Problem with D2S 1.22 B2 and AutoFitCD / FACAR

[manolito]

There seems to be a serious problem with the D2S 1.22B2 preview window (still picture) that renders AutoFitCd and FACAR useless.

I did a test encode using a PAL Avi (768 x 576), target was PAL SVCD 480 x 576. With AutoFitCD the preview was completely scrambled, no way to obtain the correct borders. I switched to FACAR Detect borders, now the preview was horizontally squeezed with a white area right of the actual movie. The vertical borders were detected correctly, so I continued with the encode. It turned out though that the generated script contained a value for DestinationWidth=360. Of course it should have been 480, and the SVCD that was created would play neither in the standalone nor with PowerDVD.

So I guess I'm going back to version 1.22 build 1 for now.

[manolito]

I did a few more tests to pinpoint the problem a little better. With DVD sources everything works fine, but all my captured PAL AVIs with 768 x 576 have this behavior. AutoFitCD is absolutely useless, and FACAR does strange things. When I select "SVCD" in the D2S frameserver tab and set "ResizeTo=0" in the FACAR script, I always end up with "DestinationWidth=360" in the AviSynth_Script_File.avs.

I tried to get around this by selecting "DVD" in the frameserver tab and setting "ResizeTo=3" in the FACAR script. This time DestinationWidth is set to 540 which is also not exactly what it should be.

I do not have any NTSC AVI files so I don't know if this is a pure PAL problem. Could someone check this please with NTSC AVIs?

Cheers
manolito

[Nick]

Hmm.
When you say this problem exists in the preview window, have you tried an encode to see if this has the same problem?

The resizing algorithms in the latest build assume 1:1 PAR for AVI sources. If your AVI's have a different PAR this will throw things. For 1:1 PAR the "16:9 Borders added, Encode as 4:3" option resizes correctly for a 4:3 TV, the anamorphic option resizes correctly for a 16:9 TV. Don't use the "4:3 No borders encode as 4:3" option even if (as seems to be your case) the source file has 4:3 AR.

IIRC FACAR was not intended for AVI's in any case and so did not resize correctly anyway. As for the problem with AutoFitCD, if selecting "16:9 Border added" doesn't solve it, this clearly requires further investigation.

[manolito]

When you say this problem exists in the preview window, have you tried an encode to see if this has the same problem?
Yes, I did an encode using FACAR. DestinationWidth was set to 360, and the SVCD was unplayable. The standalone DVD player and PowerDVD both displayed diagonal stripes like when a TV cannot synchronize itself to the signal.

Don't use the "4:3 No borders encode as 4:3" option even if (as seems to be your case) the source file has 4:3 AR.
This is interesting. I did use the "4:3 No borders encode as 4:3" option because D2S sets this automatically when the source is a 4:3 AVI. Up until version 1.22 build 1 this never caused any problems. I even believe that I tried the 16:9 option once with a 4:3 AVI, and it did not work correctly.

IIRC FACAR was not intended for AVI's in any case and so did not resize correctly anyway.
I know that for AVIs and other 4:3 sources FACAR does cut off a few too many pixels, but until now it never messed up the value for DestinationWidth.

Anyway, thanks for the tip with the 16:9 setting. I will do another test with the "16:9 Borders added, Encode as 4:3" option and report back.

Cheers
manolito

[manolito]

Well, I think I nailed it down now. These are my latest test results:

Source: Captured PAL AVI, frame size 768 x 576
Target: PAL SVCD 480 x 576


AutoFitCD with D2S 1.2.2 build 1
--------------------------------

Selecting either "4:3, no borders, encoded as 4:3" or "16:9, borders added, encoded as 4:3" made no difference at all. The parameters that were calculated for the resizer and the AddBorders command were absolutely identical.


AutoFitCD with D2S 1.2.2 build 2a
---------------------------------

Selecting "4:3, no borders, encoded as 4:3" resulted in a horizontally squeezed preview window. Switching from the preview to "AutoFitCD" displayed a scrambled preview window. On further examination I noticed that under "Destination" the PAL checkbox was not ticked. Ticking it manually brought everything back to normal. Obviously AutoFitCD thought that I intended to create an NTSC SVCD.

When selecting "16:9, borders added, encoded as 4:3" everything was normal. The PAL checkbox was ticked automatically, the resulting parameters for the script were again identical to the previous test where I selected "PAL" manually.



FACAR with D2S 1.2.2 build 1
----------------------------

Only the 4:3 option gave me the correct AR for the encoded SVCD. When I selected 16:9, the picture came out vertically squeezed with much too big black borders on top and bottom.


FACAR with D2S 1.2.2 buld 2a
----------------------------

This time the 4:3 option resulted in an unplayable SVCD like I already described it. The 16:9 option solved this, FACAR behaved exactly the same as it had with the 4:3 option in D2S 1.2.2 build 1.



Conclusion:
There must be some minor issue with NTSC / PAL in the new resizer code. I can certainly live with it now that I know that selecting 16:9 even for a pure 4:3 AVI will do the trick, but it sure would be nice to have it fixed in the next version.


Cheers
manolito

[Nick]

Thanks for your testing and reports.
Helpful stuff.

I cannot replicate your findings re. NTSC vs PAL not being properly detected by FitCD. Would you mind doing a full deinstall, then installing DVD2SVCD (new build) and AutoFitCD from scratch.

That is how I installed the new build and it seems to work fine for me.

Cheers
Nick

[manolito]

Whenever I reinstall DVD2SVCD I do uninstall the previous version first. But following your advice this time I uninstalled everything related to DVD2SVCD except CCE. Then I reinstalled everything like this:

1. Install D2S 1.2.2 build 2a with AviSynth 2.55, but without D2SRoBa 3.60
2. Uninstall AviSynth 2.55 (does not work with my QMF filters)
3. Install AviSynth 2.54
4. Install FitCD 1.12 (no real install, just copy the executable to a folder)
5. Install AutoFitCD 1.5
6. Install FACAR 1.06.7
7. Install D2SRoBa 3.50 (I prefer it over version 3.60)


Result:

No difference. With a PAL source AVI of 768 x 576 and "4:3, no borders" selected AutoFitCD does not recognize that I want a PAL SVCD, I have to manually tick "PAL" under "Destination". When I select "16:9, borders added, encoded as 4:3", everything is fine, PAL is selected automatically.


But it gets worse. Out of curiosity I created two small PAL AVI's with frame sizes of 720 x 576 and 704 x 576, which are also legal PAL frame sizes. When I fed those files to D2S 1.2.2 build 2 with AutoFitCD, PAL was never detected automatically, even when I selected the "16:9" option.

With FACAR those frame sizes were completely unusable. The parameters that were created by FACAR always caused CCE to quit with a message that this frame size was not supported.


I suppose these problems only occur with PAL AVI's. Since I do not have any NTSC AVI files I cannot verify this, though.

Cheers
manolito