Two Part DVD Rip = Two Files, Same Width, but Different Height?

[cxp36]

My system is WinXP SP 3, and this problem has occurred with both version 2.45 as well as the latest beta of AutoGK.

I've used AutoGK to rip several hundred of my DVD's into Xvid AVI files which I use while traveling. However, I've run into a problem disc and I'd appreciate help in solving this issue.

The disc in question is "Dr. Zhivago," which is a "flipper" disc - that is, the first half of the movie is on one side of the disc, then you flip the disc over for the second half. I ripped each side to Xvid AVI, with a specified width of 720. Side 1 (2 hours long) had a specified target size of 1.5GB; side 2 (1 hour and a few minutes long) had a specified target size of 1GB. When I tried to join the two files (I use Avidemux for this), the program reported an error, saying that the height of the two files was different, so they could not be joined.

What settings do I need to adjust so that both halves of this movie come out not only the same width, but the same height as well, so I can join them into one single file?

Thanks for any help.

[BigDid]

Hi,

That is an interesting problem indeeed.

Could you indicate the height of each part, width being 720 ?
I suppose the automatic crop did not behave correctly on one of the 2 parts..

Then, either you can force autocrop to behave well adjusting the params in the hidden options (Ctrl/F9), either you force a manual crop (hidden options also).
From the help:
- Sometimes auto crop used with default parameters by AutoGK cannot totally remove black bars or removes too much of a movie material. In this case "Tune auto crop parameters" is very handy. Threshold defines how sensitive auto crop will be: the higher the value the more cropping will be done. To completely disable audio crop you can set threshold to 0. "Number of frames to examine" is useful parameter to change if movie is a mixture of full screen/wide screen shots, so by selecting different frames that auto crop examines you can improve cropping process. "Starting frame" can help auto crop in situation when you have a full screen logo as a part of widescreen movie, in which case autocrop might decide that the whole source is full screen. By selecting a different starting frames you force auto crop not to examine irrelevant starting movie sequence. "Force cropping" option allows you to crop additional pixels after autocrop operation (if you find that you need to always crop several more pixels you can use this option). If you disable autocrop with threshold 0 then "force cropping" option becomes fully manual crop. Remember always to check how movie looks like after you set new auto crop parameters using Preview function of AutoGK

Good luck

Did

[citanuL]

I've wondered if AutoGK's default number of frames to examine and/or starting frame for autocrop is set too low and should be set atleast a little higher by default so it checks past the video intro.

[cxp36]

Not sure of the exact frame height numbers for the two parts, as I deleted them after finding out they could not be joined, but I do recall that the difference was pretty significant - on the order of 50 points (pixels?) or more. I ripped the DVD again and ran it through AutoGK again thinking it might have been a fluke, but the exact same thing happened.

This is the only DVD rip I've made where this has occurred, and I still don't know why.

[yetanotherid]

I've noticed some oddities when it comes to height. I think sometimes AutoGK crops a bit extra to keep the quality up when you specify a width, if it needs to. I've also seen it claim it's going to produce a particular height (greater than the actual resolution) only to have the resulting output be slightly smaller (the actual resolution).

Have you tried converting the whole lot in one hit?
Assuming you have both discs ripped to your hard drive separately, you'd copy the vob files from the first disc to a new folder, then rename the vob files from the second disc to continue the numbering order. For instance if the first disc has vob files numbered VTS_01_01.vob through to VTS_01_04.vob, you rename the first vob file of the second disc VTS_01_05.vob and the second VTS_01_06.vob etc. When that's done copy those vob files into the new folder and tell AutoGK to convert the first vob file. It'll then happily include all the sequentially numbered vob files from both discs and convert them to a single AVI. I guess you'd ask it to produce a 2.5GB file (using your previous sizes) and then split it later with VirtualDub if need be.

Doing it the way you're doing it, even if the two AVIs were the same height, you'd still probably not be able to join them due to different bit rates. Plus doing it all in one it, you're going to convert the whole video with equal quality.

It's possible that the video on each disc (or each side rather) is actually a different resolution and AutoGK is cropping them differently as a result. I've seen episodic DVDs with individual episodes which require different cropping. If that's the case you may find your single output file has small black bars during the second half. If that happens you may need to then use AutoGK's settings to get it to slightly over-crop the first half so there's no black bars in the second part.

Edit: I should add the possible downside. I'm not sure how it works exactly but AutoGK/VirtualDub picks up the sync from the audio from the original files and delays it accordingly if necessary. I've had issues where I've converted two discs as described and while the first half has been fine, the audio of the second half (second disc, same AVI) can be out. If that's the case, you may have to try to fix it by splitting the AVI at the point where the second disc starts, adjusting the audio of the second half, resaving it, then maybe joining the two back together again. If you try my suggestion and bump into a sync problem and need instructions for trying to fix it with VirtualDub, post back and I or someone else should be able to help.