DVD Rebuilder (CCE One-Click Beta v0.46) Comments and Suggestions

[TheSeeker]

Well because alot of times when i rip dvd's with dvd decrypter i use stream processing to just get the video and english 6ch audio stream. Because of this the resulting vob's are under 4.5 gb. but i dont need any menus or anything like that so maybe you should but a Re-Auther mode or something into dvd-rb so people who want to can just rip the video and single audio stream and then just run the vobs through dvd-rb on this re-author mode to get the video_ts and audio_ts directories so they can just burn those to dvd-r. At least that would seem rather useful to me.

[Le_Zouave]

Originally posted by TheSeeker
Well because alot of times when i rip dvd's with dvd decrypter i use stream processing to just get the video and english 6ch audio stream. Because of this the resulting vob's are under 4.5 gb. but i dont need any menus or anything like that so maybe you should but a Re-Auther mode or something into dvd-rb so people who want to can just rip the video and single audio stream and then just run the vobs through dvd-rb on this re-author mode to get the video_ts and audio_ts directories so they can just burn those to dvd-r. At least that would seem rather useful to me.

If you are using CCE then DVD2DVD-R is for you, the last version is 1.8.1 I think.
In the case that the movie alone is under 4.35Gb then DVD Shrink will be barely enough but of course use the re-author mode (by default it's on "full disc" mode).
DVD-RB is the only way with the Big 3 to use CCE to re-encode and keep the menu. If you are not planning to use CCE there is a lot of other software that have a lots of great feature (but don't have the CCE support).

[KungFuCow]

You can also rip the main movie with DVDShrink with 0 compression and then run the output through DVD-RB. Its one extra step but it's pretty painless.

[unplugged]

Originally posted by jdobbs
I've never used this option. Are you positive it will have no negative affects?
There was a bit of discussion when idct options were expanded in MPEG2Dec plugin, simpleIDCT (7) has quite positive feedback as I red and know in this forum (from users).
I have used it with ~20 DVDs, some with my previous Athlon XP machine and some with my latest Pentium4, I'm quite happy about its detail and had no bad surprises so far (surprises at all).
It's also reported to produce even slightly bigger encodes.

And it's fast!

[jdobbs]

Originally posted by FreQi
Are there plans to impliment a way to pause encoding?

I don't know how DVD-RB deals with other encoders, but when using CCE, I noticed that it's encoding each cell, feeding one ecl at a time to CCE. Would it be possible to have DVD-RB pause between ecl's and remember it's state to allow resuming from the next cell at a later time?

I sometimes find myself needing to reboot or capture a tv show while in the middle of an encode, and if DVD-RB would just hold off on sending the next job to CCE, I could do that.

And BTW, I am incredibly happy with this app. THANK YOU. When the next job starts -- push pause/abort in 3 click mode, and you can pick up where you left off in the encoding.

[RB]

Originally posted by unplugged
jdobbs, could you adopt "mpeg2source("source.d2v",idct=7)" model in your default avs scripts, idct7 (simpleIDCT code from libavcodec) is best qualitywise and fast as others and with all CPUs (only idct5, for SSE2 and P4s, is little faster but slightly worse with quality)
Originally posted by DDogg
jdobbs, there is something nagging me in the back of my head about that idct line. Enough to suggest you get nic or RB to weigh in on the subject.[/B]
@unplugged:
Just create a mpeg2dec3.def file (no, not mpeg2dec3dg.def) in the D2VAVS directory and add a lineidct=7

@jdobbs:
I know you are very responsive to user's suggestions and feature requests. This is a very good thing and it is highly appreciated. However, I see the risk of you getting a little flooded with "feature creep" :) I hope nobody gets me wrong, this is not meant to shut up people or put words in your mouth, jdobbs. Just a concern I have. Given that there are a number of outstanding issues such as Philips players not liking DVD-RB backups at all, no subs in certain SAs, simple VTSes sometimes split into hundreds of segments, still some A/V sync and stuttering problems etc., may I respectfully suggest that maybe it's time to think about a temporal feature freeze? :) Again, I'm not trying to speak for everyone, just trying to express what I'd likely do if I were in your shoes.

[rayvt]

I just did "What dreams may come" with dvdrb-0.46/CCE2.66, one click method.
During the rebuild, I got error #0004, buffer overflow.

[jdobbs]

I know you are very responsive to user's suggestions and feature requests. This is a very good thing and it is highly appreciated. However, I see the risk of you getting a little flooded with "feature creep" I hope nobody gets me wrong, this is not meant to shut up people or put words in your mouth, jdobbs. Just a concern I have. Given that there are a number of outstanding issues such as Philips players not liking DVD-RB backups at all, no subs in certain SAs, simple VTSes sometimes split into hundreds of segments, still some A/V sync and stuttering problems etc., may I respectfully suggest that maybe it's time to think about a temporal feature freeze? Again, I'm not trying to speak for everyone, just trying to express what I'd likely do if I were in your shoes. Thanks for pointing out all those problems in a single post... now I'm really depressed. ;)

Note added later: I'm not serious. Please, everyone, don't have any crisis intervention people calling my house.

[tomaste]

Originally posted by jdobbs
Note added later: I'm not serious. Please, everyone, don't have any crisis intervention people calling my house.
Lol! Just shows how attached we've become!

[the-warriners]

@RB
may I respectfully suggest that maybe it's time to think about a
temporal feature freeze?



I would second that. I am still reluctant to stop using DVD Shrink as I am worried that when I next come to use a backup there will be problems with it.
I'd really like to get to the point where we are all happy that there are no major issues lurking.

And thanks again JDobbs - I have already sent 2 donations and will send some more once I am able.

[Joergen]

Yes, although I dont care about philips or other player problems since I wont be buying such players, I'd also like to see jdobbs halt the new features and continue working on fixing the bugs RB mentioned.

But as a sidenote only the hundreds-o-segments bug has concerned me thus far with one title. :)

DVD-RB "even" in its current state is the best thing that ever happened to DVD backup, and is still getting better!

[insanescape]

I say perhaps it's time to have some sort of poll and feature chart to sort out what's important, what's wished, and what is really happening.

I mean, I'm sure jdobbs has people from all directions saying things like "Fix BOV" and "where's my interleaving, bitch!" or "Compress the menus for crying out loud!" but probably has no real grasp as to what users as a whole find most important. That and he probably has his own ideas of what he wants to implement next, which of course we might not know about.

So, instead of having disjointed requests and fixes, let's prioritize so people can have a general idea of when to expect things and jdobbs can be sane with organization :)

[Joergen]

I think jdobbs is ontop of things and arranging polls would make people think they have the right to expect the most-voted "feature" to be in the software by the next update. Its best for jdobbs to dictate what he wants to do and when, otherwise it can actually slow down the development through unrealistic expectations and stress. :(

[insanescape]

I never said it was an absolute.. (cue up images of jdobbs throwing his papers across the room because everyone voted on my "selection complimentary remarks" option instead of Menuing). Just an idea :)

[robot1]

Originally posted by onesoul
Hey, this is just a crazy thought but since procoder is so popular with interlaced sources ... and it's better than CCE with interlaced or progressive source at low bitrates.
IMHO.

[DDogg]

I don't think it is a bad idea to filter and sift the suggestions. I sure wished I could have voted no on deinterlacing for NTSC, especially at the early stage of the program. Like you guys said, it's his call, but allowing the user base to filter 'individual enthusiasms' from core mainstream requests might be a way to provide useful information to jdobbs.

Over the years I found users typically tend to demand better justifications for features from other users because they fear a new individual enthusiasm might just end up breaking their own individual enthusiasm. :)

[JuanC]

@DDogg (&jdobbs):

This avisynth usage forum thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=75610) made me wonder: Has anybody (@ this 50+ pages! thread) suggested jdobbs to allow users of DVD-RB to insert a couple of customizable lines for every AVS (Something similar to what NuMenu4U does) so that they could apply any avisynth filters they like?

I'm not lazy, but haven't got the time to read all these "mega-threads" ;)

[Gunner-GoNad]

Originally posted by JuanC
@DDogg (&jdobbs):

This avisynth usage forum thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=75610) made me wonder: Has anybody (@ this 50+ pages! thread) suggested jdobbs to allow users of DVD-RB to insert a couple of customizable lines for every AVS (Something similar to what NuMenu4U does) so that they could apply any avisynth filters they like?

I'm not lazy, but haven't got the time to read all these "mega-threads" ;)

That sounds good in all but I think jdobbs wants this to be an easy one click option with CCE. You start adding custom AVS you might as well go back to the old broken 3 step (or more :)) wagon wheel.

- Gunner-GoNad

[DDogg]

JuanC, not to worry, I suggest it about every chance I get :)

Gunner-GoNad, the appropriate compression filters can reduce bitrate requirements sometimes up to 20-25% without negatively effecting the video quality (to me). Since dvd-rb is trying to fit fit the equivalent of two disks onto one, supporting light compression filtering seems to make sense within the dvd-rb framework.

[shoarthing]

Hi - firstly wish to say how impressed I am by this clever utility. Apart from its functional excellence, I really admire the modesty & neatness of the interface. Also very much appreciate & applaud distance from the implicit hint of 'warez' endorsement caused where utilities depend on vastly expensive [ie Scenarist] third-party s/w

Requests:

- in support of 'unplugged' - An option [presumably off the AVS 'advanced [expert] options' menu] for global choice of the IDCT value - specifying this is of real value to those w/ PIV-familiy CPU's or K7's w/ the current MS driver.

Support for the Mainconcept encoder - as well as quality arguably on a plane w/ CCE, this affordable encoder has efficient '3D Now!' & SMP optimisations, & is not biased towards the Intel PIV-family platform.


- many thanks again to jdobbs for all your work.

[Axlemar]

ALl of the error messages I have got before are gone but they seem to have been replaced with error 5. Other than the error 5 problems, a lot more dvds work now. Thanks for the great program.

[caprioles9000]

jdobbs just wanted to let you know that i have tried 0.46 ..and i am afraid that the audio dropouts of like a millisecond still exists ..however its less than before ....the situation occurs at 24 NTSC Season 1 Disc 1 . Its the fourth episode ..where a woman cop gets killed and just when the scene changes from one to the other you hear the audio drop :( .....i also have tried the Big3 and in that one it does not ..so i am just guessing that or during the mucing something happens or its something with the encoding...... but no clue :( ...but again man this is some amazing software ...i am sure that in the end when the RC1 comes alog littel glitches like this will be nothing :) again .....my hats off to you :)...i wonder if anyone else can confirm this issue with 0.46....

Greetings
Caprioles9000

[Harm]

I got some other suggestions:
1. Post a new sticky just containing what bugs are worked upon
2. Post another sticky containing what suggestions have been made and with what result

Because these threads are sooooooooooooo big..... :)

So I haven't been able to find out if someone already suggested to build something to replace an existing subtitle by another one in the rebuild phase?
Seems like a great advantage to me...... :D

[philos31]

That has been suggested allready, would be a great option...

[rayvt]

A minor improvement suggestion:
Have dvd-rb save the log to a text file (in the work directory) at exit. I've been starting a "one-click & shutdown" before I go to bed, and it would be nice to see this. Otherwise, I have to depend on the fact that my computer is off in the morning to infer that everything went ok.

[Joergen]

Any news jdobbs? I'm getting worried since no updates for days ;)

Programming must be a pain at times, but please dont end up like the creator of pkzip who drank himself to death! :scared:

(and boy was pkzip ever a highly useful tool, arj is dead for 7 years, he had no reason to be depressed, or maybe he drank to celebrate his victory...)

[rui]

Well, DVD-RB 0.46 is working so great for me, that even if no more updates are made, my small donations were money very well spent. :)

[jdobbs]

Originally posted by Joergen
Any news jdobbs? I'm getting worried since no updates for days ;)

Programming must be a pain at times, but please dont end up like the creator of pkzip who drank himself to death! :scared:

(and boy was pkzip ever a highly useful tool, arj is dead for 7 years, he had no reason to be depressed, or maybe he drank to celebrate his victory...) It's been a busy week on my paying job (again). I haven't had any time to dedicate to the software. The weekend should produce another version.

[blueboyec]

Jdobbs,

Started using this program for the last couple of weeks and its great. Thanks for the hard work, donation sent.

[nwg]

I have decided that Rebuilder works extremely well with DVDRemake.

I just done Star Trek TNG Season 1 Disc 1. I used DVDRemake to take the copyright messages and the menus in Non-English languages. I made the DVD load the English menu as default. Normally, you have to select the required language and it loads the appropriate menu in the chosen language. I managed to get the menu's down from 250MB to 85MB.

I put the ouput through Shrink to get rid of the unwanted audio (and delete the ifo entries. I put the Shrink output through Rebuilder 0.46 using CCE and 3 passes.

I cannot see any difference with the commercial DVD. I am very pleased.

[jdobbs]

Originally posted by blueboyec
Jdobbs,

Started using this program for the last couple of weeks and its great. Thanks for the hard work, donation sent. Thanks much.

[jdobbs]

Originally posted by Joergen
Any news jdobbs? I'm getting worried since no updates for days ;)

Programming must be a pain at times, but please dont end up like the creator of pkzip who drank himself to death! :scared:

(and boy was pkzip ever a highly useful tool, arj is dead for 7 years, he had no reason to be depressed, or maybe he drank to celebrate his victory...) Posted 0.47... it would have been sooner but I just woke up from a 7 day drunk. ;)


Edit: BTW, if you've every written an algorithm for Adaptive Huffman or Lempel-Ziv-Welch compression you could understand how it might drive someone to drink...

[Joergen]

Good job with 0.47! Stay strong!

I'm really bad at maths, which just might be a blessing. I do drink extensively when I get going though :o

[rayvt]

Some more minor problems:
(All of these came up when I tried to do Hunt For Red October.)
HFRO has one huge VTS, everything is in it, extras, main movie, etc.
HFRO has 291(!!!) segments.
1) If the Source Path is long, it won't fit in the GUI field, and you can't scroll it to see what it is.
2) In the status panel, during encode phase, the segment number displayed is only 2 digits. This needs to be 3.
3) Of the 291 segments in HFRO, 276 of them are only 1 frame. These get assigned bitrates anywhere from 393 to 9000. It would be nice to have DVDRB give all these a low bitrate. Either automatically, or maybe an option ("Assign bitrate of ___ to segments smaller than ___ frames.")

[DDogg]

jdobbs, any more thoughts on whether you will consider supporting templates for CCE 2.67.x ? I think RB would have any information you need on the registry loacations.

[RobertR]

Some of us have more than one hard drive. It could be usefull to be able to tell DVD RB to work (ie generate avs'es and m2v and other files) in one directory and to recreate final VOBs, IFOs etc in some other. Small feature probably easy to implement (to avoid confusion 'muxdir' could by default be same as 'workdir') but could be helpfull :)

[jdobbs]

Originally posted by DDogg
jdobbs, any more thoughts on whether you will consider supporting templates for CCE 2.67.x ? I think RB would have any information you need on the registry loacations. Not sure I understand what you mean.

[EddieTH]

I posted this a couple of weeks ago, and I'm guessing you didn't see it since you were pretty busy with other issues. I've looked at Rebuilder.ECL files from the newer versions and didn't see a line for it, but I'm not always the most observant person in the world.
Originally posted by EddieTH
I just started working with CCE Basic 2.69.01.04 and I noticed that while they have added Quantization Characteristics in this version, DVD Rebuilder still doesn't use it for ECL files in Basic mode.

[jdobbs]

Originally posted by RobertR
Some of us have more than one hard drive. It could be usefull to be able to tell DVD RB to work (ie generate avs'es and m2v and other files) in one directory and to recreate final VOBs, IFOs etc in some other. Small feature probably easy to implement (to avoid confusion 'muxdir' could by default be same as 'workdir') but could be helpfull :) I've had this suggestion before -- and the hard part for me is trying to figure out the benefit. If I'm rebuilding into a different hard drive, how much time could I really save? Right now on my system the rebuild only takes about 15-20 minutes on a single drive, so even if you could cut that in half (which isn't likely) you'd only save 10 minutes off of a job that takes hours. As for the encoding (which takes the lion's share of the time), my experience has been that it's pretty much processor bound rather than I/O, and it can already be on two drives (source and working) anyway. Thoughts?

[DDogg]

Originally posted by jdobbs
Not sure I understand what you mean.
We must have a disconnect as I am nearly sure this subject has been brought up before. Also, template usage is one of the main focus points of Doom9's CCE tutorials. I do realize you would need to make your own modifications to the chosen template, but if you used it as your 'base' for the ecl creation, people could use some of the more advanced features of CCE 2.67, including different matrices. That would be the main use for me.

[EddieTH]

When I first started using DVD-RB I thought it would be better to use a different drive for the finished DVD, but after using it I agree with jdobbs about there not really being any performance advantage. I don't think I could get better times than I already do without a faster PC.

[[BMC]]

I totally agree. The biggest improvement I would like to see in DVD-RB would be to allow the setting of lower bitrate for extras. Once again jdobbs, thanks for giving us such a wonderful tool

[c0b3c]

Thank you jdobbs for the latest 0.47 build! Finally cce worked for me without getting "DVD Rebuilder experienced a buffer overflow. Error #0004. Process must abort."

One thing i noticed though was the inability of dvd-rb to copy the still images data (used for biography or photo gallery in menus) in the program chains. Could this be implemented as well please?

[jdobbs]

Hmmm... it has been working successfully with stills... not sure what is happening in your case.

[c0b3c]

I used CCE 2.66+ SP / Dynamically assign cell bitrates / Half D1 and Half Space for Extras options

When I click on the Photo Gallery button menu freezes and doesn't go to the corresponding chapter. Thankfully "Main" button works and i can click out of the freeze back to the extras menu. I'm not knowledgeable of the inner workings of the dvd but anything else i can do to troubleshoot this better? I looked with dvd-remake and only the button links have been preserved with "no video present" for the corresponding still image PGC.

[Joergen]

Maybe it has half-d1'ed the still pictures in the extras and that screws the menu?

[wgw]

Originally posted by jdobbs
I've had this suggestion before -- and the hard part for me is trying to figure out the benefit. If I'm rebuilding into a different hard drive, how much time could I really save? Right now on my system the rebuild only takes about 15-20 minutes on a single drive, so even if you could cut that in half (which isn't likely) you'd only save 10 minutes off of a job that takes hours. As for the encoding (which takes the lion's share of the time), my experience has been that it's pretty much processor bound rather than I/O, and it can already be on two drives (source and working) anyway. Thoughts?

I was thinking of asking for the same option. The prepare process takes about the same amount of time regardless of whether or not the source and working directory are on the same drive. About 8 minutes on my system. But the Rebuild phase takes 30 minutes or more.

Could you possibly do a Rebuild test where the final destination is on a different drive than the working directory and see if there is any improvement in the rebuild time? Are you using SCSI or IDE drives? Most of us are probably using ATA100 IDE drives which might account for my rebuild process taking longer than the 15-20 minutes you are getting. The Rebuild phase only uses 25-30% CPU on my system so I am assuming that there is probably intense disk access that is slowing the process.

[Joergen]

I originally suggested this, and I usually have the source files and the working dir on two separate drives, but it prolly doesnt help that much cause the audio and subs data read from the source drive is so small during rebuild. But with this in mind it would probably help if the target of the rebuild was the other drive cause the video part is naturally the largest data to be read/written.

Jdobbs: perhaps you could just add a tick to the options like "Rebuild to source drive" or an optional rebuild path under the options so you dont need to add it to the front gui and confuse people.

[EddieTH]

Originally posted by wgw
Most of us are probably using ATA100 IDE drives which might account for my rebuild process taking longer than the 15-20 minutes you are getting. The Rebuild phase only uses 25-30% CPU on my system so I am assuming that there is probably intense disk access that is slowing the process.
It gets done in 13-17 minutes (usually around 15) on my ATA100 drive so I find that interesting. The only time I ever got longer times (about twice as long) was when I started using RBFarm and was using a mapped drive. It was a local drive, but I was accessing it through a mapping. Since apparently that's not everyone's experience I guess I'd like to see if it would make a difference for others.

[wgw]

Originally posted by Joergen
Jdobbs: perhaps you could just add a tick to the options like "Rebuild to source drive" or an optional rebuild path under the options so you dont need to add it to the front gui and confuse people.

A tick option in the next version would be great. We could give it a try and provide feedback and if it does not prove beneficial you could remove it in future versions.

Or perhaps it might be easier to add a "hidden setting" in the ini file for testing.