Unusual Audio File Name Creates Havoc

[mnfesq]

First of all, I did check to see if anyone reported this and the closest thread I came to was the problems with DVDAuthor. Here's the deal:

I have been using dvd2svcd for years now and my audio file is ALWAYS named "Encoded_audio_1.mp2" I recently reinstalled dvd2svcd after buying a new hard drive, along with d2sroba and mDVDauth. Since that time, my mp2 file has been named "Encoded_audio_1_mp2.mp2". Until I started using dvdauthor to create the output files, this was not a problem, but now that I am trying to automate everything, I find that this file name is causing mplex.exe to fail and, therefore, dvdauth.exe cannot find the MPlex_Muxed_File00.mpg file.

Any idea what is causing my mp2 file to have that unusual name? Any known cures? Thanks.

[mnfesq]

After doing a bit more digging, I found this line in the transcodeac3.au3 file:

$OutputFile = '"' & $AudioDir & "\Encoded_audio_" & $number & "_mp2.mp2" & '"'

I guess the transcodeac3 file is my audio transcoder instead of besweet.exe. Can I just switch back to besweet or will this cause some undesirable consequences? Can I revise that line of code to remove the "_mp2" part of the file name to be created? What's the best suggestion?

[Nick]

I recently reinstalled dvd2svcd after buying a new hard drive

I would try deinstalling and installing again from scratch.
Something is very wrong there.

[mnfesq]

selecting besweet instead of transcodeac3 gave me an audio file with the correct name, so for now I am going to go with that. I am curious to know if I can use mDVDauth without using its transcodeac3.exe for audio encoding. If so, it would seem my problem is solved. I am getting good quality back-ups so I am not inclined to uninstall and start over just now. I would appreciate knowing what was "very wrong." Is mDVDauth not supposed to replace the audio encoder in dvd2svcd?

[Nick]

Yes it is, but I don't remember any major changes to the filenames.
To be honest, my DVD player won't entertaind DVD's authored with IFOEdit, I don't know why. But it means I have only ever used mDVDauth for a couple of test runs, never for full projects.

Perhaps others could shed more light on this than me.

[jsoto]

Hi,
Well, I've selected this name to avoid any problems with the original one..
This file will be generated only if you select mp2 as output of low rate audio tracks. You can select ac3 (a 2.0 track will be created) or keep thr audio as it is.

Err, No, in general, you cannot use BeSweet in mDVDAuth (although transcode calls it). Delay adjustments are done by transcode itself, and dvd2svcd does not uses BeSweet to correct positive delays. In the case of calling audio encoder with zero delay, transcodeac3 looks into ini and project files of dvd2svcd to be sure there isn't positive delay.

EDIT:
Can I revise that line of code to remove the "_mp2" part of the file name to be created? What's the best suggestion?
Yes, I believe you can do it.

jsoto

[mnfesq]

Thanks for all the great input. I made a test back-up using besweet. When DVD2SVCD extracted the ac3 stream, I noticed it logged a -67 ms delay. I was curious to see if besweet would correct this and it did. I guess you are saying that if it were +67 ms, besweet could not fix that. I will try changing the transcodeac3.au3 file to change the output file name and see if that works as well. For now, I am using a 3-pass of DVD2SVCD rather than mDVDauth and D2SRoba because it is at least as fast for me doing it with just DVD2SVCD, because I enjoy tweaking CCE and feel lazy letting some software do all the hard work for me, and because the fewer programs I use to rip, the better my computer performs. The way I have it set up now, everything from dvd2avi to a completed .iso file is handled by DVD2SVCD.

P.S. - How come I never used to have time delays with ac3 files when I made SVCD's of DVD's but now that I am making CVD's (DVD's with 352 x 480 image size), I do get these time delays?

Oh, and btw - Jsoto - thank you for this excellent app (mDVDauth). I can see how it really makes good quality back-ups. But you mentioned that my file name problem is the result of selecting a low-quality mp2 audio file. Let me explain. I back up, errr, adult videos. With those, a 128 kb bitrate is more than adequate and it allows me to devote substantially more of the filespace to video bitrate to improve the encoding of fast motion, which is the essence of good adult videos. I am also very limited in file size because I like to keep a 2 hr, 20 min vid to 1.6 gigs, the same as a 2 cd svcd. Unlike a good back up of Saving Private Ryan, adult films are too prolific and not worth the diskspace as feature films. For my purposes, CVD is a vast improvement over SVCD since the narrower horizontal image size decreases the number of bytes per frame, thereby giving me more filespace to devote to motion, and unless the back-up is being watched on a projection TV or some other screen that is more than 36", it views as good as a DVD, but I can fit 2 full length vids on a single DVDR, compared to 4 CDs holding two SVCD vids. I save lot of shelf space (and disk space) that way.

[jsoto]

P.S. - How come I never used to have time delays with ac3 files when I made SVCD's of DVD's but now that I am making CVD's (DVD's with 352 x 480 image size), I do get these time delays?
I'm pretty sure you're wrong here... Delays are in the original DVDs, and, at least in my experience, a negative value is the most usual. Zero delay is also normal, but positive is rare.

BTW, currently I usually do DVDr backup and Saving Private Ryan is the only one movie I had to split in two DVDr, because its poor compressibility. For these kind of things D2SRoBa is very very useful: before encoding (after the small tests it does) you know if the resulting backup will be a good quality one or not. If not, you can change someting, like delete an audio, add some little borders, or use more CDs.

jsoto