VOBtacular

[Primus Motor]

Hello

I've read around most of the tutorials, but they still haven't answered properly to two of my questions.

I'm deeply sorry if this has been asked thousands of times.... but apparently I suck and didn't notice them by searching... Oh well.

1) Converting NTSC VOB files to PAL VOB files. Without remarkable losses in video/audio quality, and certainly it should work properly, as it wouldn't make the picture twitch or anything. Any help?

2) What DVD authoring program I have to use to make menu's with ability to select and change subtitles? Haven't really found the original one, and TMPGENC DVD Author is pretty lame in that case.

These probably have been answered many times, but please, point me out to the answers!

Hopefully you get what I'm meaning :/

Thanks in advance

[jggimi]

Hello, and welcome to the forum.

I'll start with question "2)" since that's a lot easier to answer. If you take a look at Doom9's Authoring Guides (http://www.doom9.org/mpg/dvdauthoring.htm) page, you'll see mention of Scenarist NT and DVDMaestro that discuss subtitle authoring, and, in the table below, you'll see it mentioned that DVD Wise and DVDMotion Pro support up to 32 subtitle tracks. There are links to guides for all 4 authoring tools, though of course, the professional tools are expensive software products.

Regarding question "1)" NTSC->PAL or PAL->NTSC are not newbie sorts of issues, because they can be very complex, and, the processes you use may or may not introduce image degredation. If the NTSC source was originally 24fps film that was Telecined, usually one can get away with an Inverse Telecine (IVTC) then setting the framerate from 23.976 to 25.000 fps, and adjusting the audio track length(s) to match. There are a variety of tools that can help automate this, such as DVD2SVCD in DVD2DVD mode.

[Primus Motor]

The FPS is 29.97 on the VOB files. Can the tools you mentioned still convert the files like I'd like to?

So, what kind of steps does NTSC -> PAL conversion involve?

[jggimi]

Just because the framerate of the MPEG-2 stream in your .VOB set is 29.97 doesn't mean that its easy to convert it to PAL. NTSC streams are not necessarily Telecined cleanly. For a better understanding of what makes up a 29.97 video stream, take a look through www.doom9.org/ivtc-tut.htm -- it is a tutorial for people who use a couple of different tools (DGIndex/DVD2AVI and AviSynth), but it will help you understand what Telecining is, and how to determine if your content used it or not.

As I'd stated, DVD2SVCD may be helpful as it may automate this non-newbie procedure. Doom9 has a guide at http://www.doom9.org/mpg/dvd2svcd-dvdr.htm. Note that the "PAL to NTSC" option is greyed out in that example -- I'm hopeful that is only because the source is PAL. You'll have to try it and see -- I don't have a DVD burner so I've not run the encoding suite in DVD2DVD mode.

[Primus Motor]

Sorry, haven't been able to post lately.

However, I was trying to author it with TMPGENC DVD Author (trying to convert the NTSC one now, will perhaps do the PAL covnersion later), but then it gives a nice error!

"The combined bitrate of the clip exceeds the upper limit for a standard DVD.

The current bitrate is video: 9800 kbps, audio: 1536 kbps, combined: 11336 kbps. The combined video and audio bitrate can be no more than 9.848 Mbps (9848 mbps)"

So, what should I do?

[jggimi]

Lower your bitrates.

If you feel that suggestion didn't provide enough information ... its because neither did you.

We don't know enough about your sources and the processes you've used. For example, why does your video bitrate alone, already exceed the DVD standard all by itself? What did you do to your VOB set prior to starting the authoring tool?

[Primus Motor]

I surely hope this thread won't be locked due to the perhaps obvious warez situation...

However, I haven't done anything to the VOB's after acquiring them.

All I need to know now is how to lower the bitrate... it must be really simple for your answer was kinda simple :/

(Not a good reason for it being simple, though)

[jggimi]

Its obvious now. :rolleyes:

Since you are working with sources that you do not have rights to, I will refer you to these three links:The Piracy & Copyright section of Doom9's disclaimer (http://www.doom9.org/disclaimer.htm)
Rule #6 (http://forum.doom9.org/forum-rules.htm)
This announcement (http://forum.doom9.org/announcement.php?f=6) .

[Primus Motor]

A shame.

Well, bye!

[Pyscrow]

Sorry, haven't been able to post lately.

However, I was trying to author it with TMPGENC DVD Author (trying to convert the NTSC one now, will perhaps do the PAL covnersion later), but then it gives a nice error!

"The combined bitrate of the clip exceeds the upper limit for a standard DVD.

The current bitrate is video: 9800 kbps, audio: 1536 kbps, combined: 11336 kbps. The combined video and audio bitrate can be no more than 9.848 Mbps (9848 mbps)"

So, what should I do?


TMPGenc gets it wrong, it reads the bitrate of the combined file, then re-adds the bitrate of the audio on again when it calculates to bitrate and gives the error message. London to a brick that is what is happening in your case.

Also most DVD players dont really care all that much if you did exceed the allowed bitrate. My advice is to just burn it and see if your Play can play them ok.

If not, just use DVD shrink on the output from TMPGenc DVD Author. You may need to set the compression manually, as you are after a deliberate reduction in size to lower the bitrate.

You have to be a bit careful around here how you word your requests, they are very phobic about piracy issues (and who would not be in todays climate with the MPAA sueing everyone left right and centre), so if you are doing something unusual, that may sound like piracy, but is not, explain what you are up to fully, or you will get an earful.

IE if you downloading VOBS or DIVx copies of DVD's that do not have copyright claimed on them, or are free to use, such as some amature porn swapping, or home videos of sports events, family events overseas etc etc, by all means say so! For example my english father in law gets his son to load DVD quality home video of the grandkids onto my website, so he can download them, rahter then send em in the post (They were forever getting damaged).

If you are being a Pirate, you do however deserve it! they spell it out pretty clearly.