*Tips and Trick* for help files

[Rockas]

I'm compiling information to make a HTML help system.
It will have everything (I hope ;)) to help anyone that is a beginner on DVD-RB.
I would also like to add a section with Tips and Tricks... can you guys suggest some (of course the credits will be to the poster)

Thank you...
... and keep it UP

[Paced]

Don't know what you will think about this idea, but maybe you could discuss robot1's brilliant RB-Opt "add-on" program in the "Tips & Tricks" section? For example, you could inform the reader about the advantages of using different matrices for various situations.

[Sir Didymus]

Hi Rockas :)

Maybe it is too obvious to be mentioned, but I would give the suggestion to apply cuts and stripping of unwanted material as a POSTPROCESSING to every ppl having troubles in preprocessing material to feed to DVD-RB...

Steps could be as follow:

1. Evaluate the size (in byte) of the materials to be stripped. This could be eventually carried out doing a backup, performing the preprocessing, taking note of the difference respect to the backup and restoring the original material from the backup...

2. This size, in sectors, is obtained by dividing the size in bytes for 2048 (better being conservative on this value, cause this computation is not taking into account the fact that the stripped material MAY be involved into the encoding, resulting in an overestimated value)...

3. Perform a "standard" DVD-RB session on the original title, tuning the TargetSectors item in the [OPTIONS] section of the Rebuilder.ini file; at the TargetSectors item, if present, should be added a value in the order of the size, in sectors, obtained in point 2...

4. When DVD-RB has completed his work, strip the unwanted material...

Cheers,
SD

[pg55555]

To combine the previous ideas:

3b. Use RBOpt to set the compression ratio of the material to be stripped to 100% (no compression) so their size after processing with RB is similar to the original.



Other:

As the menus are not processed by RB, if they are too big, use Shrink to preprocess them (other parts od the DVD set to "No Compression" in full backup mode)

[eriksen76]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by pg55555
[B]To combine the previous ideas:

3b. Use RBOpt to set the compression ratio of the material to be stripped to 100% (no compression) so their size after processing with RB is similar to the original.

Is this nessesary to make it work properly?
And what is the latest version of RBOpt - And finally is there a guide to use this program?

Thanx

/Julius

[dannyv]

You may want to create an installation tip section.

The most common mistake I've read is making sure you point the CCE path to the eclcce executable and not the cce executable itself. This is the most common cause of avs scrip errors "frame size not supported".

Also include to make sure the latest versions of eclcce v1.81, avisysth (v. 2.55) and DGMPGDec v1.012. or mpeg2decdg from the decodefix110mod.zip kit is used.

Making sure the latest properly installed software is being used would solve 90% of the new install error problems.

[Fr4nz]

It could be a good idea also to suggest CCE parameters values like "Quality_prec" or "VBR_Bias" given the film lenght.

For example:

Movies < 2hr:

quality_prec = 15
vbr_bias = 20

Movies between 2h - 2h10m:

quality_prec = 15
vbr_bias = 19

and so on...

[Rockas]

Thank you all.

Just for the record.. I will also add a section for every add-on that was created for DVD-RB... so you tips and tricks can be about them as well.

About installations... I will, in a near future, create and installer with all the (free) tools needed on DVD-RB... as you know this process will be full automatic, but I'll need some beta tester too ;), specially from people with operative systems in other languages than English, do you think that it is a usefull idea?

thanks
and keep it UP

[wmansir]

Rockas,

I already have an installable version of DVD-RB put together (it has to be updated to add EclPro and DGDecode support, but that will be easy). I got all the permissions/licencing worked out, but I had a problem getting it hosted, Doom9 needed some time to arrange it, and I sort of dropped the ball. I'm planning on making a push to get it out this week though. I figure it's a good time since there will be a gap until v0.65 goes public.

[Rockas]

@wmansir

No problem, I can arrange the host on dvdrebuilder.com... I'll post a direct download link here on the forum for a direct download.

By the way, what program did you use to make the compilation, was it Imno? if it is... can you give me the script to able me add, later, the help files? (by the way I was hoping to use some of your material on that files... is there a problem?)
thanks
and keep it UP

[TheSeeker]

1. A common error I see, and one that is easily fixed, is incorrect usage of the filter editor. People will see the incorrect frame size 1024x52 or some such thing, when going to encode (and the encode will take like seconds). And this is usually caused by either not using a LoadPlugin command or using incorrect syntax when calling the filters.

2. Also, warn people to be wary about using the Decomb functionality. I think alot of people say oh this is interlaced so I had better use decomb. This is not the case. The hardware deinterlacers in tvs and dvd players do a much better job so keep it interlaced!!

3. Another one is the Interlaced=true option. Even I forget to uncheck this one alot of the time when doing progressive movies.

4. Oh and maybe would want to just pass some info along to more advanced users about how certain filters cant or shouldnt be used on progressive sources and some shouldnt be used on interlaced sources.

5. Put some info on when to use which custom matrices that are included in with RB-Opt.

6. Definately encourage and explain in detail so it cant be messed up how to setup all the programs to work together. ALso encourage the installation of the newest software as soon as it comes out (given that its supported by the other software being used)

7. Maybe make a compendium of all the known major erors that have been seen, and include the fixes/workarounds to counteract them.

8. I dont know that we necessarily need to discourage pre processing as i do it for every disc i have ever done with RB and i havent run into any problems at all. I would just say to keep pre-processing to an absolute minimum and if you do do preprocessing and start getting errors, then that is the first place that should be looked at as the cause of said errors.

9. Mention that any more than 1+3 passes is pretty much overkill, and results in very negligible quality gains.

10. I would definately do a nice Tip and tricks section on RB-opt explaining how to tweak bitrates by vob id and all that good stuff.. not to mention using cce preset filters and all the settings contained in RB-Opt.. its such a great tool.

Thats all I can come up with for now. I will post if I think of anything else.

[wmansir]

I used AGInstaller. It's a free (for non-commercial use) installer that uses simple .ini based scripts.

You can donwload it here: http://www.agentix.org/utilities/AGInstaller/

I'll update it later today and send you a couple of links. One for the installer and one to a .rar with all the setup files, if you want to build/mod them.

Also, you can use whatever material you want to build your help files. I copied a lot of it from jdobbs or others here in the forum.

[eriksen76]

Originally posted by Sir Didymus
Hi Rockas :)

Maybe it is too obvious to be mentioned, but I would give the suggestion to apply cuts and stripping of unwanted material as a POSTPROCESSING to every ppl having troubles in preprocessing material to feed to DVD-RB...

Steps could be as follow:

1. Evaluate the size (in byte) of the materials to be stripped. This could be eventually carried out doing a backup, performing the preprocessing, taking note of the difference respect to the backup and restoring the original material from the backup...

2. This size, in sectors, is obtained by dividing the size in bytes for 2048 (better being conservative on this value, cause this computation is not taking into account the fact that the stripped material MAY be involved into the encoding, resulting in an overestimated value)...

3. Perform a "standard" DVD-RB session on the original title, tuning the TargetSectors item in the [OPTIONS] section of the Rebuilder.ini file; at the TargetSectors item, if present, should be added a value in the order of the size, in sectors, obtained in point 2...

4. When DVD-RB has completed his work, strip the unwanted material...

Cheers,
SD

Thanx for the great guide. If I have entered a value in the "Targetsectors" will this change if I Squeeze the VTS files to no compression with RBOPT. I mean RBOPT tells me if a movie is to large to fit, and if I press "OK" anyway will it deal with the RBOPT settings alowing to make it larger. Or will it conflict with inputet value in targetsectors?

Hope I asked the question in an understandable way

TIA

/Julius

[Rockas]

If this thread continues this way I won't be compiling a "Help" system... I'm gonna make an Encyclopedia.

thanks...
...and keep it up

[Sir Didymus]

@eriksen76:

Hi Julius; :)

It is a little bit OT to discuss your question in this very nice thread.

I would say, [this applies to myself, hope is useful even to you...] most time, most efficient way to clarify some dubts, it to use the practice: try-and-see... Sometimes [like in this case...] it is just a matter of minutes, since no encoding is involved...

Now, to say it short: no, it is not conflicting with the beautiful RB-OPT of Robot1; it is just the manual calculation and setting of one of the many parameters that can be tuned in DVD-RB. If you like (and if you are used to) RB-OPT, you may simply use this application [Global Resizing in the Global Options] for doing the job, instead of manually changing the TargetSectors value...

Using RB-OPT, as indicated by pg55555, has also the advantage of allowing to set-up the Rebuilding Stage in order to have a precise match between the calculated TargetSectors value and the wanted size, after the stripping of the unwanted material...

I'd say such a precision is recommended, but I don't feel it is mandatory... So even the manual tuning should produce very nice and useful results...

Cheers
SD

[Rockas]

@wmansir

My goal was to make an installer a little more complete that yours... I want to configure automatically DVD-RB and install the proper .dll(s) on Avisynth pluggins directory, so that beguinners will only have to click two buttons to make a backup (choose source and encode - one click method)... later I'll guive you a download link to test it, ok?

[wmansir]

It should be a complete install and work (with QuEnc) out of the box. Of course I ran into a little bug (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=83369) related to QuEnc, so I don't know if it works out of the box with this particular version of DVD-RB.

Originally I did have 1-click mode activated and several other changes by default, but after some discussion with jdobbs I decided to just keep everything at the DVD-RB's default, except change the encoder to QuEnc so it should work without additional setup.

Of course getting it to detect and configure CCE (and ProCoder) would be great. I don't have a lot of experience with installers, and it seemed to be a pain to me, but if you want to do it feel free. whether you use my setup as a base, or start from scratch. Send me a link and I'll test it.

[Rockas]

@wmansir
I'll try to finish it tomorrow then I'll give you the link, ok?
By the way... you should try the "Inno"... it's much more user friendly.

[Rockas]

@wmansir

Just a little question

Your installer puts "DGDecode.dll" on a folder named "Plugins" shouldn't it be on plugins folder of AviSynth? (I never made any test with that file off the AviSynth plugins' folder :o)

DVD-RB functions correctly that way?

Thanks keep it UP

[wmansir]

I just called the folder "plugins" because that's where I put the AviSynth plugins. It's just a normal folder. But you can put DGDecode.dll/Mpeg2dec3dg.dll or Decomb.dll anywhere as long as you let DVD-RB know where they are in the DVD-RB setup screen. DVD-RB will then add the line 'LoadPlugin"C:\blah blah\DGDecode.dll" ' to all your scripts.


The "plugins" folder in the AviSyth directory is special because AviSyth will scan that directory whenever you open an .avs file and auto-load any plugins so the script can use them. You don't have to setup DVD-RB to use them if you put them here because they are auto-loaded. However, it's not as reliable as the previous method because sometimes AviSynth can get messed up and not auto-load the plugins.

[Zainal]

Throwing DGDecode into the avisynth plugins folder and not giving a path in the script does not work as already mentioned by jdobbs. Another thing to mention never use any of the options related to extra on episodic DVD's containing the espisodes in multiple VTS. It will only set the the largest as the main and will define all the other episodes as extras.