TaZit: New tool to fully automate DVD to XviD/Vorbis/XCD conversion.

[TaZ4hvn]

Well I spent days to write it, I think it's good enough for a first release. Here is a copy of the readme:

TaZit readme file
------------------------

Abstract:
------------
This utility is designed to fully automate DVD rip to ogg container (.ogm),
video is XviD while audio is Vorbis (.ogg), using the 'state of the art' tools.
The final files will be Mode2/Form2 .bin/.cue/.toc ready to create an XCD;
program will burn and/or mount images with Daemon tools on request.
To use it simply insert a DVD in the DVD drive, a blank CDR in the burner,
launch TaZit and wait hours, the burner will eject a finalized XCD.
(program maybe a bit long to start since the first thing it does is retrieving
DVD name, so wait for authentification).
If you want to contact me send a private message on doom9 or mail me:
taz4hvn@msn.com

Features:
-------------
Initially it was intended to be a batch file to chain the most effective tools
nowdays:
- Ripping with DVDDecrypter.
- Indexing/Demuxing with DVD2AVI.
- Transcode audio to Ogg/Vorbis using BeSweet.
- Build an adequate AviSynth script.
- Convert video to XviD (2pass mode) using avs2avi.
- Force keyframes at chapters start with KFenforcer.
- Mux audio/video to ogg container with OGMuxer (while splitting into parts).
- Create mode2/form2 image(s) with mode2cdmaker.
- Mount image(s) with Daemon Tools.
- Burn to CDR with CDRDAO.
So you have to get all these tools (links to them a the end of this file.)
Open paths.ini and carefully fill required fields with correct paths.

Actually smarter parts of code are needed, mainly to do do GKnot stuff, this is
what the program does by itself (further explanation in configuration section):
- Find and use name of the DVD,
- Find audio tracks you specified to pass to besweet (up to 2).
- Find the correct pixel aspect ratio (par) for correct resizing.
- Find if the DVD is or not anamorphic, again for resizing decision.
- Find correct cropping and resizing for the video.
- Find required numbers of cd according to set compressibility bounds.
- Label video stream by name and audio tracks by language to show in Ogg parser.

Configuration:
-------------------
Here is the funny and tricky part: open settings.ini.
If you get in trouble switch back to defaults.
- PROJECT=,if set to AUTO program will use DVD name.
if set to anything else, will use this else as name.
- CD_SIZE=, size of one CD, since we are going to an XCD, size are mode2,
i.e. 795 is ok for regular 700MB CDR.
By now, audio overhead is only a quick hack: retaining 0.5% of final size,
not smart but should avoid oversized files.
- BURN=, if ON will burn final .bin file, if more than one CD, will burn the first one.
if SIM will only simulate burning (blank CDR required anyway).
if anything else, won't burn.
->see notes below for further explanations.
- MOUNT=, if ON will mount images with Daemon Tools (up to 4).
if anything else, won't mount.
- OGGQUAL=, ogg quality for audio encoding,
I may be a bit deaf but 0.100 is ok to me, others prefer 0.200.
- KFENFORCE=, if ON will force keyframes at chapters start for accurate
seeking, anything else stands for OFF. This flag is required as KFenforcer
won't work with B-frames and/or stable builds of XviD, if you plan to use one
of them, disable it. Anyway even dev. builds of XviD are stable enough providing
you avoid wrong combinations, and I find B-frames usefull for very low bitrate
encodes only.
- LANG1=, has to be the exact name you'll find in 'VTS_?? - Stream Information.txt'
created by DVDDecrypter as the search relies on parsing this file.
Pasing shouldn't fail whatever your settings are as I overwrite DVDDec registry
settings first (an restore them when rip is over).
->see notes below for further explanations.
- LANG2=, see above.
If set to none (lowercase), only LANG1 is used, resulting in a single audio file.
- MINCOMP_1CD=, this is the video quality factor, if compressibility factor
(SecondPassSize/FirstPassSize ratio) is lower than this will go for two CD.
MINCOMP_2CD=, compressibility under wich program will switch to 3CD.
MINCOMP_3CD=, compressibility under wich program will switch to 4CD.
->see notes below for further explanations.
- KILOPIX_PER_FRAME=, this is the resolution, in thousands of pixel per frame,
the resizing routine will try to achieve. The default 190 will give 'standart' resolution.
close to 640x272 or 672x272 for 2.35 movies.
close to 576x320 or 576x304 for 1.85 movies
close to 512x368 or 512x384 for 1.33 movies.
->see notes below for further explanations.
- IVTC=, if ON fire on autoIVTC/deinterlacing function. As I mostly have PAL non
interlaced DVD, I don't know how this performs, actually this function is provided
by bilu @doom9 -big thanks to him :)- and *shouldn't* harm non interlaced/NTSC DVDs.
Since I can't verify I provide a flag to disable it. Anything not ON will be as good as OFF.
- KEEP_ALL=, mainly a debug flag, if ON will keep all files produced by the program.
Be aware it can be very large (let's say up to 10GB). Can be usefull if you want to keep
some files or study what the program does. Better set it to OFF (or anything not ON ...)

Further notes:
-------------------
- About compressibility:
Let me develop this a bit, I set MINCOMP_1CD=0.65 because this is the compressibility
under wich I think 1CD will get too ugly to watch, setting it higher will give better, but less
numerous, one CD encodes.
To force 1CD set MINCOMP_1CD=0, to force 2CD (if possible) set MINCOMP_1CD=1.
I set MINCOMP_2CD=0.50 because I think 3CD is not an option, so I allow even so so
quality on 2CD to avoid switching to 3CD. If I wanted to completely disable 3CD (and 4CD)
I'd set MINCOMP_2CD=0.
I set MINCOMP_3CD=0.80 because, until I'm on tha path for 3CD, I want highest quality
and don't care to switch to 4CD then.
By now resizing is down with Lanczos filter and undot preprocessing, i will change it later.
I hope I made it clear.

- About cropping/resizing decision:
Actual resolution depends on the movie and cropping decision, cropping/resizing is made
by an AviSynth function, have a look at functions.txt. What it does is:
First simulate autocrop image, and then determine teh correct aspect ratio to target based
on the pixel aspect ratio and if image is anamorphic or not.
Then determine usable resolution (means mod32 in width and mod16 in height) giving
aspect ratio closest to targeted aspect ratio.
Calculate the real aspect ratio image will have with the chosen resolution and then does
a real crop respecting this ratio.
Resize to selected resolution.
Actually it mostly works as intended on the few tests I did (i.e. in a GKnot manner),
if you have ideas to improve it, let me know.

- About audio search:
I wanted audio search routine to act as I would. What it does is:
-------sorry this part is well formatted in original txt---------
First search for LANG1,
if LANG1 found,
if LANG2 is set, search for it, display results and go on, whether LANG2 is found or not.
if LANG2 set to none, then display results and go on.
if LANG1 doesn't exist,
if LANG2 is set, search for LANG2,
if LANG2 is found, display results and go on: movie will be single languaged.
if LANG2 doesn't exist,
if LANG2 wasn't English, search for English,
if English found, go on.
if English not found, use first available track (stream 0x80) and go on.
if LANG2 was English, use first available track (stream 0x80) and go on.
if LANG2 set to none,
if LANG1 wasn't English, search for English,
if English found, go on.
if English not found, use first available track (stream 0x80) and go on.
if LANG1 was English, use first available track (stream 0x80) and go on.
-------sorry this part is well formatted in original txt---------
Well I guess it must be tricky to read, but it was a lot more to code !

- About cdrdao:
At the moment cdrdao only supports scsi adressing so you need a working aspi on your machine.
You can get one at: http://www.dvd2svcd.org/
You have to target your burner in an scsi manner, like 1,0,0.
To find it just run 'cdrdao scanbus' at command line prompt.

Current limitations:
--------------------------
Lot's of things are still to be implemented but as it already represents an unfair amount of code
to work with I want to be sure what's done yet is working. So I need you to test, suggest and
feedback.
It has been written on XP for XP, hopefully It should work on ... XP :)
Anyone wanting to test on others platforms is expected to report behaviour to me.
Function regarding IVTC/Deinterlacing is far from perfect ... don't expect too much with NTSC
and combed materials.
Cd number decision algorithm is certainly not the clevest part. I plan to code something much
more versatile, able for instance to lower resolution and change resizing filter before switching
for one more cd. It looks really difficult to fit human tastes on this ... I'm working on it.
EDIT: Well sorry for those who tried and find it to fail, I forgot to mention you nead CALL_25.dll and NicEcho.exe in your avisynth plugin folder too :p
get it here: http://nic.dnsalias.com/Call.zip

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Get it Link removed due to update, see below

[ChristianHJW]

Out of curiosity, what application are you calling to create your OGMs ? VdubMod, OggMuxer or OGmuxer ?

EDIT : ok, i found it, you use OGmuxer ... dont know why i was overreading it in 1st reading, sorry. Please allow me to add that mkvmerger was ported to win32 meanwhile ;) ....

[DaveEL]

BIG bug in avs2avi currently better stick to old version (1.25 or before ) if you want xvid support (files produced will decode with ffdshow but not the xvid decoder) till i get it sorted sorry.

DaveEL

[TaZ4hvn]

oh good ! Thanks DaveEL, I noticed it but was sure my system is totally screwed up ! So I updated the readme.

@ChristianHJW
didn't play with matroska yet cause I was coding this, I will test it now and when win32 merger will be ready I think I can add choice between matroska and ogg container.
Also about merger, I found OGMuxer the most convenient as OGGmuxer wasn't kf accurate in my last tests and vdubmod a bit tricky to call via cli ... do you think I made the right choice ?

EDIT: Sorry ChristianHJW, looks like I missed some of your words too when I first read your initial post :D

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by TaZ4hvn didn't play with matroska yet cause I was coding this, I will test it now and when win32 merger will be ready I think I can add choice between matroska and ogg container. .. they are ready, latest version can always be obtained from here http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/index.html#dlinst_win32 , it even supports writing the Aspect Ratio flag for anamorphic encoding already ..
Also about merger, I found OGMuxer the most convenient as OGGmuxer wasn't kf accurate in my last tests and vdubmod a bit tricky to call via cli ... do you think I made the right choice ? .. i cant comment here, i know both devs very well and dont wonna piss any of them ... ;) ...

[TaZ4hvn]

updated readme to point to avs2avi 1.25.
updated online exe to resize with simpleresize (faster until I make the programm able to switch resizing filters by itself)
and corrected a bug in resizing decision leading to slightly wrong AR.
EDIT: looks like there's also a silly bug in audio parsing causing programm to crash when a single audio is specified. I'm working on it.

[bilu]

Way to go, TaZ!!! :D :D :D

About the automatic IVTC function, this is neuron2's opinion:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&postid=310156#post310156

Since both Decimate(mode=1) and (mode=3) can recognize between Video and Film and the only automatic way is though D2V statistics, it seems that although not perfect, it probably couldn't get any better.

You've put together a lot of stuff, and you don't need Robot4Rip :) but I do have a request to make: include subtitle ripping to disk. You can check how R4R does it, seems easy.

As soon as I finish my resizing/compressibilty decision on R4R_ENC I'm going to get a lot of inspiration from your tool ;)

Best of luck improving it :)


Regards,
Bilu

[TaZ4hvn]

@bilu:
Thank you my friend !
I hope you tried it at least :p
About IVTC I rely on your work as I can't test, I still hope we can merge later and change the silly name I gave to my prog :p
About subtitles, this is on my mind but there's things I want to do before, like a 'batch process directory' mode so that I can rip 10 DVDs whith one clic (well, when I'm out for a week or so :) ).
Concerning subtitles I don't know if I should go for an OCR rip, that will breaks the chaining process, or a hard rip (never did this before) ...

@All:
Already changed a few things (including version number :p):
v0.11: -fixed a silly bug causing program to crash when one audio track only was selected.
-added a DAR table to the existing PAR table as resizing wasn't accurate enough.
-modified resizing function so that it never crop top/bottom anymore.

Get it:Link removed due to update, see below

[LOUIE]

Well....i like your tool and love the idea, but....i just got one lil problem ;) Every time i run it, i get this:

Missing operator.
PM was unexpected at this time.


As far as i know i've setup all my paths correctly in paths.ini and even that little bit in Filters.txt. I also have CALL_25.dll and NicEcho.exe in my aviSynth plugin folder,so thats not missing. I have no idea what PM means....maybe you could give me a hint?;) Or how to replace that missing operator (whatever that maybe). Btw, i've also got it set up to use just one langauge (English) in the first audio track. Do i have to edit anything besides Filters.txt, paths.ini, and settings.ini? If you like, next time i can attatch those files. :rolleyes:
Thanks

[TaZ4hvn]

@LOUIE: First thank you for trying and posting bugs.
Anyway I don't have a clue what PM is :p.
I need more information:
- did you use v0.11 ?
- at wich step does process fail ?
(ie: before anyop, after decrypting, after indexing ...)
- what files do you have in conversion folder when failing ?
- what is your OS ?

EDIT: well I think I had an idea ! There's a timer inside program telling you how long each step was but I built it according to my own system running a 0-24 clock and not a 0-12AM/PM.
That must be the famous PM you get ... am I right to suppose your system timing is AM/PM ?
If yes, you can try changing your local settings to set clock on 24h and tell me if it runs this way...

[LOUIE]

Thanks:D
Yes i'm running v.11

It fails after i see the black dos window change to white with red text. I had to run it in a comand prompt to accutually see the text that it outputs, which is what i gave ya. Just to clarafy a bit....it fails at step 1.....i don't even hear my dvd drive start to spin....haha...so no decryption is going on.

I have no files in my conversion folder

I'm running windows XP sp1


I followed your advice (changing to 24 hour format) and...got an interesting result:
It still gives me error text, but nothing about a missing operator and an unexpected PM. See:

TaZit v0.1 by TaZ4hvn - Job - Started at 12:29
_________________________________________________________________


A batch process to fully automate DVD rip to XviD/Vorbis Formats in Ogg files.
Will even burn to XCD and/or mount .bin images to Daemon Tools.

________________________________________________________________
CHECKING SETTINGS AND COMPONENTS
________________________________________________________________


Local environment
___________________________
Enabled command extensions.
'"G:\\ctext.exe"' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.


User settings
______________
PROJECT =
CD_SIZE = 795
BURN = ON
MOUNT = OFF
OGGQUAL = 0.200
KFENFORCE = ON
LANG1 = English
LANG2 = none
MINCOMP_1CD = 0.65
MINCOMP_2CD = 0.50
MINCOMP_3CD = 0.80
KEEP_ALL = OFF


Programs paths
______________
'"G:\\ctext.exe"' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

Some components are missing. Please check your paths in paths.ini
_____________________________________________________________

'"G:\\ctext.exe"' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
___________________________________________________________________

Press any key to shutdown.




Maybe it's something to do with those command extensions it's talking about? It sure doesn't seen to like that ctext.exe.It really repeated that line about ctext.exe 10 times, i just cut it down to one. Hehehehe.....do u really need that just to color the text?? I work a lil in flash.....i'd be glad to make a GUI for ya
:cool:

[TaZ4hvn]

Ok we got it !!
The error you get now is just because the program assumes its install dir is the one it is started from, so it doesn't find the "ctext.exe" if you start from a separate command prompt ! (and it won't find its config files either !)
Just launch the exe from its own directory where all the files paths.ini, settings.ini ... lies and it will work :p
Tell me if I'm right.
At the very moment I'm working on the clock bug and a also a very exciting nex feature: expect a new release soon !

EDIT: I'm searching a way to tell the prog where its files lies ... perhaps via registry don't know.
EDIT2: Also a small tip, if you want to see if everything goes right before doing a complete encode: set CD_SIZE=80 for instance and stop decrypting near 10% it will just process a tenth of the movie.

[LOUIE]

Ahhh.....nope same thing. It gives me that if i use a command prompt or the exe.:(

[TaZ4hvn]

I wasn't far :D
Can you post you paths.ini and settings.ini please ?

EDIT: looking at the ouptup you post I wonder if you installed it at the ROOT a the G: drive ?
if this is the case please try to make a path with at least one directory, like "g:\TaZit".
I just realised it can be a problem :p

[LOUIE]

Hahahaa!! I knew you'd suggest that at same point:p Here ya go Taz:

Paths.ini
_______________________________________________________
SOURCE=E:
TARGET=0,1,0
CONVDIR=G:\DVD\TAZit\convert
AVSPLUG=C:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\plugin
DVDDEC=C:\Program Files\DVD Decrypter\DVDDecrypter.exe
DVD2AVI=G:\!!!!=TAZ it=!!!!!\needed\DVD2AVI\DVD2AVI.exe
KFECLI=G:\!!!!=TAZ it=!!!!!\needed\KeyFrameEnforcer\kfEC.exe
BESWEET=G:\!!!!=TAZ it=!!!!!\needed\BeSweet\BeSweet.exe
AVS2AVI=G:\!!!!=TAZ it=!!!!!\needed\avs2avi_125\avs2avi.exe
M2CDMAK=G:\!!!!=TAZ it=!!!!!\needed\Mode2CDmaker\Mode2CDMaker.exe
OGMUXER=G:\!!!!=TAZ it=!!!!!\needed\OGMuxer\OGMuxer.exe
DAEMON=C:\Program Files\D-Tools\Daemon.exe
CDRDAO=G:\!!!!=TAZ it=!!!!!\needed\CDRdao\cdrdao.exe
_________________________________________________________


Settings.ini
_________________________________________________
PROJECT=1
CD_SIZE=795
BURN=ON
MOUNT=OFF
OGGQUAL=0.200
KFENFORCE=ON
LANG1=English
LANG2=none
MINCOMP_1CD=0.65
MINCOMP_2CD=0.50
MINCOMP_3CD=0.80
KILOPIX_PER_FRAME=190
IVTC=OFF
KEEP_ALL=OFF
_____________________________________________________


I have two HD's one is c:\ (duh) and the other is G:\. I put your program in "G:\!!!!=TAZ it=!!!!!" and i put the programs that didn't need installing or were already installed in "G:\!!!!=TAZ it=!!!!!\needed" in thier own directories as you can see. Oh yeah, my dvd drive is E;\. Hehe...i have too many drives.Oh well...there ya go


;)

[TaZ4hvn]

well, first set PROJECT=AUTO and ....
above all G:\!!!!=TAZ it=!!!!! is the worst name you could find :(
Actually the "!" symbol is used internally for the *hated* delayed expansions so NONE of your path should contain "!"
(that is one of the reason i'm triyng to get rid of delayed expansions)
Change this and tell me :p

[LOUIE]

Wheeeeee!!! YEEEESS!!! :D It works!! *giggles like a school girl*
Thank you. It was the !!!!!!!!!!! that was messing it up all along. *Pats Taz on the back* Hehe...can i buy you a beer sometime?:rolleyes:

[TaZ4hvn]

...can i buy you a beer sometime?
Yes of course ... be aware i'm long to get drunk :p

Please keep reporting how it works, the quality of the output and if you're satisfied with its job.
And stay tuned a new very exciting version is coming :D

[LOUIE]

Hm....okay...now i have an official problem. I've tried 3 diffrent times now to make this work. It rips,indexes,and makes an avisynth script just fine.....but as for everything else....it acts like the files aren't even there. Here's the text:

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

TaZit v0.1 by TaZ4hvn - Job POA - Started at 2:16
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????


A batch process to fully automate DVD rip to XviD/Vorbis Formats in Ogg files.
Will even burn to XCD and/or mount .bin images to Daemon Tools.

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

CHECKING SETTINGS AND COMPONENTS
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????


Local environment
?????????????????
Enabled command extensions.
Enabled delayed expansion.


User settings
?????????????
PROJECT = POA
CD_SIZE = 795
BURN = ON
MOUNT = OFF
OGGQUAL = 0.200
KFENFORCE = ON
LANG1 = English
LANG2 = none
MINCOMP_1CD = 0.65
MINCOMP_2CD = 0.50
MINCOMP_3CD = 0.80
KEEP_ALL = OFF


Programs paths
??????????????
SOURCE found in E:
TaZit found in G:\TAZ
CONVDIR found as G:\TAZ\DVD
AVSPLUG found as C:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\plugin
DVDDEC found as C:\Program Files\DVD Decrypter\DVDDecrypter.exe
DVD2AVI found as G:\TAZ\needed\DVD2AVI\DVD2AVI.exe
KFECLI found as G:\TAZ\needed\KeyFrameEnforcer\kfEC.exe
BESWEET found as G:\TAZ\needed\BeSweet\BeSweet.exe
AVS2AVI found as G:\TAZ\needed\avs2avi_125\avs2avi.exe
M2CDMAK found as G:\TAZ\needed\Mode2CDmaker\Mode2CDMaker.exe
OGMUXER found as G:\TAZ\needed\OGMuxer\OGMuxer.exe
CDRDAO found as G:\TAZ\needed\CDRdao\cdrdao.exe

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

STEP 1: DECRYPTING AND PARSING (2:16)
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Project name is POA
DVD files are saved in G:\TAZ\DVD\Rips\POA.
VOB name pattern should be VTS_10.

English audio track should be track 1.
(stream 0x80 type AC3 coded on 6 channels).

Video is type (NTSC) (16:9) with 720x480 resolution.
Pixel aspect ratio should be 72/79.
Display aspect ratio should be 108/79.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Start 2:16 - End 2:33 - Step 0:17 - Total 0:17
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

STEP 2: INDEXING AND DEMUXING (2:33)
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Project files are saved in G:\TAZ\DVD\Projects\POA.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Start 2:33 - End 2:39 - Step 0:06 - Total 0:23
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

STEP 3: TRANSCODING AUDIO STREAMS (2:39)
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Start 2:39 - End 2:39 - Step 0:00 - Total 0:23
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

STEP 4: BUILDING AVISYNTH SCRIPT (2:39)
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Loadplugin("C:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\plugin\AutoCrop.dll")

Loadplugin("C:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\plugin\Mpeg2Dec3.dll")

Loadplugin("C:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\plugin\Decomb.dll")

Import("G:\TAZ\Functions.txt")
Mpeg2Source("G:\TAZ\DVD\Projects\POA\POA.d2v")

#Optionnal preprocessing filters to pass to avisynth before resizing
Loadplugin("C:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\plugin\UnDot.dll")
UnDot()
Distortion =(72/79.)*(108/79.)
PerfectCropResize(190, Distortion, "SimpleResize")
Limiter()

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Start 2:39 - End 2:39 - Step 0:00 - Total 0:23
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

STEP 5: ENCODING VIDEO FIRST PASS (2:39)
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????


AVS2AVI v1.25 (c) 2002 Christophe PARIS (christophe.paris@free.fr)
Contributions by: int21h
B-Frames and resuming support by David Leatherdale (dave@leatherdale.net)

Thanks to Avery Lee author of VirtualDub and Chia-chen Kuo author
of DVD2AVI for providing great source code of inspiration.

Source:
* Filename: G:\TAZ\DVD\Projects\POA\POA.avs

AVIFileOpen failed, unable to open G:\TAZ\DVD\Projects\POA\POA.avs : : The opera
tion completed successfully.

I just don't get it...i tried naming the project thinking that would help....but alas.:confused:

[TaZ4hvn]

Could you plz redo and tell me if there's some audio tracks demuxed after indexing, and if yes what are their names ?
I suspect there must be a problem with tracks naming ...
Also does it happen on a few set of DVDs (3 or 4 randomly chosen) or on this one only ?

Regards

EDIT: Well reading more carefully your report I saw "VOB name pattern should be VTS_10" ... I'm really doubtfull the VOBS are really named VTS_10_*.* it must be VTS_1_*.* ? Am I true ? I'll have a look a my procedure to find what could fail ...
EDIT: Humm ... no finally it's stupid as I would be VTS_01 and no VTS_1 so it must be correct ... tell me plz.
Also there is clearly two problems here:
-audio encoding didn't kickin, I guess files are not found.
-video didn't either, did you try to launch the avs with your favorite playa to see if it works at least ?

[LOUIE]

Yep...it is called vts_10_...etc. The dvd was planet of the apes. It's a multiangle too. Hmmm.....maybe you could include a switch to select angle 1 or 2? That would be quite nifty. I figured out the problem.You were right about it not finding the filter!I lookedat the logfile of besweet and it said that azid.dll couldn't be found. I went back to the website and got version 1.4 (http://dspguru.notrace.dk/BeSweetv1.4.zip) in the stable section (and i checked to see that it had azid.dll. As for the avisynth thing, i had to download another version (http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=146119) of that too. I had version 2.5 Beta before not 2.5.1 Beta :confused: ...whew So, i tried ol taz out and it works like a charm. I cut the decryption off short to see if it would work.And it does...hehe! Love the tool. Can't wait to see what's next:devil:

[TaZ4hvn]

Well, I'm glad to know finally it worked for you !
That's good cause when it works it works well :D
About the older version of besweet you had to switch back to, it's pretty strange and I can't figure out why ... :confused:
But for avisynth your guilty here since I clearly stated 2.51 was requested as I use pretty new functions only available on the latest build :p

I'm currently working at making it stronger and less sensible to errors, I suceeded at avoiding delayed extension so that you'll be able to use exclamation mark again in the paths, and moreover it should now work starting from win98.
I also made audio tracks search more robust, and finally changed some thinks so that it should work on any languaged OS.

And the last but not the least, I made an engine automatically searching for best resolution / resizing filter to fit given compressibility: that's a great feature allready :D
I know I still have to work a lot on IVTC & interlacing stuff for NTSC DVDs. That's now high priority on todo list.

EDIT: Well, perhaps I wasn't clear, all this stuff is NOT in the version you can get here at the moment, it will be in the incoming v0.2. I'll post it in one or a couple of days !

[DaveEL]

avs2avi 1.28 out should work with xvid correctly now.

http://daveel.leffe.dnsalias.com/avs2avi-128.zip

DaveEL

[olorin]

Nice tool :)

When I'm encoding movies I don't care about size, since I put them several together on dvd discs. I care more about constant quality. I also always use the ac3.

I wonder if it is possible to add some options, for ex options to bypass certains steps like image and burn? And to choose to mux the ac3 files and not convert to vorbis?

Thanx for your great work! :)

[TaZ4hvn]

for ex options to bypass certains steps like image and burn?
I know readme is pretty long but looks to me you missed some points :p
To disable burn and mount simply open "settings.ini" and set:
BURN=OFF
MOUNT=OFF

When I'm encoding movies I don't care about size
Simply set all MINCOMP to 1 in "settings.ini" and encoding will be constant quant=2 :p

I also always use the ac3.
Well that's a very easy hack to do, couple of minutes for this :D
If you really need it I will add it.

Enjoy the tool, and don't forget to report problems !

[olorin]

Originally posted by TaZ4hvn
BURN=OFF
MOUNT=OFF

Oops :p

Originally posted by TaZ4hvn

If you really need it I will add it.

:D

[TaZ4hvn]

v0.2 is out !
Here is a copy of the changelog:

-major new feature: TaZit is now able to change resolution and/or resizing filter to
best fit to a given compressibility. (see readme)
-retrieve and apply correct delays to audio tracks.
-should now work in win2k and perhaps win98/millenium.
-changed way to retrieve DVD name: should now work with non english win32.
-changed pre-gain option -g by post-gain -G in BeSweet.
-no longer compiled, as I found this was slowing down execution.

And one off the related parts in the readme:

Sizing/filtering decision:
--------------------------------
This is a totally new part from v0.1 I'm happy with, but there's still room for improvement.
Program will do compressibility checks to find best resolution and filter to resize.
COMPTESTSIZE=, is the percentage of full encode to use for compressibility tests.
If you don't want to bother, defaults are good enough.
You'd better launch the program to do a real example to follow explanations:

First you set a TARGETRES to achieve (in thousand of pixels per frames), allowing up to
LOWRESDEV resolutions under and HIGHRESDEV resolutions higher.
The LOWRESCOMP?CD are the min compressibilities to achieve for low resolutions (i.e. the
ones under TARGETRES).
The HIGHRESCOMP?CD are the min compressibilities to achieve for high resolutions (i.e.
starting from TARGETRES included).
Let's say one has a 2.35:1 image, TARGETRES=175, LOWRESDEV=2, HIGHRESDEV=2,
all LOWRESCOMP?CD set to 0.650, all HIGHRESCOMP?CD set to 0.700.
Program will find TARGETRES is (640x272) for instance and then compute the two lower and
the two higher: (576x240) (608x256) (640x272) (672x288) (704x288).
From here program does a compcheck at minimal resolution less charpening filter, i.e. (576x240)
bilinear and find compressibilities for 1/2/3/4cds are: 0.478 0.956 1.435 1.913.
Since the first compressibility to be over LOWRESCOMP?CD=0.65 is for 2cds,
movie will fit on two cds (starting from here I just give 2cds compressibilities.).
From here program will first try to reach TARGETRES, increasing resolutions (filter is
still bilinear) up to TARGETRES as long as comp. is over LOWRESCOMP?CD.
Let's say comp. at (640x272) is 0.790. From here min. comp. switches to HIGHRESCOMP?CD=
0.70. Since TARGETRES is possible (0.790>0.700), program will now start to sharpen resizing,
as long as comp. is over 0.70, in this order:
-Bilinear
-SoftBicubic (0.333,0.333)
-Simple
-NeutralBicubic (0,0.5)
-SharpBicubic (0,0.75)
-Lanczos
If comp. for (640x272) NeutralBicubic is 0.720 and comp. for (640x272) SharpBicubic is 0.680,
program will stop checking and go on with the last good one (>0.700), here (640x272) with
NeutralBicubic.
If comp. for each filter is still over 0.700, then program will switch to next resolution (672x288)
and start sharpening this resolution as long as comp. is over 0.700, retaining the last good one.
And so on...


Don't forget to edit "filters.txt" to modify paths to suit your install !
Get it: Enjoy!

Also a personal note: I see this thread has been read quite a lot, I guess prog has been downloaded too.
So why don't I get more feedback ? If something doesn't work for you, you'd better tell the author rather than throwing away prog ... that's the way things come to a mature state :)
removed due to update, see below

[ookzDVD]

@TaZ4hvn,

I really want to try your tool,
but somehow I can't download it, mind if you give me the mirror ?

thanks.

[olorin]

Originally posted by TaZ4hvn

Simply set all MINCOMP to 1 in "settings.ini" and encoding will be constant quant=2 :p



Is it possible with the new version to make ONE file with a specified comp? I said that I don't care about size, but I really meant that I don't care THAT much about size ;) Constant quant=2 will be too large.

Also if u could implement ac3 audio option that would be great :)

For making encodes for cdr I think the new resizing method seems nice :)

[TaZ4hvn]

@ ookzDVD: well I don't get why I can't post attachments to this forum :confused:

@ olorin: I didn't forget but v0.2 was ready before I begin to work on ac3 implementation.
Well for the comp. thing, you can still specify very high comp. like 0.800 and forcing resolution (i.e. lowredev=highresdev=0), but at the moment you'll anyhow end up with a number of CD i.e. 800MB or 1600MB.
You can try this: put CD_SIZE=4000 and all comps to 0.800 this way prog will produce 'undersized' (well, compared to 4000MB :p) movies with comp. just above 0.800. I think it should do the trick for you.

[DDogg]

I think my machine is just getting hot, but is anybody else having a crash toward the end of the first pass of the avs2avi stage of the process? As said, I think it is my machine but wanted to check in and see before I pull off this darn heatsink again.

/Edit: Made it through the first pass. The second pass stalled which surprised me. The log showed:

Step 4 Finished at 6:51

Step 5 Launched at 6:51
Step 5 Finished at 7:09

Step 6 Launched at 7:09
The system cannot find the file specified.


I will keep all files if you have any questions.

[TaZ4hvn]

I will keep all files if you have any questions.
Please do so. And rather post prog output: at the moment logfile is beeing implemented and not very usefull alone :)
Also a fundamental question: does it crash starting second pass, or during it, or ending it ?
Obviously if this is during pass TaZit is not responsible, but I will try to investigate anyway :)

[EDIT] that's weird, really there isn't much stuff in second pass, and if first goes well, second shouldn't fail :confused:
does keyframes forcing going well ? If not sure you may try to set KFENFORCE=OFF to see if process goes on ...

[TaZ4hvn]

v0.3 is out !
Copy of the changelog:

-now comes with an installer and all required softs packed: configuration nightmare is over :p
-can now deal with interlaced/telecined sources.
-now able to process a whole directory for batch conversion.
-direct ac3 copy is possible.

And related parts of the readme:

All required tools are now packed with the installer (links at the end of this file.)
No more "paths.ini" to edit .
Except DVDDecrypter, XviD codecs and Daemon Tools. Get them by your own and
install them first so that TaZit can automatically find them.
...
MODE=, if DVD will process DVD inserted in SOURCE.
if HDD will disable ripping and batch process every directory stored in \Rips subdir
of CONVDIR.
...
About IVTC/Deinterlacing process:
Still based on Bilu's avisynth function (thanks pal!). It has been slightly changed and should
perform much better. I also added a test routine comparing frames with or without this function
to check if use is necessary (as using it when not required can harm a bit progressive material
and anyway will slow down the whole process.)


Sorry just realized I can't upload as much as 3MB to my web site :(
I'm searching a replacement ... if someone is willing to host my little exe ?

Read below !!

[majerle]

read your PM

Andres

[TaZ4hvn]

ok thanks to majerle I now have an hosting ... dunno why I always suck at finding good free accounts :p

So get v0.3 here: Link removed due to update.

[majerle]

Succesfully downloaded !

Now trying this very interesting release !

bye

Andres

[TaZ4hvn]

Well one more time thx for the help. I f you have any trouble let me know ... if you don't tell me too :)

[majerle]

Transcoding is started (Memento 'DVD)

I am testing the hdd features, and it sound very promising.

first note
isn't that obvius that vobs must be put in xxx\rips\AUTO (at last reading help)

next notes tomorrow (at end of trascoding)

my wishlist:
will be released a version with even mp3 support ( i dislike oggds, not oggs, but DS, 'cause have several bugs and hang-up) muxed via AVIMUX (http://www-user.tu-chemnitz.de/~noe/Video-Zeug/AVIMux%20GUI/index-eng.html) , that afaik support command line input ?

isn't possible to run tazit.bat without changing TIME SETTINGS ? (from . to : ) (i run programs going in conflicts with this time settings)

Thanks again

Andres

[TaZ4hvn]

isn't that obvius that vobs must be put in xxx\rips\AUTO (at last reading help)

Well that's perhaps it musnt't :D
Let say I want to convert: Xmen, Die Hard and Terminator (this is just for instance purposes !).
I set CONVDIR=D:\Conversion in settings.ini.
Then my files will be:

D:\Conversion\Rips\Xmen\VTS_01 - Chapter Information - OGG.txt
D:\Conversion\Rips\Xmen\VTS_01 - Stream Information.txt
D:\Conversion\Rips\Xmen\VTS_01_1.VOB
D:\Conversion\Rips\Xmen\VTS_01_2.VOB
D:\Conversion\Rips\Xmen\VTS_01_3.VOB
D:\Conversion\Rips\Xmen\VTS_01_4.VOB
D:\Conversion\Rips\Xmen\VTS_01_5.VOB
D:\Conversion\Rips\Xmen\VTS_01_6.VOB

and similar files in:

D:\Conversion\Rips\Die Hard
D:\Conversion\Rips\Terminator

Please note there is not a VIDEO_TS subdirectory (I know it should, I will mod this).
Also note there must be "Chapter Information - OGG.txt" and "Stream Information.txt" in the directory so please check your DVDDecrypter options.
Finally name used for each project is the directory name, here in bold: so keep it nice.

Sorry for ya majorle, but as I understand your post your movie will be Named "AUTO" :p
Well it will work anyway ... I hope I've been clear enought this time !

Regards.

[majerle]

Just one more question:

How XviD settings is being calculated ? Is possible that tazit don't use B frames/vhq/Threshold...?

In my last encode the movie has only P frames.

I usually use 2/150/100/255, chroma motion, vhq 1, motion precision 6, btw.

Thanks

Andres

[TaZ4hvn]

By default TaZit uses very conservative xvid settings:
- no qpel
- no bframes
- no vhq
- no GMC
the only advanced used is chroma motion.
this is just because I didn't work yet to determine wich settings I want to ship it with :)

Of course you can override defaults settings: just set xvid as you like, in vdub for instance, then export HKCU\Software\GNU\XviD registry branch to XviD_Settings.reg (in TaZit install directory).
The only think you have to care about is, at the moment, forcing Keyframes at chapter start compatibility with Bframes is yet to be checked and is most probably broken: so even if you uses Bframes in your XviD_Settings.reg TaZit will disable them if you uses KFENFORCE=ON.
If you absolutly want to use Bframes set KFENFORCE=OFF in settings.ini but then you will loose chapter jump accuracy.
That's it !

This apart please report program behaviour, is output good to your taste ? wich features are to be enhanced, wich are to be implemented ?

EDIT: and yes about the clock separator being something different than ":" I'll implement this ASAP and post a fixed version :D
thx that's a small but yet true bug report since it can screw up the prog's output !

[majerle]

Dumped Xvid reg , OK!

same test on same clips: form 640*256 bilinear to SharpBicubic 672*272 , enabling bframes (2/150/100/255), vhq1.

AWESOME !!!

About quality : great ! near all frames at quant 2 ( with my xvid settings 3.4, still good)

This apart please report program behaviour, is output good to your taste ? wich features are to be enhanced, wich are to be implemented ?

mp3 integration, in setting.ini possibility to input bframes value/vhq/threshold ..., possibility to disable making of iso/bin images


Great tool, truly.

bye

Andres

[bilu]

Hi TaZ,

A suggestion for queueing jobs: call your batch file from within another that parsed a job file to send parameters. Haven't tried such a thing but it may work.

Best regards,
Bilu

[TaZ4hvn]

@bilu:
You're right, batch mode is a very early implementation wich lacks lots of things.
The most important is certainly beeing able to specify different settings for different files and also beeing able to add jobs while others are still going.
I will work on this very soon:)

@majerle
At the moment i'm doing some cosmetic improvements, majorly to support different time format from system settings so that your "." separator would be supported as well as any separator.
About mp3 that's a thing to do, even if this isn't top priority since I don't want to begin supporting too much varied formats until I know ogg is well implemented and I don't have to work on it anymore.

[Soc]

Great work on this project TaZ (and Bilu too)! I've been wanting someone to write a program like this for quite a long time (I could see it was possible but I haven't had the time or the knowledge required to do it myself), so I'm very grateful that you've done it! :D

I haven't had any problems to speak of, once I'd spent the time to fiddle with settings.ini, export my own XviD settings, etc. I've been very happy with TaZit, and I'm looking forward to any more developement!

My only requests would be to make it easier to change the BeSweet command line parameters (it wasn't too hard to modify them in TaZit.bat, but I'd rather not have to change your code at all), and also the XviD settings (as majerle suggested), via settings.ini. These are really only minor issues though :)

Keep up the good work!

- Soc

[youngster]

OK, What am I doing wrong?

When I get to step 6 and 7 (the XVID encoding part) it takes forever. It is processing less than 8 frames/sec, which takes about 14 hours!

My computer has a 2GHz Athlon XP processor, and can usually encode 2 passes in about 4 hours.

I love the tool, but have to figure this out before I use it for backups.

[TaZ4hvn]

@soc:
well dunno if I will add configurable BeSweet cli since I don't want the number of parameters to start beeing to much numerous, after all that's the good point with the program not beeing compiled: any body can adapt it to its own need. That's virtually the most configurable code ever :D.
more seriously, I'm considering doing something like profiles for xvid and besweet settings. Or if I find someone willing to write a nice GUI I could add much much parameters without beeing unreadable ... any volonteer ?

@youngster:
go into your conversion folder, and look for "your movie_fp.avs" and "your movie_sp.avs". Look at them if something seems bad in the script, try to load in vdub and encode from there, try to encode with avs2avi from cli (you'll find the command line used by tazit in tazit.log), finally post your avs here plz. Good hunt.

[Soc]

@youngster:
This may sound like a stupid question, but could it be different XviD settings are being used? TaZit uses the settings from XviD_Settings.reg, not the registry. Also, 14 hours doesn't seem that bad, since a long movie with intensive settings (especially Qpel) can take around 30 hours on my Athlon 900! Without Qpel takes about half as long.

@Taz:
A GUI shouldn't be too hard to write, I'd be happy to have a go at it if I find some time. I'm pretty busy studying for my exams at the moment, so if anyone else wants to write it instead of me, please do :)

Profiles would a great idea, also it would be very handy if TaZit could take the path to the settings file as a parameter, rather than always using %TAZDIR%\settings.ini

Also, for people like me who take a long time to encode, is it possible to fix the time-keeping code so it doesn't go back to 0 after 12 hours?

- Soc

[TaZ4hvn]

I think I will propose 4 or 5 different settings from reasonnable low ( 175000 pix/frames, H263, bframes ....) to "studio" ( 210000 pix/frames, MPEG, no bframes, no preprocessing ...) and ask user for one of them at the very start of the process. Of course each profile can still be modified by the user.

About time issue this is already done and will be released with the next version :) just wait for it (one week max).

[youngster]

@Taz

I don't think there is anything wrong with the .avs files because I load them into Vdub and I get about 28 frames/sec. I can finish both passes in less than 4 hours.

I think the problem must be with avs2avi.

[Soc]

@Taz
Sounds good! :D It's not the best idea to turn off bframes though, it's better to use ratio=100 and offset=0 (ie no increase in quantizer) that way you still get bframes but they wont harm the quality.

Also, a suggestion for the algorithm that looks for the best resolution and resizer: The current algo could take up to 14 (!) comp tests on a very highly compressable movie, it would be faster to do something like this:

Test ideal res, bilinear.
if below highrescomp:
    lower resolution until lowrescomp or reached we exceed lowresdev (time for 2 CDs)
if above highrescomp:
    try ideal res, with lanczos
    if below:
        try other resizers for this res
    if above:
        go up to next higher resolution and start over

This would take at most 8 comp tests (assuming we stay on 1CD).
Even better would be to use the first comp test to guess the results of the other resolutions with that resizer, and somehow use this to make smarter tests :D
Like most of my suggestions, this is a minor issue, so save it for later if it's too complicated to code :)

[TaZ4hvn]

@ youngster:
search in tazit.log the commandline used with avs2avi, provided you didn't delete project files you can run avs2avi by its own (ie out of tazit) to see what happens. You can also try with avs2avi v1.25 the latest "stable" build according to me, 1.29 is heavily using vdub routines but hasn't been tested that much so you can have surprisingly faster results with 1.25.

@ soc:
of course that's a nice idea, but sorry to say this was already in my plans :D
that's damn right 14 comptests is a bit overkill.
I'm triyng to do an even smarter code as i'm studing if some linearity between resolution+resizer versus compressibility exists to predict results from only one comptest ... but i'm having hard time with this :(
things i like to do/improve now are comptest accuracy and speed, kicking in some denoiser when necessary (i still have to find a reliable test for this :confused: ), and improving a bit more auto decombing ... after these i don't have any idea what could be added so don't hesitate to suggest further :)

[superdump]

Please forgive me if I'm being stupid but I'm new to TaZit. I've set everything up correctly as far as I can tell but I get this error when I run the batch file...

'reg' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
'reg' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
'reg' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
The system cannot find the file specified.
HDD was unexpected at this time.

I'm running Win2k SP3, TaZit version 0.3, Daemon Tools version 3.33, DVD Decrypter 3.1.6.0, Koepi's 14-05-2003-1 XviD compile... erm. If there's anything else you need to know to help me then please say. :)

Thanks for your time.

EDIT: That happens straight away as soon as I run the batch file. Nothing else happens. Also, in the filters.ini I just uncommented convolution3d movie hq. And here is my settings.ini:

# Program paths:
# SOURCE is DVD drive, TARGET is CD burner (SCSI address of),
# CONVDIR the directory where files are stored, DAEMON is full path to Daemon.exe.

SOURCE=D:
TARGET=1,0,0
CONVDIR=C:\DVD
DAEMON=C:\Program Files\D-Tools\Daemon.exe

# General settings:
# if MODE is HDD, TaZit will batch process each directory stored in \Rips subdir of CONVDIR.
# if MODE is DVD, TaZit will process the DVD in SOURCE.
# if PROJECT is AUTO, use DVD name as project name, either use the name provided.
# if LANG1 is none, audio is disabled.
# FORMAT? is either OGG or AC3.
# If FORMAT1=AC3 set LANG2=none, or know what you're doing !

MODE=DVD
PROJECT=AUTO
CD_SIZE=695
BURN=OFF
MOUNT=OFF
OGGQUAL=0.001
KFENFORCE=OFF
LANG1=English
LANG2=none
FORMAT1=OGG
FORMAT2=OGG

# Sizing/filtering decision:
# See readme. Don't touch unless you know what you're doing.

COMPTESTSIZE=3
TARGETRES=175
LOWRESDEV=2
HIGHRESDEV=1
LOWRESCOMP1CD=0.580
LOWRESCOMP2CD=0.650
LOWRESCOMP3CD=0.700
LOWRESCOMP4CD=0.700
HIGHRESCOMP1CD=0.650
HIGHRESCOMP2CD=0.700
HIGHRESCOMP3CD=0.750
HIGHRESCOMP4CD=0.750

# What to keep ?
# better to come on this...

KEEP_ALL=ON

[TaZ4hvn]

Looks like an interessting failure since it sounds to me that even internal windows command line instructions are not recognized.
Please be sure you run TaZit from its install dir, not dropping it to an external command session.
But sincerely I wonder if this has something to do with the fact you're running w2k, as far as I know every people running it so far is using XP, since this is my first batch I really dunno which commands are backward compatible.
can you try a "reg /?" into command window to see if it is supported ?
if you can't sort it out please contact me via private message I will do my best to help.

Regards

[Soc]

@Taz
Good to see that you're already a step ahead of me :)
As far as more suggestions for TaZit, having everything so far talked about would be excellent :D, but I was wondering if you have any plans for somehow using higher compression for the credits?

I imagine the hardest things to automate would be choosing the filters and lowering the quality for the credits, so maybe the user should just take a look at the movie, estmate how noisy it is, and find what time the credits start?

Trying to detect credits automatically would be an interesting problem :), I did a quick search of the forum and couldn't find any discussion about it, do you know if it's been attempted before? The best way I can think of is by looking for frames with a lot of pixels that have very high or very low luminace (ie average of [abs(Y-128)]^2 across all the pixels is close to 128*128). I wouldn't know how TaZit would analyse this though :(

- Soc

[Soc]

@superdump
I had the exact same problem a while back, I can't remember exactly but I'm pretty sure it was after I installed DVX and the DVX system pack, which brought with them their own copies of some of the software used by TaZit. My solution was to uninstall DVX (I didn't want to keep it anyway) and TaZit, then reinstall TaZit (so that the AviSynth reg entries belonged to TaZit's copy). After that it worked fine.

The first thing that happens in the TaZit code is a registry lookup to find where the AviSynth plugindir is, so the problem is most likely related somehow to the AviSynth registry entries. Any thoughts TaZ?

[EDIT] By the way, I'm using XP

Hope this helped

- Soc

[TaZ4hvn]

- looks like I sorted superdump's problem out with his help: win2k simply lacks reg.exe, so I uploaded XP's one here:
http://members.xoom.it/taz4hvn/reg.exe
To run TaZit on win2k, simply put it into windows/system32/

- about auto credits detection I dreamt of it sometimes at the beginning of the project, but I decided to postpone it since it really looks difficult to achieve. Anyway I have some very vague idea on how I can do this, both way uses avisynth script of course:
As you said, Soc, I can look for scenes with average luminance under a given threshold, providing this is at the end of the film ...
Or I can use autocrop plugin with a large threshold to look for sequences with large left/right black bands.
Really I dunno if any of this can be done seriously, and if it can be done quickly enought (don't want to add a third pass just to find credits :D )

- about DVX: that's one of the reasons I began writing this script, first time I installed DVX it looks very promising with all the features I wanted, but don't know why I never succeded to have it work on my box :(
This is certainly a very good project, by far more ambitious than TaZit, but as it didn't want to work for my eyes ...
Anyway i also found it a bit 'intrusive' since it screwed up my avisynth installation.
TaZit shouldn't bother on this: if you have avisynth already installed somewhere just uncheck it during TaZit install and required plugins will be installed in already existing plugins folder.
Of course if you leave it checked, new install will override older one !

- and also a very tiny thing: I don't like the name 'TaZit', that was just the first silly idea I add when first posting the batch. So feel free to suggest a better name :)

[superdump]

Hello again all. The reg.exe does fix the problem I had an now TaZit works flawlessly.

I have a couple of suggestions though. Some people won't want to make a mode 2 CD from their rip and so don't require that stage. This has been catered for in the settings.ini if I remember correctly. However TaZit still displays "Step 8: Making Mode 2 CD" or whatever it says, and doesn't close automatically. It's not a big problem at all. :)

What sort of volume normalisation/gain is used in besweet because the audio was a bit quiet. Aside from that everything turned out well and I think TaZit is a good name, memorable. :)

Thanks

EDIT: Also I set the CD size to 695 and ogmuxer muxed it and split it at 694 and left another little 1.2mb file. :) I found this quite amusing, but the 1.2mb bit would have fit on the cd and I only set 695 to give a bit of an overhead. So, does ogmuxer always cut below the split boundary? i.e. if you set 700mb as the boundary and it has two positions it can cut at, one at 698mb and the other at 700.1mb, will it always choose the 698mb one?

[Soc]

Sorry about my last post, it was completely wrong! I must have had some other problem than superdump's, I guess my memory is worse than I thought :rolleyes: Good to see that it's fixed though!

@Taz
I agree DVX is a good project and has definitely had a lot of work put into it, but I too found it quite intrusive (not just in the installation) and counter-intuitive to use (funny that I feel happier using TaZit even though it has no GUI (yet))

I'm all in favour of postponing credits detection till after you've finished all the stuff you're working on already! What I was suggesting was more complicated than just low average lumninance, but I'll talk to you more about it when you've done the next release.

As far as I can see credits detection wouldn't take long (I hope :D)!

@all
I've always been hopeless at thinking of names for projects, I'll leave it to someone else to make a suggestion.

If you're going to change the name maybe you should still keep 'Taz' in it somewhere, cause I'm getting very used to 'TaZit'. Also have you considered changing the capitalization to 'TazIt'?

[superdump]

How about "RazzmaTaZzit"? Lol.

EDIT: Typo in razzmatazz :)

[Soc]

@superdump

- TaZit is set to never close automatically, if you want to change this then remove these two lines from near the end of TaZit.bat:
ECHO Press any key to shutdown.
PAUSE >nul

- Setting MOUNT=OFF and BURN=OFF turns off step 9 and step 10, but TaZit still makes the image files (step 8). I assume Taz has already fixed this in the next release, but try adding this line at the beginning of step 8 (where it says ":: Step 8: Building image(s)"):
IF /I %MOUNT% NEQ ON IF /I %BURN% NEQ ON GOTO :ending

- TaZit uses "... -azid( -G max -L -3db -c normal -s stereo ) ..." for normalizing. Taz is planning on making this customizable (using profiles), hopefully next release. Of course in the mean time you can do as I did (I prefer r4r's method of boost + hybridgain) and modify it in TaZit.bat (do a search for 'core').

If you're not comfortable editing the batch file, I'd be more than happy to post (a link to) one with the above modifactions (tell me what BeSweet CLI you want though)

[superdump]

soc:

OK, I might change those lines for closing [Razzma]TaZ[z]it in the bat. ;)

I'll change the line in the bat to make it close automatically. I assume by shutdown it just means close TaZit? Or does it mean shutdown the computer?

I'm perfectly comfortable editing the batch file. I'll scout out the besweet command line and edit it as I see fit. But nevertheless, why "-s stereo" and not "-s surround2"? Does the latter not give a more desirable output? I also prefer the r4r hybridgain and boost method. -hybridgain goes in the ota switches doesn't it, if I remember correctly. But boost has it's own section, right?

Original:

-core( -input "%CONVDIR%\Projects\%PROJECT%\%TR1%" -output "%CONVDIR%\Projects\%PROJECT%\%PROJECT%_T1_%LANG1:ç=‡%.ogg" -logfilea "%CONVDIR%\Projects\%PROJECT%\%PROJECT%_T1_%LANG1:ç=‡%.log" ) -azid( -G max -L -3db -c normal -s stereo ) -ota( -d %TR1_DELAY% ) -ogg( -q %OGGQUAL% ) -profile( TaZit )

I would change this to...

-core( -input "%CONVDIR%\Projects\%PROJECT%\%TR1%" -output "%CONVDIR%\Projects\%PROJECT%\%PROJECT%_T1_%LANG1:ç=‡%.ogg" -logfilea "%CONVDIR%\Projects\%PROJECT%\%PROJECT%_T1_%LANG1:ç=‡%.log" ) -azid( -L -3db -c normal -s surround2 ) -ota( -hybridgain -d %TR1_DELAY% ) -boost( /b=2 /l=0.98 ) -ogg( -q %OGGQUAL% ) -profile( TaZit )

Is that the correct boost switch? I can't remember what it is and I don't want to install r4r again. :) Is the /l=# the right value from r4r?

Thanks for your help Soc.

EDIT: edited :)

[Soc]

RazzmaTaZzit lol :D
Any thoughts on something like TazEnc or TazDub or even the obvious but slightly boring DVD2XCD?

By shutdown it just means close TaZit, although now that you mention it it would be cool if TaZit could turn off the computer... :devil:

You were mostly right: r4r uses "... -ota( -hybridgain ... ) -boost( /b=2db ) ...", without azid at all (and no /l in boost), which becomes
-core( -input "%CONVDIR%\Projects\%PROJECT%\%TR1%" -output "%CONVDIR%\Projects\%PROJECT%\%PROJECT%_T1_%LANG1:ç=?%.ogg" -logfilea "%CONVDIR%\Projects\%PROJECT%\%PROJECT%_T1_%LANG1:ç=?%.log" ) -ota( -hybridgain -d %TR1_DELAY% ) -boost( /b=2db ) -ogg( -q %OGGQUAL% ) -profile( TaZit )(Make sure you've changed this line in both places, ie for LANG1 and LANG2)


Glad to be of service :)

- Soc

[superdump]

TazEnc sounds good. However, no offence, but I'm still rooting for RazzmaTaZzit. :) Nah. TaZEnc sounds alright. I just think it needs an unusual name to make it stand out. But names are also more useful when they're more descriptive...

Brainstorming time. What are TaZit's main features?
- One-click startup.
- Automatic cropping, resizing and CD fitting.
- Burning to XCD.
- XviD Video and OGG/AC3(/MP3? I don't care about it so I usually scan over it when I see it, heh.)

Nope. Nothing's coming. I think RazzmaTaZzit takes the crown.

"RazzmaTaZzit - The ultimate DVD to XCD conversion tool."

:D

[jernst]

Originally posted by Soc
[B]after I installed DVX and the DVX system pack, which brought with them their own copies of some of the software used by TaZit. My solution was to uninstall DVX (I didn't want to keep it anyway) and TaZit, then reinstall TaZit (so that the AviSynth reg entries belonged to TaZit's copy). After that it worked fine.


@Soc&TaZ4hvn
Latest DVX and DVX SysPack do not longer screw up AviSynth installation (it shouldn't screw up any software installation anymore). It detects if you have it installed and uses the current plugins directory. As for the problem of TaZ4hvn I guess this was related to the directshow issues that have been fixed in the latest versions. If you want you might try it again and post on DVX's board if you still encounter problems (it might help others as well).

BTW I'm gonna try TaZ4hvn new tool which seems very promising as well !

[Soc]

@jernst
Thanks for the tip! I'll give DVX another chance, and from now on all my comments about it will go onto the DVX forum, instead of just complaining about it here :p

Go ahead and give TaZit a go, but remember there will be a lot of changes in the next release.


@superdump
The challenge IMHO is to find a name that is interesting and unusual like "RazzmaTaZzit", descriptive like "DVD2XCD" (or just "DVD2CD"), and that still has "Taz" in it. I wonder if this is actually possible, or if "TazEnc" is the best we can do :D

I don't think "Enc" is the best description of what TaZit does though, since the actual "encoding" as such is done by avs2avi/besweet, maybe the name should reflect TaZit's role as a manager of the overall process, eg "TazRip" or "TazBackup" or "TazDVD" or something :confused:. Maybe even "DVDDemon" :p

[bilu]

How about TaZ-o-matic ? :)

Bilu

[superdump]

Soc and Bilu:

TaZ-o-matic and TaZRip sound pretty good. I agree that TaZEnc isn't quite right for what TaZit does. I dunno. :)

[Soc]

I asked one of my friends to brainstorm some names and he suggested quite a few, so I've made a list of all the current suggestions and included them in it:

RaZzmaTaZzIt :p
TazEnc
TazDub
TazRip
TazRipper
TazBackup
TazDVD
TaZ-o-matic :)

DVD2XCD
DVD2CD
DVDDemon
DVD1 (cause it takes 1 step)
DVDZipper
DVDCompressor
DVDThief :p

DIVO - like TIVO, but stands for DVD in, video out
DIMO - DVD in, movie (or MPEG4) out
MIMO - MPEG2 In, MPEG4 Out :p
DICO - DVD in, CD out
DISCO - haven't decided what the S stands for yet :D maybe select? smart?


Hope I didn't miss any

- Soc

[TaZ4hvn]

LOL, I see you guys are having good time while I'm coding :D
I totally rewritten comptests procedure so that now the maximum tests is 6 while it was 14 previously (not bad at all :)).
Of course it is quite complicated now, but should be configurable in a certain extend (more precision to come).
I still have to test this, and fix the resdev feature broken by the way (ie locked to lowresdev=2 and highresdev=2).
If everything is going well, expect next release by the end of the week...

[JWillE]

@TaZ4hvn

Hey just tried your tool and its just what the doctor ordered.:D

I had one request. Would it be easy enough to add a setting for
MAXCD=# so I could adjust the max number of cds to use in only one ini file setting per rip and leave my default COMP settings the same.
Some rips I really don't care about max quality (i.e. many cartoon rips for the kiddies, ect.), I just want one cd.

I think that would be great. :devil:

Thanx for the work....

[TaZ4hvn]

@ JWillE:
I'm not sure I get the point. Is what you want to simply limit the number of CDs for any encode anytime regardless the quality can be shitty sometimes ?
If yes, edit the batch, search for :

SET FITCD=4
SET LOWRESCOMP=%LOWRESCOMP4CD%
SET HIGHRESCOMP=%HIGHRESCOMP4CD%
IF %COMP3CD% GEQ %LOWRESCOMP3CD% SET FITCD=3& SET LOWRESCOMP=%LOWRESCOMP3CD%& SET HIGHRESCOMP=%HIGHRESCOMP3CD%
IF %FITCD% == 3 IF %COMP2CD% GEQ %LOWRESCOMP2CD% SET FITCD=2& SET LOWRESCOMP=%LOWRESCOMP2CD%& SET HIGHRESCOMP=%HIGHRESCOMP2CD%
IF %FITCD% == 2 IF %COMP1CD% GEQ %LOWRESCOMP1CD% SET FITCD=1& SET LOWRESCOMP=%LOWRESCOMP1CD%& SET HIGHRESCOMP=%HIGHRESCOMP1CD%

if you want to limit to, say, 2cd, change like this:

SET FITCD=2
SET LOWRESCOMP=%LOWRESCOMP2CD%
SET HIGHRESCOMP=%HIGHRESCOMP2CD%
IF %FITCD% == 2 IF %COMP1CD% GEQ %LOWRESCOMP1CD% SET FITCD=1& SET LOWRESCOMP=%LOWRESCOMP1CD%& SET HIGHRESCOMP=%HIGHRESCOMP1CD%

That should do the trick (comps for 3 and 4 cds will still be displayed but ignored) if not, let me know.

Anyway I think this is a bad idea, cause some movies simply requires more than two cds ( try 'Saving Private Ryan' :D ).
If you want to force 2CD even if compressibility (and quality) is really low LOWRESCOMP?CD is made for this, simply set, for instance LOWRESCOMP2CD=0.50 and LOWRESDEV=2 and believe me, you'll have hard time finding movies requiring 3 or 4 cds !

[JWillE]

@TaZ4hvn

Sorry just edited my previous post to clarify before I seen your reply. My rips vary greatly from many that I want best quality regardless of the number of cds, to a few that I want convenience of 1 cd regardless of quality (children programs, they don't seem to care much:p). If there were some type of "cd limit" setting in the ini it would be a great convenience in these cases. I could leave my default quality settings for 1,2,3, & 4 cd rips and still have an option to force a max number of cds for a rip with minimal editing.

Thanx for your quick reply and keep the great work;)

[TaZ4hvn]

I understand better now.
Well next version should be able to manage different profiles so that you can set your settings one time for all for each type of material.
You'll be able to choose between 'great quality encode for my own eyes' and 'perhaps shitty quality for kids that don't care' :D.
So wait for it !

[JWillE]

Sorry to keep bugging you but for a quick edit until the next version I was wondering this would work.

1. Add MAXCDS to the settings.ini file

2. Add the following

SET FITCD=4
SET LOWRESCOMP=%LOWRESCOMP4CD%
SET HIGHRESCOMP=%HIGHRESCOMP4CD%
IF %COMP3CD% GEQ %LOWRESCOMP3CD% SET FITCD=3& SET LOWRESCOMP=%LOWRESCOMP3CD%& SET HIGHRESCOMP=%HIGHRESCOMP3CD%
IF %FITCD% == 3 IF %COMP2CD% GEQ %LOWRESCOMP2CD% SET FITCD=2& SET LOWRESCOMP=%LOWRESCOMP2CD%& SET HIGHRESCOMP=%HIGHRESCOMP2CD%
IF %FITCD% == 2 IF %COMP1CD% GEQ %LOWRESCOMP1CD% SET FITCD=1& SET LOWRESCOMP=%LOWRESCOMP1CD%& SET HIGHRESCOMP=%HIGHRESCOMP1CD%
IF %MAXCDS% LSS %FITCD% IF %MAXCDS% EQU 3 SET FITCD=3& SET LOWRESCOMP=%LOWRESCOMP3CD%& SET HIGHRESCOMP=%HIGHRESCOMP3CD%
IF %MAXCDS% LSS %FITCD% IF %MAXCDS% EQU 2 SET FITCD=2& SET LOWRESCOMP=%LOWRESCOMP2CD%& SET HIGHRESCOMP=%HIGHRESCOMP2CD%
IF %MAXCDS% EQU 1 % SET FITCD=1& SET LOWRESCOMP=%LOWRESCOMP1CD%& SET HIGHRESCOMP=%HIGHRESCOMP1CD%

Thanks:cool:

[TaZ4hvn]

@JWillE:

That's very close, if not equal, to what I wanted to add for you :)
Looks good and should work :)
One more time, one nice thing with TaZit (if they are any :D) is that anyone can easily modify it to better suit his needs.

@All:

Profiles feature is almost done. Please could you guys choose and export here (in reg format) your favorites xvid settings ?
Please add a few commentary on what for is each settings and why you choose them: I will start from your suggestions to ship next version with some default profiles :)
Thx

[Soc]

I'm assuming you meant for us to copy the entire contents of the reg file into our posts. If not then sorry cause that's what I'm going to do! :D

My no. 1 aim is to fit movies onto 1 CD, so long as quality is reasonable, and since I started using these settings I haven't yet had to go to 2 CDs (even when ripping 2hour+ movies) although a few have turned out a little blurry (especially with bicubic resize, it seems).

I'm still a n00b when it comes to choosing good avs filters, but the combination of Convolution3d("moviehq") and UnDot() works very well for me with these settings in most cases.

Summary of the settings:
- H.263 quant (because it softens plus it lets me use trellis quant)
- VHQ4 (makes for slow encoding but seems to be worth it)
- chroma motion ON
- qpel OFF (For my situation Qpel doesn't seem to help quality, and it's a lot faster to encode without it on my slow computer!)
- B-frames: 2/150/100/50 (I find threshold 100 too aggressive for my settings since the pre-processing, H.263, and a soft resizer already add plenty of compressability)
- chroma optimizer ON
- trellis quant. ON
- (all others on default setting)

Using these settings/filters does decrease first pass size quite drastically, so I've had to increase LOWRESCOMP and HIGHRESCOMP by at around .05 (or more) to get good results.

As far as audio goes, I never go below ogg quality 0.300, anything less sounds bad to me. My besweet CLI is straight from r4r:
-core( -input "%input%" -output "%output%" -logfilea "%log%" ) -ota( -hybridgain -d %delay% ) -boost( /b=2db ) -ogg( -q 0.300 ) -profile( %version% )

I hope you like these settings, they've served me well, and if you're feeling lazy you can pretty much apply them "as is" to most movies. Otherwise, please question/critisize anything you don't like (especially qpel), I'd love to have feedback! :D

I'd comment more but I really should go now, I have a programming exam in 2 hours :( I've never been very focused on my study, my last chance to do revision and I'm on here posting, lol :D

- Soc

P.S. you can ignore my "stats1" and "stats2", TaZit overwrites them anyway ;)

------- Begin XviD_Settings.reg -------
REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\GNU\XviD]
"mode"=dword:00000003
"quality"=dword:00000055
"quant"=dword:00000005
"rc_bitrate"=dword:000dbba0
"rc_reaction_delay_factor"=dword:00000010
"rc_averaging_period"=dword:00000064
"rc_buffer"=dword:00000064
"motion_search"=dword:00000006
"quant_type"=dword:00000000
"fourcc_used"=dword:00000000
"vhq_mode"=dword:00000004
"max_key_interval"=dword:0000012c
"min_key_interval"=dword:00000001
"lum_masking"=dword:00000000
"interlacing"=dword:00000000
"qpel"=dword:00000000
"gmc"=dword:00000000
"chromame"=dword:00000001
"greyscale"=dword:00000000
"max_bframes"=dword:00000002
"bquant_ratio"=dword:00000096
"bquant_offset"=dword:00000064
"bquant_threshold"=dword:00000032
"packed"=dword:00000000
"dx50bvop"=dword:00000001
"debug"=dword:00000000
"reduced_resolution"=dword:00000000
"use_trellis"=dword:00000001
"chroma_opt"=dword:00000001
"frame_drop_ratio"=dword:00000000
"min_iquant"=dword:00000002
"max_iquant"=dword:0000001f
"min_pquant"=dword:00000002
"max_pquant"=dword:0000001f
"desired_size"=dword:0008b290
"keyframe_boost"=dword:00000000
"discard1pass"=dword:00000001
"dummy2pass"=dword:00000000
"kftreshold"=dword:0000000a
"kfreduction"=dword:00000014
"curve_compression_high"=dword:00000000
"curve_compression_low"=dword:00000000
"use_alt_curve"=dword:00000000
"alt_curve_use_auto"=dword:00000001
"alt_curve_auto_str"=dword:0000001e
"alt_curve_use_auto_bonus_bias"=dword:00000001
"alt_curve_bonus_bias"=dword:00000032
"alt_curve_type"=dword:00000001
"alt_curve_high_dist"=dword:000001f4
"alt_curve_low_dist"=dword:0000005a
"alt_curve_min_rel_qual"=dword:00000032
"bitrate_payback_delay"=dword:000000fa
"bitrate_payback_method"=dword:00000001
"twopass_max_bitrate"=dword:00989680
"twopass_max_overflow_improvement"=dword:0000003c
"twopass_max_overflow_degradation"=dword:0000003c
"hinted_me"=dword:00000000
"credits_start"=dword:00000000
"credits_start_begin"=dword:00000000
"credits_start_end"=dword:00000000
"credits_end"=dword:00000000
"credits_end_begin"=dword:00000000
"credits_end_end"=dword:00000000
"credits_greyscale"=dword:00000000
"credits_mode"=dword:00000000
"credits_rate"=dword:00000014
"credits_quant_i"=dword:00000014
"credits_quant_p"=dword:00000014
"credits_start_size"=dword:00002710
"credits_end_size"=dword:00002710
"deblock_y"=dword:00000000
"deblock_uv"=dword:00000000
"hintfile"="\\hintfile.mvh"
"stats1"="F:\\TAZIT\\Projects\\THE_FIFTH_ELEMENT\\THE_FIFTH_ELEMENT.stats"
"stats2"="\\videogk.stats"
"qmatrix_intra"=hex:08,11,12,13,15,17,19,1b,11,12,13,15,17,19,1b,1c,14,15,16,\
17,18,1a,1c,1e,15,16,17,18,1a,1c,1e,20,16,17,18,1a,1c,1e,20,23,17,18,1a,1c,\
1e,20,23,26,19,1a,1c,1e,20,23,26,29,1b,1c,1e,20,23,26,29,00
"qmatrix_inter"=hex:10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,12,13,14,\
15,16,17,18,19,13,14,15,16,17,18,1a,1b,14,15,16,17,19,1a,1b,1c,15,16,17,18,\
1a,1b,1c,1e,16,17,18,1a,1b,1c,1e,1f,17,18,19,1b,1c,1e,1f,00
"credits_begin"=dword:00000000
------- End XviD_Settings.reg -------

[EDIT] fixed typo

[TaZ4hvn]

v0.4 release:

As usual, let's begin with the changelog:

v0.4:-improved auto naming
-better and universal timing functions
-better comptest algorithm
-more accurate comptests
-profile support
-changed for beta besweet, now using hybridgain and surround
-other minor enhancements

Some explanations:

-improved auto naming:
There's no more PROJECT setting.
TaZit will retrieve DVD name and convert it to a friendly format i.e. lowercase except for first letter.
If DVD name is "WILD_WILD_WEST", TaZit will propose to name project with "Wild Wild West".
You can either accept it or override it.

-better and universal timing functions:
Internal Timing should now work regardless of how exotic your system settings are !
Output is 24 hours and now accurate to the second.

-better comptest algorithm:
Well this is a big part. From the updated readme:

Algorithm is totally rewritten from scratch starting from v0.4. Main advantages are:
-Should be much more faster now: while search could requires up to 14 comptests in previous
algorithm, process will end in 6 steps max now.
-Is user configurable in some extend.

Parameters are stored in two files:
-The 'profile?.ini' in TAZDIR\Profiles subdirectory.
-The 'comptests.txt' file located at TAZDIR root.

First let's look into a profile file:
-------------------------------------

MAXCD=, should be 4, unless you want to force a number of cds regardless of the quality.
COMPTESTSIZE, is the percentage of the movie to use for compressibility tests.
TARGETRES, is resolution to achieve (in thousand of pixels per frames), allowing up to
LOWRESDEV resolutions under and HIGHRESDEV resolutions higher.
The LOWRESCOMP?CD are the min compressibilities to achieve for low resolutions (i.e.
ones under TARGETRES).
The HIGHRESCOMP?CD are the min compressibilities to achieve for high resolutions (i.e.
starting from TARGETRES included).

Then let's look into 'comptests.txt':
-------------------------------------

This is a guide file for the program to know in wich order to chain the comptests.
By default 'comptests.txt' contains this matrix:

0+03 0+01 0000 0-11 0000 0000 0000 0000 0-23 0000 0000 0-21 E-21
0000 0+02 E+01 0-13 0000 0000 0-12 E-11 0-25 0-24 E-23 0-22 E-21
0000 E+02 0000 0-15 0-14 E-13 E-12 0000 E-25 E-24 0000 E-22 0000
0000 0000 0000 E-15 E-14 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0+05 0+04 E+03 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0000 E+04 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0+15 0+13 E+05 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0000 0+14 E+13 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0000 E+14 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0+23 E+15 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0+25 0+24 E+23 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
E+25 E+24 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000

First char is either 0 (do a comptest) or E (encode).
Second and third chars are deviation from targetres i.e. +0 means targetres, +1 one res higher ...
Last char is resizer:
1=Bilinear
2=SoftBicubic
3=Simple
4=SharpBicubic
5=Lanczos

When a comptest is done TaZit will look at the first non 0000 term:
-going right if comptest failed,
-going down if comptest passed.

An example:
-----------

Let's say one has a 2.35:1 image, TARGETRES=175, LOWRESDEV=2, HIGHRESDEV=2,
all LOWRESCOMP?CD set to 0.650, all HIGHRESCOMP?CD set to 0.700.
Program will find TARGETRES is (640x272) for instance and then compute the two lower and
the two higher: (576x240) (608x256) (640x272) (672x288) (704x288).

The first compcheck program does is at minimal resolution less charpening filter, i.e. (576x240)
bilinear to determine the number of cds required.
Let's say compressibilities for 1/2/3/4cds are: 0.478 0.956 1.435 1.913.
Since the first compressibility to be over LOWRESCOMP?CD=0.65 is for 2cds,
movie will fit on two cds.

From here program enters 'comptest.txt' matrix at the upper left corner i.e. 0+03 by doing
a comptest at targetres (640x272) SimpleResizer.
Wether this comptest passed or not, TaZit will look at the next non 0000 term down or right:
-next term is 0+05 if comptest passed, so next test will be at (640x272) LanczosResize.
-next term is 0+01 if comptest failed, so next test will be at (640x272) BilinearResize.

Program will continue comptests until one of these conditions is reached:
-an E*** term (meaning encode) is reached in the matrix,
-LOWRESDEV or HIGHRESDEV are overgone,
-width of the current comptest is higher than original cropped width.

To complete this explanation, let's finish the example (colored in red in the matrix):
-0+03 (640x272@Simple) passed (going down in the matrix),
-0+05 (640x272@Lanczos) passed (going down in the matrix),
-0+15 (672x288@Lanczos) failed (going right in the matrix),
-0+13 (672x288@Simple) passed (going down in the matrix),
-0+14 (672x288@SharpBicubic) failed (going right in the matrix),
-E+13 Encode with 672x288@Simple.

Remarks:
--------

The whole process is faster not only because the new algo is clever but also because some settings
won't be tested anymore:
-NeutralBicubic is not used because it will conflict with Simple, sometimes compressibility is
higher for NeutralBicubic, sometimes it's higher for Simple. So that cohabition between them can
lead to serious trouble in prediction.
Furthermore Simple is faster and better quality than NeutralBicubic.
-For the two highest resolutions minimal resizer is Simple, since I believe one has to prefer one
resolution lower with Lanczos to one resolution higher with Bilinear !
So a higher resolution is considered beeing better only if it will fit with at least SimpleResize.
-I expect people to submit different 'comptests' matrices if they have different conceptions.

-more accurate comptests:
Compressibility is now extrapolated from comptest using a commandline version of jonny's Enc tool he was kind enought to compile for Bilu and I (thanks jonny !).
Also it relies on avs2avi logfile output capabilities, so avs2avi 1.29 is a must have.

-profile support:
Well it's better you read the readme about it and look at the examples I provide.
I think this is a very versatile implementation since a 'profile' is made of three files:
-general TaZit settings,
-XviD settings,
-AviSynth preprocessing filters.
You can define as many files of each kind and merge them into any combination.

-changed for beta besweet, now using hybridgain and surround:
As it says, as everybody tends to believe this is the best, including DSPGuru himself.

-other minor enhancements:
Well I worked on so much details at the same time I don't even remember right now.
I won't be surprised if things are badly screwed up :p

Last but not least: profiles I ship TaZit with are not, in no way, recommendation. But just here to show you how to define profile. Please if you have any good settings to propose don't hesitate to post them here.

As usual enjoy and keep reporting bugs and wishes for next versions.
Get v0.4 here: http://members.xoom.it/taz4hvn/TaZitv0.4.exe


[EDIT] Do you think I can write such a giant post in one shot ? :D

[TaZ4hvn]

Well regarding naming of the program: I see you guys really did some search, that's nice. Anyway I'm not determined yet wich name to choose or even if I should change (in no way for RaZzmaTaZzIt :D sorry superdump !). I will just go on with TaZit for the time beeing.

I already have some idea of what I want to add for v0.5:
-auto credits range detection to reduce bitrate/quant.
-auto find 'noise level' of the movie for denoising.
-matroska support if tools are finished enought at this moment.
-subs as soon as matroska is supported.
Anyway, for the two fisrt points I don't have solid ideas at the moment, if someone can help ...

[Soc]

Yay! Thanks TaZ :D

Very good idea, using a matrix to make a comptest decision tree! :)

My last exam is tomorrow, after that I'll try to put together a GUI, but I'm not promising that it will be good! ;)


v0.4 is working perfectly for me so far, but I have a couple requests for options to be added to settings.ini:

PROFILE=
Lets you choose which profile number to use, or set to ASK (default).

IMAGE=
For people who still use normal CDs and don't want to make a mode2 image, they could set this to OFF, otherwise it is ON (default). I've done it for myself by modifying the M2CDMAK check as follows:
IF /I %IMAGE% == ON (
IF EXIST "%M2CDMAK%" (
%CTEXT% "{f0}M2CDMAK {f2}found{f0} as %M2CDMAK%{\n}"
) ELSE (
SET MISSING=1
%CTEXT% "{f0}M2CDMAK {f4}missing{f0} as %M2CDMAK%{\n}"
ECHO M2CDMAK missing >> tazit.log
)
) ELSE (
SET MOUNT=OFF
SET BURN=OFF
)
and adding this line at the top of step 8:
IF /I %IMAGE% NEQ ON GOTO :ending

Keep up the good work :)

- Soc

[TaZ4hvn]

after that I'll try to put together a GUI
That would be terrific :) If you're into it contact me, I have some ideas for the layout.

Lets you choose which profile number to use, or set to ASK (default).
This is already the case, default profile is profile0, if you just press enter at profile request, profile0 is loaded. Or did I miss the point ?

For people who still use normal CDs and don't want to make a mode2 image, they could set this to OFF, otherwise it is ON (default).
Oh good, I forgot that small mod :D I will add your mod asap and update to 0.41.

[superdump]

Lets you choose which profile number to use, or set to ASK (default).

This is already the case, default profile is profile0, if you just press enter at profile request, profile0 is loaded. Or did I miss the point ?

I think what Soc means is that if you set said parameter to 'ASK' then it prompts you when you run TaZit. If it is set to a number corresponding to a particular profile then it uses that profile and does not prompt you at all about the profile being used, it just displays it. 'ASK' would be the default setting.

I have a small feature request. Could you make it possible to prompt you as to whether you wish TaZit to shut down the computer when done so people can leave it running overnight? i.e. "Do you want TaZit to shut down the computer when all tasks are finished? [Yes/No | Default = No]" sort of thing. I would appreciate it greatly. :)

Thanks

[TaZ4hvn]

I think what Soc means is that if you set said parameter to 'ASK' then it prompts you when you run TaZit.

LOL, sorry I though ASK was an abbreviation :D and so missed the request.
I dunno if this is required since if you want to use default you just have to press 'ENTER' one more time at the start: not a big thing :)

Could you make it possible to prompt you as to whether you wish TaZit to shut down the computer when done

Added to todo list: should be easy to do :)

I will also add a flag to disable XCD mod, as requested, and also implement a mod to encode as a regular avi with mp3 so that I can attract a larger audience ...

[Soc]

@Taz
The PROFILE= thing wasn't important, I was requesting it mainly so that the GUI would be able to select profile by modifying settings.ini. I haven't yet decided how GUI and TaZit should interact, I'll probably end up making quite a few modifications (suggestions welcome :)). I'll PM you to talk about more about the GUI and its layout, etc.

Finished exams now yay! :D:D:D I'm going away again though (skiing), so don't expect the GUI to be ready any time soon... :(

Would you be willing to fix the timekeeping code to allow for people like me who's encodes sometimes exceed 24 hours? I just did a 25.5 hour encode that TaZit says was 1.5 hours (I wish lol). Minor cosmetic detail only :)

It's a shame so many people still use mp3 (blech). Matroska support in v0.5 would be very cool!

I have a plan as to how to do credits detection, and if it works I'll be quite happy :), but it looks like I'll need to write an avs plugin, which will require me to do a fair bit of learning. I learn pretty fast, so I can do it sometime in the holidays, but it would be easier if someone else with some experience would write it for me :D if anyone is interested then I'll put up more details of what I have in mind.

- Soc

[TaZ4hvn]

I didn't even imagine your encode can take more than 24 hours :)
I already fixed the bug for more than 12 hours ... ok I will do it again for 24 :)

Also check your PM about the GUI thingy ...

[superdump]

What happened to the quick 0.41 update? :)

[Riley]

I am having a problem with the Tazit program. The program always seems to freeze up during the beginning of step 4, when it is checking if the source is interlaced. (avs2avi has 0% cpu usage)

I have run the program on other computers without any problems. But it always freezes up at the same point on my Dell Dimension 2350. I have XP home edition installed. I also believe the computer came with the .NET framework already installed.

I really love your program, but I need some help to get the program running on MY computer.

-riley

[Soc]

@riley
A possibility is that it's something to do with TaZit setting the avs2avi process priority to idle, and somehow either some other program with higher priority is using all the CPU or some similar problem. You could test this by changeing the priorty of avs2avi in the CLI (do a search in TaZit.bat for -p 0 and replace with -p 1).

Please let me know if this helps

- Soc

[Riley]

@Soc
I tried your suggestion, but unfortunately that did not solve the problem.

It is specifically "freezing" at the following line in step 4:
"%AVS2AVI%" "%CONVDIR%\Projects\%PROJECT%\ivtccheck.avs" "%CONVDIR%\Projects\%PROJECT%\ivtccheck.avi" -p 0 -c xvid >nul

With the task manager being the only other program running I can see that the cpu is 98% idle (with the task manager itself using 2% of CPU and avs2avi still using 0% regardless of priority setting).

I have tried testing with various DVD's and the problem is very repeatable.

I'm a big newbie when it comes to programming, but I'm assuming that avs2avi is being passed in with a command or setting that it just doesn't know what do with. Hence why it's stuck at 0% cpu usage? I really have no idea.
:(

I find the whole thing to be very odd. Especially since I am using a NEW install of Tazit (with no modifications to code) on a new system that has practically no other programs installed.

Any other suggestions? I would *REALLY* love to get this working on my computer.

[TaZ4hvn]

Well I assume you did some usual verification :sly:, open the convertion folder:

- does ivtccheck.avs exists ?
- can you open it with a player, with virtualdub ?
- is ivtccheck.avi created (even if 0 size) ?
- did you try to launch avs2avi out of TaZit to see if it works ?
- are you using avs2avi version provided with TaZit ...

Please give me some more stuff so that I can have a clue, I suspect it to be a silly thing.
Anyhow, in a few weeks at most, I'll release a totally new version of TaZit did with some real programming stuff: It could takes times since I have to learn so much on modern programming languages :)

[Soc]

Originally posted by Riley
I tried your suggestion, but unfortunately that did not solve the problem.

It is specifically "freezing" at the following line in step 4:
"%AVS2AVI%" "%CONVDIR%\Projects\%PROJECT%\ivtccheck.avs" "%CONVDIR%\Projects\%PROJECT%\ivtccheck.avi" -p 0 -c xvid >nul
Are you sure you change all the occurrences of -p 0 to -p 1, in TaZit.bat? That line you quoted is still using -p 0!

Please try again

- Soc

[Riley]

@Taz
I really appreciate your help (and for writing the program).

Yes. I am using the avs2avi version provided with TaZit. The only programs installed on the computer are DVDDecrypter v3.1.6, Daemon tools v3.33, Koepi's 14052003 Xvid build, and TaZit v.4

Yes, ivtccheck.avs does exist. I can view it in notepad. If it would be helpful, I can post its contents.

The file ivtccheck.avi is NOT created. At the command prompt, I tried to run avs2avi with the same parameters that TaZit uses, but got an error message like the following:

AVIfileOpen unable to open avi

I can also post the specific error message tomorrow.

Again, I appreciate you guys trying to help me out. I wish I could give you more specifics right now, but I can't. I'm running TaZit on my home computer, which does not have an internet connection, and I can only post from my computer at work.

@Soc
Yes, I am sure that I had made the appropriate changes, but it still didn't work. :(

[TaZ4hvn]

Yes, ivtccheck.avs does exist. I can view it in notepad. If it would be helpful, I can post its contents.
In case you're not familiar with avisynth, you should be able to open it with a media player also or with virtualdub and get the movie.
I have to know if you can do this or not to determine if the problem comes from the avs script or from avs2avi, plz let me know.

[Riley]

VirtualDub could NOT open ivtccheck.avs.

It said "Cannot Determine filetype of "C:\RIP\Projects\1MPRNTS\ivtccheck.avs"

Here are the contents of the ivtccheck.avs file:

Loadplugin("C:\Video\TaZit\AviSynth\plugins\AutoCrop.dll")
Loadplugin("C:\Video\TaZit\AviSynth\plugins\Mpeg2Dec3.dll")
Loadplugin("C:\Video\TaZit\AviSynth\plugins\Decomb.dll")
Mpeg2Source("C:\RIP\Projects\1MPRNTS\1MPRNTS.d2v")
Import("C:\RIP\Projects\1MPRNTS\ivtc.tmp")

SelectRangeEvery(1400,14)
Call("'C:\Video\TaZit\utils\NicEcho.exe' 'C:\RIP\Projects\1MPRNTS\ivtccheck.tmp' "+string(framecount), "-2")
Subtract(DeComber( 2, 6382))

[TaZ4hvn]

Ok, so your problem is certainly relative to avisynth installation and in now way with TaZit.
please try this minimalistic script:

"Loadplugin("C:\Video\TaZit\AviSynth\plugins\Mpeg2Dec3.dll")
Mpeg2Source("C:\RIP\Projects\1MPRNTS\1MPRNTS.d2v")"

does it works ? if no please check existence of 1MPRNTS.d2v.
if yes, try this even shorter:

"Mpeg2Source("C:\RIP\Projects\1MPRNTS\1MPRNTS.d2v")"

just to know if your plugins directory is find by TaZit. Let us know.

[mulderfox]

What about the Profiles? Are there profiles which use alternating bitrates? as in a movie with action scenes, and slow scenes..
All I see (in version 0.4) are 7 profiles, most of them low-motion..
I thought the program was supposed to analyze each movie and decide on a strategy in accordance..
Any tips about that?

thanks!

[TaZ4hvn]

@mulderfox: I don't get the point :confused: TaZit uses XviD, slow motion or low motion profiles are nonsense, this is codec's stuff to choose the right settings for each scene (at least with modern codecs). Perhaps are you talking about finer settings you class are low/fast motion like MPEG matrices, Bframes ratio or others ??

[mulderfox]

when I start tazit, I get the checkup screen (that sees if I got all the programs), and after that, I'm asked to choose of 8 profiles starting from "Best for low rare - english - slow" and ending with "higher quality - francais - slow". what's with those?

btw, how much free space should I leave aside from the space needed for the dvd ripping?


thanks

[majerle]

@mulderfox

an extra 3gb, over ripped dvd

~ 300 mb for every ac3 audio tracks
~ 60 mb for ogg vorbis audio
~ 700 mb for avi first pass
~ 640 mb for avi second pass
~ 695 mb for final ogm
~ 700 mb for .bin/.toc/.cue
~ 10 mb for varius test files

btw, in profiles, you can specify what files want to keep

for profiles : i made 11 xvid.reg dump (as this
Xvid_2-125-100-255-vhq1.reg xvid1
xvid_2-150-100-255-vhq0.reg xvid2
xvid_1-150-100-100-vhq0.reg xvid3
xvid_1-200-0-0-vhq0.reg xvid4
xvid_2-125-100-255-vhq0.reg xvid5
xvid_2-150-100-0-vhq0-gmc-qpel.reg xvid6
xvid_2-150-75-0-vhq0.reg xvid7
xvid_2-150-100-0-vhq0-qpel.reg xvid8
xvid_3-100-100-0-vhq0-qpel.reg xvid9
xvid_3-150-75-0-vhq0-qpel.reg xvid10
xvid_2-150-100-0-vhq0-qpel-RD.reg xvid11)
and 6 profiles, using differet settings.

Try yourself, tazit is able of marble result tweaking its settings)

Regards

Andres

[TaZ4hvn]

Well, I would recommend a bit more, like 5GB, since majerle example is a very favourable case: 700MB first pass and one CD output only :sly:
But if you specify to keep only selected files, others are deleted as soon as they are not necessary anymore, so it should decrease need for space drastically.
About profiles, you should almost always go with the first one, profiles are not educationnally designed, I mean I just did some very quickly to show ppl how to build them, I'm not claiming they are good, except perhaps for the first wich reflects actual consensus on XviD settings.

Good Rip :)

[Riley]

@Taz
You were correct.

Problem solved by doing the following:

* Uninstalling TaZit 0.4
* Installing AviSynth 2.52 as a standalone application
* Installing TaZit 0.4 and unchecking the AviSynth 2.52 box during installation.

Seems to be running fine now. Thanks for your help.

[TaZ4hvn]

Thanks for your help.
You're welcome. Enjoy :)

[Riley]

Taz, what other features are you working on/would like to add to you program?

[TaZ4hvn]

Well, I may seem unactive while I'm really not !
I'm totally rewriting TaZit from scratch into Delphi to benefit power of a true windows programming: that's long and difficult since I have to learn the langage while I'm programming :p
Anyhow, I already achieved astonishing results, so far implemented functionnalities are close to the Wef's Robot4Rip, including auto finding DVD drives and IFO parsing capabilities.
I need some time to built my dream's proggy, but some time soon expect TaZit to be a viable replacement for r4r+gknot combo.
What's take so long is I have to write any piece I need by myself since I don't have access to any sources, so if somebody with delhpi knowledge is willing to help ...
Anyways before I release something I will need some testing/feedback then I will rely on you guys (soc, superdump, riley and so) for beta testing. At the moment I'm still to far to have something usefull but as soon I think I have something usefull you'll get it !

[bilu]

I wish you all the luck in the world ;)

Just leave some space for the users to use their custom decombing, OK?
It's still needed. I've been investigating on automatic decombing, but still have a lot of work to do.

You can check on neuron2's forum to see what's going on :)


Bilu

[Soc]

Good suggestion Bilu :)

Unlike Taz, I may seem inactive cause I actually am ;) Sorry guys, I've been busy doing holiday type stuff, it's good to be back home with all my old friends! I wont get much free time until I go back to uni next week.

That being said, I know some Delphi, so Taz if you send me what you've got so far I'd love to take a look at it, I've got a lot of other projects on my plate but I'll try and find time, cause I'm very much looking forward to seeing your new version of TaZit up and running!

@Riley
One of the "projects" I mentioned above is autodetecting of credits, which I havent started yet but still have firm plans for (although it will take a bit of experimenting and a lot of learning). Combined with Taz's new automatic DVD drive detection, GUI etc. and the the possibility of perfect auto-decombing, the future of TaZit is looking better than ever! :)

- Soc

[EDIT] Fixed wording, removed over prolific smileys ;)

[Riley]

I hope you guys are still plugging away at your various programs. :)

:rolleyes: I wish I had more programming knowledge to help, but I'll be more than happy to help beta test. Just let me know.

[superdump]

TaZ is working on TaZit 0.5 as fast as his fingers will go. :) It's a hard job considering he's learning delphi as he goes. Sit tight, it'll come when it's ready. :D

[wertert]

where do i download this tool ? all the links seem to say 'Get it Link removed due to update, see below '

[majerle]

and, btw any news on Tazit 0.5 ?

thanks


andres

[Soc]

Hi guys,

Ok a few things, firstly as far as writing TaZit v0.5, I've spoken to Tas recently and he said he's been having a lot fairly major things going on, and so hasn't had really much time to work on TaZit. I'm in a similar sort of way (I was without a computer for 6 weeks, for example) plus I'm just slack ;). Taz is hoping to get v0.5 around christmas time, but it may come sooner or later, who knows.

In the mean time, I recently got a PM asking for all the custom stuff I've done to TaZit, and so I thought I'd release a little rar file, which contains the latest version of TaZit (0.4) from TaZ4Hvn, plus the other files you need, plus most of my modifications:
- changed the BeSweet command line args to be better (IMO)
- added in an IMAGE switch, which when set to OFF will stop TaZit making an XCD image out of the final movie
- put my own xvid settings, filters, and profiles in (the ones included in this rar are my "stable" ones, for my own use I use other profiles that are better but I'm still fiddling with them too much to be distributing them around)
- added in a MODE=RIP option for better batch mode rippping.
- possibly something else that I've forgotten.

I've called it TaZit_Soc_v0.42.rar since it has what was supposed to be in Taz's "quick 0.41 update" that never happened plus more ^_^

Anyway you can download it here (http://www.trinity.unimelb.edu.au/~drolle)

@wertert:
You'll probably want to download that rar too, since even if you only want to use TaZit 0.4, it's included in there.

Enjoy =)

- Soc

[majerle]

Thanks Soc

waiting for 'xmas

Andres

[TaZ4hvn]

Hi guys,

Sorry for the long time without any news.
Sorry also for the "quick" v0.41 update, I had to suffer some majors hardware problems at this time and was a bit demotivated.
Thanks to soc you'll find these quich hacks in his mod.
To speak the truth I have to deal why a new home, a wedding preparation and a lot of "true" work: so that I'm pretty busy at the moment, I think I won't be able to spend some time on TaZit v0.5 before end of November.
But as I already did a lot you can still expect this totally new proggie around christmas.
If you have some suggestions, please let me know, also if someone is confortable with matroska tools and container it may be very helpfull to me since I plan to integrate a native mkv output.

Regards.

[bilu]

Are you gonna get married? :)


Bilu

[Soc]

Congratulations Taz! (or to whoever it is that's getting married ^_^)

While we're waiting for Taz to release v0.5, I'm gonna keep adding small things to v0.4 to keep us happy :)

My plans are to get mkv support working and then try to add subtitle support (for mkv only, subtitles for ogm aren't really feasable). I'll keep you posted :D

Also if anyone has any questions about TaZit_Soc please let me know as my documentation was a little thin ;) (btw make sure you run TaZit_Soc.bat not TaZit.bat!)

[Koepi]

Forgive me, but why aren't subs in OGM feasible?

I use them sometimes and they work like charme.

Must be some kind of misunderstanding or something...

Koepi

[TaZ4hvn]

Well koepi, what we're trying to do here is to develop a kind of fully automatic proggie able to make each important decision by itself so that no human step is required.
AFAIK we can't go the OCR way for subtitles as this wouls certainly break the chain (unless you have thousands of matrices !).
Again AFAIK bitmaps subs can't be included in an ogg container, that's the reason why soc says it's better to postpone subs support to mkv container.

[Koepi]

Thanks for the explanation :-)

Well, in that case you're right of course. I'd write explicit "bitmap subs" then to avoid confusion (those subs are going to eat up some space if you're heading for 1cd encodes...)

Best regards
Koepi

[bilu]

@Taz

But you can use them as external subs, loadable with DirectVobSub.

I did it all the time with R4R_ENC.


So, you're getting married or not? ;)


Bilu

[TaZ4hvn]

Well I have to confess ... that's me ! It has to be a foolish idea :)

[bilu]

Congratulations, my friend :D

I'm married for 1 year and 4 months now, but she lived with me 1 year before marrying.

Best experience of life until now :)

Cheers to you,
Bilu

[Soc]

@koepi

ahh yes sorry, I meant bitmap subs :rolleyes:

taking up space isn't really a problem, since vobsub allows you to put the .sub file into a rar, making the subs less than 1 MB total. I haven't looked into if this is true for putting subs into an mkv too, but I'm hoping it is! :)

@bilu

that's true, you could have them as external files with an ogm, I just don't like doing it that way, I much prefer having everything in one file. If others don't mind doing that though, I can add ogm + external bitmap subs in as an additional option (hopefully!).

The good thing is that if I work out how to do all these things for v0.4, it'll probably help Taz with v0.5 too :D\

@all

any other feature requests, please post them now while I'm on a roll, otherwise I probably won't look at them for months ;)

- Soc

[TaZ4hvn]

Well it looks like ppl are not patient enought to read a whole thread, again here is the link to TaZit v0.4 (latest non user modified version): http://members.xoom.it/taz4hvn/TaZitv0.4.exe
You can for sure go with soc's version, small enhancements that can help, see previous page.

[krackato]

Why don't you put the link to the updated program at the top of the page so that it's really easy to find? I don't really understand why it's necessary to read 7 pages of forum text to find a download link. Or perhaps it could be in your signiture.

[TaZ4hvn]

"I don't really understand why it's necessary to read 7 pages of forum text to find a download link": Well perhaps because that's only an experimental proggy and I doubt someone can customize it a satisfactory way without a few readings.
"Or perhaps it could be in your signiture.": well of course, that's just because I was to lazzy to do, but now everybody knows I am, I did it :)

[Soc]

Good idea I'll add my TaZit to my sig as well, lazyness is a problem for me too, TaZ ;)

I've done a little bit more work on TaZit_Soc, in between playing with spatial smoothers ^_^ I've got bitmap subs working with ogms, I'm just perfecting the algorithm to choose which sub stream(s) to rip, and also going to add in a couple more changes before I make it TaZit_Soc_v0.43

As always feature requests and suggestions for changes are very much appreciated :D

- Soc

[edit: fixed my sig]

[TaZ4hvn]

About auto finding subs, you can get inspiration from the way I parse the info file produced by DVDDec for audio files.
I even think with only a few mods you can have TaZit to choose by itself the right subs. Good luck :)

[edit] Also you should consider using a third digit for your own release: at this rate you'll reach v0.49 before I can release v0.5 ... well never mind, that's a joke of course :p

[Soc]

hi guys!

sorry i've been kinda silent recently, i got tonsilitis, and then by the time I recovered i was thrown straight into exams :(

I'm pretty ashamed of that tazit mod I released, there were waaaay too many bugs in it :(

I fixed them all (I think) but I'm going to add a few more features first (and test it properly this time) before I release again.

as far as auto finding subs Taz, that's exactly what I did, i made a copy of your audio code and used that as a base for my sub code ^_^

The problem is though that if for example you want english subs on an anime, there could be more than one english sub stream, and you may or may not want both of them, since the extra one could be for signs and things that you need even when using english audio, or it could be a director's commentary. I don't really have enough DVDs to be able to get an idea of how these things usually work, so if anyone can lend insight it would be appreciated. It looks like director's cuts are usually labeled such, but that's actually surprisingly hard to detect (although not impossible).

Hey taz, just on a point of interest, I'm guessing you used avs scripts to do your calculations in TaZit because batch files don't appear to have support for any kind of maths... I thought so too, but it turns out you can use SET to do arithmatic ^_^ It's good that the new TaZit will be in delphi though, working with batch files has been an interesting experience but I don't think I'll do it again heh ;)

[TaZ4hvn]

SET command is limited to integer :( So yes all the maths are did trough avs script, you can open then after they are created to check the content; you'll find my favourites formulas for overhead and so for ...
Anyway, I'd like to say batch programming is not as poor as it seems: there's almost allways a trick to do what you want, the counterpart is everything is a trick; with almost 20 commands you're almost sure the one you need doesn't exist ! Finally that's not worse than loosing hours to browse delphi docs to find the command you want amongst thousands :D
The bad news is I don't have plenty of time now to work on TaZit, as you may know I bought an house ... well almost an house since I have a lot to do in it :) That takes time and energy !

[Soc]

That's a shame... we're all looking forward to TaZit 0.5 ^_^

Well I just finished my exams, so after I've spent a week or so partying I'll get to work on my programming projects (I'm also working on some cool bittorrent stuff (in python) at the moment, writing a 3D racing game (in VB), and learning c++ so i can write avs filters... so i got a lot on my plate) ;)

If you're not going to be working on delphi TaZit much any more TaZ, maybe I should help with that instead of working on 0.4? I'll PM you when i've finished my partying week ;)

[TaZ4hvn]

Of course, your help proposal is welcome (even if it's not the first ... :p ) But I didn't say I won't work on it anymore, just that I don't have much time to spend on it by now :D