chilledinsanity
27th December 2002, 10:39
Hi, I've been reading a lot of forum posts from searching and I still am unable to make a decision here. Here's my situation:
I'm switching from using SBC 2-CD burns with mp3 to Xvid DVD-R burns with AC3 audio. Xvid was a dream, for higher bitrates it slammed SBC encoding cold in my tests. The audio however, is giving me a nightmare. I initially had problems which I solved by using the preload/interleave values as mentioned in the big AC3/AVI FAQ. If I recall, I ended up going with 128/128 for 384kbps and 96/96 for 448kbps. This worked great...off my hard drive. When I finally got my DVD-R burner, I burned one disc and found the results horrific, the disc was choking on complex action. I found out later that this was a result from Nandub and AVIMux_GUI was able to fix this via rec lists...sort of. Initially all my problems were solved and it worked great. However, in order to give it a just test, I watched a full movie off a DVD-R. The movie was 2.5 hours about (Ali) and for the most part it was great, but I noticed 2 distinct, possibly 4 total points where the audio played fine, but the video jerked to keep up. Fortunately it was very brief and I imagine the average person wouldn't notice, but it bugged me. Since I couldn't remember my interleave/preload values at the time, I used 128/128 going by the AC3/AVI FAQ. I really don't want to start burning movies only to find these minor glitches each time. This never happens on the hard drive, and I am NOT thrilled about the prospect of having to wait and burn the DVD of the altered clip (time: .5-1 hour) then watching the entire movie (time: 1.5-3 hours) just to make sure this isn't an issue.
My basic goal now is that I want to establish some sort of system before I start burning more stuff. I'd prefer something non-complex, but I'll learn what I have to in order to do this right. My basic goal here is to future-proof (if that's even a possible concept) what I burn so that with my system a couple computer generations from now will still be able to run this without trouble. I'm hearin how preload/interleave values can vary from system to system (BAD!) and how some soundcards will screw up the sound on some 5.1 soundcards (I only have 4.1 analog at the moment, but I want my movies to play well if I upgrade to something better). My basic question is what method should I use? From what I can tell here are my options:
1. Find some magical preload/interleave value(s) that will work for any movie of a specific bitrate and continue to use AVIMux_GUI
2. Find some method to calculate the exact values I need for the movie and enter them that way.
3. I've been reading about using Ogg Vorbis for 5.1 audio, but it sounds a bit tricky (I know NOTHING about programming by the way). Is this is a good option? How annoying would the process be if I were to master it? The authors on some of these filters didn't sound too confident on their reliability.
4. Something else I don't know about.
Anyway, suggestions are more than welcome, my end goal here is peace of mind when encoding so I can concentrate on the movie and not wonder if it's going to screw up. Sorry about the long post!
I'm switching from using SBC 2-CD burns with mp3 to Xvid DVD-R burns with AC3 audio. Xvid was a dream, for higher bitrates it slammed SBC encoding cold in my tests. The audio however, is giving me a nightmare. I initially had problems which I solved by using the preload/interleave values as mentioned in the big AC3/AVI FAQ. If I recall, I ended up going with 128/128 for 384kbps and 96/96 for 448kbps. This worked great...off my hard drive. When I finally got my DVD-R burner, I burned one disc and found the results horrific, the disc was choking on complex action. I found out later that this was a result from Nandub and AVIMux_GUI was able to fix this via rec lists...sort of. Initially all my problems were solved and it worked great. However, in order to give it a just test, I watched a full movie off a DVD-R. The movie was 2.5 hours about (Ali) and for the most part it was great, but I noticed 2 distinct, possibly 4 total points where the audio played fine, but the video jerked to keep up. Fortunately it was very brief and I imagine the average person wouldn't notice, but it bugged me. Since I couldn't remember my interleave/preload values at the time, I used 128/128 going by the AC3/AVI FAQ. I really don't want to start burning movies only to find these minor glitches each time. This never happens on the hard drive, and I am NOT thrilled about the prospect of having to wait and burn the DVD of the altered clip (time: .5-1 hour) then watching the entire movie (time: 1.5-3 hours) just to make sure this isn't an issue.
My basic goal now is that I want to establish some sort of system before I start burning more stuff. I'd prefer something non-complex, but I'll learn what I have to in order to do this right. My basic goal here is to future-proof (if that's even a possible concept) what I burn so that with my system a couple computer generations from now will still be able to run this without trouble. I'm hearin how preload/interleave values can vary from system to system (BAD!) and how some soundcards will screw up the sound on some 5.1 soundcards (I only have 4.1 analog at the moment, but I want my movies to play well if I upgrade to something better). My basic question is what method should I use? From what I can tell here are my options:
1. Find some magical preload/interleave value(s) that will work for any movie of a specific bitrate and continue to use AVIMux_GUI
2. Find some method to calculate the exact values I need for the movie and enter them that way.
3. I've been reading about using Ogg Vorbis for 5.1 audio, but it sounds a bit tricky (I know NOTHING about programming by the way). Is this is a good option? How annoying would the process be if I were to master it? The authors on some of these filters didn't sound too confident on their reliability.
4. Something else I don't know about.
Anyway, suggestions are more than welcome, my end goal here is peace of mind when encoding so I can concentrate on the movie and not wonder if it's going to screw up. Sorry about the long post!