AVStoDVD Support Thread

[manolito]

Originally Posted by yab_tater

This is a puzzling statement as the working bits of AVStoDVD are very happy taking 24p as input and outputting the same. My ISO files/DVDs are still in 24p, there is no 2:3 pulldown to 30fps.

There is no HARD pulldown in your output, but there certainly is SOFT pulldown via setting the RF flag accordingly. 24 fps is not DVD compliant. You should have a look at this thread:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.ph...96#post1654796

You have to differentiate between encoded frames and presentation frames. The presentation frames include the repeated fields, and the chapter frame numbers always relate to the presentation frames.

There is a nice little tool called ChapterGen which lets you convert between different chapter formats. It can also automatically convert the chapter positions between different frame rates.

http://i40.tinypic.com/2hchoqf.jpg

You can export your chapters from here into a "CellTimes.txt" file which you can then import into AVStoDVD.


Good luck
manolito

[MrC]

In addition to what manolito wrote:

Originally Posted by yab_tater

I am sorry I was not clear in describing my problem, which is that, to use your example, putting in 18,000 frames does not result in a break at 10:00 in my DVDs, but one at 8:00. To get a chapter break at 10:00, I would need to enter a frame count of 22,500

This is puzzling: 22500 frames at 10:00 means the framerate would be 37.5 fps... are you really sure that AVStoDVD is doing that in the 'Add Chapter' routine? If my source title is 23.976 fps (output NTSC) and if I manually add a chapter flag @22500 frame, the related timestamp is 12:30.751

Please double check



Bye

[manolito]

Re Non-Mod4 issue:

Just to let you know that hello_hello came up with another nice workaround for the problem. Have a look here:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.ph...86#post1659686

I think that the modified a2dsource.avsi has the edge, mainly because it does not require that ffdshow is used as the decoder, and because switching to ffmpegsource2 is faster. But I do like his approach. And AVStoDVD probably could make the necessary ffdshow settings at runtime.


Happy new year to everybody...

Cheers
manolito

[rs008f]

Is it possible to change the number of titles per page on the DVD menu?

I got this error during DVD authoring of 52 MKV files. It happened on title #33 which means on the third DVD menu page. Too many files?

Segment memory resources --> RELEASED
Local Stack memory --> RELEASED
File i/o structures --> DEALLOCATED

[MrC]

@manolito

yes I do prefer your solution within A2DSource.avsi. It will be published with 2.7.3 final.

@rs008f

please avoid double posting here and at videohelp.com



Bye

[manolito]

More findings about these non-mod4 sources:

After getting rid of ffdshow and Haali and installing the current LAV filters, all of the problematic non-mod4 source files suddenly worked...

See here:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.ph...92#post1660292

The LAV audio filters gave me some problems within AVStoDVD. For an MPEG2 source with MPEG audio (MP2) I did not get any audio at all. I was unable to fix this via the LAV settings, so I switched to a combination of ffdshow and LAV filters.
//EDIT// Please ignore this. The source file was broken.

My winning combination looks like this:
I installed ffdshow first, but disabled the video decoders completely. Then I installed the LAV filters, but only selected the splitter and the video decoders. So far after about a dozen test conversions everything looks good...


This is probably not for the average AVStoDVD user, setting up this stuff is a little complicated. But it sure is interesting.



Cheers
manolito

[MrC]

@manolito

thanks for the new feedback. Do you know if LAV Filter settings are stored in the win registry, such as ffdshow? If yes, I may add the adjustments at runtime also for LAV Filter.

I'm sending you the 2.7.3 English.lang.ini to update the German.lang.ini. Thanks in advance



Bye

[qyot27]

Originally Posted by MrC

Do you know if LAV Filter settings are stored in the win registry, such as ffdshow? If yes, I may add the adjustments at runtime also for LAV Filter.

It would appear so:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/LAV

with separate areas for 'Audio', 'Video', and 'Splitter'.

[MrC]

@qyot27

thanks, good to know. What is your opinion about LAV Filter? Is it still a "promise" or already a full alternative to ffdshow?



Bye

[manolito]

Alright, here is yet another workaround for the non-mod4 issue.

In the AviSynth thread Wilbert recommended to add the Pixel_Type value YUY2 to the DirectShowSource command, and this workaround (while not elegant) did indeed work.

You can get the same result by modifying the ffdshow video decoder output settings:
http://i39.tinypic.com/1zchg09.jpg

Disabling the YV12 output effectively makes these non-mod4 sources work.

So why do the LAV video filters work out of the box? Do they automatically detect problems with YV12 output and switch to YUY2? All of this is a big mystery to me...



Cheers
manolito

[qyot27]

Originally Posted by MrC

@qyot27

thanks, good to know. What is your opinion about LAV Filter? Is it still a "promise" or already a full alternative to ffdshow?



Bye

A 'full' alternative? LAV has no VFW component, but for everything else, yes (or LAV is better). And if you need the VFW component, it's not like ffdshow's can't be used in tandem with it (unless you're using the 64-bit version of ffdshow - that complaint has been getting tossed around lately in the ffdshow dev thread since either the VFW interface gets disabled in all the 64 bit builds of ffdshow, or only under Win8...something like that).

ffdshow's development has almost halted, and on top of that, it relies on an internal copy of the libav* libraries, whereas LAV Filters doesn't. So basically, LAV is actively maintained and uses much more up-to-date versions of avcodec, avformat, etc. It's also capable of playing both HEVC and Opus - ffdshow can't (and unless there's been a recent update, Haali can't deal with Opus streams in MKV, despite Opus-in-MKV being finalized back in July).

Originally Posted by manolito

So why do the LAV video filters work out of the box? Do they automatically detect problems with YV12 output and switch to YUY2? All of this is a big mystery to me...

It could be a bug in swscale that got fixed in the newer versions that LAV Filters links to. Or a fix that was specific to FFmpeg, since ffdshow took sides with Libav.

Or maybe it is a difference in the underlying DirectShow-related bits, but I know even less about that.

[manolito]

Alright, I took the plunge...

I uninstalled ffdshow, Haali and the FLVSplitter completely and installed the latest LAV filter package (0.59.1), all settings at their defaults.

No problems so far, decoding non-mod4 width sources works each and every time. One minor glitch in AVStoDVD: For MPEG2 source files with MPEG audio (MP2), I do not get any sound in the preview. The actual conversion does work, though, and playing the file in a DirectShow based player also works. So this is most likely a AVStoDVD issue.

//EDIT//
It did work after enabling 32bit floating point output which was disabled by default
http://picload.org/image/lgdwogp/lav_audio.jpg


But I do have a couple of questions:
In ffdshow there is a setting for raw sources, and it should be set to "All Supported". LAV filters do not have such a setting. Is it unnecessary, or could the absence of this setting cause trouble?

My other question is about the audio mixer. In ffdshow it is enabled by default, and AVStoDVD modifies its settings at runtime to ensure proper channel mapping for multichannel sources.

For LAV filters the audio mixer is disabled by default. Will this result in a false channel mapping for multichannel sources (i.e. is it necessary for AVStoDVD to modify the mixer settings), or will the LAV audio filters deliver a correct channel mapping without activating the mixer?

Since I do not have a multichannel configuration in my system, I have no way to test this. But so far the LAV filters look very promising to me...



Cheers
manolito

[qyot27]

Originally Posted by manolito

In ffdshow there is a setting for raw sources, and it should be set to "All Supported". LAV filters do not have such a setting. Is it unnecessary, or could the absence of this setting cause trouble?

It seems it can handle raw video, but I've not tested extensively. The 'rawvideo' and 'rawaudio' options are actually in the Splitter's formats list.

[manolito]

Thanks qyot27 for the information...

So I'd say it is up to MrC now to test the LAV filters. Especially if the audio channel mapping works correctly out of the box, or if the mapping must be corrected like with ffdshow.


Cheers
manolito

[MrC]

I'm currently in the process to finalize 2.7.3 release (cosmetics and help file update). After publishing it, I will give a try to LAV Filters and check all the runtime adjustment needed. With ffdshow, AVStoDVD adjusts:

- Raw Video and Audio "on" when previewing output using ActiveMovie DShow class (quartz.dll)

- Audio mixer when encoding audio with DirectShow approach

- Preferred filters merit with the new tool introduced with 2.7.3 alpha releases



Bye

[Sparktank]

Wonderful progress!

Can't wait to show my friends this program. They've been looking for something to back up their BD's so their kids don't ruin them.
They got Windows 8.1, and not much internet.

When they get it up and running, I'll check on them and see how things are going and report back on 8.1 progress.

It's been awhile since I've given this a go (or even updated lol).
Looking forward to the updates and checking things out, MrC.

[manolito]

More interesting findings about non-mod4 sources and LAV Filters:

(This applies to using ffdshow and Haali)
I came across some MPEG1 and MPEG2 files which ffmpegsource2 cannot handle. This is the error message:
http://i42.tinypic.com/ztte0z.png

This means that my workaround for a2dsource.avsi does not work for these sources. I found another workaround which forces DirectShowSource to output YUY2 in such cases. Maybe this one should be used generally instead of the old one. The DirectShowSource commands look like this now:

Video = DirectShowSource(VideoSource, fps = FrameRate, convertfps = VFR, audio = false)
Video = (Video.Width % 4 ==0) ? Video : DirectShowSource(VideoSource, fps = FrameRate, convertfps = VFR, audio = false, \
pixel_type = "YUY2")

I uploaded two offending files plus the modified a2dsource.avsi here:
http://www27.zippyshare.com/v/95856523/file.html


When using LAV Filters instead of ffdshow and Haali the offending files are handled by ffmpegsource2 without problems. This means that the LAV splitter works better in combination with ffmpegsource2 than Haali. Kind of funny because the ffms2 documentation states that in order to decode OGG and MPEG streams correctly the Haali splitter must be installed. But using ffmpegsource2 is not even necessary for these files with the LAV filters, DirectShowSource handles them just fine.

Overall I am quite happy with the LAV filters so far. Raw sources indeed do not seem to be a problem, the AVS2DVD preview works with all kinds of source formats. Remains the audio mixer and the preferred filters merit...


Cheers
manolito

[qyot27]

Originally Posted by manolito

When using LAV Filters instead of ffdshow and Haali the offending files are handled by ffmpegsource2 without problems. This means that the LAV splitter works better in combination with ffmpegsource2 than Haali. Kind of funny because the ffms2 documentation states that in order to decode OGG and MPEG streams correctly the Haali splitter must be installed. But using ffmpegsource2 is not even necessary for these files with the LAV filters, DirectShowSource handles them just fine.

The docs say that to seek in them reliably, that you need Haali. It doesn't say it requires it for decoding. If Haali's not installed (or if FFMS2 has been built with anything other than the Professional version of MSVC), it falls back to libavformat's demuxer - there's no way for it to see, let alone use, LAV Filters (nor would it be necessary, considering that LAV Filters uses libavformat too). The key point there is that that blurb in the docs has probably not changed in the several years since FFMS2 was first released, and in the meanwhile, libavformat's demuxers have gotten a lot better, even if MPEG-2 Transport Streams are still something of a sore spot.

You'd probably have gotten the same behavior if, when Haali was still installed, you used either the C plugin version of FFMS2 or used the demuxer=lavf option.

[manolito]

Thanks for the info. Much appreciated...


Cheers
manolito

[Kangiten]

Hello everyone,

I'm new to AVS2DVD. After some trial-and-error attempts, I've managed to get pretty much everything working.

I still have a little question pertaining to chapters. So I have a Blu-ray which I want to convert to DVD9. Although I'm in a PAL country (and therefore not used to NTSC encoding), the Blu-ray is 23,976 fps. When converting, AVS2DVD logically suggested I should encode in NTSC. After the encoding, I checked the .vob files with GSpot, which indicated a frame rate of 29,97 fps (which, if I understand correctly, means that AVS2DVD performed pulldown).

Now, after encoding, I realized that I forgot to include the original chapters. So I extracted the original chapter list. Now, my understanding is that I have to correct this chapter list so they adjust to the new frame rate. I found out that I could do just that with Chapter Grabber. Now, the thing is when I open the *.vob files in Ifoedit, it reports a frame rate of 30 fps next to the chapters (and not the 29,97 fps that I expected).

So my question is: should I use 29,97 fps or 30 fps as the basis for chapter conversion? I don't know if the difference matters all that much, but if you do things, you might as well do them properly

Thanks for any input.