*** DVD2SVCD Hacks ***

[dvd2svcd]

No support will be on these hacks.

Feel free to supply your own hack

[dvd2svcd]

Rev. 2.

You need an IFO file that fits the framerate of your MPEG file (PAL/NTSC 25 / 23.976). Rename that IFO file to VTS_01_0.IFO

Then rename the MPG file(s) to VTS_01_1.VOB .. VTS_01_X.VOB

In DVD2SVCD load the IFO file as you use to, and select the audio track 1. It doesn't matter if the audio track says AC3 or MPA. DVD2SVCD will figure that out when extracting the audio. Then just hit go.

That should do the trick.

[dvd2svcd]

Sorry, this hack is not yet possible due to a small bug in build 4. When build 5 is released I'll post the hack.

[MrFaust]

I recently decided to back up my X-Files Season 1-4 DVDs. I broke out Smartripper and ripped the vobs to the hdd. I loaded the Ifo into dvd2svcd. In the time drop-down there was 4 episode time listings. I chose one and hit go. Well I don't know if this is a bug or my mistake, but it wanted to convert all 4 episodes. So I deleted the vobs and ripped again with Smartripper. This time i seperated the that were listed as Angles in Smartripper. Each episode had it's corisoponding vobs and an ifo file. Here is were the fun comes into play... Loading the 1st episode from each disc works great. It showed the right aspect ratio (4:3) and coverted from the desired vobs. The 2nd episode's ifo was a little messed up. It showed the right vobs, but the aspect was defaulted to 16:9. Then there was the 3rd adn 4th episodes. The ifo was just messed up completely. Showing the aspect as 16:9 but also only listing the 1st vob on the disc. I tried maunally adding the vobs in the selection part of dvd2svcd. This didn't work either. So after playing around, I just figured I was test to see if a renaming would work for 3 and 4. I renamed the vobs in the corisponding manner for episode 2 and it worked. Only thing is I still ahve to change the aspect ration manually to 4:3.

So this might be more of a bug report than a HACK per say. But if other people are experiencing the same problem, maybe this will help. Or maybe someone can tell me what I'm doing wrong.

[Founder]

To MrFaust:

I do this all the time

Problem: Smartripper always includes VTS_0x_1.VOB, even if its empty
when you rip ep2 - 4, VTS_0x_1 is empty
DVD2SVCD reads the empty file for aspect ration info, since its empty it will go default ( 16:9)


Solution: rip to different folders, delete VTS_0x_1.VOB if its 0, and rename other VOBs to VTS_0x_1.VOB VTS_0x_2.VOB VTS_0x_3.VOB .....

open VTS_0x_0.IFO in DVD2SVCD, it should show the right info now

edit: x in VTS_0x_1.VOB means ifo number, in your case it should be 1

[daxab]

I don't know if this qualifies as a 'hack'.

I like to change two things when I encode with DVD2SVCD. I prefer BilinearResize instead of bicubic, to avoid sharpening artifacts. Also, I like GreedyHMA for recovering 24fps from source material like anime and tv -- it's fast and does as well or better than anything else I've tried (but still not perfect; problems with fades). Both of these things can be changed easily in the edit AVS step, but this means DVD2SVCD freezes in the middle and requires manual intervention.

So I have a script that waits for the edit window to appear, and when it does, it automatically performs the edits I want, and then proceeds. Obviously you can use this to make any variety of changes to the avs file if you're an avisynth fan and like to do that.

[24hourloop]

This has worked for me in the past:

CCE will generally process the title and changecd files. It may hang in the actual movie. When it hangs, abort things. (Close CCE and DVD2AVI).

Load the AVS file into CCE and make your settings manually. Do not use the generated ECL file. Encode your movie. Rename the output file to whatever the DVD2AVI project file specifies (edit the .D2S file with notepad, by default in the 'movie' directory). Find the line that says 'Project Position'. It should state '27'. Change that to '31'. Run DVD2AVI and crash recovery. It will now let you pick up using 'Pulldown'. Everything should run smoothly now.

I have tried this several times. Might not be a DVD2SVCD blessed hack.

[DDogg]

"Do not use the generated ECL file"

This does not make a lot of sense to me as the ecl file *was* generated by CCE. If you will notice, dvd2svcd loads the avs into cce then saves an ecl which is then reloaded.

This extra step was added a long time ago to insure the frame count and start and stop numbers were correct.

What "changes" were you speaking of?

Maybe I am just not understanding you.

[24hourloop]

I discussed the distinct differences here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=15008). Turned out to be a sure-fire method for me.

The differences must have come via settings that DVD2SVCD made since I used all defaults.

[Refthoom]

Don't know if this is a real hack but maybe it helps someone;

Encoding on my PII@450MHz using TMPGenc takes about 24 hours for ca 80 min. of video, so I'm very pleased with the crash recovery feature of D2S (Thanks!).

However last time, when the muxing and cutting failed, this feature brought me back (only) to the encoding part, which would mean another 24 hour wait, while my mpv file was perfectly good.

The workaround I found was this: I made the mpv file read-only and used "continue-video encoding" from the crash recovery. TMPGenc showed an error that it couldn't make the required file. After clicking on OK, TMPGenc closed and D2S continued with the muxing and the rest.

Saved me a long wait :-)

[Lippy]

In my particular case, CCE would freeze the first time it tried to open an .avs file. (as well as multipass - but that was cured with the CRC patch).

It did not freeze if .avs files were dragged-n-dropped into the CCE window, but after a clean boot, if the avs title is entered via the right-click/add/open files dialogue, CCE would ALWAYS freeze. If the CCE session was then killed and restarted, CCE would happily accept .avs files from any method. If this is the problem that anyone else is experiencing, then the following might be of interest.

SO - I did a bit of playing around and discovered that if I opened CCE and forced an error ( right-click/add then entered a non-existant .avi, producing a file not found error), after closing the error message-box, CCE happily accepted .avs files without crashing/freezing

Not being a programmer, I had to make do with a script which I compiled into a tiny .exe

It simply starts DVD2SVCD - waits for the CCE widow to open - sends keystrokes to open a non-existant .avi - closes the error message box and exits.

This only takes a second or so, and happens before DVD2SVCD tries to open an avs.

+++ Update +++
CCE did freeze ONCE, I think that perhaps windows was doing something in the background and slowed it down so it didn't finish before DVD2SVCD started using CCE.

So the script now selects 'Edit AVS before encoding' and waits for that window, starts CCE - forces file not found error - closes message window - closes CCE - closes 'Edit AVS...' window and exits, and DVD2SVCD of course waits for this before continuing.

RESULT = CCE has not frozen since!

Hopefully, this info will help others.

If not - I have absolutely no teccy expertise at all and so cannot answer any questions or arguments about it. It simply works for me and so I've shared my findings with you, I hope it helps