How can I specify the Movie time to encode?

[Amit]

Hi!,

I am trying to encode "The Animal" R1 movie. Its made of 28 Chapters and the total movie time is 82mins & few seconds. The last chapter (28th Chpater) starts at 75min and the movie ends at 77min. Then it's only the casting.

My question is-- Is there a way I can specify the time instead of a chapters to encode? I want just the 2 mins from the last chapter. That way I can put the whole movie in 1 CD. If I encode the last chpater too, it becomes an 82 min. movie and requires 2 CDs.

Thanks
-Amit

[markrb]

No there is no way to specify a length to encode.

I use one of two methods to do what you are trying to do.

1. If the last chapter is just the credits. I just don't rip them.

2. If #1 does not apply it is more complicated and it takes getting the hang of it, but it works well for me. It requires that you find the length of the movie minus the credits you want cut out. Then find what the bitrate will be for a movie of that length. Manually put in that bitrate in the MAX AVG setting on the bottom of the bitrate tab then find the length of the movie on the bitrate tab and increase the number of cd's over what you want by one. If it works right then what will happen is the whole movie will be on the right number of cd's while the credits will end up on the last image you just don't burn. Be a little cautious at first and set the bitrate about 25 points lower then what you think it will be.
The following is how you will find the bitrate to put in the MAX AVG section. This is just an example to let you understand what I mean.


In this setting the movie is THE ROCK. It's total time is 136 minutes, but lets say the credits are 5 minutes long. So what we want to know is what is the bitrate setting for a movie of 131 minutes on 3 cd's.

First make sure you set the audio bitrate to 192 or this won't work since we won't have the same settings
On the bitrate tab hit the default button. This will reset everything to there default settings so we are working from the same page. Wherever it says 740 change it to 800.
Locate where it says Between 125 and 163(5th one down)
Change that 163 to 131 (length of THE ROCK minus credits)
Look at the far right where you will see a range of bitrates
It should say 2410-2290
2290 will be the MAX AVG bitrate used for this video, but lets drop that 25 to be safe so use 2265. So you will enter 2265 in the MAX AVG section
return the 131 to 163
Then change that 3 in the number of cd's to 4.

What happens is now DVD2SVCD will decide what the average bitrate to use will be. Well if we let it pick whatever it could since we are now letting it go on 4 cd's it would be very high. Our putting of 2260 in the MAX AVG will not let DVD2SVCD use anything higher then this for the average so we end up with what we want, most of the credits gone.

Disclaimer That 5 minutes was a convienent guess I have no idea how long the credits are to the movie THE ROCK.

With a little practice you will be a pro.

Mark

[Head Hunter]

You could just change the default cd values and have the full movie put on 1 cd if thats what you want.

[markrb]

75 minutes on one cd? That would have the bitrate at 1251. At that rate don't bother making an SVCD. Just make a VCD instead. The results would be much better.

Mark

[Head Hunter]

I agree with you, actually I would use DivX for 1 cd rips, but SVCD should not be used with more than 60 min on a disc, but thats just my opinion. I was just suggesting a way for him to go SVCD like he asked about.

[emilius256]

Maybe you can try editing the avs script (in the frameserver tab you can choose "Edit when Dv2Avi processing is don" or "Edit as part of video encoding") and add as last line

Trim(Start_frame,End_frame)

bye

[markrb]

emilius256 that's a little advanced and you would have to find out the frame numbers around the area you wish to end the first encode and start the second. I am not saying it won't work, just it's a bit more complicated.

My second method above may sound complicated, but in reality it's really easy and only takes a minute.

I failed to mention the way you would find the time of the movie minus the credits is simply to play the DVD in a software DVD player like WinDVD.

Mark

[emilius256]

Yes, you're right, but is just another method and is not perfect because with trim the video is encoded for the frame specified but the audio is encoded completly.
So at end i have a video that stop before the end credits but the audio still go on.

bye.

[Amit]

Thank u all for providing a wealth of information on this issue.

@markb
75 minutes on one cd? That would have the bitrate at 1251. At that rate don't bother making an SVCD. Just make a VCD instead. The results would be much better.

Since the bitate is falling too low, I would love to compare the output with VCD. Is it possible to make a VCD with D2S? If yes, where's the option.

-Amit

[markrb]

Not yet, technically. If you read the thread in the advanced forum about making a VCD in DVD2SVCD there will be a beta attached that can. I do not know if it's a real Mpeg-1 VCD or a Quasi Mpeg-2 VCD.
If you use Mpeg-2 then it's still a pretty low bitrate, you want Mpeg-1 if you can.

If you want to compare correctly put the SVCD on 2 discs. This will bring the SVCD up in quality.

Mark