Mencoder: AC3 files produced by ac3enc.dll freeze when Authoring
 

Hi Guys,

I use DVD-Lab Pro 1.4 beta 2 for my authoring needs.

The problem is that everytime I use PackShot to convert my VOBs via PS I put the resulting m2v file and ac3 files into DVD-Lab and use the simple movie template.

The problem is after about 3-5 seconds the picture and sound freezes. I can press the scan button on my DVD standalone but again after 3-5 seconds it freezes again and again.

Now I know DVD-Lab v1.4 has bugs and issues but ive used this to author countless DVD's without problems and I have used the video/audio files produced by DIKO and have never had any problems what so ever.

I know its easy to blame DVD-Lab for being buggy but I dont buy its just this, maybe my settings are wrong I just dont know.

Here are my settings Screenshot1:
http://www.digitalfaq.com/archives/error.gif

Here the intial encoding start, Screenshot2:
http://www.digitalfaq.com/archives/error.gif

Where am I going wrong in PS??? Please help me :bawl: lol

Re: m2v files produced by PackShot freeze when Authoring.
 

The problem you have is probably tied to your standalone and not to the authoring tool. I mean that the result will probably be the same with tmpgenc Author for instance.

Even if I never had any fully working DVD with previous PRO beta 1 ;-)

Note: I'm not sure but 9800 isn't the max bitrate for video PLUS audio ? Perhaps there is a problem there...

Note2: mencoder produces great video with 5000 as max bitrate also ;-)

As I know, DIKO uses CCE for encoding and it seems that this is not an Packshot issue BUT a mencoder Issue when authoring mencoder generated files using DVDlabpro beta versions!

All other DVD authoring apps do not have any Probs with Mencoder m2vs, like MaestroDVD, TmpgEnc DVD author, ... etc.

I dropped DVDlab(pro) cause ...

a) buggy!
b) to slow when authoring/muxing
c) Much nice stuff for play, means many menue creating options. BUT they FIRST should getting main engines work properly before developing useful extra "toys" ;-)
d) A TOOOOTALLY complicated way if generating a DVD using multiple VTS Tracks! Even in Pro Version (do look at their Tips/Tricks page - that workout to get 2 VTS Tracks working is a JOKE!) ;-)

and

e) too sensible according to incoming streams as you see in your case above. In the Mediachance forum they say "Do add Closed GOP feature and it will be ok" .... :?: For what the hell I do need closed GOP feature if NOT authoring more featured DVDs ?? :lol:

You see I made my count with mediachance.
Do look at MaestroDVD and you see where the at least full working roots of DVDlab are from. :wink:

:D Inc.


PS: I see you go into Packshot/mencoder using an full field/blended/dynPhaseshifted Simpsons Stream!
In small words :arrow: Interlaced Source ... and Packshot in its actual state doesnt support interlaced encoding.

BUT as I also some time ago did a " mistake" by encoding progressive a similair case (Independence day - also bad NTSC/PAL converted and therefore full interlaced) ... I did a try and just patched the encoding to a interlaced stream in its flag settings using Restream .... and it played back with NO Problems! 8O
Totally crazy but it worked even when that mistake by choosing the wrong encode mode was done :lol:

Sorry Inc i hope you dont think im moaning at PackShot I never thought for one minute it was PS giving me problems, I was thinking it was more to do with Mencoder and the settings I have used for it.

I have compared the Average bitrates from Mencoder via PS and DIKO.

DIKO has around 550 to 560kbps where as

PS resulted in 1997kbps.

Maybe my bitrate is too high for my standalone was my first thought.

Then I decided to test just the movie only without any audio and guess what?

The movie played back perfectly in my DVD standalone with an awesome picture.

These leads me to believe that the problem is in the audio track via BeSweet doing ac3.

I shall try a coulple more tests one using an average bitrate of 500kbps and ac3 audio and another encode with the same average 500kbps and mp2 audio @ 48Khz and see the results.

This may take a while though.

Thank you both Phil and Inc for your time and patients with me. :)

DIKO works with CCE and prediction if I do remember. And as you did set in Packshot 2pass and 2000avg bitrate ... it seems everyth. is ok ;-)

BTW: 720x576 and interlacing encoding at 2000avg ... is veeery less!
But you have to diecide for yourself .. watch fast motion areas in interlaced encodings which where done at lower avg bitrates... they do get "Blocky" veeery fast ;-)

I thought that player incomaptibility in very rare cases is fixed when BeSweet uses AC3 enc??? 8O Well they told that.

But as you "only" encode to 2.0 CH I would shurely use mp2! As I think that Ac3 problem maybe occurs only on 2.0 CH encodings at some Player Models --- which brand of player u got on your own???

And as said above .. DONT use that low avg Bitrates in case of interlaced encodings ... it will look alwful! ;-)

Unfortunately here in the U.K a lot of my DVD's are PAL Interlaced so I guess I need to find out how to deal with interlaced sources.

I think I will give DVDMaestro a look at.

I shall search the web and see if they offer any trials of their software. :)

EDIT: My Standalone DVD Player is a Rowa DVD-280. :)

Is it the same as 'DVD Maestro' from spruce ?

Because it's a profesionnal tool that cost A LOT ! And it is far to be at the reach of a newbie.

I once ripped commercial DVDs that were authored with this prog ;-)

Else : were can I see that soft ?

Alas Phil you are right.

If it is the program that I found which is DVDMaestro from Spruce as you said Phil, then there is no trial available for it and it does look (to me at least) a bit more involved than DVD-Lab im afraid.

Here are two links Phil so that you can check it out. You proberbly already know it though. :)

http://www.spruce-tech.com/products/dvdmaestro.html

http://www.spruce-tech.com/

Hi Inc, I tested the same Simpson Episode again this time using mp2 audion at 48Khz with 128kbps.

It authored perfectly in DVD-Lab and plays fine but to me this is a bit disappointing because I have to use audio quality which is basically VCD & SVCD.

Is there a way I can extract the audio and use SoftEncode to convert to ac3?

Thanks.

Hi Michael,
There are some ways.
Use VobEdit to rip the right audio track from your VOB files.
You start VobEdit and click the Open button > choose the VOB file of your source DVD.
Now click the Demux button on it and a new window pops up.
Now choose AC3 audio Stream radio button and choose the right track from the combo box next to it.
Every thing is stored as 0x80 (usually English track) so you need to check which one you need.
Then you can use the audio encoder of your preference.
There is another way with DVDDecrypter using the "Stream Processing" tab.
It actually does the same as VobEdit.
Cheers

Thanks for the info Rui, very helpful indeed I shall try out both the examples you gave me here. :)

Tell me the final "recognisable" difference between mp2 2.0 ch 128kbit or AC3 2.0 ch 128kbit! finally when "hearing" the sound of the Movie :lol:
Both do support surround/surround2 an azid gots a very good downmix engine wich is supported by Packshot.

To me the only reason to keep AC3 as AC3 is, if you want to keep 5.1 CH!
So do a test (maybe on a DVD-RW):
- Use AC3Machine !!with the latest besweetengines!! (simply copy AC3machine into Packshots "engines" folder and do assign within AC3machine the path of besweet to the one besweet which is stored in the "engines" folder.
Do reencode your orig AC3 5.1 to again AC3 5.1 in AC3Machine ... and do generate your DVD again incl. that 5.1 AC3 ... now test if it plays well.
I want to know if only at AC3 2ch issues do could come up in case of your player where btw .... I still dont know your Players brand/model ;-)

Hi Inc, I did put my standalone player in this above post. ;)

I agree with you Inc about AC3 2ch audio and im not really bothered about that for converting that to mp2 audio as there is no real difference.

The problem is when I convert a movie that has 5.1 AC3 audio I dont really want to lose all the benefits of that surround sound by converting that to mp2.

I dont really trust BeSweet or AC3Machine as from what ive read it has a lot of bugs/issues when converting to AC3 (btw im not blaming BeSweet for this but the plugins).

I shall however Move AC3Machine to my engines folder as you suggested and see how I go.

What I might do is rip one VOB from one of my movie DVD's just to test full AC3 audio and see how I go from there. :)

There are differences between a 128kbit MP2 and AC3. Naturally it depends on the audio source itself, music will show the differences clearly but dialog doesn't. IMHO AC3 (encoded with SoftEncode) doesn't produce as audible artifacts as an MP2 at such (relatively) low bitrates.

I don't really see the diff with the ac3 file that was produced pack packshot.
AC3Machine is just a GUI upon besweet.exe and packshot uses besweet.exe. So the result will ne the same.

Yep Phil, but in Packshot you cant encode just the audio ;-)
You will have to encode the whole Job (and thats its purpose).

So he must use a standalone GUI like Ac3machine to encode Audio only!
(BTW... in case of AC3 encoding DO CHOOSE ac3machine as its known that Besweet gui gives wrong parameters when reencoding to AC3! Ac3machine gives a better working Commandlineoutput).

@Boulder

Ok, I do agree, and thats why I said "recognisable" ;-)

@ Zyphon

You also should add a maximise gain in Ac3machine when reencoding to AC3 ... this will avoid the "quiet" volume issue of the output.

Thanks for the info guys much appreciated and ive learned a lot about different audio qualities and formats. :)

I did have another question about the AC3 audio, could I use an extracted ac3 file from DVD2AVI and re-encode that?

For sure. Reencode or reauthor it directly into the DVD if you have enought room for that.

Thank you very much for the info Phil, I shall go and make some tests. :)

how many Mbs you will got reencoding the ac3 to another bitrate?
from 384 to 256 will give less than ~35Mb....it's not a good choice!

my hint and my personal choice is: use the original AC3 for best quality, don't reencode!
:wink:

Hi Jorel, I will keep bitrate the same 384.

Seeing as BeSweet via PS gives me this freezing error in playback on my Standalone DVD player I just wanted to encode the audio from an external encoder.

Im not to sure if I can simply use the ac3 file generated by DVD2AVI or do I need to use AC3Machine or another tool to re-encode or to clean up and avoid the quiet volume issue as Inc mentioned. :)

yes, you can use the ac3 file extracted from dvd2avi!
:wink:

The file you get from DVD2AVI is _exactly_ the same that you hear when you play the original DVD in your standalone. As jorel said, use the original track, don't re-encode.

@Jorel & Boulder

So this means really even if my AC3 is 2ch or 5.1 I can just use the ac3 track extracted by DVD2AVI without the bother of converting 2ch AC3 to mp2.

This is excellent news guys I thank you both so much for your helpful info and same goes to Inc and Phil.

Thanks guys. :)

Out of interest if I did want fix an ac3 made via PS to avoid the audio being to quiet what settings would I need.

These are the current settings i have:
http://www.digitalfaq.com/archives/error.gif
What should be the correct/optimum settings?

Thanks again guys. ;)

"Fixing" an AC3 ??? Thats not the way!
Do use the orig AC3 or whatever and use AC3 machine inc. "Auto find max gain" as you showed in your AC3 machine settings.

BUT! Some parameters in Besweets engines did change! And so I would use Packshots generated Besweet commandline but in azid a "-g max", this will make the ac3 encoding louder.

BUT as AC3machine ALSO like Packshot bases on the ac3enc.dll ... then you will end up with the SAME type of AC3!
So do first look if ONLY issues do occur if your Player gets 2.0 CH reencoded AC3s.

If there still problems do occur (on my player they doesnt) ... you should use in DVD decrypter "demuxed" streams output where you go into packshot using the resulted m2v from dvd decrypter and the outputted AC3s you can reencode (If wanted) using SOFTENCODE ... which is known as one of the best AC3 encoding apps. ---- but it costs money!

Thanks for the info Inc, I understand what you are saying and I shall take that on board and put to use what I have learned here today.

So thanks again. :D

Note: I have made an amendment to the topic title as suggested by Inc. ;)

Since I now know that the freezing issue was caused by the audio and not the video it makes better sense for others to not to be mislead by topic title.

Thanks again guys for all your help. :)

Adding:

Its also senseful as for audioencoding BeSweet is used in Packshot, and DSPguru WON'T that it could be seen that ac3enc.dll is a fixed part of Besweet! Its just a standalone.dll independend from DSPgurus developement - Thats also the reason why he wanted me to add that "warning message window" if AC3 encoding is choosen in Packshot.

;-)

And a resumeé is that this issue above is Player-Brand/Model/Type dependant!

Thanks Inc, I fully understand that ac3enc.dll is an external part of both PackShot and BeSweet and hence im not blaming either products for my ac3 problems.

I dont know if there is a bug in the ac3enc.dll and if there will be any updates of it to address the problems it has.

Hi Michael!

AC3enc.dll related very useful links!!:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=43466

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=52263

As you can read there the incompatibility issue "should" have been solved and thats why a new ac3enc.dll came out (which in regular is in the latest besweet package included!) ... so do check your ac3enc.dll version.
Also there seemed to be only an issue related to player crashings when encoding to AC3 2 CH.

Volume related .... well as said, do use in Packshot in case of AC3 Gain = Auto which gives the right parameter to azid ( -g max ) which avoids only 50% volume on AC3 outputs.

In one of the threads above (at the end) you can see a post from J-Wo who said that a ota ( -G 1) "postgaining" (not pregaining!) instead of azid (-g max ) would give even louder AC3 outputs ... I'll check that.

;-)

Thanks for the links and info Inc, I shall read them. :)

As the the ac3enc.dll I downloaded it at the same time as PackShot as you suggested when you first released PS on the 15/5/04.

So basically I dont know when was the last time ac3enc.dll was updated but im sure my is the current release I got it from DSPguru's site in the plugin section.