MeGUI: General Questions and Troubleshooting Thread [Archive] - Page 33

ACrowley

5th November 2007, 16:07

@Acrowley: about Time Elapsed issues: try this build (http://www.mediafire.com/?emabblo2xij) please and report feedback.

i will test it ..THX

AH, Video enc log is saved again:) Dont know why it wasnt saved after updateing to latest Build 1034.

EDIT:
You made the Megui internal Time independet from System Time in your test build ,right ?
When i change the Windows Clock the ElapsedTime/fps in status windw is stable....in older builds it was changing with the Windows Clock :)

I will report back later after the 24h Border if its stable now...

joran

7th November 2007, 05:28

Hey everyone, hoping you guys could help with a question I had. I am encoding DVDs to watch from a standalone player using DVDDecrypter, MeGUI, and mkvmerge. I'm fairly new to x264 encoding and it's been a fun process learning about the ins and outs of it, but one thing I haven't been able to figure out despite looking around a lot:

My player (unfortunately) does not support, or at least doesn't obey, any DAR flags set in MKVs (it's a TViX 4100SH in case anyone is interested). I've therefore had to resize the anamorphic DVD for it to display correctly. I'm curious as to what the better approach would be for this given, say, a 720x480 NTSC DVD (2.35 DAR), cropped to remove borders down to 720x368. Should I now:

a) resize to 720x304
b) resize to 864x368
c) something else?

I guess I'm wondering whether a) will mean throwing away information unnecessarily and losing quality, or b) will mean upscaling without any quality benefit. Ideally I'd like to retain as much information as possible from the DVD, so I was leaning toward b), but given that the whole image needs to be resized to fit the screen anyway it may just be worse to do it twice - once while encoding and once while playing.

Also, this is a bit weird, but I've discovered that when using MeGUI to encode anamorphically, my player _will_ show the image correctly if I tell MeGUI to use an MKV container instead of MP4 for the video. This only happens if I don't mux any audio in - as soon as I use MeGUI, mkvmerge or anything else to try and add audio, subtitles, or chapters, suddenly it stops playing in the correct aspect ratio. Even running mkvmerge to re-package the original MKV without adding any other tracks will break it. Is there anything about the x264.exe MKV output code that would make it any different than mkvmerge or MeGUI's muxer? It's a bit baffling.

RandomEngy

7th November 2007, 06:32

If you just have a simple script like:

AviSource("d:\docs\heavy_test.avi")
ConvertToYV12()

Is it supposed to automatically bring over the audio track? I've got a source avi file with PCM audio but it always comes out silent.

I've also tried to do an audio encode with

WavSource("d:\docs\heavy_test.avi")

But the file is also silent. Is there something I'm doing wrong?

ACrowley

7th November 2007, 07:00

@Kurtnoise

No, Elasped Time resets to zero at 0.00 Time with Test Build

kurt

7th November 2007, 09:46

My player (unfortunately) does not support, or at least doesn't obey, any DAR flags set in MKVs (it's a TViX 4100SH in case anyone is interested). I've therefore had to resize the anamorphic DVD for it to display correctly. I'm curious as to what the better approach would be for this given, say, a 720x480 NTSC DVD (2.35 DAR), cropped to remove borders down to 720x368.
There should be no resizing necessary at all. Could you plz try these samples on your TviX? http://home.arcor.de/evil.bert/test/xvid.parsimpleblocks.rar

A user of the german doom9 forums reported they will be decoded correctly. If not you may have to update your firmware. I encoded the files with a par flag (-par 4 because the source is PAL) set in the bitstream with xvid_encraw and then muxed in mkv with mkvmerge (I didn't do any changes in the latter regarding DAR/PAR).

For a NTSC source you should try -par 5 with xvid_encraw or --sar 40:33 with x264. Either paramter can be set in MeGUI as well under "custom command line".

mroz

7th November 2007, 13:46

If you just have a simple script like:

AviSource("d:\docs\heavy_test.avi")
ConvertToYV12()

Is it supposed to automatically bring over the audio track? I've got a source avi file with PCM audio but it always comes out silent.

It should work. See the docs (http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/AviSource).

I assume the audio plays when you watch the avi in a media player? Try GraphEdit to see if it plays it; if it doesn't, fix your codecs & repeat.

Try opening the file in your script using DirectShowSource. If that still doesn't work demux the audio & try opening the audio track.

joran

7th November 2007, 15:40

There should be no resizing necessary at all. Could you plz try these samples on your TviX? http://home.arcor.de/evil.bert/test/xvid.parsimpleblocks.rar

A user of the german doom9 forums reported they will be decoded correctly. If not you may have to update your firmware. I encoded the files with a par flag (-par 4 because the source is PAL) set in the bitstream with xvid_encraw and then muxed in mkv with mkvmerge (I didn't do any changes in the latter regarding DAR/PAR).

For a NTSC source you should try -par 5 with xvid_encraw or --sar 40:33 with x264. Either paramter can be set in MeGUI as well under "custom command line".

Thanks - I tried the samples and they all play correctly, no aspect ratio problems at all. I tried using MeGUI to encode using both --sar 1201:1000 and --sar 40:33. It plays fine when I tell MeGUI to output to MKV, but when I output to MP4 and use mkvmerge to create an MKV out of the MP4, it plays stretched.

Oddly enough, if I take the sample AVI and use mkvmerge to turn it into an MKV, it plays fine. But when I take my MKV and re-merge it into another MKV, it doesn't play correctly.

Here are my AVS script and x264 command line for reference:

# Set DAR in encoder to 47 : 20. The following line is for automatic signalling
global MeGUI_darx = 47
global MeGUI_dary = 20
DGDecode_mpeg2source("Source.d2v",info=3)
ColorMatrix(hints=true)
#deinterlace
crop( 0, 54, 0, -58)

#resize
Undot() # Minimal Noise

__film = last
__t0 = __film.trim(5000, 6000)
__t0

x264.exe --crf 18.0 --ref 3 --mixed-refs --bframes 16 --b-pyramid --bime --weightb --filter -2,-1 --subme 1
--analyse p8x8,b8x8,i4x4,i8x8 --8x8dct --me umh --threads auto --thread-input --sar 1201:1000 --progress --no-psnr --no-ssim

kurt

7th November 2007, 16:12

@ joran: strange....on your computer you have the correct AR with the mp4 file and on the tvix you have not? If so you may have to report your problem to the TviX-Guys...

joran

7th November 2007, 16:57

@kurt: Well, I'm actually less inclined to think it's a problem with the TViX now given that it plays those sample files fine, and it plays an MKV created by MeGUI fine as well. It's only when I tell MeGUI to output to MP4 and use mkvmerge to make an MKV that the picture plays distorted.

I have no clue what could cause this at all, though - I've tried using an older version of mkvmerge (2.0.2 instead of 2.1.0) with the same result. I've tried manually setting the DAR to 2.35 as well as setting the pixels to 835x368, 47x20, 10809x4600 in mkvmerge, all without success. I can't figure out what is different between the MKV produced by x264.exe / MeGUI and the one produced by mkvmerge that is causing the problem...

Sharktooth

7th November 2007, 16:59

joran

7th November 2007, 18:57

Is there any tool out there that would let you inspect the AR stored in the bitstream?

As far as I can tell, they should be in sync. The cropped resolution is 720x368. I tell MeGUI to use Clever anamorphic encoding, no overcrop or resize is required. MeGUI is telling x264 to use a SAR of 1201:1000, which by my calculations is correct:

368/720 * 47/20 = about 1201:1000, I guess 1081:900 would be more precise but it's close enough.

I'm telling MKVMerge to use display pixels of 864 x 368, to stretch the image horizontally out to 2.35 AR.

Maybe I'm doing something wrong?

ETA: I just loaded up the MP4 from MeGUI into VLC. In the stream info dialog, it lists both the Resolution and Display Resolution as 720x368. That seems wrong, since I expect the DR to be different, but the player displays the image fine and in a 2.35 AR. So I'm still confused.

mroz

7th November 2007, 19:20

AR is usually stored in 2 places. In the video bitstream and the container. If those, for various reasons, do not match then there could be problems depending on the software/hardware used for playback.
So possibly the player firmware could be improved, but still, this issue shouldn't normally arise, surely? Am I wrong to think generally the ar match?

Given problems arise from changing containers doesn't it seem most likely it's the ar in the container that becomes the problem? Once the vid stream is encoded none of these processes are going to alter the ar info embedded in it.

Is there a tool to inspect both stream & container aspect ratio? This does amount to a bug in one of the Megui tools it seems.

Does this player handle mp4s? If so, does the mp4 output direct from x264 play with the correct ar?

Edit: @joran - You could try a simple test encode where the ARs are pretty much guaranteed to match unless something's very wrong, by sticking with a simple SAR in x264 & corresponding exact dar in MVKMerge, eg with x264 override Megui's choice of SAR with 6:5 & stick with the 864 x 368 in MKVMerge. That'd be my first try if I couldn't find a tool to read/write the ARs directly.

joran

7th November 2007, 19:45

@mroz: The player does support mp4, I've been able to play various QT encodes, but unfortunately the box doesn't want to play this particular mp4 for whatever reason. It may be the lack of an audio track or something in the container that it doesn't like. It's probably not the H.264 stream itself since the same stream packaged in an MKV plays fine (albeit with a bad AR).

mroz

7th November 2007, 19:53

Hm, so maybe it doesn't like mp4box. That's annoying.

When you play back the working mkv compared to the problem one, on your desktop machine, do they both display using /exactly/ the same AR? If they do that doesn't tell you much, but if there's any difference it could certainly explain the problem.

joran

7th November 2007, 20:04

Well this is bizarre: playing back the x264-created MKV file using VLC, it's horribly off-ratio. It plays back in a thin vertical strip about 200x1000. It may have something to do with x264.exe writing the MKV display at 10809x4600. The same file plays back perfectly on the standalone box.

Re-muxing the working MKV with mkvmerge, leaving all settings alone, displays the same in VLC (horribly wrong) but on the standalone it displays in 1.95 aspect ratio (720x368 square-pixel).

I've tried to use mkvinfo to compare the working MKV with the non-working MKV (both of which have the exact same video stream), but there don't seem to be any glaring differences.

RandomEngy

8th November 2007, 04:16

It should work. See the docs (http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/AviSource).

I assume the audio plays when you watch the avi in a media player? Try GraphEdit to see if it plays it; if it doesn't, fix your codecs & repeat.

Try opening the file in your script using DirectShowSource. If that still doesn't work demux the audio & try opening the audio track.

Demuxing the audio with MeGui results in a silent audio file. I can extract to wav with virtualdub and try to mux it in in MeGui and it's still silent. It's also silent when I use DirectShowSource.

I can open it with GraphEdit and see the 48khz PCM wav track. I don't know what you mean by seeing if it "plays" it.

St Devious

8th November 2007, 06:10

Encoding status window disappears after first pass , and doesn't show up at all during second pass .

mroz

8th November 2007, 06:16

@joran: maybe VLC & your standalone simply don't like such large integers in the components of the aspect ratio. Why not replace them with 108x46 & test that on both?

@RandomEngy: The PCM track is I assume audible when you play the source avi, yes? When you open it in GraphEdit, click on play - does it play & can you see the video & hear the audio?

joran

8th November 2007, 06:25

Well, at this point I guess it's time to give up:

I just tried out Handbrake encoding a small test file from an anamorphic DVD. It plays flawlessly on my standalone box. I open up mkvmerge, load the MKV and save it out to another file, and it's broken - aspect ratio blown away. Could it be an issue with mkvmerge, of all things? mkvinfo states the two MKV files have the exact same values for pixel and display ratios.

So, the direct MKV output from both MeGUI and Handbrake works fine, but I want to add additional audio tracks (commentary, etc) as well as subtitles and chapters, which requires me to use mkvmerge. But using mkvmerge for any working MKV will bust the display ratio, so I guess I'm back to resizing down and encoding non-anamorphically.

Are there any other MKV muxers I could try out? The muxing/writing application flags for the working files are "Haali Matroska Splitter"\"x264" and "libmkv"\"Handbrake"

ETA @mroz: I had the same thought, but the big numbers are what x264/MeGUI is spitting out, and that file plays fine on the standalone. In order to lower the values I'd have to use mkvmerge which seems to be the kiss of death for my standalone, heh. Just to be sure, I tried a few variations (108x46, 47x20, 864x368) none of which worked.

kurt

8th November 2007, 08:54

Are there any other MKV muxers I could try out?
you could try gdsmux (wich is part of haali media splitter). Chapters should be possible, subtitles too I think.

One more question: did you try to encode a mp4 file direct from commandline? (without meGUI) and after that just muxing with mkvmerge?

RandomEngy

8th November 2007, 09:05

@RandomEngy: The PCM track is I assume audible when you play the source avi, yes? When you open it in GraphEdit, click on play - does it play & can you see the video & hear the audio?

Yes, it's audible when I play the source AVI. I can hear audio and see video when I play it in GraphEdit.

andrewwan1980

8th November 2007, 15:55

Can someone tell me the exact settings that go into NeroAACEnc.exe when used with MeGUI please? Assuming default settings except: Downmix multichannel to Stereo, AAC-LC, CBR (container: MP4-AAC, codec: ND AAC).

I want to compare the command-line settings used by MeGUI with AutoMKV.

rack04

8th November 2007, 16:28

mroz

9th November 2007, 01:01

Yes, it's audible when I play the source AVI. I can hear audio and see video when I play it in GraphEdit.
I'm puzzled that the audio plays in GraphEdit but loading the avi with DirectShowSource gives silent audio. What filters are involved in the chain?

You could try saving the working graph out of GraphEdit & opening that with DirectShowSource. Iirc you might have to delete the rightmost filter from the graph first - the one doing the rendering. /Checks - yes, delete the last filter in the audio chain. Also, in the DirectShowSource call specify video=false (as it can only handle .grf files with 1 stream).

If that doesn't work I really am at a loss. See the DirectShowSource docs (http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/DirectShowSource), enable logging & try to make sense of the output. Last time I had a problem a helpful guru materialised & took a look at my log for me.

If DirectShowSource with the .grf file plays the audio, unless that's good enough, you'll still need to check the DirectShowSource log to work out why it doesn't play otherwise.

Sorry I can't be more help.

Edit: How big are the files? If large, can you trim off a sample which still has the same problem properties? If you can upload a sample I can at least check the problem is local to your set up.

Can someone with more of a clue help RandomEngy?

Kurtnoise

9th November 2007, 14:06

@Kurtnoise

No, Elasped Time resets to zero at 0.00 Time with Test Build
Could you try to test this build (http://www.mediafire.com/?cedeyzx13nu) please....

:thanks:

saint-francis

9th November 2007, 14:40

Encoding status window disappears after first pass , and doesn't show up at all during second pass .

If you have the status window minimized when a job finishes this happens. The new window will not show up. You need to go to view -> process status -> show all when this happens and the new window will appear.

Could this be considered a bug?

Sharktooth

9th November 2007, 14:45

no. it's intentional. if you have the main windows minimized it's supposed you're "working" with other softwares and dont want megui show anything on the screen, possibly causing problems to full-screen DX apps or games or changing the focus of the foreground window just to display the megui status window...

ACrowley

9th November 2007, 17:17

Could you try to test this build (http://www.mediafire.com/?cedeyzx13nu) please....

:thanks:

yes....i will report back ,THX

RandomEngy

10th November 2007, 03:06

I'm puzzled that the audio plays in GraphEdit but loading the avi with DirectShowSource gives silent audio. What filters are involved in the chain?

You could try saving the working graph out of GraphEdit & opening that with DirectShowSource. Iirc you might have to delete the rightmost filter from the graph first - the one doing the rendering. /Checks - yes, delete the last filter in the audio chain. Also, in the DirectShowSource call specify video=false (as it can only handle .grf files with 1 stream).

If that doesn't work I really am at a loss. See the DirectShowSource docs (http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/DirectShowSource), enable logging & try to make sense of the output. Last time I had a problem a helpful guru materialised & took a look at my log for me.

If DirectShowSource with the .grf file plays the audio, unless that's good enough, you'll still need to check the DirectShowSource log to work out why it doesn't play otherwise.

Sorry I can't be more help.

Edit: How big are the files? If large, can you trim off a sample which still has the same problem properties? If you can upload a sample I can at least check the problem is local to your set up.

Can someone with more of a clue help RandomEngy?

Okay, problem 1, with this line only:

DirectShowSource("d:\docs\heavy_test.avi", logfile="logfile.txt")

it says it does not recognize the named argument "logfile" but it says it's there in the wiki.

I tried deleting the audio renderer as you said in graphedit, then rendering just the audio stream to mp3 for starters:

DirectShowSource("g:\heavy_project\heavy_test_noaudiorender.grf", video=False)

However it fails and I get this in the log:

Starting job job1 at 5:19:33 PM

Starting preprocessing of job...

Preprocessing finished!

successfully started encoding

Processing ended at 5:19:35 PM

------------------------------------------------------

Log for job job1

Error:

------------------------------------------------------

End of log for job1
------------------------------------------------------

I also tried this for the whole video:

video = DirectShowSource("d:\docs\heavy_test.avi", audio=False)
audio = DirectShowSource("g:\heavy_project\heavy_test_noaudiorender.grf", video=False)

mixed = AudioDub(video, audio)

ConvertToYV12(mixed)

Except that this time it told me that there was an error on line 2: that the filter graph won't talk to me.

I've uploaded a small sample clip (http://engy.us/videos/heavy_test_short.avi) that's giving me problems. The video is encoded as lagarith lossless, audio as 16-bit 48khz PCM.

One more interesting thing is when I view the resulting MP4 file in graphedit, it shows a video pin and an empty "closed caption" pin.

mroz

11th November 2007, 00:48

Okay, problem 1, with this line only:

DirectShowSource("d:\docs\heavy_test.avi", logfile="logfile.txt")

it says it does not recognize the named argument "logfile" but it says it's there in the wiki.

...From version 2.57. I guess you must be using an older one. Try updating?

RandomEngy

11th November 2007, 01:58

Ahh, you're right, I installed a new one and it logs now.

http://engy.us/videos/heavy_test_log.txt

mroz

11th November 2007, 02:09

I tried deleting the audio renderer as you said in graphedit, then rendering just the audio stream to mp3 for starters:

DirectShowSource("g:\heavy_project\heavy_test_noaudiorender.grf", video=False)

Rather than complicating the situation with another encoder, just try playing the avs in something like VDub.

/snip

I've uploaded a small sample clip (http://engy.us/videos/heavy_test_short.avi) that's giving me problems. The video is encoded as lagarith lossless, audio as 16-bit 48khz PCM.

One more interesting thing is when I view the resulting MP4 file in graphedit, it shows a video pin and an empty "closed caption" pin.

I installed the lagarith codec 1.3.14. Your file plays fine here. An avs reading the file with avisource or directshowsource plays video & audio either way. I'm afraid I can't help - you need someone more knowledgeable. My best suggestion is to update avisynth to 2.57 & try again; assuming it fails, get a log from DirectShowSource & start a new thread concerning DirectShowSource's failure to decode the file, along with the log.

Edit: just seen your reply with the log; hopefully someone who can follow it will help, but you might need to start a new thread to catch their attention.

Edit2: That's odd. It looks as though DirectShowSource has accepted the audio & is decoding it. Is it possible the problem is between AVISynth & whatever is rendering the audio? I'm probably wrong though - just guessing really.

Do post again in this thread if you discover the cause.

ACrowley

11th November 2007, 13:39

Could you try to test this build (http://www.mediafire.com/?cedeyzx13nu) please....

:thanks:

What i can say now is that when i change the Windows Time over 0.00 the Time Elapaed is correct and stays over 24h..no reset to 0h

I hope it works real tonight when the encoding reaches 24h and 0.00 a Clock

RandomEngy

11th November 2007, 23:59

Hey, it lets me encode just fine using the x264 VFW codec if I do it through virtual dub. I think I'll just use that; I'm tired of banging my head against the wall with MeGUI.

ACrowley

12th November 2007, 07:32

@kurtnoise

Nice...your new Tets Build works perferct!
Elapsed Time is at 30h , and Remaining Time seems to work stable too

Thank you!

Kurtnoise

12th November 2007, 07:57

\0/...that's great.

ACrowley

12th November 2007, 22:21

mroz

13th November 2007, 02:17

I find it hard to believe it ever gave an accurate prediction for the end of pass two while it was in pass one, but it could be more helpful than it currently is. ATM I assume it predicts based on percentage progress (treating each of n passes as 100/n percent) assuming a progress rate of the current average since start. Naturally with a fast first pass one gets low estimates during the first pass, which then steadily climb.

A better simple solution would be to assume a progress rate based on a moving window average - ie just use average speed for the last s seconds of encoding.

As to a method that would give useful figures for final completion even during early stages, the only method I can conceive off would have to build up speed profiles for the various jobs. This could be done by logging average fps for each of the last j jobs, with these stats recorded for each pass (where applicable) of each defined profile (the stats might need to be wiped when a profile is edited). Initially when stats aren't available, it would have to fall back to the cruder method, but once you had a few runs in, it should give reasonable results.

Edit: re wiping stats, a better automated heuristic might be: flag when a profile is edited & if measured fps deviates significantly from the logged average, wipe the stats log for that profile.

Kurtnoise

13th November 2007, 07:27

yeah..but i must correct me, the Remaining Time is still unstable

Example :
1080p x264 2pass takes 30h. But the Remaining Time after 5h encoding is only 3h , few hours later its 10h ...etc etc etc

I can remember, in old Builds it was one static Value which was correct Remaining Time
:eek: Time Remaining code is the same since the beginning...I didn't modify it.

Maybe your CPU was busy by multiple tasks ?

fleon

13th November 2007, 17:33

uncertainty

13th November 2007, 18:06

I have a problem with megui: I installed and opened then i started to update megui with everything but when mencoder is completed I get and error also I reopened the program and tried to update another componet or external program I get the same error, I also have staxrip installed, this is the error:

http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/2793/meguiru7.th.jpg (http://img444.imageshack.us/my.php?image=meguiru7.jpg)

I'm getting the same error message as you are with megui's auto updater. It just started yesterday with trying to update just the core. I'll just turn off auto updater till we get more feedback on this issue.

Sharktooth

13th November 2007, 18:26

do a clean install AND before updating set the auto-update to development server.
it should fix things until the "stable" folder on the auto-update server will be updated.

St Devious

14th November 2007, 18:40

do i have to auto-update everytime i install a new version of megui ?

saint-francis

14th November 2007, 19:22

Every time you do a clean install you do but if you just update the core through the auto update function you will only have to restart MeGUI.

berrinam

15th November 2007, 00:14

A better simple solution would be to assume a progress rate based on a moving window average - ie just use average speed for the last s seconds of encoding.I did that for one of the tools (the Avisynth analysis pass) and it was probably fine, but I since removed it when I simplified the code so that all the processors use the same time estimation code. I thought about a moving average, but I went for the current method because I'm lazy and the code without a moving window average looks nicer: no variables about the last update time. But that's just laziness. Please post this to the feature request tracker so that it doesn't get forgotten, and it will be seen to eventually.