Black Hawk Down - Help Please!

[guboogi]

i'm pretty new to this dvd encoding thing and i've been trying to burn black hawk down for quite some time but i'm having some problems. i know this is a very long post, but if someone would please be kind enough to help out, i'd really appreciate it! thanks so much in advance!

basically, i followed the doom9 IfoEdit "basic guide". i'll use specifics for black hawk down, and hopefully i can apply this to any other dvd in the future.

basically the movie files are VTS_01_xx files, so i trashed the VTS_02_xx, VTS_03_xx, and VTS_04_xx files. this dvd only has english menus so i couldn't strip any menus. i took out the copyright screen and i also took out all audio/subtitle tracks besides english. this puts the movie files at roughly 5.7 gb so i have to transcode the video stream. here's where it gets tricky for me.

i followed the steps for making a DVD2AVI project and it comes out with a 1.5 GB audio file called "bhd AC3 T01 3_2ch 448Kbps 48KHz". i'm not sure if there's any delay but i assumed there wasn't as it doesn't say in the title. then i proceeded to load the d2v file in TMPG as "video only" and did the settings for an NTSC movie (mpeg-2, 23.976 fps, 2-pass vbr mode, etc.)

question 1 - dvd2avi said the movie is 16:9 and ifoedit i think says 4:3. i used 4:3 because the guide said to use ifoedit's info. is that right?

question 2 - the menu file is 500 mb, the audio is 1500 mb, the movie is 145 mins in length. what should be my average bitrate to make it fit? (i did 2000 to make it 2.5 gb, but i'm not sure if this is correct. can someone please confirm?)

i did the GOP structure for only I frames in IfoEdit and added that in, too. then i encoded. then i remuxed using IfoEdit.

two problems:
1) seems the video is running too fast for the audio so it's out of sync. what could be the problem here? i had the framerate at 23.976 (internally 29.97).
2) now the VTS_01_xx files are a total of 2.9 gb. they should be rougly 4.5 gb or so, right? did i use the wrong bitrate?

[guboogi]

just a little update: i think i found out the answer to my first question. i think i accidentally looked at the menu file and THAT was 4:3 in IfoEdit, but the movie file is indeed 16:9, so i transcoded the video again in 720x480, 16:9, 23.976 (internally 29.97), constant bitrate of 3300, 3:2 pulldown when playback.

this time the file sizes seem to be correct (after i remux the entire project is about 4.3 gb) but the video is STILL running faster than the audio.

i'm pretty sure the frame rate is correct, as i followed the guide, but what else could be the problem? could it be with the d2v file i made in dvd2avi? i used "forced FILM" and YUV 4:2:2. if anyone could please direct me in the right way i'd appreciate it. thanks!

[rect]

i am not sure why your video seems to be running fast, but i have a suggestion regarding your video bitrate. By doing 3300 at a constant bitrate you are losing TONS of quality for your movie. since dvd can support up to 9800 for the bitrate, forcing it to be 3300 will not look that good. you can setup a multipass encoding using 0 as the min and 9800 as the max and 3300 as the avg, and the quality will way better.

sorry i can't help with your problem, but i don't use tmpeg for my encoding, i use CCE, so i'm not sure if it's just a frame rate issue ro what.

[guboogi]

someone on another board said to use rempeg. i've heard that it's easier to use but the quality is much worse. also that CCE has the best quality. is rempeg REALLY noticable in its lower quality, and is CCE complicated to use? i'm just barely grasping these concepts here, hehe, but i'm learning. thanks.

[colebert]

REMPEG sometimes is adequate, especially for jobs where the movie is a little bit over the 4.7G limit. But for operations like LOTR or Star Wars, CCE is really the best.

REMPEG wil give me little green squares for a second when I try to transcode just a part of the movie. Furthermore I have certain parts of movies I have enocded with REMPEG get stuttery and otherwise lose quality briefly. REMPEG is certainly not unacceptable but if you can figure out how to use CCE, you won't regret it, at least for the bigger movies out there.

It best part of rempeg is its easy. But, as with most things, being easier sacrifices perfection.

-Cole

[dergenski]

I know you said that you followed doom's guide, but did you correct the delay in the audio stream. If you didn't it would yeild a constant ms delay. Other that that, the only thing i can think of is if there is a small black vob at the very begining of the movie(i just did black hawk down and i dont remember seeing it). Usually they are about .15 seconds. you could use vobedit and ifoedit to remove the blackness and hopefully resync the video. Im having the same type of problem getting pearl harbor on one disk. The first disk is perfect, but the second disk goes out of sync.

[guboogi]

when i used dvd2avi and saved the project, the audio file that i got didn't state anything about the delay, so other than that i didn't know how to figure it out. therefore, i didn't do any change (make corrections to) the delay.

as for the video-audio sync, it just appears that the video actually PLAYS faster than the audio (which plays in normal time). it's not a constant time that they are out of sync, but just that the video will run out somewhere in the middle of the movie and the audio plays for the full 145 minutes.

[guboogi]

also, is this the guide i should be looking at if i want to use CCE?

http://www.doom9.org/mpg/ifoedit-cce.htm