How to prepare files for CCE?

[Richard Berg]

I'm just starting to get into DVD production with either Tsunami or CCE; the authoring program will probably be DVDLab. I know TMPEG is slower, but one advantage it seems to have is the DVD burning wizard, which automatically sets the appropriate resizing / cropping / bitrate for DVD-ready MPEG2. CCE, on the other hand, seems very bare-bones: there are a good number of options to tweak bitrate allocation (which I won't use, probably just vanilla 2-pass VBR), but no way to modify the incoming stream. AFAICT, this means I need to ensure the source file is already DVD compliant.

Unfortunately, none of the Doom9 guides or FAQs address this (correct me if I'm wrong), since their sources are already from DVDs. Mine are from ReplayTV captures, which are something like 352x480 @ 4:3 aspect ratio. Neither CCE nor TMPEG accepts MPEG2 directly, so I'm having to go through DVD2AVI + Avisynth anyway; what commands should I add to prepare them for CCE? Do the latest versions still need ConvertToXXX at the end of the script?

Thanks.

[Posh]

I'm sure someone else could give you a better answer but I will give you my 2 cents.

You don't have to use DVD2AVI with mpg files. Only vob's from what I understand. You should be able to use the mpg's through Avisynth with the Mpeg2Source command. I'm guessing you will have to do some resizing unless that is the half dvd (D2 I believe). Yes ConvertToYUY2 is needed for Avisynth 2.5x. CCE doesnt support YV12 so it has to be converted.

Now that I think about it TMPGEnc also supports mpeg2. I believe you are probably having problems with the mpeg2 files the replay creates. I'm guessing its a codec thing. Someone else with knowledge on this will have to speak up but I'm pretty sure there is an easy way around this.

[archimage]

CCE needs Video & Audio through Avisynth 2.5 . In older Avisynth 2.0 , you could just add Resampleaudio() an it would open in CCE , Sh0dan removed the bug in Resampleaudio , so you must run video & audio together in 2.5+.

LoadPlugin("C:\Plugins\MPASOURCE.dll")
LoadPlugin("c:\plugins\MPEG2Dec3.dll")
Video=mpeg2source("C:\stuff.d2v")
Audio=MPASource("c:\stuff.mpa")
Audiodub(Video,Audio)

[Richard Berg]

Posh, I'm certain you need DVD2AVI, unless you're using Nic's somewhat less stable MpegDecoder.dll.

Archimage, that's great to know, but I'm still curious about the core issue at hand: what resolution video should I pass to CCE? How to tell it the correct aspect ratio?

[Richard Berg]

Part of the problem here was I was working by proxy (don't have CCE myself). It seems that passing ordinary 720x480 video is fine; you can specify the aspect ratio inside CCE. Score.