GPL command line M2V transcoder

[zyzzle77]

DVDRFreak,

Since you don't have an FTP server, could you possibly E-mail me your optimized version. Here is my email address:

zyzzle77 *at* yahoo dot com.

Looks like this tool is now the best solution to movie-only backup. Quality continues surpass even Shrink's output.

-z

[Rombaldi]

DVDRFreak

check your PM's

[DVDRFreak]

I just received an offer from MrBass to host my version. I just send him a mail including the optimized exe and modified source files.

I hope he will post a link here soon.

[mrbass]

http://www.mrbass.org/M2VRequant.rar

[mrbass]

http://www.metakine.com/products/dvdremaster/
M2VRequantizer:
A module which simply requantizes the video leaving the motion vectors unchanged. This module is very fast and provides relatively good quality.

M2VDownsizer:
A modules which recompresses the video stream completely (including motion vectors). This will usually yield slightly better quality, at the cost of time.

what about the M2VDownsizer: better quality?

here's that article translated from German to English by Google.

[int 21h]

To port that second one to Win32, it looks like you have to port libmpeg and mpeg2enc... however, I seem to remember that Nic ported these both awhile back? Perhaps he can supply us with the needed code fragments, because porting pthreads would not be fun, (to me anyways).

[Nic]

Excellent news (Thanks for pointing this out to me Int21h). I'm crazy busy right now with work, but this deserves my attention Ill try and port M2VDownsizer now.

-Nic

ps
Edit: Well, already got it compiling, now just got to get all the 24 unresolved errors removed. I haven't put in the MMX code or anything yet, expect the first release to be slow as hell.
Edit2: Although it might not help a jot, i did build a ICL 7.1 compiled Requant http://nic.dnsalias.com/Requant.zip
Edit3: Got it compiled as an exe, now gotta work out how to use it
Edit4: Uggh, it's one of these apps that uses stdin and stdout for the input/output...that's just wrong, im on windows afterall soon change that.
Edit5: Well it's running, using 99% cpu so I suppose it's going ok. If I can't get it working then Ill at least release the source code, got to get back to work now. It's all done in VC6 using ICL 7.1.
Edit6: Well now its running correcly Very very slowly making output...really need to get the mmx code in, may not put it out till then.
Edit7: Wow! It works...did my first little test. Slow as hell though.
Edit8: By the way, ill make a little GUI for Requant and make it so it can accept PS/TS/ES Streams as well (although it will only output ES)

[Rombaldi]

Edit8: By the way, ill make a little GUI for Requant and make it so it can accept PS/TS/ES Streams as well (although it will only output ES)

you were reading my mind.. I was about to make the suggestion that a good enhancement would be to let it accept something more than a M2V and DEMUX the output streams while it went (ie. input a MPG program stream, output being the 'requanted' M2V and the AC3/MPA stream... ready to feed into the authoring program..)

[rasta21]

...what we need is a standalone trancoder like rempeg for example...without all those "iwanttocopytonsofdvds" features like reading vobs, get sectors, create images.

...then you can use that trancoder standalone or in tools like numenu4u for example.

[int 21h]

I'd rather have the VOB reading/writing feature so that it could easily handle multi-pgc titles. After this weekend I anticipate having alot more free time to look into this project further.

[Rombaldi]

I see good use for both variants (M2V/MPG and VOB).

One over looked area (but the IC/DVDShrink/et.al. approaches) are the
home recorder (growing by leaps and bounds). I've had more than one instance where I might have (for ex) three episodes that won't quite fit on a disc.. yet one is just a bit bigger than the other two.. till now, I had to author the disc image, process the WHOLE image and the burn... now I can shrink down one ep a touch (or all three) and THEN author/burn... much quicker not having to process the whole disc.

[jdobbs]

By the way -- this is pretty exciting. The output looks very good. With VOB reading capability this could really be nice -- we would finally have a ReMPEG2 replacement that gives good quality and is fast. If it read a .VOB you could simply take the output and reintegrate into the orignal stream using IFOEDIT's remux function.

Note: The compression factor isn't very accurate -- depending upon the input I've had things that were told to be compressed at 3.0 come out to be less than 2.0.

[Nic]

Im just about complete on my little GUI app (ive called it ReJig for now) that lets you load in all types of MPEG-2 file(s), see all the streams (demux if wanted) and then re-encode to m2v. After I've finished that i'll look on making the compression a bit more accurate

Looking through the code, it's real simple, should have pulled my finger out ages ago and done it myself

I'll post back later

-Nic

[mikegun]

Originally posted by jdobbs
By the way -- this is pretty exciting. The output looks very good. With VOB reading capability this could really be nice -- we would finally have a ReMPEG2 replacement that gives good quality and is fast. If it read a .VOB you could simply take the output and reintegrate into the orignal stream using IFOEDIT's remux function.

afai remember, it's not that easy to remux, at least it is not possible to remux using cce encodet streams.

mikegun

[jdobbs]

That's because CCE doesn't necessarily create an identical GOP stream (IPB, etc) -- this one does!

[jdobbs]

Looking through the code, it's real simple, should have pulled my finger out ages ago and done it myself

I was thinking the same thing. The quality isn't CCE -- but it's not bad either, and this is really, really fast.

[Nic]

So,

http://nic.dnsalias.com/ReJig.zip
(Sourcecode: http://nic.dnsalias.com/ReJig_src.zip )

It needs a little work (bit rough and ready at present), but I think any suggestions will help motivate me.

Takes Vob/M2V/TS input, shows the streams along with audio delay etc, allows you to demux the audio streams, and it uses ReQuant built-in to compress the video.

It's only a beginning, but it should be a good start (I hope )

-Nic

[DVDRFreak]

Looking great NIC. It still has the speed of the original command line util but now it has a nice GUI.

I was testing a little bit and found some strange things:
1) When I add VOB files to the left listview and press the arrow keys the files disapear.
2) When I add files to the left list view and delete them again the right listview is not updated anymore. Even when I press the refresh button.

Some suggestions:
1) A possibility to define the compression ratio per stream would be nice.
2) The percentage I enter now is a integer it would be nice if it would be a float again so I can enter something like 77.8.
3) A way to select the video stream I want to transcode from a VOB would be nice. Sometimes a VOB has more then one stream if it contains logo's and extra's in different programs.
4) Now it looks like the program transcodes the stream per VOB it would be nice if it could transcode a complete movie (maybe I did something wrong will test a little bit more what happens if I add all VOB files).
edit1:
It is worse, the program seems to combine all the streams of all the VOBS that where add in the left listview and combines the streams in random order. Ended up with a movie starting at the end scene then jumping to the beginning, etc...

edit2:
Question.
When the program detects a AC3 stream with a delay does it correct the delay so I have a stream I just can add to my authoring program without any problems?


For a first version ReJig looks prommising.

[jdobbs]

Wow, Nic. You must be the fastest programmer on the block! Thanks!

[Nic]

@DVDRFreak:

Thanks for the bugs ill fix those now.
1) Per Stream? Not quite sure what you want there.
2) Ok
3) Hmmm, Ok, Ill add that
4) Could you explain exactly what it should do? I've never authored a dvd in my life, so Im not sure what the desired effect should be. And it shouldn't have been random order, but instead the order in which the vobs were added. (ill check that)

No it doesn't correct the AC3 file, merely informs you what it should be. I suppose I could add it as a feature, not exactly sure how.

Well I'll fix that, and also I've added a reasonable amount of the MMX code to that M2VDownsizer. It works ok, but it is very very slow (MPEG2Enc from mjpegtools is a slow encoder even though heavily optimised). Ill release a commandline version of that with source tomorrow in case any one wants to take a look.

Any other feature requests welcome,

Cheers,
-Nic