General Questions

[GParent]

BACKROUND:

These questions are purely for the purpose of backing up DVDs I own, that were originally double sided. I have already joined the two sides into one set of VOBs. I am using DVD2AVI/VFAPI to frame serve the VOBs to CCE. Next, I will re-author and burn a DVD-R with the entire movie on one side!

I've read the FAQ, different guides, newsgroups.

(1) WHICH REV CLARIFICATION:

The FAQ says to use V1.76 for AviSynth and/or VFAPI. However, I read this before I had been using V1.77.3 in conjunction with VFAPI 1.05, together, feeding CCE 2.67.

What is wrong with using the most updated mix of softwares I have used above?

(2) COLOR SPACE:

Many of the guides say to do the following for DVDs.

COLOR SPACE = YUV 4:2:2 (not RGB)
YUV -> RCB = PC (not TV)

Since my intention is to watch the burned DVD on my own TV, wouldn't TV be the choice that I, and most users, should select?

Also, how does color space have an affect, if any, on either an authoring program or CCE MPEG-2 settings? For example, in CCE Does it interact with the Luminance configuration, in any way? The default there is always documented in Guides as 16 to 235. Is that DVD compliant or should 0 to 255 be used?

(3)FORCED FILM:

I know this is complex to answer in a few sentences. Let me give you a for instance. What if the movie uses progressive scan and has been Telecined? DVD2AVI shows 99% FILM frames. Wouldn't it be recommended to specify FORCE_FILM (23.976)and frameserve into CCE? Also, is there a single setting in CCE 2.67 that I would need to do differently from picking NO_FORCE_FILM (29.97) using CCE?

[hakko504]

:readfaq: v1.76 and v1.77.3 does not create the same project files. Most applications cannot read v1.77.3 .d2v's and I therefor recommended the use of v1.76 ONLY. vfApi is a slower solution than AviSynth, and AviSynth is therefor recommended.

In general, you are correct though, you should use the latest versions, as long as they solve problems in earlier versions. It is sometimes necessary to use an older version if it is a more stable solution.

This is a bit complicated: CCE can also make conversion from PC-scale to TV-scale. If you are not careful you may end up with 32-223 instead of the expected 16-235. Best is to have TV-scale in DVD2AVI and NOT let CCE compress the scale again. Search in the posts about DoCCE and you'll find a longer discussion on this.

Use Force Film if you have 99% FILM.

[GParent]

Hakko,

I wanted you to know that I have honored the rules and read the FAQ before posting, however I was confused about why the latest version appeared to work in my project, when the FAQ recommended to use 1.76 for VFAPI and AVISYNTH. Maybe CCE Version2.67.00.10 has better support for the latest DVD2AVI 1.77.3.

Do you think its worth while to do two projects and compare the results, or should I stick with the output of D2V 1.77.3/CCE 2.67, since it did create a pleasing m2v?

Lastly, you brought up an important thing, I need to learn AVISYNTH. I've been lazy in not learning it. I will obviously need some basic tutorials to get my feet wet and build from there. Other than the FAQ, can you recommend other places to start out?

Thanks,

Pat

[hakko504]

Originally posted by GParent
I wanted you to know that I have honored the rules and read the FAQ before posting, however I was confused about why the latest version appeared to work in my project, when the FAQ recommended to use 1.76 for VFAPI and AVISYNTH. Maybe CCE Version2.67.00.10 has better support for the latest DVD2AVI 1.77.3.

This is not about CCE as it doesn't open the .d2v directly. If vfApi supports v1.77.3 then by all means use that. I did not know that this was the case when I wrote the FAQ. And, yes, I did see that you had read the FAQ, but I'm not so sure you have understood it. The difference between v1.77.3 and v1.76 lies in the header information of the file. This info has changed and many applications become confused by the newer version. Apparently vfApi skip lines it doesn't need when opening the file.

Do you think its worth while to do two projects and compare the results, or should I stick with the output of D2V 1.77.3/CCE 2.67, since it did create a pleasing m2v?
No. They should produce identical results.
Lastly, you brought up an important thing, I need to learn AVISYNTH. I've been lazy in not learning it. I will obviously need some basic tutorials to get my feet wet and build from there. Other than the FAQ, can you recommend other places to start out?
Well, reading the guides at Doom9's homepage (http://www.doom9.org) as well as the info on Avisynth.org (http://www.avisynth.org) is a good start.
Depending on what you do, you should take a look at two major application suites/GUIs that use AviSynth: DVD2SVCD for VCD creation DoItFast4U/ReAuthorist/DoCCE4U for DVD-R creation.