Help understanding CCE vbr

[troy]

I am using dvd2dvdr with CCE to re encode a dvd movie. I am converting a 3 hour Lord of the Rings movie so I can fit it on one dvd. I set up dvd2dvdr to do a 4 pass vbr. When CCE first starts up it displays a pop-up screen saying it is creating a .vaf file. It takes about 3 hours to create this .vaf file. Then another pop up screen says it is creating a .m2v file. It takes about 17 hours to create this m2v file. I am confused because I thought that if it is doing a 4 pass vbr that it would go and create the vaf file and then do 2 more passes modifying the .vaf file and then on the last pass it would create the m2v file. Can someone explain what is going on.

[Kedirekin]

I agree - it's a touch confusing, but you get used to it.

However many passes you select, CCE actually performs one more pass than that (the vaf pass). On each pass after the vaf pass, CCE creates an m2v file. You can even configure CCE so 1st pass (after vaf) creates one m2v file, 2nd pass creates another m2v, then 3rd overwrites the first m2v, and so on. Presumably, each new m2v is slightly better than the last.

Hope that helps.

[maa]

Yes not much logic in the terms used.
266 tells me its doing pass 1 / 1 and 6 hours later its doing pass 1 / 2 and needs another 8 hours so I get annoyed with it and use MainConcept instead because at least that tells me how long its going to take over all.
(I'm just letting off steam here - don't wory ;) actually MainConcept is very good at high bitrates....)

[Milo Bloom]

I think what Troy is asking is that the VAF file doesn't appear to change after each pass; so if the mpv file is overwritten after each pass, where are the modifications which would create a better picture on the next pass stored?

[RB]

The VAF file does get changed with every VBR pass.