Merge SVCD Files

[SimonSez07]

I have a (long) movie on 4 SVCD's. Unfortunately they are not muxed or authored quite correctly. They will play if I use PowerDVD to manually open the mpg files out of the MPEG2 folder, but the discs will not play on my stand-alone player.

So, in order to re-burn the discs, I copied the .mpg files out of the MPEG2 folder onto my computer. I now want to merge these four mpg files into one 3.2 GB file and then demux the audio, remux with bbmpeg and then cut it at scene changes.

I am wondering what is the best tool to do the merge with. I am also not sure how to go about cutting the new mpeg2 stream at nice scene changes. Any ideas??

Thanks,
Simon

[Boulder]

I'm quite sure that the MPEG Tools in TMPGEnc will do the cutting and merging just fine. They can also be used to demux the audio and video, and then just use bbMPEG as you said.

[SimonSez07]

anyone know what the advantage is when using vcdgear to extract the mpg file(s) from a (s)vcd instead of just windows exploerer to copy the file(s)??

[SimonSez07]

i tried merging the four files with tmpgenc and it didnt work. the process took hours :( then when i played the (very large) resulting mpg file, the video and audio were horribly out of sync (by 30 seconds or so at different points).

i tried dvtool too, and when it joins the files, i can play the resulting file, but it only plays the first 45 minutes (the first segment) and just ignores the rest of the movie (the other three segments) as if they had not been joined.

i cant think of anything else to try, and this problem is getting a little frustrating now, so any help would be great!

thanks

[Boulder]

Well, I'm at my wits end here as almost everyone around seems to use either TMPGEnc or DVTool. Did you demux the four files before you joined them?

[SimonSez07]

It took me a while, but i got the files successfuly merged with perfect sync. I used DVD2AVI and opened the four files as if they were four consecutive vobs. I then chose to demux MPEG audio and saved a proeject file. it concatenated the audio into one MP2 file and saved it. I then demuxed the video out of each of the four MPG files using TMPGEnc MPEG Tools and then joined the demuxed M2V files using DVTool. Then I used bbMPEG to join the big M2V file with the full MP2 audio file. Worked like a charm.

Here's the next problem:

Now I have one big, correctly muxed, 2.9 GB MPG file and I need to break it down again into four smaller files, but I want to neatly cut it at scene changes. Any ideas??

Thanks,

- Simon

[gargoyle]

My suggestion would be to try using BBMPEG - the only problem is that you will have to De-mux the file again, and know what the time is (in seconds) where you want to cut.

http://www.doom9.org/mpg/bbmpeg.htm

[delly01]

Originally posted by SimonSez07
Then I used bbMPEG to join the big M2V file with the full MP2 audio file. Worked like a charm.

Here's the next problem:

Now I have one big, correctly muxed, 2.9 GB MPG file and I need to break it down again into four smaller files, but I want to neatly cut it at scene changes. Any ideas??
- Simon

You were nearly there :-)

When muxing, bbmpeg has an option to cut at selected intervalls. Use 790MB for 80-min-cd-r.

So, repeat this step with a set cutsize.

Bye,

Detlev

[Boulder]

Actually, you can use 795MB as the interval. Not that it really matters, but still;)

[gargoyle]

But I think he wants the ability to cut at a scene change, not just fit as much as possible (795 - 800 MB) on each CD.

[SimonSez07]

gargoyle is correct. i know how to use bbmpeg to cut mpeg2 files by size when muxing, but i was hoping to find a way to cut the movie more precisly.

if i am not mistaken, mpeg2 is broken up into not merely keyframes, but 'groups of pictures' (gop's). i am pretty sure tha cce encodes mpeg video into gops at scene changes, but im not sure if the movie i have has been encoded with such feature or not.

anyways, any ideas on cutting at scene changes / gop's ???

thanks

-simon

[gargoyle]

Simonsez07- You may want to try Womble's Mpeg2VCR or Mediaware Solutions M2-Edit; they are both supposed to be pretty good, but I personally have never tried either.

Check out this link:
http://www.vcdhelp.com/editmpg.htm

[SimonSez07]

thanks for the info ... i had no idea such 'virtualdub for mpeg' software was out there, but this seems promising!!

[o0RaidR0o]

My problem is after joining two mpgs and use TMPGEnc to re-encode to a DVD file, it only sees the file upto where it was joined. In other words it only sees the 1st CD within the joined file and not both as a whole.

I use Joiner, because of sync issues with TMPGEnc when merging/joining two video files. Does any one recommend a tool for joining two video files of the same source that will fool TMPGEnc into seeing it as one whole file when re-encoding?

Thx!

[eugen]

About TMPG and its possibility to do remux correctly. Some time ago I have tried to use TMPG for merging purposes. I failed. After to be operated by TMPG file was very "undesirable" for VCDXbuild. It was something about "wrong padding stream". Then I have done a very simple test everyone could do the same. I have taken bbMpeg_muxedfile00.mpg, prepared by DVD2SVCD, then demux it in TMPG, and re-mux there once again. The resulting file does not contain no padding stream and has smaler length. After that I am using DVtools - good enough to clip and merge.

[zony]

I got nearly the same problem like o0RaidR0o. I demuxed the audio source using DVD2AVI and the video source using TMPGEnc (like SimonSez07 said). After that I merged the resulting .m2v files with DVTool to have a big audio (.mp2) and a big video file (.m2v). Finally after muxing these two with TMPGEnc the resulting .mpg file seems to be played correctly with WinDVD (audio and video in sync during the entire movie).

My problem is that I want to author a DVD using DVD-Maestro. While importing the large .m2v video file to the asset bin (after having it patched with the correct DVD settings with DVD-Patcher) DVD-Maestro starts reading but "finishes" after about 50%. The file seems to be read correctly but its lenght is lacking the lenght of the formerly second file (so it's only the lenght of the first file although its size is as large as both files combined). Any hints for me? Help would really be appreciated, I'm looking to solve this issue for about a month...

zony

[zony]

My problem is solved, received help from somebody else.

zony