Decent DVD authoring software (1 Viewer)

[Steven K]

Very nice Rob!

Perhaps you could post a spec of the hardwaresoftware that you used for the entire process...

 

[Rob Gillespie]

LD player is a Japanese CLD-HF9G, which is basically an Elite CLD-99 with a few tweaks and silver finish.

Capuring was done via a Canopus ADVC-1394 card. Video at 720x480 resolution. Audio was analogue feed directly into the card, so the synch is perfect.

The three sides were spliced together using VirtualDub resulting in one big (26gb) .avi file. Audio was then stripped out. A single-DVD version I'm doing will have the audio turned into 192kbps Dolby Digital using BeSweet. I might also do 2-disc version using higher video bitrates - this will use uncompressed PCM.

The subs were added using Vegas Video 3 LE which I got with the Canopus card. It's just the standrd 'Impact' font squished together a little bit. The new subs are a frame-for-frame sync with the original LD subs in the lower letterboxing border.

Video conversion done using TMPGEnc Plus with the original letterboxing borders blanked off. Bitrate is 5200-8000kbps 2-pass VBR. Inverse Telecine was also enabled to turn the video into 24fps progressive before conversion. I also tweaked the brightness up and red level down a little. The final encode was done with the highest quality motion setting and NO noise reduction (don't need it with that LD player!).

Both of my main PCs are based on the Asus A7N8X motherboard each with an Athlon XP2500+ (Barton) chip and 512mb of RAM in dual-DDR mode. The encode for the full film takes about 15 hours, but that was 18hrs before I changed the memory sticks to 2x256 so they could run in dual-DDR.

 

[Steven K]

Nice setup Rob... I have yet to venture into LD capturing but its something that I've been wanting to do for some time - just don't have the capture card yet.

I do alot of SVCD encoding - I use TMPGEnc as my MPEG2 encoder as well, but have also used Cinema Craft in the past. Have you tried CCE SP for MPEG 2 encoding? It's about 2x as fast as TMPGEnc (for Multipass VBR) and has a bit better quality, but not significant. The downside - it's around $2,000 USD. There is a free version that leaves a watermark in the picture (this is what I've tested with).

Your setup sounds almost identical to mine as far as encoding goes - Virtual Dub for frameserving into either TMPGEnc or CCE, DVD2AVI for audio-stripping, BeSweet for resamplingaudio recoding, pulldown.exe for removing the pulldown flags, restream, etc...

Best part is, most all of the tools are freeware!

Best of luck on future transfers

 

[Rob Gillespie]

There's a Basic version of CCE which is around $50, but it's pretty basic from what I've heard. From the forum discussions I've seen about it on DVDrHelp.com the best results seem to come about using it in conjuction with AviSynth. To be honest, I don't really want to have to learn another scripting language just to get another couple of % of picture quality.

 

[Steven K]

You're right about the basic version of CCE - but it's very limited in that I believe it can only do, at the highest, 2 pass VBR. The main benefit to using CCE is for its speed - it really is at least twice as fast as TMPGEnc and I believe that TMPGEnc can only do 2 pass VBR as well. But, for $50, TMPGEnc cannot be beat.
AviSynth does sound like alot to tackle, but I found that, if you have even a very beginner knowledge of C, that the scripting aspect of AviSynth only actually takes about 10 minutes to learn.

 

[Rob Gillespie]

The main benefit to using CCE is for its speed - it really is at least twice as fast as TMPGEnc

Twice as fast for a $1950 increase in price? Mmmm... value for money!

From what I can tell, TMPGEnc beats most apps well beyond it's price limit. It's not something I've really looked into in any detail but the upgrade steps seem to be to ProCoder (£600) then up to CCE ($2000). These aren't prices for normal people, they're for people who do this kind of stuff for a living (presumably, a very good living).

 

[Vince Maskeeper]

I have been using TMPGEnc as a file converter for years- but was unaware that it had any real DVD authoring abilities (besides making MP2 compliant files if you pay for it).

Canm you explain a bit more what features TMPGEnc has for menu authoring, muxing, dvd layout, that type stuff?

Also- recently I've had problems getting TMPGEnc to read/convert some AVI files I captured a while back. Media player plays them just fine- so the codecs are on the machine-- but TMPGEnc can't seem to deal with them. Any thoughts on that?

-V

 

[Rob Gillespie]

Vince - TMPGEnc doesn't have any DVD authoring facilities. It can, however, take a video source file and convert it into DVD-compliant MPEG2. However there is now a TMPGEnc DVD Author package which gives basic menus and file muxing. It's a separate app though. It's not bad, but it's only $10 cheaper than the $79 DVD-Lab which is a massively more impressive product.

 

[Vince Maskeeper]

Gotcha- so my approach (using TMPGEnc as the converter/encoder app) with a second app for actual disc authoring and layout is probably still the way to go?

Do you ahve any problems with TMPGEnc reading files on your machine that can be opened in other apps like Media Player?

-vince

 

[Steven K]

I find that the best solution is to use a Frameserver with your encoder. A Frameserver is an application which feeds individual AVI frames into your encoder. Normally, you would have to have the entire AVI file stored on your HD before you started your encoding... as in Rob's case (a 26 GB AVI file). A Frameserver will process any video type (such as an MPEG 2 VOB) and send individual frames into the encoder - thus eliminating the need for having a huge, uncompressed AVI file.

AviSynth, Virtual Dub, DVD2AVI, etc... all have frameserving capabilities, but Avisynth is arguably the most popular and most powerful. This takes care of the encoding.

Using this method of encoding, I've never had a problem with any of the files that I've processed. You might run into problems playing the video back (assuming that its MPEG 2) on certain DVD players, depending on what framerate the video was encoded at. If you perform inverse telecine back to 24 FPS, then use pulldown.exe to remove the pulldown flags, you shouldn't have a problem.

 

[Rob Gillespie]

with a second app for actual disc authoring and layout is probably still the way to go?

It seems that way. I'm not sure if there's anything around that will encode and author, at least that's any good. Jeff K will probably know more.

As for the file formats, I've not had any problems myself but then I've not tried an awful lot. I've done DIVX to DVD conversions using TMPGEnc and never had any problems once I got the codecs installed (partly why I dislike DivX is the silly amount of different codecs available). But most of my work to date (and we're only talking a couple of months really) has been converting .avi files from Canopus card.

What kind of errors are you getting? You may need to do some jiggery-pokery with them first with VirtualDub or similar.

 

[Wayne Bundrick]

Rob, those screenshots look great.

I transferred my LD to DVD-R just over a year ago, so I captured a couple of the same frames from mine to compare. There are some differences. I already know I have a black level problem so I think I am going to redo it, but there are other differences too, such as in the color of Tattooine and its moon. Did you transfer the special edition or the original?

 

[Rob Gillespie]

The original ones Wayne - the REAL Star Wars!

I finished my first complete test of the whole movie last night. A 4:3 letterbox version with bitrate at 5500-8000kbps. Red level was knocked down a bit (-25) and Brightness up (+18) - but that adjustment is present in the screenshots above. I was knocked out by the results. It seems my earlier bitrates weren't taking enough advantage of what was available. With VBR you have to give the encoder enough breathing space, so I've got the minimum set to 100, the average at 5500 and the max at 8000. There's a couple of scenes where the artifacting becomes noticeable (though not 'bad' by any means) - the sunset scene is always a difficult one because of the colour graduations - but overall I'm really pleased with how it looks.

 

[John_Berger]

I'm not sure if there's anything around that will encode and author, at least that's any good.

Pinnacle Studio does encode and author, and does it rather well, I must admit. I'm not sure how it handles .d2v files, but if you do anything with FireWire Studio really is a start-to-finish process from capturing to editing to DVD creation. It uses any AVI and MPEG that you have and even allows motion menus, which is something that the more-expensive-by-several-hundred-dollars DVDit PE can't do.

 

[John_Berger]

Red level was knocked down a bit (-25)

I've noticed that with my High Road to China laserdisc that I just transferred over to DVD. The red level made everyone look like they were sunburned. Is this normal for laserdisc or S-Video captures??

 

[Rob Gillespie]

LDs were often a bit hot on the reds.

 

[Rob Gillespie]

Studio doesn't seem to support AC-3, at least from what I can see on Pinnacles slow website.

 

[Ken Chan]

Rob, didn't you mention back in the IRE thread that the captures seemed a bit bright? Did you ever check if the analog-to-DV conversion was stretching the top end of the luminance range, as I mentioned? Do you have the Video Essentials laserdisc, or something with a SMPTE or pluge pattern?

I read that TMPGEnc yields better results in pure CQ mode. In VBR, the bitrate is more constrained to the average, so you don't get the really high and low values. You could check it with Bitrate Viewer. The problem with pure CQ is that the resulting size is not predictable. With AC-3, why aren't you setting the max to 9000, or even a little bit more?

I don't see integrated encoders giving you features like automatic inverse telecine with full manual override, like TMPGEnc does -- and for just $50. Looks pretty good, by the way!

//Ken

 

[Rob Gillespie]

Ken, the captures at IRE0 were bright. I've done them at 7.5 and notched up the Brightness in TMPGEnc a few notches. This looks BETTER than lowering the brightness on the IRE0 capture, so go figure. I did take in what you said before but to be honest it's going beyond my comfort-zone with this. I've compared my conversion to the LD on the same TV I used for my normal DVD watching and I'm really pleased with the results. Really pleased.

I read that TMPGEnc yields better results in pure CQ
mode

Well, not from my own trials. I did a CQ test at 8500kbps and it looked worse than my 100-5500-8000kbps VBR version. I'm not sure why. Lots of colour graduation noticeable, especially during the binary sunset scene. I'm still playing with the VBR settings so I might try a higher max rating.

 

[Wayne Bundrick]

The original ones Wayne - the REAL Star Wars!

Well then that explains some of the color differences, I transfered the SE.

I was stupid and never bought the 1995 "For The Last Time" release because I already have the Definitive Collection CAV box set. I didn't know at the time that the Definitive Collection had some shortcomings.

I think I'm going to transfer the SE again, then try to edit out the new parts that offend my eye, replacing with shots or whole scenes from the OT if necessary.