. I've also tried using the Muxed.vob file created using Rejig's auto mode (keep files created during backup > on). TMPGDVD reports time 1:54:52 for BBMpeg file, 1:54:50 for Rejig file and DVDDecrypter and REjig both report 1:54:46 for that stream on the original DVD. Both files seem to work fine when authored though. I know maybe some of these problems may be due to limited file support in TMPGDVD author but again I'm not flush enough to buy scenarist :(

As you can see this is a very short system. In it's shortest form, 1 Read, 1 mux+build then burn (until the Rejig backup mode works properly). Pulldown material however takes substantially longer, 1 read, 1 mux, 1 build. BBMpeg's muxing and TMPGDVD's authoring are considerable slower than IFOEdit's build/author resulting in a real world approximate 50% increase in IO time. TMPGDVD doesn't support importing of chapter lists so input has to be done by hand.

If the author mode in either Rejig or IFOEdit could handle pulldown material we'd have the fastest 1 shot movie only backup method. If the Rejig backup mode gets fixed and is optimised to minimise the number of IO passes it does, double winner :) If Rejig had an option to rechapter every X minutes, well, icing on the cake :D

Sorry for going off topic a little at times, just couldn't think of a way to explain without blurting it all out.

[Vapor]

Further to my post I've completed tests using a few tools. I've rar'd up the IFO's and celltimes.txt's. If they're of any use you can grab them from www.vaporised.com/files/a3.rar

These are the IFO's for the re-authored movie only backup I've created. They are NOT the ones from the commercial DVD. I've provided them only in the hope they are of use to someone in adding working chaptering support for pulldown material in IFOEdit and/or Rejig.

[Wiewior]

@2COOL
NTSC, of course :)
"Brother" is the movie which was too difficult for IfoEdit and even DVDMaestro (subtitles out of synchro). Now everything works fine.

[2COOL]

@Wiewior
Originally posted by Wiewior
NTSC, of course :)
"Brother" is the movie which was too difficult for IfoEdit and even DVDMaestro (subtitles out of synchro). Now everything works fine. hmm...then you're probably the first person to have "successfully" done what other NTSC users couldn't do. Too bad you don't have more NTSC movies for you to do for consistency testing. Which ReJig version were you using?

[Wiewior]

Not the first -the second :) Friend from alt.pl.divx had the same problem with other movie, he used Rejig 0.5 (like me) and he also said that his problems dissapeared.
I have more NTSC movies and I will test Rejig on them, but currently I had only Brother on my HDD.

Wiewior

[Nic]

@Vapor: Could you give me more info about why the multiplexing with pulldown material is not working for you in ReJig? Im sure I can fix that very easily (I don't own a single NTSC DVD :( Makes testing hard...so as much feedback as you can would be great :) )

IFOEdit can extract the chapters, but it does it wrong, it assumes every cell is a chapter. This is not the case (i.e. half way through matrix reloaded there are two cells to one chapter). Hence you get more chapters with IFOEdit.

ReJig can extract the chapters file in IFOMode, try the export button and see the figures it comes back with. Ill look into getting that fixed...Should be easy enough.

Cheers for any info,
-Nic

[Vapor]

@nic: I wish I could help more but the extent of my knowledge was ploughed into my previous post. Could you tell me exactly what you are looking for and I'll have ago at finding out? If you have any tests you want me to run let me know.

Also, nic private message/email me your address and I'll mail you an original ntsc dvd with pulldown, the least I can do.

[2COOL]

@Nic and Vapor

Any updates to this thread? Don't know if Vapor has provided the much needed info or if Nic is working on this. Just wanted to see any progress if you two were PMing each other.

[pieroxy]

I felt like adding my $.02...

IfoEdit doesn't work with anything NTSC-Film, would it be reauthor or remux. At least for me: Pioneer DV-343. It is a pretty forgiving DVD player...

ReJig worked fine for me on my first test. I guess that is the end of IfoEdit (and my quest for an authoring tool) for me... Glad I could find something that worked ;););)

Great job Nic, keep it up!!! :p

And happy new year everyone!

[2COOL]

Originally posted by pieroxy
I felt like adding my $.02...

IfoEdit doesn't work with anything NTSC-Film, would it be reauthor or remux. At least for me: Pioneer DV-343. It is a pretty forgiving DVD player...

ReJig worked fine for me on my first test. I guess that is the end of IfoEdit (and my quest for an authoring tool) for me... Glad I could find something that worked ;););)

Great job Nic, keep it up!!! :p

And happy new year everyone! I'm glad my prior suggestion worked for you. :D

[Vapor]

@2COOL: I haven't heard from nic since my last post, by either PM or email :( I assume he's having a break for the Xmas/New year period.

AS soon as I hear from him I will comply with his needs asap :) Hopefully this will be soon.

[Logiqx]

It's taken me a while to get around to trying this but finally I have put the ReJig 0.5e NTSC authoring to the test.

It is certainly a lot better than IfoEdit can do and the re-authored DVD plays fine in all of my devices (where IfoEdit creations behaved very strangely) but there is still a slight problem.

Basically, the chapter positions on the film that I have tested on start to creep forward slightly and by the end of the film, they are 3 seconds early. I have a suspicion that this may be down to the fact that my test DVD is not purely telecined frames (i.e. in DVD2AVI, the 0 1 2 3 pattern). Within the material, at times of complete blackness the frames stop using RFF for a while and are just repeated type 2 frames. Apparently this is normal within NTSC encodes but unfortunately it means that software can't assume that every 2 frames in the MPEG-2 footage will be displayed as 5 fields. Is this an assumption that the ReJig authoring makes?

Nic, if you send your e-mail address to <mynick>@<mynick>.com then I will send you the original IFO, re-authored IFO and D2V project if you like.

Logiqx

[Wiewior]

@2COOL
I tried to author Starship Troopers (NTSC of course) and... success :)

I noticed (like Logiqx) that there is something wrong with chapters -but I think it's a bug in extracting chapters in ReJig. TimeCodes from IfoEdit are different ("later" values than form ReJig)

[Logiqx]

I extracted the chapter points with DVDDecrypter, not with IfoEdit which (extracts cell times). Nic will be able to confirm if my theory is correct. ;)

[Wiewior]

@Logiqx

Did you try ChapterExtractor? It allows to see how timecodes change with different framerates. I think everything depends on the framerate. But, of course, the framerate is directly connected to the RFF, pulldown etc...

[Doom9]

fyi, I've added a warning to the ifoedit authoring guide to not use it with rff'd NTSC content. It will be online with the next site update.

[pieroxy]

fyi, I've added a warning to the ifoedit authoring guide to not use it with rff'd NTSC content. It will be online with the next site update. Thanks ;):rolleyes:

[Nic]

@Logiqx: Hi, Im not sure which version I updated it with, but I used to consider NTSC as 29.97 and then changed it to 30.0. That will cause the small creep. Ill change it back to 29.97 (30000/1001) and hopefully that will correct it...(can't do much harm ;) ).

(Remember that ReJig can extract the ChapterList file too, from the IFO Mode you can load an IFO and then select Export to get a chapter list file (not a Cell file like IFOEdit does (which is wrong))...

Cheers and thanks for all the feedback :) (Motivates me to work on it more :) )
-Nic

[Jackinbox]

I think Rejig, may just be the answer to my problem!! I will give it a shot tonight!

My problem is posted here:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=74671


In a nutshell, IFO Edit was totally thrown off by the seperate cells within a single chapter. I've been trying to solve this problem since Friday. I've been working 5-6 hours a night on it. Glad I found this old thread!!