Welcome to Doom9's Forum, THE in-place to be for everyone interested in DVD conversion. Before you start posting please read the forum rules. By posting to this forum you agree to abide by the rules. |
21st April 2002, 19:35 | #1 | Link | |
Old fart
Join Date: Oct 2001
Posts: 3,589
|
DVD2SVCD Quick Guide and FAQ
DVD2SVCD Quick Guide and FAQ
This is a quick guide, reference and FAQ. Most of this information can be found in the living Q + A. DVD2SVCD is a front end for many great programs put together with the correct options already selected for you or easily changeable that in the end all you do is hit GO. A few hours later (anywhere from 3 to 40, movie length, options and computer dependant) you have images ready to burn to make your SVCD. What other pages should I read? Always be sure you have the latest version of DVD2SVCD. You can find it at the DVD2SVCD homepage. The best pages for either a more complete guide or more advanced info are here: DVD2SVCD guide at Doom9.org DVD2SVCD Q + A Also be sure you have read this. It is a great thread about the information the forum needs to help anyone with a problem. Mandatory Read! Welcome / How to make a good post How do I tell if my DVD player can play SVCD's? Check the DVD player list at www.vcdhelp.com and see the list we have compiled here at the end of the Guide. What software other then the DVD2SVCD bundle do I need? You have three choices of encoders, two of which are commercial and the last is shareware. CCE 2.50 and CCE 2.62 are the only two versions of CCE that are officially supported. You may also use TMPgenc 2.50 or above. If you use CCE 2.62 you must check off safe mode on the encoder tab. With CCE 2.5 you may use either method, but safe mode is much slower. What hardware do I need? You will need a computer with a DVD drive, a CDRW drive, 256mb’s or more of RAM, a large hard drive (10+ GB's free is suggested) and a CPU that is at least a P3 or later for CCE. See the CCE page for more specific info. Although DVD2SVCD will work with 128mb’s, 256mb’s or more is highly recommended and if you wish to use your computer at all while encoding at least 384mb’s is recommended. How do I get started? After you have installed DVD2SVCD make sure the correct path is stated for CCE or TMPG on the encoder tab. On the Misc tab this is where you will set the default directory or the directory structure to be used. It a good idea to get into the habbit of doing this first. Very Important: There is a bug in one of the programs used in DVD2SVCD that limits what you can have as a directory name. Do not use anything, but letters. No numbers or special characters. This will cause one of the programs to fail and you will need to start over again from the beginning. You can also set the process priority for all the programs DVD2SVCD uses. This is more effective in the Winnt based OS's such as 2000 or XP. Setting the priority to idle usually will not effect the encode and tends to help when you use your computer for other light duty tasks such as surfing the net. Games and other CPU intensive programs are not recomended while you are encoding. Here is also where you get to set the level of the way DVD2SVCD interfaces with you. Until you have a reasonable understanding of what is going on leave this at normal. The settings that are hidden are done so for your protection. This is also where you set up what you will be using this program for. If you are using it to convert DVD's set it to DVD2SVCD. If you are using it to convert AVI's then set it to AVI2SVCD and if you are going to be converting PVA streams then select PVA2SVCD. This FAQ deals mostly with DVD2SVCD. On the ripping tab you have the ability to choose either not to enable ripping or you have two methods to rip. There is either the Internal method of ripping which will give you the ability to rip chapters or as an alternate choice Vstrip can be used, but you cannot rip chapters with this. External rippers are not recomended and are known to ocassionally cause issues. If you have problems with a video you ripped with something other then the two supplied rippers always redo the video with the supplied rippers before asking for help in the forums. If you have ripped the files to you hard drive using the rip only option in DVD2SVCD make sure to uncheck ripping before you start again from the hard drive. On the conversion tab you will select the IFO off the DVD (Usually in Video_TS directory). Many times there is more then one. In this case the largest IFO is usually the correct one. On DVD’s with multiple aspect ratios there will be two very close in size. One will be for the 4:3 encode and the other for the 16:9 encode. The only sure way is to pick one, rip the DVD to the Hard Drive with the rip only option, test it with a Software DVD player like WinDVD or PowerDVD 4.0, if you got the correct one load that IFO off the Hard Drive into CCE and continue and if you got the wrong one erase those files and pick the other IFO. Once the correct IFO is loaded you can now make your selections as to what you want to do with the DVD. Now you need to decide how you want the video to be encoded. There are three choices. DVD2SVCD reads the IFO and tries to make a choice, but sometimes this choice is not correct or what you want. If you use the setting anamorphic(No borders, encode as 16:9) your DVD player must support this tag for SVCD's. Signs your DVD player does not support them include having the video stretched into 4:3 mode or having violent shaking in the video even on a 16:9 TV. If this happens you should not use this setting. It seems that more players do not support the tag then do. Even the old standby Apex units do not appear to support this tag. If this happens and you have a widescreen TV you should continue to use 4:3(No borders, encode as 4:3) for you encodes that are to be dedicated. Otherwise only choose this if the video is fullscreen 4:3. You should also use this setting if the video is "letterbox". Generally these are onlder pre-anamorphic videos where the black bars are actually part of the video. If you use a more standard 4:3 TV use 16:9 (borders added, encode as 4:3) for your 16:9 anamorphic videos. This is the most commonly used setting today. Alternately you can read the excellent explanation by Nick: Quote:
On the conversion tab the length of the video will show. Click on this and as long as you have Internal Routines selected as your ripping choice on the ripping tab and have Activate DVD ripping checked off a window will popup allowing you to select and deselect individual chapters for ripping. This is a great way to do a test encode or if the last chapter is just the credits get rid of them. On the bitrate tab you can adjust the size of CDR you plan to burn the images to. The default Values are 740 or 800. Use 740 for 74 minute CDR discs and 800 for 80 Minute CDR discs. Why so large a size? I thought I could only burn 650 or 700mb’s respectively. Video does not have the overhead of file data and because of this you are able to burn much more on a CDR disc. Also on the bitrate tab you can adjust the MIN, MAX AVG and AVG bitrates for the SVCD. Until you get the hang of creating SVCD’s leave these values at default. You will have time enough to experiment later. If you get an error that the bitrate is above 2756 this means that the set MAX of the video plus the set audio bitrate combined is beyond the SVCD spec of 2756 and may not play correctly in your player. If you know your player can handle this continue and in the future you can uncheck the warn when bitrate is above 2756 on the bottom of the bitrate tab. If you are unsure you should say no and reduce the MAX bitrate until the error goes away or you can reduce your audio bitrate. It is wise if your audio bitrate is 224 or below that you reduce the MAX bitrate for the video and not the audio as some players have problems when the video bitrate alone is too high. On the DVD2AVI tab you have different options for how DVD2AVI will handle NTSC videos (does not apply to PAL). You have the options of letting DVD2AVI decide to use Forced Film or IVTC on it’s own, Forcing DVD2AVI to use Forced Film, Forcing DVD2AVI to request IVTC or use none of these and leave the video rate as it is during the encode. For most operations leaving this at the default of Automatic is the wisest choice. What DVD2AVI does is to look at the video and decide whether this is film based or video based. If this is film based then DVD2AVI adjusts the video to 23.976 fps (Frames Per Second) by eliminating special tags in the Mpeg video. If DVD2AVI decides that this is a video based source then it passes the information to use IVTC onto DVD2SVCD and then a much more complicated and time consuming conversion takes place. It is usually best to convert the video to the lower frame rate, because then there are fewer frames using up precious bits and space. After the video in encoded a program called Pulldown adds those special flags back into the video stream recreating the illusion that the video is 29.976fps or NTSC TV standard. The nice thing is that these flags take up almost no space. If you happen to notice that your encode speed is going slower then normal check the DVD2SVCD log and look for one of these two lines. Forced Film Activated! Force Film Not Activated IVTC will be performed instead! If you see the second line then IVTC is being performed and this can slow you down by as much as 40% in CCE or TMPG.
__________________
Oh no Mr. Bill! Last edited by markrb; 7th May 2002 at 03:29. |
|
Thread Tools | Search this Thread |
Display Modes | |
|
|