VirtualDubMod Help Please

[Bathrone]

Thanks for helping :)

Ok, so Im trying to encode with Divx 6.0 and given Dr Divx is no more Im trying to learn VirtualDubMod for transcoding my MPEGII DVD backups into Divx 6.0 AVIs with the original AC3 sound intact.

So Ive ripped it down to a series of Vob files:

VTS_09_1.vob
VTS_09_2.vob
VTS_09_3.vob etcetc

When I go open file, I can only grab one file within VirtualDubMod. Even if I have the "automatically linke segments" option on when I preview the file it only goes to the end of the first vob file, not the end of my movie. It would appear its only going to transcode the first vob.

When I ripped it I just took the vobs only.

How I wish Dr Dixv would have been kept.

[tigerman8u]

you could
1 convert each vob separately then join them together or
2 join the vob's together then encode them or
3 rip the dvd as 1 vob and encode it or
4 use one of the all-in-one tools

[killingspree]

have you had a look at the guides??

http://www.doom9.org/divx-encoding.htm

i would especially recommend you to take a look at autoGordianKnot or GordianKnot itself, the latter being a little more complicated/sophisticated!

cheers

[jggimi]

Bathrone is working with the brand new DivX 6 codec. The encoding suites do not yet have this codec deployed.

[khushalbhadra]

thats what I want to know,see I have a dvd with three vob files on my Hdd and I need to convert it into a good qualty Divx....I use virtualdub,the problem is that I want to make a Divx it will convert it into divx as three different file as there are 3 vob files....

As u said
how to rip a dvd as 1 vob file??.....or how to join the avi divx file after converting it into divx????which software to use for joining it???

Also help me how to make a good quality divx using virtualdub I know few basics but help me out with the Output settings for making Dvd into a good qulality divx..

[xDrJx]

also see www.doom9.org --> Guides for all the information you need

[Guest]

Concatenate the VOBs using DOS before loading into VDM.

copy /b file1.vob+file2.vob+file3.vob combined.vob

It's slow but gets the job done.

[Paulcat]

You can also use VobEdit to join multi-part VOB files..

[SeeMoreDigital]

If you want to use VirtualDubMod or the new VirtualDubMPEG-2 to generate your DivX6 encodes I would recommend using DVD Decrypter to rip your VOB files into one big/long VOB.

Use DVD Decrypter in "IFO I Mode". Go to "Tools" then "Settings" and select the "IFO Mode" tab. Then under "Options", "File Splitting" select "None".

Either that or use MPEG Mediator ;)


Cheers

[MaximRecoil]

The problem with converting VOB's to AVI's by directly loading the VOB's into VDubMod is that you will often times get A/V synch problems. Sometimes it works perfectly but more often than not in my experience, it doesn't. The creator of VDubMod explained why this happens in a post here but I don't remember the details (a lot of searching would probably turn it up like it did for me a long time ago). So, even though there are various ways of joining the VOB's into a single VOB, you are still likely to run into audio sync problems.

In the same post that the author of VDubMod explained the sync problem, he offered his opinion of the best way to convert VOB's to AVI. He simply typed "DVD2AVI + AviSynth + MPEG2Dec3.dll + VDubMod". This seemed vague to me but if the author of VDubMod thought it was the best method, then I wanted to try it out. After some searching I figured it out and it works extremely well. The audio is always in sync when you are done and there is no need to join any VOB files, nor mess around with cumbersome (IMO) automations like Gordian Knot. I have used that method for a long time and I've been very happy with it. I found out from a moderator here just yesterday that DVD2AVI and MPEG2Dec3.dll has been superceded by DGIndex and DGDecode.dll so I am now using those components, the procedure remains the same. BTW, this is the basic method that programs like Gordian Knot use, except you only do what is necessary; manually.

You need:
- AviSynth
- DGMPGDec package which contains DGIndex and DGDecode.dll
- VirtualDubMod

Install AviSynth. Extract the DGMPGDec package and copy the DGDecode.dll file into the "plugins" folder of the AviSynth install directory. Start up the DGIndex.exe file in the DGMPGDec package. Go to File > Open and browse to your directory that contains your set of VOB's. Select the VOB files that you want to process and click "open". Then click "OK" in DGIndex's "File List" dialog box. There are guides on how to use this program, useful if you have something other than an NTSC DVD Hollywood type movie, but the basics work for most Hollywood type movies that were shot on film. Go to "Video > Field Operation" and select "Force Film". This will IVTC the stream leaving only the progressive frames, i.e. it will be back in its 24 (23.976) FPS film state that it was in before it was telecined to 30 (29.970) FPS NTSC Video/TV. Make sure that "Audio > Output Method" is set to "Demux all tracks" (it is by default). Now go to "File > Save Project" and it will create a D2V file and put the AC3 audio track in the same directory.

Open Notepad.exe. Paste this text into it (adjust to match your own filenames and directories):

LoadPlugin("C:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\plugins\DGDecode.dll")
MPEG2Source("C:\movie.d2v")

For the "LoadPlugin" part, put in the path to your DGDecode.dll file in the AviSynth install directory. For the "MPEG2Source" part, put in the path to your D2V file that DGIndex just created for you. Then save the file in Notepad as "All Files" in the "file types" drop down box and for the file name, name it whatever you want with an "avs" extension, such as movie.avs. Keep this file for future projects and you won't have to make it again, but rather just tweak it.

That's really all there is to it. You then just open your AVS file in VDubMod, add the AC3 track and proceed as normal from there. Leave the original VOB's where they were at when you started, until you are finished. Something I learned recently from a moderator here is that if you add crop and resize commands in the AVS script (and/or whatever other filters you want to use), it will save a lot of time over using VdubMod's filters, because you can then use the "fast recompress" option in VDubMod.

Once you have done it once it is very easy to do again, and gives better results and doesn't take as long as joining multiple 1 GB sized VOB's. With joining VOB's into a single VOB file, not only does it take about 15 minutes just to join a typical DVD VOB set into one VOB file, but you will have to use full processing mode in VDubMod if you want to use any filters for cropping or resizing or whatever; which pretty much doubles the encoding time.

[Bathrone]

Thanks all, especially MaximRecoil. I cant express how thankful I am for you showing me the true path! Ive been doing alot of research and experimentation. Thanks to you MaximRecoil :goodpost: , Ive finally let go of the crappy approaches I had in the past and am enjoying having due control over transcoding. :thanks:

I agree with you that automations like AutoGordianKnot are kinda clumsy and I didnt come up with a way of using those tools to get the results I need. :cool:

What I wanted to do was to take my PAL DVDs and to transcode them into Divx 6 while retaining the AC3 audio track. I have arrived at the following method and highly recommend it. If anyone has any suggestions for improvement I welcome those :)

I started with ripping them down from DVD onto HDD using DVDFabDecrypter. This is because DVD Decrypter is no longer supported and smart ripper wont get around the newer security measures.

Them I used smart ripper to pull out the episodes I wanted. Multiple episodes were spanned within different VOBS so transcoding the VOBS directly would work. As too, I enabled stream processing to rip out the unwanted audio and subtitle streams....Having DVDs with episodes instead of just one set of vobs having one movie meant I had to fiddle with the vobs and extract it into different directories for the different episodes.

I followed your process above using DGMPDec v 1.4.1 beta 4. I set DGIndex to use the IEEE iDCT alogorithm for best quality - speed wasnt a problem for this anyway. I take the point it might be indiscernable over other faster algorithms but I wanted the best one I could get. I used the honour pulldown flag option for field operation - my source is 25fps PAL 720x576. For the audio I demuxed the single track. I did not use any range control - I specifically wanted to keep the original AC3 soundtrack in its original condition. This included leaving the sampling rate at 48khz and not downsampling to 44khz.

I wrote the notepad file for AviSynth. Within Virtualdubmod the avisynth file was opened and I added the AC3 stream to it. I used AviSynth 2.5.6 Beta 4.

Q: I ran it in normal processing mode : I read elsewhere fast processing mode could lead to problems???

Im now using the Helium beta Divx 6 codec. I decided not to use the new feature like trellis psychovisual enhancements due to their immature status. The codec settings I used were:

Unconstrained profile, 2 pass, insane quality, multibframes, H263 Optimised, GMC, no resize, NR off, psychovisual enhancement shaping.

I had to disable the divx feedback window as it would crash and abort the job within virtualdubmod.

Q: VirtualDubMod development is behind VirtualDub. Should I now be using Virtualdub for the video transcoding and just using another tool to mux the transcoded video to the original AC3 soundtrack?

Cheers eh, and thanks

[Bathrone]

Ah ontop of my questions in the last post, for anyone whos trying this method as well, it wont work without resizing the source. This can be done in virtualdubmod or avisynth, but I dont have all the answers on this. My 720x576 25fps PAL DVD is coming out with a PAR of 1.00 and its messing up the display.

[stephanV]

A few comments:

1. AFAIK for PAL the pulldown option is not important, since I have never seen a PAL DVD that uses some sort of telecine pattern. Also, with PAL you don't have to worry about the desynch issue with VirtualDubMod (which should be fixed in the newer VirtualDub-MPEG2 IIRC) which is related to rff/tff flags.

2. Using fast recompress is fine.

3. VirtualDubMod should work fine for what you want to do. In your case, there is no real necessity to upgrade, and it saves you an extra muxing step. IF you do choose to use latest VirtualDub, you can mux afterwards with VDM or AVIMUx GUI.

4. Some codecs let you set the AR and some muxing tools do to. You can also use MPEG4modifier afterwards to set the bitstream PAR.

[Bathrone]

Thanks