CCE One-Click Software Beta [Archive]

jdobbs

15th March 2004, 04:17

Okay all -- if you were wondering why it has been taking me so long to get any updates out on IFOUpdate, the reason is posted here. Attached is my newest offering. It's call DVD ReBuilder, or DVD-RB for short. I've done some preliminary testing and think its ready for some beta testing.

PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS BETA SOFTWARE. IT IS EXPECTED TO HAVE SOME PROBLEMS. DON'T JUDGE IT TOO HARSHLY UNTIL IT HAS A CHANCE TO GET THE KINKS WORKED OUT.

You can read the "Rebuilder.Txt" file and get more information, and I will eventually work on a guide, but in summary here's what it is:

1. Yes. It is a one-click solution for use with CCE.
2. No. It doesn't need an authoring package. It reauthors within the package.
3. Yes. It works with ReJig if you want to work really fast.
4. No. It isn't complete -- but it's getting close.
5. Yes. You can really see the CCE quality difference!

Known problems: I've built the code specifically to handle every type of original. But I've disabled the "interleaving" portion so it currently won't work with multi-angles (or other interleaving like the MATRIX) while I work on it. It will come shortly.

The program is free, and I'm hoping to keep it that way. But I've invested hundreds of hours in this and donations are gratiously accepted.

Try it out and give some feedback. Post your suggestions/problems here on Doom9. Be very specific as to the kind of problem and any insight you may have as to the cause.

Hope you find it useful.

One last reminder: THIS IS BETA SOFTWARE. IT ISN'T FULLY COMPLETE SO PLEASE DON'T SLAM ME UNTIL I HAVE A CHANCE TO ADDRESS THE MANY EXPECTED PROBLEMS THAT HAPPEN WHEN IT FIRST GETS PUBLIC RELEASE.

Thanks,
JDobbs

NOTE:

1096 downloads of version 0.14
1763 downloads of version 0.15
3254 downloads of version 0.16
257 downloads of version 0.18
758 downloads of version 0.19
2112 downloads of version 0.21
675 downloads of version 0.22
1247 downloads of version 0.23
2293 downloads of version 0.25
2564 downloads of version 0.26
4462 downloads of version 0.27
3522 downloads of version 0.28
1745 downloads of version 0.30
8303 downloads of version 0.31
744 downloads of version 0.33
1922 downloads of version 0.34
3915 downloads of version 0.35
yada, yada, yada... it's consistently in the thousands for each version now... (last one was 5725)

The latest version can be found here. (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=75452)
You can find brief installation and usage instructions on this post/page. (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=73051&postid=465822)

Note: Some browsers may need to "Refresh" to get the most current version.

The_Flash

15th March 2004, 04:39

Good work jd, can't wait to begin testing.

mrbass

15th March 2004, 05:30

definitely going to check this out. I loaded it up and it looks nice and clean. I never managed to use the Big3 (way over my head..ok actually I was too lazy to learn) so this looks more like in my league. Will try soon thanks jdobbs!

KungFuCow

15th March 2004, 07:44

Woah....

/rushes off to test

KungFuCow

15th March 2004, 08:04

No joy :(

Runs for a bit, starts CCE (Using EclCCE), CCE does its thing for a little while then all of a sudden the program tries to open like 10 instanced of EclCCE and EclCCE doesnt like that and the program halts.

KungFuCow

15th March 2004, 08:16

Oh well.. sent you a donation anyway... I see great things for this app down the road.

Paced

15th March 2004, 10:24

Can't wait to try this myself, I'll report back as soon as possible on the results. Keep up the great work :D

2COOL

15th March 2004, 10:32

Originally posted by KungFuCow
Runs for a bit, starts CCE (Using EclCCE), CCE does its thing for a little while then all of a sudden the program tries to open like 10 instanced of EclCCE and EclCCE doesnt like that and the program halts. I got the same thing but with my DVD I got 82 exact error messages. :(

KungFuCow

15th March 2004, 10:42

I went ahead and ponyed up for CCE Basic to try this thing out. Attempted to do Bring It On Again and with CCE Basic it ran all the way through, authored the DVD and said it was finished. Problem was the dir was only 1.02GB and the movie seemed to be missing. The movie vob set was only 1 file.

Trying Lost In Translation now.. guess Ill see how that one does overnight.

Nic

15th March 2004, 11:53

good luck jdobbs, I can imagine what a big job the authoring code would have been...if you need anything added/changed to ReJig, let me know.

-Nic

jdobbs

15th March 2004, 13:07

@KungFuCow and 2Cool

Whoops. :eek: I know exactly what is causing your problem. I made some last minute changes just before posting... I will fix that tonight. In the interim, you can turn "One-Click" off and:

1. Do the first step of the 3 step method (first button,see the Readme).

2. Open CCE directly and then open the project "Rebuilder.ECL" in a subdirectory called "D2VAVS" under your working path. It is already set up to output correctly, at the right bitrates, etc. You will see a list of files that will be processed.

3. After the files are all completed with CCE, go back to Rebuilder and run the last step ("Rebuild"). At the end you will have a pair of directories (AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS in your working path) that will be ready for burning.

@Nic - thanks. By the way, I've done quite a bit of testing with ReJig, and it works great and is incredibly fast. You're right -- the authoring portion was the most work. Lots and lots of "gotchas" involved.

Note to everyone: Watch out for using one-click with any version other than CCE Basic until I fix this tonight.

Paced

15th March 2004, 13:07

Back again.. The DVD I chose to use for DVD Rebuilder was Smallville - first two episodes (PAL). Firstly, just to test out the re-authoring (which I consider to be the best part of this program - it must have taken you forever to implement) I used ReJig to transcode the video (One Click mode was enabled), and the whole thing went without a problem - the DVD works just like the original does (minus some audio/subtitle streams that I removed).

After this first successful attempt, I decided to give CCE 2.67 - Basic (with the help of ECLCCE) a try - this was a very different story to my first attempt :( It basically did fine up until the encoding part of the process, which was when DVD Rebuilder told me - "No CCE path has been set. Use menu Options/Setup to configure" - I found this strange, since I had already set the paths correctly. Then, just out of curiosity, I decided I'd do: Options -> CCE Options -> CCE Pro (v2.66+) (even though my version of CCE is 2.67 Basic), and as a result, CCE opened and started encoding the files...up to a point. Then I got the same 'errors' as KungFuCow and 2COOL experienced - DVD Rebuilder was trying to open a tonne of ECLCCE instances at once, then the program stopped. I'm afraid I don't have CCE 2.50/2.66 to test with :(

I'm still loving the program though, I can't wait until the problem(s) above are corrected :D Great work!

//Edit:

Oh, and jdobbs, just a suggestion - is it possible to add an option for 2-pass transcoding for ReJig? I think most people would prefer it over 1-pass.

lighty

15th March 2004, 13:17

@jdobbs

While I am extremely happy with this tool I couldn't help not to notice that it is lacking subtitle support.

So, you may (or may not) consider this feats:

1. Subtitle support
2. Way to edit EclCCE files so that one can change default settings of CCE (like quantization matrix) and also so that one can use different bitrate for credits.
3. Enable 3 and 4 pass mode (I see that it's present but not enabled).

Please don't feel pressured but simply write it down on your to do list... if you feel like it... of course. ;)

In any case... GOOD WORK!

jdobbs

15th March 2004, 13:58

@lighty

It does support subtitles. What it doesn't support is the removal of subtitles. In doing many DVDs I came to the conclusion that the total amount of space used by subtitles is completely insignificant, so rather than take take them out -- all subtitles remain in the final authored product.

jdobbs

jdobbs

15th March 2004, 14:00

@Paced

2-Pass encoding should be easy enough as long as it can be supported from the command line... Nic?

Nic

15th March 2004, 14:07

Depends what you mean by two-pass? At present Rejig's two pass isn't a real two pass but just a pass to find the M2V size inside the MPEG-2 PS/TS. Which I don't think you need....

OT:
@jdobbs: Have you thought about supporting ffmpeg to encode the MPEG-2 Video?...The MPEG-2 support is getting better on a daily basis, supports two pass, etc all done through the commandline (or you could use the .libs if you wished (it's LGPL)

-Nic

Paced

15th March 2004, 14:13

@Nic: For some reason I always thought 2-passes (in ReJig) gave a more accurate output size - I guess I was wrong :) And, about your FFMPEG comment, the option is there (to enable it) in DVD ReBuilder (just greyed out for now), I think jdobbs intends to add it sometime in the future.

@jdobbs: I've noticed that the "REBUILDER.ECL" has this same line no matter how many passes you choose in DVD Rebuilder: vbr_pass=1
It's like this for me anyway, can others confirm?

Oh, I fixed my CCE problem (Basic wasn't being recognized earlier) by simply re-installing it (I still have no clue why it did it in the first place :))

Nic

15th March 2004, 14:18

@paced: Well spotted, my eyes are cr*p, didn't spot that. ReJig can either work off a percentage or work off of a destination output size. If not going from elementry stream it has to do a two pass to do the latter.

jdobbs

15th March 2004, 14:18

Attempted to do Bring It On Again and with CCE Basic it ran all the way through, authored the DVD and said it was finished. Problem was the dir was only 1.02GB and the movie seemed to be missing.

@KungFuCow

This is definitely something I haven't seen. DVD-RB gets necessary information when it does its initial scan and sets bitrates, etc. so that the output should allways be 4.3 GB (give or take a little rounding for CCE).

Can you give me some particulars on exactly what happens? Does it seem to complete way too early?

@ALL

If you explore the D2VAVS directory you'll find lots of info available:

REBUILDER.INF -- Tells you all the segments that were found in the preliminary scan. Also tells you the number of frames, the Presentation Start Time (PTS) of the original, System Clock Reference (SCR).

REBUILDER.ECL -- Shows the CCE settings that Rebuilder calculated for each of the segments and how they will be reencoded.

Also each of the segment files are given a name that provides information. They look like this example:

V0100010004002.XXX (.AVS, .MPV, or .M2V)
V01000100004002.AVS -- File is related to VTS 01
V01000100004002.AVS -- This file represents segment 1
V01000100004002.AVS -- It is a part of VOBID 4
V01000100004002.AVS -- The cell is tagged with CELLID 2

All the above are text files and can be viewed. But changing values must be done at your own risk -- DVD-RB assumes much of the information to be consistent.

Another thing to note: Never run Pulldown on any of the output files. DVD-RB notes the areas that need to have pulldown applied during the initial scan and performs the pulldown automatically during the Rebuild process. The setup screen has a dropdown box for setting the the threshold at which pulldown is recognized. The default is pretty good, but I found at least one DVD (Cosmos) where it had to go lower.

Paced

15th March 2004, 14:51

@Nic: Thanks for the clarification on the 2-pass option :)

@jdobbs (again): Sorry, but here's another question for you. How much control do you have over the REBUILDER.ECL script itself? Here's my situation: the main movie on my DVD is progressive, whereas the extras (trailers etc.) are interlaced. Does DVD ReBuilder take account of this? Because after the "Prepare" process, I imported the REBUILDER.ECL into CCE, and found that every .avs file to be encoded had the "Offset line" as the value of "1." Now, to my understanding, the "Offset line" option is just a new name for the old "upper field first" option that we saw in earlier versions of CCE. So my question is, shouldn't this value be set to "0" instead of "1" (for progressive material)? I think the value of "1" is for interlaced + bottom field first streams (I could be very wrong here). Just thought I'd bring this up, because you may run into people who may encode an interlaced stream with the wrong field order, and others encoding a progressive stream as 'interlaced'. Am I wrong in these assumptions? The "Offset line" option may not even matter at all :confused:

jdobbs

15th March 2004, 15:13

@Paced

I have complete control of that file, it is created by DVD-RB. The same is true of the .D2V and .AVS files. DVD-RB uses its own code rather than the other software packages (like DVD2AVI) because it needs to get additional information during the scan.

DVD-RB analyzes the original and catches the mix of interlaced and progressive. That's one of the reasons for the "segment" concept -- because there are single VTS's that have both present. DVD-RB makes its decision based upon the original content.

As for the Offset Line, I think it is correct as it is; but I'll confirm that. I do know that I've done a considerable number of interlaced sources using the existing settings and they've all worked correctly. The only time I've ever had to set it differently was when I am using a DV source. I'll have to check what affect it has on progressive streams. My guess is that it is ignored.

jdobbs

15th March 2004, 15:20

I've noticed that the "REBUILDER.ECL" has this same line no matter how many passes you choose in DVD Rebuilder: vbr_pass=1
@Paced,

This is the correct setting for a two pass encode. vbr_pass=1 means that there is one pass in addition to the .VAF pass. Please note also that CCE Basic only supports 2 passes in VBR mode. You shouldn't be able to select 3 or 4 pass if CCE Basic is selected. If you are using one of the other (SP) versions then I may have a bug if it isn't changing.

Paced

15th March 2004, 15:21

@jdobbs

I was just looking at the CCE FAQ page in the CCE forum, here's something interesting to note:

Q11: Where is the "Upper Field First" option in CCE-SP 2.67 and CCE-Basic?

In CCE-SP 2.67 and CCE-Basic, this option has been replaced by "Offset Line" (a text input control in Video Settings you can type a line number into). It works exactly like "Upper Field First" in that it tells CCE by how many lines to shift up the video.

Again here is the rule of thumb: Always set "Offset Line" to 0 unless your video is interlaced AND bottom field first in which case you set it to 1. Progressive material is always top field first.

While possible, it makes no sense to set this option to anything other than 0 and 1. I wonder why they are implementing it that way, now it's possibly even more confusing than before

But I think you may be right about the value of "1" being ignored for progressive streams - how else would your test DVDs turn out fine (surely the majority of them had a progressive stream in there somewhere)? :D You did play these test DVDs on a stand-alone right?

//Edit

Ignore what I just said here.

jdobbs

15th March 2004, 15:25

I did many, many progressive stream DVDs in testing. But there is usually some interlaced areas on almost any DVD so you get both. I'll check further on the "Upper Field First" and offset line option. I would have thought, though, that this would have stood out like a sore thumb.

I test my output on 3 different brands of standalone units.

Paced

15th March 2004, 15:28

Originally posted by jdobbs
I test my output on 3 different brands of standalone units.

Cool, I think it's safe to assume the "Offset line" option is right the way it is then :)

jdobbs

15th March 2004, 15:40

You never know... I'll check to be sure.

Paced

15th March 2004, 15:49

Oh, jdobbs, you might want to include the mpeg2dec3.dll plugin, as well as instructing the AVS scripts to load it (or we'll all just be encoding 10 second clips) :D This probably explains why my encoding was 1000 times faster than usual.. My AVISynth version is 2.5.4, and as far as I know, I don't think it's (mpeg2source) been integrated into any version of AVISynth yet.

This was probably KungFuCow's problem, he had 10 second (blank) MPV streams muxed with audio/subtitle files which added up to 1.02GB ?

krbo

15th March 2004, 15:54

Originally posted by Paced
@Nic: Thanks for the clarification on the 2-pass option :)

@jdobbs (again): Sorry, but here's another question for you. How much control do you have over the REBUILDER.ECL script itself? Here's my situation: the main movie on my DVD is progressive, whereas the extras (trailers etc.) are interlaced. Does DVD ReBuilder take account of this?

Tested it right now with PAL progressive DVD.

It looks like Rebuilder is not yet ready for PAL using encoders
(CCE or TMPGEnc)

ReJig being a transcoder doesn't care of field order/progressive...

Also it leaves CCE's stupid filters enabled so more control over ECL parameters is required.

For correct PAL encoding it must detect first is it progressive or
interlaced (if yes then correct field order is a must)

Small bug in setup: if you later add some more paths it doesn't save it until one of the subtitles is unchecked/checked again to show "save" button.

I'll suggest adding paths to DVD2AVI and Avisynth plugin folder (now I have several of them) in the setup.

My test on two progressive PAL segments produces two garbage files of correct lenght with only one frozen frame in each and some reddish thing in lower letterbox border :)

All in all for now , very nice and promising - nice job jdobbs !

btw. maybe a small notice that AddAudio() is not internal Avisynth
command ...

Paced

15th March 2004, 16:04

@krbo: You're right, PAL encoders such as ourselves will require some editing of the .ECL. But instead of going into each .avs file and changing it accordingly in CCE, I suggest jdobbs adds the option for "Offset line" into the .ECL itself, thus all we (PAL users) would need to do is, open it with notepad, and change the values from 1 -> 0 or vice versa accordingly.

jdobbs

15th March 2004, 16:42

It looks like Rebuilder is not yet ready for PAL using encoders
I live in the NTSC world, so I haven't tested PAL -- but my intent was for it to work for CCE, what exactly is it not doing.
Small bug in setup: if you later add some more paths it doesn't save it until one of the subtitles is unchecked/checked again to show "save" button.
Paths are updated when you select them -- the "Save" button is only for the audio list.
Also it leaves CCE's stupid filters enabled so more control over ECL parameters is required.
I'll look at that tonight also. I let the filters slip through with defaults.
My test on two progressive PAL segments produces two garbage files of correct lenght with only one frozen frame in each and some reddish thing in lower letterbox border
The reddish thing is an error message from AVISYNTH. Go into the \D2VAVS folder and open the .AVS directly with media player. You should be able to read the error message then.
Oh, jdobbs, you might want to include the mpeg2dec3.dll plugin, as well as instructing the AVS scripts to load it (or we'll all just be encoding 10 second clips)
I thought that if you put it in the PlugIn directory it wouldn't have to be individually listed. If I'm wrong it should be easy to add.

Nic

15th March 2004, 16:50

(I was just thinking you probably need something that goes from AVS->M2V but uses ffmpeg to do it...Have you already got something like that? Im quite in the mood to whip something up to do it if you haven't)

jdobbs

15th March 2004, 16:58

@Nic

That would be great. I haven't even started to address that.

jdobbs

15th March 2004, 17:02

@krbo,

Just FYI. My plan was to add a module that would let you create templates for ECL and .AVS files -- but it just got to the point that I thought I'd never actually hand the software out, so I set some defaults and released the beta as-is. Eventually I'd like for users to be able to customize just about everything.

lighty

15th March 2004, 18:06

@jdobbs
Path to TMPGEnc can be selected but it is not remembered.

jdobbs

15th March 2004, 18:33

@lighty

Yeah. Since it isn't implemented I really should have removed it or disabled it. I haven't even started looking at how I will support TMPGEnc yet.

KungFuCow

15th March 2004, 19:14

Well, I tested Lost In Translation overnight and the program ran all the way through, authored the DVD and the output is too small again. The output for this DVD was 2.89GB.

I do think its finishing a bit quickly as it managed to do this DVD in under 3 hours and Lost In Translation is a pretty big DVD. It also is only writing one VOB file for each titleset, which is the same thing it did when I attempted to do Bring It On Again. Lost In Translation has 18 titlesets and each one has a VTS_XX_0.VOB and a VTS_XX_1_VOB and thats it so it looks like somehow DVD-RB is missing something somewhere.

Something else I noticed is that I dont ever see DVD2AVI get called. At what point is this program supposed to run because I never see it start up.

jdobbs

15th March 2004, 20:06

DVD2AVI never gets called directly. DVD-RB does the scanning. Something is definitely wrong if you are getting output that is not 4.3GB. Have you opened the VTSs to see if they were actually created properly? If they look like blackness with orange/red patterns on the bottom there may be something wrong with the AVS file. Either way it is DVD-RB's problem.

In the 18 titlesets, is there a lot of space used in the VTS_XX_0.VOB files? DVD-RB copies menus directly without recompressing. I have "Lost In Translation" on NTSC DVD. I'll try it and see what happens.

KungFuCow

15th March 2004, 20:15

Im rerunning Lost In Translation now except Im doing it via the 3 Click Method and running CCE manually. Ill see what happens when its done and report back.

Paced

15th March 2004, 21:16

@jdobbs: You're right about it not having to be loaded if the plugin is in your "plugins" directory, but I'm pretty sure not everyone knows this (they do now :) - possibly add something to your Rebuilder.txt file?).

Originally posted by KungFuCow
Im rerunning Lost In Translation now except Im doing it via the 3 Click Method and running CCE manually. Ill see what happens when its done and report back.

Are you sure you do not have any errors in your AVS scripts? Right click on one, then "Open With" and choose Windows Media Player, you'll most likely get an error saying AVISynth cannot find a certain command that's listed in the script (because you don't have the required plugin(s) installed).

robot1

15th March 2004, 22:04

I was backing up an interlaced dvd, and i find this script:
mpeg2source("E:\FILMSOURCE\D2VAVS\V01A.D2V")
trim(0,8969)
ConvertToYUY2()

I think the correct line was
...
ConvertToYUY2(interlaced=true)

Keep up the great work.

Barker

15th March 2004, 22:54

I haven't had a chance to try this software yet, but out of curiosity, is it designed to support seamless branching correctly(similar to other 1 click transcoders that do not change the dvd structure)?

jdobbs

15th March 2004, 23:11

Yes it was designed to support it. But it isn't doing it yet.

KungFuCow

15th March 2004, 23:22

Originally posted by Paced
@jdobbs: You're right about it not having to be loaded if the plugin is in your "plugins" directory, but I'm pretty sure not everyone knows this (they do now :) - possibly add something to your Rebuilder.txt file?).

Are you sure you do not have any errors in your AVS scripts? Right click on one, then "Open With" and choose Windows Media Player, you'll most likely get an error saying AVISynth cannot find a certain command that's listed in the script (because you don't have the required plugin(s) installed).

I get these errors:

Script Error: There is no function named AddAudio in file xxxx
Script Error: There is no function named mpeg2source in file xxxx

I have since moved over the dvd2avi dll file and the vfp file over to the Plugin dir of Avisynth so I guess Ill see if that makes a difference. I am open to suggestions tho because Im sure whatever the problem is, its my fault.

KungFuCow

15th March 2004, 23:47

Originally posted by jdobbs
DVD2AVI never gets called directly. DVD-RB does the scanning. Something is definitely wrong if you are getting output that is not 4.3GB. Have you opened the VTSs to see if they were actually created properly? If they look like blackness with orange/red patterns on the bottom there may be something wrong with the AVS file. Either way it is DVD-RB's problem.

Yea, they play with black screens with a red/orange pattern at the bottom of the screen.

jdobbs

16th March 2004, 00:14

@KungFuCOw,

What version of AVISYNTH are you using? I think AddAudio() is standard in 2.5 and above. If not, go under the Options/AVS Options and unclick "AddAudio()" -- in some circumstances you may want to click on "ResampleAudio(44100)" to get around a bug in CCE.

Script Error: There is no function named mpeg2source in file xxxx

This should be supported as a part of mpeg2dec.dll or mpeg2dec3.dll

When I finally get around to making a manual and/or a guide I can see that there are lot of specifics I'll need to call out on the support applications. Sorry for the continuing problems. I think you'll be pleased after I work out the initial kinks.