IFOedit question... Please help

[Demons]

I have kind of a unique situation. My main purpose in DVD authoring is to take a DVD movie that is not exactly a “family film” and edit out the bad language and extremely violent clips to make the viewing audience a little broader. I know that many of you may not consider this a worthy cause but that’s ok… to each his own. So far I have had much success in editing the video. I use DVD2AVI to edit the film directly in Adobe Premiere and I decode the AC3 file to 6 separate full quality WAV files so I can edit out only the center channel for the bad language. This effect is quite nice since I am not removing the background noise while removing the bad language so the fact that it has been edited is more transparent. Anyway, I re-encode the video in TMPGenc as a standard 16:9 DVD video file and re-encode the 6 WAV files as a Dolby Digital AC3 file. So now I have a standard audio and video stream that is about 1 minute shorter than the original DVD streams that I want to author back to a DVD burner.

My question is this… I want to keep the original Root DVD menu and Chapter Selections menu and I need to know the best way to do this. I have tried to extract the menu VOB from the DVD and use Scenarist to re-create the layout but I haven’t learned all the ins and outs of Scenarist yet. I’m wondering if it would be much easier to use IFOedit to strip everything out of the DVD but the menus and re-mux the new Video and Audio stream back into the original DVD menus. I know that IFOedit has the option of re-muxing a new video stream back into the original DVD incase you need to re-encode the video at a lower bitrate to make it fit on a 4.7GB disk but I didn’t see any option to re-mux a new audio stream with it. I also know that I will need to re-setup the chapter points since the video is now a different length. I skimmed through the post at the top of the forum but could not find anything relating to my specific issue. Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!

[mikecito]

I'm trying to accomplish the same task. I currently have just been clipping the scene or 1-2 second clips that are offensive, and have had good luck with my process. Search for "multirating" under the forums and you'll see the process I use.

Unfortunately, I haven't been nearly as technical about it as you. I'm trying not to reencode anything as this takes time and loses quality. However - I could help you out with scenarist questions - I'm getting pretty used to the program. I'm not a pro by any means, but chapters and such are pretty simple.

[Demons]

I read your guide in the other forum and it seems to be a pretty good way of doing the same thing. Personally I'm a perfectionist so I like the ability to edit any exact frame and muting only the center channel so the editing is transparent. Your right with the quality loss though... Using DVD2AVI to edit in Premiere you loose nothing because of course you are converting it to raw video uncompressed... but I noticed when converting it back to MPEG2 with TMPGenc I was loosing quite a bit of quality since I had to use a slightly lower bitrate than the movie originally had since it is such a long movie. But I found a solution to that. I tried Cinemacraft Encoder (CCE) using a VBR 4-pass encoding which took the same amount of time as a 2-pass on TMPGenc and the quality is amazing! Truly a professional encoder! I can hardly notice any differance whatsoever in quality. I've been very happy with it. I'd be happy to share the process with you if you are interested. I gave up on the extracting of the menus with IFOedit. I just converted the menus from the menu VOB to a HUFFYUV AVI (a lossless codec), opened it in premiere and chopped it up that way into many different files. I now have a full structure of the DVD in Scenarist. It works great! It's been lots of fun to figure it out on my first editing project (The Matrix). Now I'm on to about 5 more to edit for my family.

[mikecito]

Wow - I wish I had your patience. I was looking for a way to do exactly what you're doing - with lossless quality. Unfortunately, ac3 and mpg are both compressed, so any conversion will always lose something. BUT - I'm sure the quality is still high, especially using CCE.

I wish a company would do this - pre-production. It's pretty simple, and the directors don't want to do it. :)

Anyway - thanks for the info - I'll get back to you if I want to spend that much time editing them. It sounds like many hours per dvd. Mine have just a simple movie with chapters every five minutes. I'm usually a perfectionist too, so the trade-off of loss of quality eats at me. I used to do this to SVCDs. A much easier process when not dealing with AC3, demux, remux, etc.

If you ever need any help, drop me a line. I think it's a worthy cause, I agree with you.

[Demons]

Actually, the set-up and editing of the film doesn't take too much time. I just make a list of everything I want to edit out and then once i have it in Premiere it only takes me about an hour and a half to do the editing. What takes the longest of course is re-encoding the movie back to MPEG2 with multi-pass encoding. This takes about 6-8 hours on a CCE 4-pass(I usually leave it going overnight) on my dual AMD 1800+ system. But now with my final product, I consider it worth the time... you pop in the DVD and you don't even realize that it has been edited. I've shown the movie to several people who have never seen the movie and they can usually only notice one or two points that I have edited out of the 25 points that I have taken out. Anyway... It's a hobby. :)

[mikecito]

Hey - Sorry to bug you now, but you send a simple rundown of your process? I think I might use it. Even though I have to reencode, the quality is still excellent, i'm sure. Thanks for your time!

[Demons]

Video Editing DVD movies while keeping as much quality as possible.

First, I used ErMac’s Guide to all things video to open the VOB files in Premiere. This page can be found here:

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/ErMaC/guide5_2.htm

Then I use Sonic Softencode to decode the AC3 file to 6 mono 48 KHz PCM WAV audio streams. Make sure to name them accordingly to their channel (i.e. CENTER, FRONTLEFT, and FRONTRIGHT). Open premiere and choose a custom project. Set your video project settings to a 24 fps, 24 timecode project and your video settings to 23.98 fps. Set your audio to 48 kHz mono. You will have to add a few audio tracks in the timeline to make 6 total. Import your DVD2AVI file per the guide mentioned above. Import your 6 audio files into the timeline. If you have a fast enough computer, you should be able to playback the video with all 6 audio tracks playing simultaneously. But to speed things up and make things easier, since I’m usually only editing out the center channel, I usually mute all the channels except for the center channel. To mute a track click on the little speaker on the left side of the timeline window next to the corresponding track. I now sync the audio by going to a part in the movie that has some good, loud, sharp sound effects with video to match up. I find that most ac3 files are offset by about 2-3 frames. I make the slight adjustment to the start of the timeline and then I’m ready to start editing. You now have the ability to edit out the foul language of the center channel without muting the background noise as well. This makes the editing very transparent.

After you have cut the video and audio you wish to, first export all of your audio files as individual mono WAV files by muting all but the track you want to export. You should now have 6 mono 48 kHz WAV files that are slightly shorter than the originals. Simply import these files back into Softencode or the AC3 encoder built into Scenarist, pick your bitrate and re-encode the new AC3 file. Now we need to export the video. The only encoder I have gotten acceptable results with is Cinemacraft Encoder V2.64. CCE-SP comes with a Premiere plug-in that makes it very easy to use. Export the timeline instead of the audio this time and the export setting will pop up. Uncheck the export audio box as we have already completed the audio. Cycle through the other Premiere settings and make sure that everything is set properly. We want to export in 23.98fps and make sure that in Keyframe and rendering that it is set to “No frames” as this is currently progressive video. Under general settings click on advanced next to Cinemacraft MPEG 1/2. Under video, these are the things to have checked for this project:
1. Add sequence code
2. Progressive frames
3. Zigzag scanning order
4. DVD compliant

On the right, make sure to set the timecode to all 0s. Also, you will most likely want to set the aspect ratio to 16:9 as most DVDs are in this ratio. Go to the bitrate settings and choose a VBR 3 or 4 pass. Choose whatever bitrate you would like. Just make sure to not go over how much space you have on a DVD-R. For the Matrix I choose Min-2000 Average-4000 and Max-9000 and got wonderful results. On the quality tab, leave the Quality priority at 25 and uncheck the Anti noise filter. Since our video is already great quality, a noise filter would slow things down and probably cause more damage than good. I found that the Quantize Matrixes are also best on their default settings but if you are forced to use a bitrate lower than 4000, click on the button and choose “Very low bitrate instead of “Standard”. If you are doing something animated instead of live video you also might want to change the setting to “Smooth” instead of standard. Under the GOP tab M=3, N/M I change to 4 per the guide from the Doom9.net site and leave the Seq header at 1. The two checkboxes should both be left unchecked. The Audio and System tabs should both be left untouched. Hit OK and OK again in the Premiere settings window and it will ask you where you want to save the file. Name it and take a brake. On my dual AMD 1800+ each pass on a 2:15 video took about 2:30 total so a 4 pass took about 9-10 hours. When the system is done encoding the file, use the pulldown.exe utility that you can download from the Doom9 site to convert the final 23.98fps progressive video to 29.97fps interlaced NTSC video. Import the audio and video into Scenarist or your authoring program of choice. Set the chapter points and author it. One catch that I have found in this method is the fact that Premiere can only be set to 23.98fps while the standard is actually 23.976 fps. This results in the final video, when exported through CCE to be a second or 2 longer than the project in Premiere which makes your audio gradually go out of sync. This is easily remedied by importing each of the 6 mono files into an audio editing program like Cooledit and stretching the audio by %100.017. Make sure that you set the stretch settings to “retain nothing”. You have the option to “retain pitch” or “retain speed” but both of these settings will cause SIGNIFICANT loss to the audio quality. “Retain nothing” works great. You will need to do this, of course, before you convert them to the AC3 file for your final project.

Well there you have it. I hope I didn’t leave anything out. If you have any questions, I will be happy to answer them and amend this guide as best I can. Hope you enjoy it!

[mikecito]

WOW - thanks for that! You went beyond the mark! I'll try it and tell you how I fare with it.

Thanks!

[mikecito]

quick question -

How do I use softencode to decode the files? I mean, I can encode, and all that, but what's the process to save seperate wave files? Do I just save as wav? I tried that and couldn't open them for the life of me. Thanks for your help! Greatly appreciated!

[mikecito]

Never mind! I think I figured it out. I just had to delete the tracks that I didn't want to save.... I hope that's right.

Thanks

[Demons]

You do have to delete the tracks you don't want but then Softencode will actually delete the RAW sound file it just created. A way to get arround this is to go into the temp directory that you can specifiy in Softencode, right after you have finished decoding the ac3 file and write-protect all of them. Then you are free to go back into the temp directory and open each of the RAW sound files and save them out to PCM WAVs. Hope this helps!

-Demons

[mikecito]

I'm having trouble with the export part of this procedure.

I get everything done until I use the CCE plugin to export the movie to DVD video.

I can't find a "no frames" option under keyframes and rendering, and I don't see a couple options under the plugin advanced settings.

I'm using CCE 2.64 trial version, and Premiere 6.02. I also tried CCE 2.5 and Premiere 6.0, and 6.01.

Any ideas? Am I doing something wrong? Is there a way to export through TMPGEnc or something without writing the entire raw video to the hard drive?

Thanks!

[Demons]

The Keyframe and Rendering is under the Premiere export settings... it's the same windows as the "Project Settings" but it's different than your project settings. You can have completely different "Export" and "Project" settings even though the windows look exactly the same. When you go to File>Export>Movie and it asks you where you want to save it, I think Keyframe and Rendering is on the last or second to last tab, or option from the pulldown menu. If you go to Advanced settings after you select the CCE plug-in, you can change the CCE settings but you don't set the "no frames" option in CCE. You set it in the export settings in Premiere. Hope this helps. I don't have the program in front of me so I'm going off of memory. I hope you find the setting ok. If you don't let me know and I will take a look at it.

-Demons

[mikecito]

SUCCESS!

I finally finished every step and have a very-well edited copy of Enemy of the State. There are times when it's obvious what they're saying, so I might go back and just clip those couple words and try to make it look convincing.

Now I've got to learn how to use Premiere better! I didn't get much further than lifting and stuff. I would love to learn how to mosaic over a part of the picture, maybe blend frames for a better transition(or sound) etc.

The end quality when played side-by-side with the DVD is near perfect. Almost no loss of picture. Most people I showed couldn't tell a difference (obviously the untrained eye has a harder time). And the sound is also basically unmarred.

Thanks for this great guide Demons! It helped me out with something I've wanted to do for a LONG time.

Now if we could find a way to trade our premiere projects so we don't end up editing the same movies... we could edit for each other (although I'm sure you do a much better job). It would be hard, however, because we would probably have to use the EXACT same steps to get the data into Premiere. I used Smartripper to rip the stream I wanted... just 1 angle and 1 audio stream(with video in VOB format, audio to seperate AC3 file), and then split the AC3 using BeSweet. I used the same DVD2AVI/avisynth/mpeg2dec method you instructed to import to Premiere. It worked great.

You might want to use BeSweet instead of Soft Encode(to extract the wavs from the ac3.) It does it all in one nice step and about 1/4 the time. (Get the GUI!)

The only part I found extremely annoying was stretching the audio. Cooledit definately took it's time to stretch each file... about 10 minutes, which adds up fast because each step is 2 or 3 minutes(opening, stretching, saving), and you have to sit there. Maybe that could be lessened with a dualie like you have. I already have a raid-stripe with a PIII 1GHZ and it's still a little pokey.

Anyway - great work Demons. Thanks for the excellent tutorial.

[Demons]

You are certainly welcome! I'm glad that you've had success with it! CCE does a great job at keeping the quality up! I do share your frustration with the audio stretching in Cooledit. Maybe it will be fixed with future versions of CCE or Premiere so you won’t have to stretch the audio. Thanks for the advice on BeSweet, I’ll have to give it a shot… I haven’t ever used it before. Sounds a lot better than using SoftEncode. That part was also a little tedious.

We should be able to trade projects, in theory… we are using the same method to import them into Premiere so all we have to do is open the project file and Premiere should come up with a message saying that it can’t find the media files and it will ask you to browse and find them on your system. Just point it to the right place and re-save the project and you should be good to go. I also am using Smartripper to rip the DVD… only 1 angle and AC3 to a separate file so I don’t think we should have any problems there. We ought to try it sometime. I was just about to start on my next project. Right now I’ve only done one so far in this method. Here’s a list of the ones I plan to do. The Matrix is the one that I now have completed.

To Do:
True Lies
MIB
The Saint
Rush Hour
So I Married an Ax Murderer
The Fifth Element
The Mask
Sneakers

Some of these wont have a lot to take out but in my opinion it's worth it for your kids. It’s always one or two scenes that you wish they had left out. I’d be happy to send any project files that you would like after I’m done. Anyway, thank you again for the praise. I am very happy that I’m not alone in my desire for cleaner movies.

[mikecito]

That looks like a good list of movies! Some of my favorites.

So - I edited Enemy of the State and it came out great. I have a way around the monotony of stretching the wavs.

Cool Edit 2000 accepts scripts. Open notepad, type in the following(or copy this and paste... much easier)

~~~~~~~~~

Collection: New Collection
Title: Stretch Audio 100.017
Description:
Mode: 2

Selected: none at 0 scaled 380553216 SR 48000
cmd: Channel Both

Selected: 0 to 380553215 scaled 380553216 SR 48000
cmd: Time/Pitch\Stretch
1: 1.00017
2: 1.00017
3: 0
4: 0
5: 25
6: 0
7: 0.8
8: 2
9: 2
10: 0
11: 0

End:

~~~~~~~~


(without the tildes)

Then save it as something.scp. I used "stretchaudio.scp". In Cooledit, click on Options ---> Scripts and Batch Processing. Then click open/new collection. Then open the file you just created. Then click on the description of the file in the left pane. Uncheck pause at dialogs if it is checked. Then click on batch Run.

Add all the sound files you want to stretch, choose a destination directory, check the "disable undo" box so that it doesn't waste time on that, and then click begin. An hour later or probably 5 minutes on your computer :) you'll have them all stretched without the misery of clicking continue every 5 minutes.

Good luck! I also attached my adobe premiere project for the movie "Enemy of the State." It's not perfect, but pretty good.

P.S. I'm going to put all of this on www.mikecito.com it's my own website that is temporarily under construction. I'll give you proper credit for your ideas. Thanks!

[Demons]

That sounds great!!! :) I'll be famous before you know it! J/K Thanks for the Cool Edit Script! It will make things a lot easier! It will be nice to just let it run, each one takes 7-10 min, even on my dulie. :) But it will certainly simplify things. I'll have to read up on the Cool Edit script functions to see what all that you wrote means... Some is obvious and other stuff I don't really have a clue, but I'm a quick learner. Anyway, thanks again for the feedback. Feel free to post anything of mine on your site... project files and all... And thank you for your help! C-ya

[mikecito]

Thanks for the great compliment, but I didn't write the scripts. There's a script recorder in Cool Edit - I just used that. I wish I new what it all meant, but, I do know it works! :)

[mikecito]

Well - I was going to post all the stuff I edit here, but since it will keep dropping to the top of the forum, I'll post it on www.mikecito.com. You can go there to look for project files. Yeah, I know the site sucks, but I haven't found time to start working on it. It's functional.

Mike

[atreides93]

I'm really interested in trying out what you guys are doing...but I went to sonic's web site and they no longer sell Sonic Soft encode 5.1 !!
does that mean i can try to get it through some other source?
can someone send it to me?
________
Suzuki RGV250 (http://www.cyclechaos.com/wiki/Suzuki_RGV250)

[mikecito]

You can do searches on many peer-to-peer networks like imesh or morpheus, and you might find something. I'm not sure if it's available for purchase ANYWHERE anymore. In fact, I don't even know of other solutions. But - you should be able to find it someplace.

Mikecito

[mikecito]

Sorry for the... slight... delay in my reply. :)

You can use besweet(downloads on this site) to create AC3, it's free, and from what I hear it's faster and does just as good of job!

Apparently you feed it a 6 channel wave file in the order of FL, C, FR, BL, BR, LFE, and you get ac3 out of it. Soft Encode can be purchased, but I don't know where. My copy is years old. Maybe Ebay???

Anyway - good luck!