VOB --> AviSynth --> TMPGEnc 4 Xpress

[zoinbergs]

Hey folks!

Love this forum -- just wanted to say thanks first for all your wonderful help!

Now I have a quick question if that's okay..

Right now I'm cleaning up some DVD footage, and I need to use avisynth for some filtering. I'm pretty sure I've got the process down, but could somebody please confirm that what I am doing is in fact, the correct thing to do?

(Assume I'm encoding frame-based, interlaced video, with no flags, using an alternate scanning mode and non-linear quantisizer scale)

1. Use DGIndex to build a *.d2v file

2. Use avisynth and the lines:

LoadPlugin("...\DGDecode.dll")

MPEG2Source("...\example.d2v")

<filters go here>

ConvertToRGB(interlaced=true)

3. Import *.avs file into TMPGEnc 4 Xpress

4. Encode


Now I'm pretty sure I don't have to mess with any levels or their expansion (TV-->PC or vice versa) -- but I could be wrong. Could somebody confirm this? It's what I'm most concerned about.

Also, I noticed several arguments I can set for ConvertToRGB(). They have to do with "matrix" settings such as rec.601 / pc.601 / rec.709 / pc.709 -- do I need not mess with these settings either? Is the default okay?

I always thought YV12 used a luminosity scale of (16,235) -- that was stretched to (0,255) using ConvertToRGB() -- that was then shrunk back down to (16,235) via TMPGEnc 4 Xpress during the encode. Could somebody confirm if this is indeed happening? Or do the levels always stay at (16,235) all throughout the process?

Both before and after clips have identical luminosity, which eases my worrying.. but I'd love to know what goes on behind the scenes to better prepare me for more advanced encoding.

Thanks so much to anybody kind enough to shed some light (pun intended) on the subject! ;)

[zoinbergs]

Yay! Just did a whole bunch more homework and answered my own questions. :D

Everything is a-okay.. and the range is indeed stretched then shrunk.. and if my DVD source is rec.709 then I use that coefficient instead of the more popular rec.601.

No messing with pc.601 / pc.709. No messing with the ranges using ColorYUV(). No messing with anything!

Thanks for putting up with me.

Ciao

[bitwerks]

I'd like to try this on XPress 3.0 and see if it works. Thanks for a clear and concise post!

-bitwerks

[bitwerks]

OK, it worked fairly well except there was no audio in the final .mpg. Did you explicitly specify the audio track in TMPGEnc or was it meant to come along for the ride when DGIndex is instructed to demux all tracks?

I'll try a couple of approaches and see which works best...

[Guest]

It won't come along with the AVS script unless you explicitly add it to the script as described in the Quick Start guide that comes with DGMPGDec. You can also add the audio track in TMPGEnc as you mentioned.

[bitwerks]

Thanks Neuron2, for the great tip (and for your work on the DGMPGDec suite)!

The Quick Start rocks! I had gone straight to the DGIndex manual and was wading in the deep stuff :) I added the .wav file directly into TMPGEnc but now I am going to go back and let AviSynth handle the .acs file instead. I wish all the apps out there had documentation as good as the DGMPGDec tools.

The only other question I have is around audio. Hopefully, I'll find it reading the manuals. The audio on one of my recordings is very faint. Rather than demux to .wav and use GoldWave or similar to tweak the volume I'd like to figure out if DGDecode has any functions to normalise the volume of the audio track. I haven't played with pre-scale decision method or normalisation yet...but it looks like it only works with .wav files.

[bitwerks]

Looks like I've got a little bit of research yet to do. The video quality looks great but a couple of times fast action scenes froze my DVD player and about 1/3 of the way into the file the video began to get horribly out of sync with the video. I need to check my DGIndex files and see if I can root cause the problem. Stay tuned...

[DayStarr]

I've got a pestering issue with tmpgenc xpress 4. For at least a year I used this regularly to convert various video files into various other video file formats. Recently I had to reformat my computer and knew I was in for quite a bit of re-installing to get my computer back up to date. At this point I've tried four different versions of tmpgenc xpress 4 and when I try to open any video file it says the typical codec issue "cannot open video, only audio can be opened". First off, yes I know this shouts *CODEC PROBLEM* buuuut here's the thing, I've downloaded all the codecs I had before (mainly from k-lite mega codec pack), I've tried various other codecs (actually following doom9's instructions so I don't have contradicting codecs). Here's the main signal to me that it has to be a preference problem (or something along those lines)... I downloaded the *TRIAL* version of Xpress (which is version 4.4.1.237) and the *trial* actually works just fine. I now have a copy of that very same version and have it registered... but when I try the *retail* version IT has the same "cannot open video" problem. Anyone have any idea why this is happening? Once again, codecs aren't an issue because trial version works fine. Also as a side note, I have version 3 and it works too (I prefer 4 however because it takes about 4 hours to encode 3 hours of video as apposed to version 3.0's 10-20 hours).