R1 Elizabethtown & DGDecode

[magic144]

Just sat down to watch my 1.08.1 Pro rebuilt version of Elizabethtown (R1) last night on the DVD player and noticed a video hiccup about 3 mins in (I'll confirm the exact location when I get back home tonight) - it's a scene where Orlando Bloom is sitting at his desk remembering working at the company, immediately before a scene change.

As usual my rebuild was movie-only mode, keeping only the DD5.1 soundtrack and the English subtitles.

Basically some erroneous "blocks" flash on the screen briefly - obviously this does not happen on the original source. This video is in the 2nd segment that Rebuilder submits to the encoder (the first segment is a very brief film logo). The error can also be seen by playing the individual .m2v segment file (i.e. it is inherent in the generated video before any reassembly/3rd-phase-rebuilder processing).

I thought it might have been a bad +R disc, but upon rebuilding, the same problem shows itself from the hard-drive files, repeatably at the same spot (using PowerDVD 6)

This build was done using DGDecode 1.4.5 (as is distributed with the newest versions of Rebuilder Pro). Rebuilder is set to use the default DCT mechanism with DGDecode (I've never bothered setting a specific algorithm, never needed to).

Out of curiousity, I re-ran the build using DGDecode 1.1.0 from older distributed versions of RB. The glitch still happens at the same place but is much less obvious on-screen - it's more of a "stuttering" in a couple of parts of the picture.

I've looked at the source VOB using DGIndex (with 1.4.5) and don't see the problem from within that tool (I don't know if it gives precise enough access to the frames, but I would have thought it did using the "<" and ">" on-screen buttons to skip between frames.

I also earlier tried reencoding the same segment using HC Enc 0.17 (I usually use CCE 2.70.02.04 SP Trial) but got the same result, hence my looking into DGDecode variations. I have the usual AviSynth 2.5.5 installed as ever it has been.

@jdobbs, can you reproduce this issue at all? I will confirm all the exact details tonight when I get back home. I'm wondering if there is a problem in DGDecode, or in the way Rebuilder is driving it...

Let me know if you find anything or if you want me to report some specific details or run some specific tests - as ever, I will oblige!

Thanks again,

m

[setarip_old]

Basically some erroneous "blocks" flash on the screen briefly - obviously this does not happen on the original source.As an experiment, rip the entire DVD to your hard drive - and play the rip, using VLC or similar, to see if it exhibits the same problematic behavior...

[Guest]

I've looked at the source VOB using DGIndex (with 1.4.5) and don't see the problem from within that tool (I don't know if it gives precise enough access to the frames, but I would have thought it did using the "<" and ">" on-screen buttons to skip between frames. No. The < and > buttons skip a whole GOP at a time, i.e., usually about 12-15 frames. To step through frames, you have to set Options/Playback Speed to single-step and then hit F6. Then the > button steps forward a frame at a time.

[magic144]

Thanks Donald

I'll try that when I get home and see if I can see the problem using DGIndex alone...

@setarip_old - I've watched the same scene on the PC using the ripped-from-original and I don't see the artifacting in PowerDVD

[setarip_old]

@setarip_old - I've watched the same scene on the PC using the ripped-from-original and I don't see the artifacting in PowerDVDGood - then you've narrowed down the possibles sources/causes of the problem!

[magic144]

ok

@Donald,

single-stepping to the error-position in DGIndex,
I get different results at the point of "blockiness"
timestamp is 03:09, sourcing directly from the source-ripped VTS_05_1.VOB

using DGIndex from v1.4.5, I get:
"motion code error" showing up in the Info box of the Status window

using DGIndex from v1.4.6, I get: "block error" in the Info box and a popup "Caught an exception during decoding! See help file." window
(I know this version isn't supported by DVD Rebuilder yet - I just wanted to observe the behaviour and report it)

I don't seem to be able to single-frame-step from the dgmpgdec110 version I downloaded

what now???!!! - I assume this implies a problem with the source data? but yet it plays back OK on the disc/ripped-original using a DVD player/PowerDVD

can I get you some more info for you to investigate?

m

[Guest]

You can give me a VOB fragment that contains this errored part.

I don't like that it dies with an exception, so I'd like to fix that, at a minimum.

[magic144]

ok sure
how do I extract the fragment you need??

if you can leave me instruction here, I'll get on it tonight or early tomorrow

cheers

m

[Guest]

Open the VOB with the bad part in DGIndex.

Use the [ and ] buttons to set a range around the bad part. Then do File/Save Project and Demux Video. Give me the resulting M2V file. You can control the file size by changing the size of the range selected in DGIndex. Give me as much as you can. Thank you for helping to improve the software.